Happy Mother’s Day! Below are some excerpts from my own wonderful mother’s testimony of motherhood, written in 2004.
Photos of My Mother
“When I got married, I just thought it would be another challenge. Little did I know what I was beginning. Of course, having married a wonderful, inspired, intelligent man who was not competitive, I didn’t have any adjustment to marriage. It was babies that were my Waterloo. I was never baby hungry and I was never domestic. I don’t like to decorate houses or clean them or do anything but live in them comfortably. I was used to doing things very well or not doing them at all. And I was used to getting a great deal of frequent, positive attention for the things I did.”
“So when I had my first baby, I was stunned. It was so much harder than anything I had ever done and yet I was never good enough and no one cared how hard I was working. It wasn’t pregnancy or delivery. It was the day to day living, realizing that whatever I did would have profound implications for many generations.”
“[Looking back] Every good thing I am, I learned from trying to build a mini-kingdom on earth.”
“I am so thankful I had babies, even when the whole world said not to, even when it was hard and I wasn’t really suited to do it.”
“I am so thankful God had mercy on me and led me to righteousness through his prophets, and that I had enough faith to follow. I am so thankful that He asked me do a job that I couldn’t do well so that I could learn humility, so that I could learn to lean on His arm instead of my own wisdom.”
“The idea that a career will give a woman the fulfillment that every person is looking for is just a flat out lie. The world of business just uses women and then when they get old, it spits them out without a backward glance. The same actually goes for men most of the time. A career just will never care about a woman when she’s old, ugly, fat, or tired. A family is just the opposite—you’re always working on something good and eternal, even when you’re just holding babies or going to the park. And when you’re old and tired, you’re revered for the work you did instead of rejected.”
“Pres. Faust once said that women can actually have it all—just not all at once. My life has proven him correct. There are times and seasons in a woman’s life, and if she’ll just keep the commandments, she can have seasons of many kinds of personal growth—seasons of having and raising babies, seasons of schooling, seasons of careers, seasons of being a care giver and a care receiver. If things are done according to the commandments and according to personal revelation, life is rewarding without sacrificing all the truly important things and we as women can look back without regrets.”