Month: May 2008

Today we’ll pick up where we left off with Elder M. Russell Ballard’s talk “Daughters of God,” about the eternal importance of motherhood. Last time, he talked about gaining appreciation for the work of motherhood and its eternal importance and finding success in motherhood. Today, we’ll look at his thoughts on reducing pressure on ourselves and enjoying our families. We’ll overlap just a little with yesterday’s thoughts:

As a Church, we have enormous respect and gratitude to you mothers of young children. We want you to be happy and successful in your families and to have the validation and support you need and deserve. So today, let me ask and briefly answer four questions. While my answers may seem extremely simple, if the simple things are being tended to, a mother’s life can be most rewarding.

I’m very encouraged by the thought he ends with in this paragraph. So often when I think, talk and blog about fulfillment in motherhood, it seems like such a large, daunting, nebulous concept that I may not ever find it myself, let alone find myself adequate to help others.

But if we focus on the simple things, make sure we have a few basics, how much better and easier might our lives be? Let’s take a look at the first of his basic questions, which has several answers of its own:

The first question: What can you do, as a young mother, to reduce the pressure and enjoy your family more?

First, recognize that the joy of motherhood comes in moments. There will be hard times and frustrating times. But amid the challenges, there are shining moments of joy and satisfaction.

We talked about this a bit last time, when we recognized that motherhood isn’t easy—but that those little moments really do stand out and can make such a difference in a day.

Author Anna Quindlen reminds us not to rush past the fleeting moments. She said: “The biggest mistake I made [as a parent] is the one that most of us make. . . . I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of [my three children] sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages six, four, and one. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night. I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less” (Loud and Clear [2004], 10–11).

I’ve talked about this several times, probably best for another GWP entry, Motherhood isn’t, where I concluded: “Motherhood is not, at its heart, about doing. Motherhood is about being. Because motherhood isn’t just something you do; it’s who you are.” Apparently, I’m in good company!

Second, don’t overschedule yourselves or your children. We live in a world that is filled with options. If we are not careful, we will find every minute jammed with social events, classes, exercise time, book clubs, scrapbooking, Church callings, music, sports, the Internet, and our favorite TV shows. One mother told me of a time that her children had 29 scheduled commitments every week: music lessons, Scouts, dance, Little League, day camps, soccer, art, and so forth. She felt like a taxi driver. Finally, she called a family meeting and announced, “Something has to go; we have no time to ourselves and no time for each other.” Families need unstructured time when relationships can deepen and real parenting can take place. Take time to listen, to laugh, and to play together.

One of these opportunities for unstructured (or semistructured) time together is a program we have in the church called Family Home Evening. Monday nights, families gather for a lesson and activities. (We’re not the best at doing this.)

Another wonderful opportunity for this time together is meal time. If you don’t eat together at least once or twice a week, I’d recommend taking a look at your schedules like the mom Elder Ballard mentions. Growing up, my family had a set time for dinner and just about every night of the week, all four daughters and both parents were there (and at various times we had Girl Scouts, dance, church youth group, church children’s group, soccer, piano lessons, violin lessons, orchestra . . . you get the idea).

Why is this time so great? If you can’t cook, don’t worry—it’s not about the food. It’s about spending time with one another, finding out what’s going on in one another’s lives, showing interest, support and love for one another.

If conversation doesn’t come easily, I suggest one of my family’s institutions (which I think began when we were sullen teenagers 😉 . We went around the table and each person in the family shared one good thing that had happened to them that day. If absolutely nothing good happened, they could share one bad thing.

(In our family, these things were answered with specific, set cheers from the rest of the family: “Good for you!”, “Ha ha ha ha, ha ha ha ha, oh boy, oh boy”, “Better than crackers”, and a cheerleading-style clap-clap-number 1! Totally awesome things got all four in succession.)

Anyway.

Third, even as you try to cut out the extra commitments, sisters, find some time for yourself to cultivate your gifts and interests. Pick one or two things that you would like to learn or do that will enrich your life, and make time for them. Water cannot be drawn from an empty well, and if you are not setting aside a little time for what replenishes you, you will have less and less to give to others, even to your children. Avoid any kind of substance abuse, mistakenly thinking that it will help you accomplish more. And don’t allow yourself to be caught up in the time-wasting, mind-numbing things like television soap operas or surfing the Internet. Turn to the Lord in faith, and you will know what to do and how to do it.

Oh. Crap. Surfing the Internet. Tell me reading and commenting on MamaBlogga (and me commenting on your blogs!) replenishes your well. Please? (But SOOO guilty on that count!)

Fourth, pray, study, and teach the gospel. Pray deeply about your children and about your role as a mother. Parents can offer a unique and wonderful kind of prayer because they are praying to the Eternal Parent of us all. There is great power in a prayer that essentially says, “We are steward-parents over Thy children, Father; please help us to raise them as Thou wouldst want them raised.”

Another strength that I find in religious devotion is some of the doctrines that we’ve already talked about in this series: that motherhood is a vital part of God’s eternal plan for our happiness.

Next time: What can a husband do to support his wife, the mother of his children? (Now I know you’re waiting with bated breath!)

Today we’ll pick up where we left off with Elder M. Russell Ballard’s talk “Daughters of God,” about the eternal importance of motherhood. Last time, he talked about gaining appreciation for the work of motherhood and its eternal importance. Today, we’ll look at his thoughts on the challenges facing mothers.

There is no one perfect way to be a good mother. Each situation is unique. Each mother has different challenges, different skills and abilities, and certainly different children. The choice is different and unique for each mother and each family. Many are able to be “full-time moms,” at least during the most formative years of their children’s lives, and many others would like to be. Some may have to work part- or full-time; some may work at home; some may divide their lives into periods of home and family and work. What matters is that a mother loves her children deeply and, in keeping with the devotion she has for God and her husband, prioritizes them above all else.

Today, I think all mothers feel a lot of pressure to be perfect. We’re encouraged—conditioned, even—to believe that we can have it all, and we have to have it all NOW. We have to be perfect executives and liberated women; we have to be perfect mothers and homemakers; we have to take our children to seventeen hundred and fifty-three soccer games or they’ll be in therapy for fifteen years.

And once we’ve finally found a balance and (hopefully) mothers who are in similar situations, it becomes so easy to look at other mothers with different balances and different solutions and judge them. I’ve been on both ends of this and it’s so easy to forget what Elder Ballard ends on here: “What matters is that a mothers loves her children deeply and . . . prioritizes them above all else.”

I am impressed by countless mothers who have learned how important it is to focus on the things that can only be done in a particular season of life. If a child lives with parents for 18 or 19 years, that span is only one-fourth of a parent’s life. And the most formative time of all, the early years in a child’s life, represents less than one-tenth of a parent’s normal life. It is crucial to focus on our children for the short time we have them with us and to seek, with the help of the Lord, to teach them all we can before they leave our homes.

Ironically, this talk was delivered on the same day that I designated to post for our last GWP, “Savoring the seasons,” when I hit on his first point here: we have to savor the seasons of motherhood. I said then that “when I look back at his short life, my chief regret is not enjoying him more, even during the difficult times.”

My mother expressed a similar sentiment recently when she said “If I could do anything over again, I would worry less about things that really didn’t matter, and just enjoy the wonders of childhood with my girls. I would be more patient, more loving, more generous. I would discipline with more understanding and love. I would read more stories and more scriptures to you. I would just enjoy the very fleeting moments I had with my girls.”

Like Elder Ballard, I’m impressed by mothers who can “live in the moment” with their children, appreciating the joys of each phase of their lives. All phases have difficult times, but focusing on these simple pleasures can help us through the difficult times, too.

Elder Ballard continues:

This eternally important work falls to mothers and fathers as equal partners. I am grateful that today many fathers are more involved in the lives of their children. But I believe that the instincts and the intense nurturing involvement of mothers with their children will always be a major key to their well-being. In the words of the proclamation on the family, “Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children” (“The Family: A Proclamation to the World,” Liahona, Oct. 2004, 49; Ensign, Nov. 1995, 102).

We need to remember that the full commitment of motherhood and of putting children first can be difficult. Through my own four-generation experience in our family, and through discussions with mothers of young children throughout the Church, I know something of a mother’s emotions that accompany her commitment to be at home with young children. There are moments of great joy and incredible fulfillment, but there are also moments of a sense of inadequacy, monotony, and frustration. Mothers may feel they receive little or no appreciation for the choice they have made. Sometimes even husbands seem to have no idea of the demands upon their wives.

Although I still feel like he doesn’t know all that from personal, excruciating, daily experience, Elder Ballard really captures the range of emotions that I’ve felt through motherhood, from the highs to the lows. Sometimes it seems like we’re expected to act as though there aren’t any lows, as if motherhood is always peaches, cream and joy—and should we ever admit that it’s hard, we must not love our children enough.

Guess what: it’s hard. I still love Hayden, but becoming a mother when he was born is probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It was giving my life and my soul to God and to my family, and sometimes it’s still a struggle. The days with grumpiness, whining and tantrums are sometimes really crappy. (Ooh, I said crappy.) I still love him, and there are almost always one or two sweet, loving moments, even in the worst of days.

And the worst of days sometimes have little to do with whether or not he behaves—they’re the days when I wake up and know I won’t be able to entertain and feed him the whole day. They’re the days when even eight episodes of Blue’s Clues later, it’s still three hours until nap time and I can’t think of anything for lunch, let alone fathom a way to get through the next eternity without more televisionsitting. They are the days when I’m bored, unstimulated and left wondering if there isn’t more for me out there.

But y’know, I really don’t think there is. I think that any regular, 9-to-5 job has similar moments of boredom and frustration, the same feeling of running in place, the same monotony. And while 9-to-5s come with paychecks (and sometimes recognition) (and adult conversation, usually), somehow, I don’t think that in the long run, I’ll look back and think “Oh, if only I’d had a ‘real’ job back then.”

Back to Elder Ballard for just a minute:

As a Church, we have enormous respect and gratitude to you mothers of young children. We want you to be happy and successful in your families and to have the validation and support you need and deserve.

Hurray! This is what I want for mothers, too, and this is what I’m trying to do here with this talk and with MamaBlogga.

Keep tuned: we’ll look at his suggestions for finding that validation and support—and fostering it in your own home—in the coming days!

One of the apostles of my church gave a wonderful talk on motherhood last month during the church’s semiannual General Conference. For the next few days, I’m going to take a look at his talk, which includes appreciation for mothers and our efforts, suggestions to help us enjoy motherhood more and suggestions to help our families show us appreciation. While many of his thoughts relate specifically to LDS doctrine, most of his sentiments can apply universally.

The original talk was given by Elder M. Russell Ballard and is entitled “Daughters of God.”

Brothers and sisters, recently my wife, Barbara, had back surgery and could not lift, twist, or bend. Consequently, I have done more lifting, twisting, and bending than ever before—and it has made me more appreciative of what women, and especially you mothers, do every day in our homes.

While women live in homes under many different circumstances—married, single, widowed, or divorced, some with children and some without—all are beloved of God, and He has a plan for His righteous daughters to receive the highest blessings of eternity.

This afternoon I want to focus my remarks primarily on mothers, particularly on young mothers.

As a young father, I learned the demanding role of motherhood. I served as a counselor and then as bishop for a period of 10 years. During that time we were blessed with six of our seven children. Barbara was often worn-out by the time I got home Sunday evening. She tried to explain what it was like to sit on the back row in sacrament meeting with our young family. Then the day came that I was released. After sitting on the stand for 10 years, I was now sitting with my family on the back row.

The ward’s singing mothers’ chorus was providing the music, and I found myself sitting alone with our six children. I have never been so busy in my whole life. I had the hand puppets going on both hands, and that wasn’t working too well. The Cheerios got away from me, and that was embarrassing. The coloring books didn’t seem to entertain as well as they should.

As I struggled with the children through the meeting, I looked up at Barbara, and she was watching me and smiling. I learned for myself to more fully appreciate what all of you dear mothers do so well and so faithfully!

I love this story and the ministory he tells in the first paragraph because this is always what I think of when I ask how we can help our husbands appreciate what we do: let them try it.

Let them spend two hours putting the two-year-old down for a nap. Let them get up with the baby all night long. Let them wait up for the teenager and deliver the lecture. Let them work on raising obedient, good, clean, productive, responsible human beings day in and day out and let us come home and wonder “What do you do all day? Do you just play with them all day long?” And let them smile and say “Yes.”

It ain’t easy, and sometimes the only way we can truly gain appreciation for that fact is a full-blown demonstration.

A generation later, as a grandfather, I have watched the sacrifices my daughters have made in rearing their children. And now, still another generation later, I am watching with awe the pressures on my granddaughters as they guide their children in this busy and demanding world.

After observing and empathizing with three generations of mothers and thinking of my own dear mother, I surely know that there is no role in life more essential and more eternal than that of motherhood.

Why is motherhood so essential? Following this week’s holiday, I hope the answer is obvious: where would most of us be without our mothers? And where would our children be without us?

Mothers guide and lead their children to become, as I said before, obedient, good, clean, productive, responsible human beings. It would be so easy to just let them do whatever—to not discipline and instill a sense of right and wrong, morality, ethics, etc. Because even today, even though many (most, even) of us work full- or part-time, in or outside of the home, mothers are still fundamentally responsible for the rearing of their children.

But I probably don’t need to convince most of you of the importance of motherhood. As easy as it is to lose sight of the importance of our efforts in the mundane minutiae, I think most mothers understand how vital and influential they can be. But I don’t want to speak for your when you’re here and can speak for yourselves—do you feel how important motherhood is, at least from time to time?