Motherhood – A Grand Tradition
of Ups...and Downs
Don't
Get Stuck in the Downs
Each
of you have been in my heart and in my mind this past week leading up to
Mother's Day.
I have
been studying Elder Jeffrey R. Holland’s April 1997 General Conference
talk, “Because
She is a Mother” this past week. While studying this talk,
the Spirit taught me so many truths. Of course, I wanted
to share them with all the amazing mothers I know! Especially
my Mothers Who Know sisters!
This
week in our 9am Mothers Who Know meeting
we discussed how to keep a truthful perspective
about how we are doing in our stewardships as mothers. It is challenging
to not assume we are failing when our child is behaving contrary
to our values and God's commandments.
So, when we are
being celebrated for our efforts as mothers, we feel the evidence is
overwhelming that the last thing we should be comfortable with is the results of
those efforts. This can only be made worse as we hear talks, see videos, and
listen to songs that highlight glorious insightful successes of other mothers.
Add to
this the tactic of our enemy satan to fog the truth
and fill us with lies. He uses our obvious and evident
messy failure at our
house to convince us into literally hating Mother’s
Day.
Consider what’s really going on
here. Is there truth behind our misery or are we being deceived?
Elder
Holland shares:
“Sometimes the decision of a child or a grandchild will break
your heart. Sometimes expectations won’t immediately be met. Every mother and
father worries about that. Even that beloved and wonderfully
successful parent President Joseph F. Smith pled, ‘Oh! God, let me not lose my
own.’ That is every parent’s cry, and in it is something of every parent’s
fear. But no one has failed who keeps trying and keeps praying. You
have every right to receive encouragement and to know in the end your children
will call your name blessed, just like those generations of foremothers before
you who hoped your same hopes and felt your same fears.”
Consider the disappointment of some of those
mothers before us. Elder Holland points out:
“ours is the grand tradition of Eve, the mother of all
the human family, the one who understood that she and Adam had to fall in order
that “men [and women] might be” and that there would be joy.”
As Elder Holland puts it; “ours
is the grand tradition of these noble mothers”. This tradition includes both great success and great pain. Ups
and downs!
Eve was
a mother who had some serious messes at her house. Her
son Cain listened to satan more than God, killed his
brother Abel and then pledged his allegiance to satan and
served him in darkness. For a mother, this would be devastatingly painful.
The
mothers of the sons of Helaman sent
their young, inexperienced sons off to war to fight a fierce enemy they knew
very well. They understood how much the Laminates hated those they
sought to kill, because they had lived among them and once thought as
they thought and lived as they lived. Miraculously none of these
sons were lost but they had to see all their sons wounded, some of them
with very deep wounds. This could cause a mother high levels of shame and
regret if she were one of the
mothers whose sons wounds were so deep that each time she
looked at him she was reminded by the handicap he lived with - of
what he gave up for her to be safe.
Sariah, the
mother of Laman and Lemuel, had some pretty
unbelieving, disobedient, disrespectful, grumpy sons who had such bad
tempers they would consider beating, tying up or killing their
brother when they were mad. I can just imagine the tears that welled up
in her eyes as they would sing their day’s version of “There is Beauty All
Around, When There’s Love at Home” for Family Home
Evening. I'm sure she would have wondered in
frustration and overwhelm; “What else can I do? I’ve tried every way I can
think of to teach them that in our family ‘we don’t hit…we use our words,’
but they just won’t listen.”
Mary, the
mother of Jesus, had to watch her perfect loving son be publicly disrespected,
arrested, tortured, beaten, mocked and belittled and
finally, brutally murdered right before her eyes. How incredibly
tormenting and painful to a mother's heart…her very soul.
Heavenly
Mother had to watch countless numbers of her
children turn away from their Father and seek to destroy His plan for our
happiness. She had to watch as one of her most distinguished sons –
Lucifer - used his influence to deceive his brothers and sisters,
taking advantage of their vulnerabilities, instilling doubt, and
filling them with fear. I’m sure Her mother heart broke
as She considered his motive of wanting to have honor and glory. I
can’t help but wonder what Her council might have sounded like as She
attempted to guide him, yet understood that nothing She said or
did would ultimately dissuade him from mis-using his agency.
The
kind of conversations She and Father must have had before Father had to
cast them out of His presence. The kind of yearning and heart
ache She had after they had to leave and what Her heart, in
all Her motherly love, must still feel as she watches the casualties
of war continue, the truth that 1/3 of her children will never experience
anything that The Father has promised.
I
think it would be safe to say that THE VERY BEST OF MOTHERS
had really big messes in their families and experienced the
heart ache and sadness we feel when our children struggle or
fail in painful ways.
Get
ready, tune in – sarcasm to follow: Maybe instead of being filled
with shame and sadness on Mother’s Day we can embrace
the tradition of the noble mothers before us…Living the tradition of the
good, the bad, and the ugly… LOL. 😊 We
are living every mother's dream since the beginning of time.
Accepting the ups and the downs with courage and faith!
Seriously. Consider
how absurd it is to think that only the mothers who break from tradition and
seem to have only “awesome” at their house are good mothers. What
if we were to embrace that sticking to tradition is
Heavenly
Father’s plan. As we - like
those mothers who went before are keeping the
tradition of believing in Heavenly Father’s great plan as we
honor agency. We are standing and fighting here just as we did in
the pre-existence for the cause of Christ. When we have pain in
our mothering and see evidence of our less than perfect results as our children
work the plan, our perspective needn't be “I hate Mother’s Day because
all I can see is my failure.” Or “I hate Mother’s Day because it
makes me feel so sad at my children’s failures to follow God’s plan.” Or
“I avoid going to church on Mother’s Day and warn all near me to not
celebrate me because I’d rather isolate myself in a dark corner and focus on my
wounds of shame that satan convinced me I should have.”
Instead, Elder
Holland explains a brighter perspective when he said;
“may I say to mothers
collectively, in the name of the Lord, you are magnificent. You are doing
terrifically well. The very fact that you have been given such a responsibility
is everlasting evidence of the trust your Father in Heaven has in you. He knows
that your giving birth to a child does not immediately propel you into the
circle of the omniscient.”
Then
he points out what we can do to embrace the tradition
of noble mothers. In summary:
·
Strive to love God and live the gospel
·
Plead for that guidance and comfort of
the Holy Spirit promised to the faithful;
·
Go to the temple to both make and
claim the promises of the most sacred covenants a woman can make in this
world;
·
Show others, including your children,
the same caring, compassionate, forgiving heart you want heaven to show
you;
·
Try your best to be the best parent
you can be
...“If you do these
things you will have done all that a human being can do and all
that God expects you to do.”
“Yours is the work of
salvation, and therefore you will be magnified, compensated, made more than you
are and better than you have ever been as you try to make honest effort,
however feeble you may sometimes feel that to be.
Remember, remember all
the days of your motherhood: ‘Ye have not come thus far save it were by the
word of Christ with unshaken faith in him, relying wholly upon the merits of
him who is mighty to save.’
Rely on Him. Rely on Him
heavily. Rely on Him forever. And ‘press forward with a steadfastness in
Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope.’
You are doing God’s work.
You are doing it wonderfully well. He is blessing you and He will bless you,
even—no, especially—when your days and your nights may be the most challenging.
Like the woman who anonymously, meekly, perhaps even with hesitation and some
embarrassment, fought her way through the crowd just to touch the hem of
the Master’s garment, so Christ will say to the women who worry and
wonder and sometimes weep over their responsibility as mothers, ‘Daughter, be
of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole.’ And it will make your
children whole as well.”
Fellow
moms, I invite you to study this article as the Mother’s Day gift
it is to a wounded mother’s heart. I invite you to allow
His light to wash away the darkness the adversary
is deceiving you with. How about we give ourselves the
huge Mother’s Day gift of celebrating that we are the CRUSHER.
Satan is just a bruiser. He has no power over us unless we give it to
him.
Take back your power by
celebrating your efforts and all the heart you have given to keep
with tradition and remain
in the truth of your divine identity and purpose. We were never meant to
be perfect at our mothering job. Our divine identity and
purpose is not to be a Savior for our children – they already have
one. The way we truly honor our Father, His son - our Lord
and Redeemer – and our foremothers is to believe in ourselves and
our children; because the everlasting tradition is that even though
we may struggle with our stewardship as a mother
from time to time…God never ceases to be God and we know:
“HE LIVES TO COMFORT ME
WHEN FAINT, HEAR MY SOUL’S COMPLAINT, WIPE AWAY MY TEARS, COMFORT ALL MY
FEARS… “
Don’t
break with tradition! Honor
the eternal promises that are ours because of Christ!
Celebrate the privilege of being a Mother Who
Knows, knows that she walks with God and knows that her work helps in bringing
about His work and His glory - through the ups and the downs!
I honor
you as the divine women each of you are.
Together in
the fight!
With love,
Karen
