I love having study and prayer time to feel in touch with God, but sometimes now that I have an infant and two little girls, I find myself struggling for time to be quiet and think.

That can be tough, especially when you have very young kids. The quietness actually can become more of an attitude that you develop. Just because everyone around you is excited doesn’t mean that you have to be excited. That inner stillness allows you to yield to God’s love and God’s messages to you. It can be happening all the time. I lived in New York City for a while, and when I would be waiting for the subway in the most packed, crazy crowd, I enjoyed getting that mental stillness, the inner stillness that allowed me to sense God’s presence. Even if you just do it for four or five seconds, that can feed you for the whole day. And so that stillness—it’s natural, it’s a quality you can develop. It’s something you can work on and get better at.

I’m a stay-at-home mother and feel frustrated from all the work to be done—serving the family with no appreciation for all the work involved.

The world may not appreciate what a mother or a father does for his or her child, yet God does. If you work as an agent of God in your family, and that’s all, maybe no one will know what you’ve done. No one will have any idea of the work you’ve done alone, yet God will bless you. As it says in the Bible: You’re His “good and faithful” daughter or son, in whom He is “well pleased.”

Say you’re a parent with three children, and the first two kids are easy, and then the third one comes along and is more demanding, changing the family dynamic. How do you respond to this with prayer?

GOD EXPRESSES HIMSELF UNIQUELY IN EACH OF US.

We all are different because God expresses Himself uniquely in each of us, but our potential is the same because it’s in God. This world is like a laboratory in which we learn that God is our Parent and that we have the potential of God’s goodness in everything we do. So, step by step, day by day, experience by experience, we learn that. Each one of us may be at a different place in that learning.

There are times when I try to make my very headstrong child do what is right, but I get such resistance that I don’t know what to do. How can I find healing for both myself and my son?

Sometimes it’s important to step back and acknowledge the presence of the divine Parent, of God, in the room. Sometimes it’s just as important to step back and be still. Let our Parent—let God—give us instruction on what to say, or maybe what not to say. Also, it’s important to see the child actually through the eyes of God, so to speak. Now, that’s prayer. When you’re praying for your child, you’re beholding your child as God beholds him or her—fully capable, only in love with good, pure, patient. Be grateful for those qualities—they’re present. As you do that, it has the effect of exalting the willfulness into strength and persistence, into a purer quality that has usefulness.

Our one son was born with Down’s Syndrome. I no longer blame myself, and I’ve tried so hard to see him as perfect. We have a beautiful relationship, and I long to see our son as God created him.

LET GOD LEAD YOUR THOUGHT.

We’re all God’s children. We, as His children, must be willing to be led. Jesus talked about being as tractable as a child—being willing to be led. And I feel that means we must be willing to have our thought led forward. So as you’re praying, day by day, for your child, don’t do it alone. Let your Parent help you. Let God lead your thought, opening the way so that you see more and more of your child’s true nature.

The Bible says that what God has done, He does forever. God created your child in His image. No event can change that, no thought, no fear—nothing can change what God has done, because we’re not separate from God. As the conceptions of God, we stay at one with God. Also, God isn’t just near us, taking care of us. We’re at one with God because God is omnipresent. And it is so important to behold that oneness. So, as you and your child go about your day, sense the presence of God. Sense your oneness and your child’s oneness with God.

You hear on the news about young people innocently making choices that wind up being life-threatening. As my children grow older and start making choices apart from me, how can I prayerfully support them in making wise decisions?

You can’t be with any person 100 percent of the time. You just can’t do it. As the children move away, you’re not with them at all. Yet actually every parent has the opportunity, when praying for their children, to explore and enjoy and embrace a child’s oneness with God. You can tell I’m bringing that up a lot, but it’s the key thing. Each one of us exists as the effect of this perfect cause called God. And cause and effect don’t separate. A human parent separates from a child. But God, as the divine Parent, never leaves. And that goes for us, too, as parents. We’re not on our own, trying to be good parents. Instead, we’re at one with God, expressing God’s parenthood.

How do you pray for a child who says they do not believe in God?

There’s no way that anyone can reject God. They can say it, but we exist only as the evidence of God’s presence. And so there really isn’t a way to not be under the love and law of God. It’s just impossible. You can’t get away from God. It doesn’t matter if somebody believes that he or she has. The presence of God is solid—it’s always there. There’s nothing you can do about that.

WHAT WE ARE SAYS SO MUCH MORE THAN THE WORDS THAT COME OUT OF OUR MOUTHS.

I remember reading something about a man who was watching someone give a speech. I’m just paraphrasing this, but he said, “I can’t really hear what you’re saying, because what you are is communicating much more than your words.” I’ve never forgotten that, because in a family it’s what we are that says so much more than the words that come out of our mouths. Someone could argue with what you say. But they can’t argue with what you are. And so, as you’re living the expression of God moment by moment, you are communicating everything necessary. If God is forefront in your thought, and everything you’re doing is just to work as a transparency of God’s presence, that’s perfect parenting because now the Parent is God.

It takes discipline of thought to keep this approach. I know that. If you only spend 15 minutes in the whole day, but it adds up to 15 minutes of being a transparency to God in your family, and that’s what you’re living, rejoice, because maybe tomorrow it will be 15-and-1/2 minutes. It’s what you are; that’s what communicates. Now, as you do that, you’ll find that the opportunities to communicate the ideas of Christian Science, or of what you want to pass along, will come.

I’m concerned about the choices being made by a granddaughter for whom a boyfriend is far more important than going to college or getting a job. I wish my own experiences could help her avoid the consequences of my poor choices as teenager and college student.

I think everyone—not just parents—hopes that people will learn from others’ mistakes. But sometimes they don’t. That’s OK. You can talk until the cows come home, but the talk often does nothing. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t talk to your kids—but sometimes trying to convince someone of their erroneous ways causes them to dig their heels in. Of course there are times where a child might be making a destructive decision, taking drugs, or doing some kind of dangerous activity, and as a parent, you have the obligation to step in and stop it.

In this case, however, your granddaughter is learning the same kind of a lesson maybe you had to learn, just in a different way. If you behold your oneness—and your granddaughter’s oneness with God—you will do more for her than any speech you could ever say to her. In that oneness, everything is completely good. It’s right. On their own, a child really is just swimming, but at one with God, anything good is possible. So work with that idea for a bit. You’ll be able to give your granddaughter more than you ever could imagine.

As a child I was never told that I was loved. When I grew up, I felt I would always tell my children that I loved them and still do. Now kids are being taught to hug and kiss people they’ve just met and tell them they love them. Isn’t this going too far the other way and cheapening the meaning?

EVERY MOMENT YOU ARE BASKING IN THE LIGHT OF GOD’S LOVE.

How you feel when you say, “I love you,” is what matters. If you show love, and say “I love you,” and you mean it, then it’s of God, and that’s not cheap at all. And there’s plenty of God’s love in you to spread out. You’re not going to run out. And that relates, then, to people who’ve felt unloved when they were children, or maybe even as grown-ups. The love that people love you with is always God’s love. That’s a very important thing to realize. It’s sort of like the moon, how it reflects the sun’s light. The moon doesn’t create any light of its own; it just reflects the sun’s light. Similarly, each one of us just reflects God’s love. We don’t create, really, any of our own love; we’re just loving everyone with God’s love. Whether or not a parent showed that to you doesn’t matter. The love of God still is present. And if you look through your life, you’ll see evidence—if you watch for it. Don’t ever look back on your life and think of it as being without love. That’s just not true. Every moment you are basking in the light of God’s love—every moment. It doesn’t matter how people behaved around you. You’re pure; you have an experience of just the goodness and love of God in your life. That’s all that’s there. It’s worth it to acknowledge that.

Could you please share ideas on how to balance parenting and work?

I don’t think that I need to put on my parenting hat or my work hat. What I’m saying is, I don’t differentiate my life into different roles. I just think of myself constantly as a transparency to God. If I can do that, then work and family life mingle; they’re separate, but they mingle together and don’t compete. And so, think of yourself in those terms. There’s so much to being a transparency to God. That’s such a helpful idea. So often we think, “Well, God gives us our identities and maybe a few qualities, but it’s up to us to go off on our own and maybe make something of them.” No, it’s better than that. We’re really at one with God, as God’s expression. And as God’s expression, then there really isn’t a different line between work and parenting or your social life or whatever else you do. There’s just the work of being the agent for God 24 hours a day. It’s a good way to live life!