MamaBlogga

Every once in a while, I get fixated on this one little thing. It might be having my son participate in his preschool Christmas program, or my daughter take dance lessons (okay, that one hasn’t happened yet). I want my child to do this thing that really isn’t all that important in the long run, but for some reason it means something to me, like singing “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer” in front of 75 strangers proves I’m raising a well-adjusted three-year-old.

Um, no?

Yes, it’s not asking much. But it seems like when I get so excited about these supposedly fun little things, they never go how I want.

The same thing seems to happen with little things that might not be so little—the small gestures I anticipate, like that first smile or first Mother’s day card will be the one little thing that convinces me this motherhood thing is worth it, that I’m not driving myself nuts watching Curious George and teaching the alphabet and trying to get! them! to! share! completely in vain.

Those are the little things that are really dangerous, because I can become so fixated on them that they become the reason for motherhood itself. And when they don’t come—and it seems like they never do—I’m so ready to give up. “All I wanted,” I want to scream at the heavens, “was this one stupid little thing. This one gesture to tell me I’m doing the right thing—one tiny tender mercy. Why are you withholding it from me?”

I’ve gotten better about these little things, but sometimes they sneak up on me. Hayden was “keeping a secret” about his Mother’s day gift at school (not really at all): a book he was writing for me. (It’s his second. He’s pretty prolific; he gets it from me. ) It was supposed to be a book about how great I am.

I knew better than to get my hopes up. I mean, the child is six. For Christmas, he got me an airhorn at the dollar store, an “attention-er,” he called it. I’ve never received a gift that filled me with so much guilt: my first thought was that he was under the impression that I yelled all the time and needed the help. (Ryan set me straight: he was five. He thought it would be fun. Therefore, he reasoned, I must have thought it would be fun. Child logic.)

Still, Hayden was very excited about his book. A few days before Mother’s day, I arrived to pick him up, and he was distraught. “The wind blew your book away!” he pouted. And it had, the staff verified: this four page book he’d spent all week on had been taken by the (surprisingly stiff) wind.

I was not going to accept this! We marched four blocks, scouring in yards and under cars, looking for that book. And I’ll admit it, my mind really wanted to go to that “Why are you taking this one stupid little thing from me?” place. That “Why can’t I get the smallest vote of ‘thanks, Mom, nice job’?” place. That “Do you not care?” place.

The search seemed to mollify Hayden, at least—my biggest concern at the time (yes, it was). He told me what the book said (I’m a great cook and I give him hugs), and said he’d make another at school the next day.

After we’d been home for a while, I remembered his teacher was sending home a certificate for some award he’d earned. I didn’t know what it was, exactly, so I was pretty surprised to find the president’s signature on the certificate:

As proud and as happy as that made me, though, it paled in comparison to the other homework he brought home:

Yep.

It’s not about these little things. It’s about the sentiment behind them. And that will be there whether I get the book or the air horn or nothing at all.

How have you found fulfillment this week?

(Hint: the answer is probably YES!)

In our church, we have members of the congregation testify and preach to us each week. The leadership of the congregation gives the speakers their topics in advance. These assignments are often a little terrifying (unless you’re a member of my family, I guess), but today of all days, the assignment to speak can be fraught with peril. I know because I have spoken on Mother’s Day FIVE times (you can read the last time here).

It seems there’s just no good way to address everyone in the congregation on this day. The emphasis on motherhood can break the hearts of the childless. Those who did not have a good relationship with their mothers are reminded of their open wounds. And often extolling the virtues of mothers only succeeds in reminding the mothers in the congregation how short they fall of that standard of perfection.

(Forgoing talks on the subject altogether is a special kind of sin in my opinion, and quite possibly the most offensive alternative.)

This year, our leadership was inspired as the made the assignments. Not only were our speakers very good, but the article they were given as a subject was absolutely perfect. The article, “Look Up” by Elder Carl B. Cook, appeared in the January 2012 Ensign magazine.

In the article, Elder Cook talks about when he was called to serve as a missionary to Germany. Missionary calls in our church are different from those in many other churches: the leadership of the church decides where each worthy applicant is assigned for his/her/their service. So Elder Cook didn’t pick Germany out of any great love for the people or the language; someone he’d never met was guided by the Lord to assign him to Germany.

At the beginning of his two-year mission, Elder Cook attended the Language Training Mission (now replaced by the Missionary Training Center) to learn German. Many missionaries are blessed with the gift of tongues as they learn their mission languages—but some, like Elder Cook, are not. He struggled with German and felt he was falling further and further behind his classmates. Finally, one day, he sought the Lord in desperate prayer for help to learn the language. Says Elder Cook (with my emphasis):

The Lord answered that prayer. I felt this thought come into my mind: “I never called you to master the German language. I just called you to serve with all of your heart, mind, and strength.”

Sometimes, as mothers, we feel we’re called to raise perfect children—and they have to be perfect by the time they’re 5. It’s so easy for us to look at other families and how well behaved their children are, or how well they get along, or how well they dress, even, and feel like we’re falling short.

But that’s a deep, deep mistake. As mothers, we’re called to build our children into good people, and that will be the effort of our lifetimes. We have a lot to teach them, but every child learns at his or her own pace. As long as we strive to love and teach our children with all of our efforts, we are doing enough.

Elder Cook continues (emphasis mine):

I immediately thought, “I can do that. I can serve with all of my heart, mind, and strength. If that’s what the Lord has called me to do, I can do that.” I stood up feeling tremendously relieved.

From that point on, my measuring stick changed. I no longer gauged my progress and success against that of my companion or other members of my district. Instead, I focused on how the Lord felt I was doing. Instead of looking to the side to compare myself to others, I began to look up, so to speak, to know what He thought of my efforts.

I don’t know that I learned the language much faster or much better from that point on, but I no longer felt the concerns I once had. I knew what the Lord wanted me to do, and it was in my power to do it.

And that’s a message anybody can learn from—and love.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Photo by Tatsuo Iwata

A repeat of an oldie but goodie, from the days when I had only one child!

When something goes wrong for Hayden, he sometimes has a tendency to overreact. I take away his current play thing, he screams. The ribbon from his balloon gets caught in his toes, he squeals and kicks. We try to see if he has any new molars, he arches his back, struggles and wails.

I’ve called him a bit of a drama “king” before. But really, I don’t expect anything different from someone who has no outlets or resources to draw upon when he’s frustrated. I also don’t expect anything different from a child of mine. I’m hardly any better than Hayden at handling my frustrations, despite decades of knowing better.

I’m trying to help Hayden learn other ways to deal with his frustration, even though they can’t really help him right now (things like, “You don’t have to scream, you can ask for help.”).

But really, both of our frustrations come from the same problem. It’s a larger problem than simple impatience. For me, it’s as if I develop tunnel vision. I can’t think of anything else in the world other than this insignificant thing. I always say, “I just expect things to work right.” And it’s true, I get frustrated when something doesn’t work as expected.

But really, my problem is that, for those moments at least, I lack perspective. Hayden isn’t old enough or experienced enough to see the big picture, but I should at least be developing that ability.

Perspective is often difficult to obtain. Sometimes one of the most difficult things to put into perspective is the big picture. For example, I know that in the big picture, I’m a mother. But what does being a mother mean?

The perspective that we’re given today says that motherhood doesn’t mean a ton. Darren Rowse at ProBlogger wrote an equation this week that struck me:

Personal Worth = What You Achieve + What Others Think of You

He was speaking in the context of blogging, of course, but acknowledged that his thoughts applied to other spheres. He continues:

The problem with this equation is that in every sphere of life (especially blogging) it is very difficult to live up to this equation. There are times in all of our lives where we fail or fall short of what we set out to achieve and where other people’s opinion of us are not high.

Rating our worth as a person in this way can be a trap and as bloggers it can be an easy one to fall into.

On a good day where traffic is up, people are saying nice things, all the blog ranking tools rate us highly and we’re getting good press it’s easy to be on top of the world – but when it all falls in a heap the lows can be very low if we tie our personal worth to how our blog performs.

Personal worth comes from something deeper than what you do (or fail to do) and what others think of you. I won’t push my own opinions of where this worth comes from (for me it’s tied to my spirituality) – however I encourage bloggers to do some realigning and gaining of perspective in this area.

Fulfillment, which today I’ll define as contentment with your assessment of your personal worth, doesn’t come from external factors. If we continually rely on others to give us fulfillment, we’ll find ourselves emptier than before.

Like Darren, my personal worth, my contentment with my role as a mother, comes from my spirituality (I’ve expounded on those beliefs recently). For me, my spirituality is one way of internalizing the big picture.

The big picture is that mothers matter. The big picture is that the greatest impact my life will create will probably not be the great American novel, even if I do write that novel. The big picture is that the most important thing that I can do with my life is to raise my son to be a good person.

I still struggle with the day to day frustrations, but keeping motherhood in perspective keeps me grounded. It helps me to recognize my personal worth. It doesn’t come from awards or professional achievements. It comes from recognizing the importance of tiny triumphs.

And for Hayden�and for me�a day without frustration would be a triumph indeed.

Rebecca is pretty dang cute—and she’s the reigning Princess of Precociousness around here. Her latest cute saying:

“Mommy, can I p’ay a game with you? Wike ‘Who Can Hide Da Most’?”

“Ah, my c’ean, wef’essing waday.” [Water]

We visited the St. George LDS Temple this week, and Rebecca was talking with one of the missionaries. He asked her why she thought the Christus statue had his hands outstretched. She replied, “I dunno. Mayme he’s a angel or sumping?”

Her first talk in the children’s Sunday School (“Primary”) was this week—she did great!

(Okay, this is from Easter, but she mentioned it in her talk!)

The Easter Bunny remembered how in years past, Peeps have not been very popular with my kids. Fortunately, the Easter Bunny (well, the EB’s mom) erred on the side of caution, and pink Peeps garnished their baskets Easter morning. Rebecca promptly bit their heads off:

Ate them, and then asked for “Mowe ‘mingos?”

“Mingos?”

“F’amingos.”

Flamingos, folks. And last night, she proclaimed “Fuh-fuh-f’amingos stawt de same aw Fuh-fuh-F’ancesco!”

True.

Christus statue photo by arbyreed

I was scrolling through my feed reader a while ago. I saw my usual spate of stories from the LDS.org homepage. For some reason, they’re always just titles, no content in the posts. But I like getting them. Especially when the message is something as simple as this:

And you do: you’re a mom.

What reminds you that you matter?

When I was a teenager, in a church lesson, the teacher once defined sacrifice as “giving up something good for something better.”

I guess that’s one way of looking at it, but that definition is so oversimplified as to be ridiculous. In fact, I believe there were candy bars involved in the object lesson—seriously, is it really a “sacrifice” to give up a few Hershey’s Kisses for a big Symphony bar? That scarcely reaches the definition of “opportunity cost,” let alone “sacrifice.”

Last month, I set myself a bunch of goals and deadlines on the novel I was revising, and I was falling behind on all my targets. However, I’d also set a goal to go to the temple. Much as I didn’t want to (and subconsciously resisted, giving myself a late start and really messing with my schedule for the rest of the day), I finally got myself out of the door and off to worship.

As I sat inside the beautiful peace of the temple, I recalled how blessed I am to live close to a temple. Growing up in North Carolina, our nearest LDS temple was in Washington, D.C.—a 5+ hour drive, each way. We went once, maybe twice, a year. When I was a teenager, they built a temple about 30 minutes from my parents’ house—and suddenly it wasn’t as much of a sacrifice to attend. These days, I live about the same distance from a temple.

Across the world, many other people make even greater sacrifices than 10 hours in the car, two nights in a hotel, and a weekend of their time to attend the temple and receive the blessings and ordinances there. Sometimes, living in the US with dozens of temples around, it hardly feels like a sacrifice to take a couple hours a month to serve and worship in the temple.

But that day, as I tried to focus not on all the tasks and self-imposed deadlines but on the Holy Spirit around me, I came up with a better definition of sacrifice:

Sacrifice is giving up something you want for something you know is more important.

That day I’d given up something I wanted—to work on a novel that I was really enjoying and wanted to make better—for something I knew was more important. It might not feel like a sacrifice to travel less than an hour round trip, but it’s still a sacrifice to take time out of what I want to do and serve God instead.

And then I realized that was what motherhood is. Motherhood is all about sacrifice: giving up many things that I might want now (a career [sort of], full control of my time, a cleaner house, less laundry, etc., etc.) for something I know is far more important, something that will bring me more joy and will contribute to the world in the most significant way I can—raising good people to lead the next generation.

And that sacrifice, though it’s still hard to make sometimes, is a privilege.

What do you think? How is motherhood a sacrifice for you? How do you define sacrifice?

Photo credit: Washington, D.C., LDS Temple by Richard Rogers