My Turn

This Sunday it was my turn to give a talk. In case you haven't guessed, this blog isn't just for all of you to enjoy. It's my version of journaling and I want my kids to see it when they're older. One of these days I'll start putting it into book form once a year. At any rate, I want my kids to read this talk when they're older, but you can feel free to skip it!

If you’re wondering, didn’t she just give a talk on Mother’s Day a little while ago? The answer is, yes, I did; 2 years ago, when Ben was in the bishopric. And Ben told me that last year when they were picking speakers for mother’s day, mine was one of the first names to come up, and Ben had to remind the bishop I had just spoken. I would like to think it’s because I have such wonderful things to say about motherhood, but that’s obviously not true since no one seems to remember. I think it’s just like my mom’s cat. My mom’s so pro life she thinks doesn't spay or neuter her pets, so her poor cat has a litter probably quarterly. When I think of a mother cat, I see Maui. When bishop thinks mother, he sees my endlessly pregnant belly.

I’d like to start my talk with these profound words about motherhood, by Patricia Holland “Eve was given the identity of ‘the mother of all living’ . . . before she ever bore a child. It would appear that her motherhood preceded her maternity, just as surely as the perfection of the Garden preceded the struggles of mortality. I believe mother is one of those very carefully chosen words, one of those rich words—with meaning after meaning after meaning. We must not, at all costs, let that word divide us. I believe with all of my heart that it is first and foremost a statement about nature, not a head count of our children.
“. . . Some women give birth and raise children but never ‘mother’ them. Others, whom I love with all my heart, ‘mother’ all their lives but have never given birth. And all of us are Eve’s daughters, whether we are married or single, maternal or barren. We are created in the image of the Gods to become gods and goddesses”

This may seem like a talk directed only to a certain number of us in the congregation today, but before you dads and boys all go to sleep, let me remind you of the words of the great Pete Seeger, “Education is what you get when you read the fine print. Experience is what you get if you don’t.” If you don’t educate yourself about supporting motherhood and choosing the mother of your children, you might get hands-on experience!

So what does it mean to be steadfast in faith as a mother? I like the way Talmage describes faith, compared to belief. “Belief, in one of its accepted senses, may consist in a merely intellectual assent, while faith implies such confidence and conviction as will impel to action.” Talmage

Being steadfast in faith is all about action, about acting on what we know is right. As the primary hymn, Faith, says,
Faith is knowing the sun will rise, lighting each new day.
Faith is knowing the Lord will hear my prayers each time I pray.
Faith is like a little seed:
If planted it will grow.
Faith is a swelling within my heart.
When I do right, I know.

So the question is, what is choosing the right for a mother, and how do we choose it as mothers?

Motherhood involves basically one thing – dedication to the family. To accomplish the goal of raising kids with “brains in their heads and feet in their shoes,” as Dr. Seuss puts it, there are 3 things that will serve us very well
1. Loving relationship between mom and dad
When I was in high school I heard a grandma say to a young mother, “your husband needs to be more important to you than your kids.” I was shocked! Kids should definitely be the most important part of a family! When I learned about eternal marriage, grandma made a lot more sense. We get our kids for a short time to raise and love and enjoy, and then, hopefully, they will find their own eternal spouses and start their own families. We know we can be with our kids eternally, but that relationship is going to be very different than the relationship we have with our spouse. Ben is the only one I have chosen and the only one who has chosen me, for time and all eternity.
Aside from that, one of the best things we can do for our children is to show them what a loving marriage looks like. As Spencer W. Kimball has said, “When we speak of marriage as a partnership, let us speak of marriage as a full partnership. We do not want our LDS women to be silent partners or limited partners in that eternal assignment! Please be a contributing and full partner”
There’s a lot of pressure in today’s world for women to prove their power by denigrating their men. Tune in to one of countless recent sitcoms and you’ll see an attractive, bright, sensible woman, who takes care of the entire household brilliantly and barely puts up with an overweight, hardly literate oaf of a husband who needs to be babysat and instructed by his wife like a not-too-sharp child. I’ll admit, I’m not above teasing Ben about the disease he came down with when we got married. It erased his memory of how to make a sandwich, do laundry, wash dishes…
But, the important thing here, is for us to value our men. To point out to ourselves, to our children, and to our husbands, the valuable work that Daddy does. We need to recognize and appreciate the way that Dads show their love for their families, because it’s different than the way Moms do it. I show my love for Ben by making him food, and talking to him. What can I say, it’s my Sicilian heritage. Ben shows his love for me by going outside and working on my garden fence. We’re different, and our girls esp. need to know that.

Being there. We can’t expect to be able to raise our kids if we’re not there. As any mother can attest, the first rule of mommyhood is to roll with the punches. You don’t know when your kid’s going to puke on the kitchen floor, although chances are it’s going to happen right after you mop. You don’t know when your kids will need you most, when you’ll have a teaching moment, when they’ll need answers to important questions, when they’ll be hurt or sick and need your love. The myth of quality time has robbed so many children of their mothers! Quality isn’t enough; kids need mommys all the time. President David O. McKay declared: “Motherhood is the greatest potential influence either for good or ill in human life. The mother’s image is the first that stamps itself on the unwritten page of the young child’s mind. It is her caress that first awakens a sense of security; her kiss, the first realization of affection; her sympathy and tenderness, the first
assurance that there is love in the world.”


Example. We live in a society that has lost its way on many fronts, and especially in its understanding of women. In the 60’s and 70’s women realized that there was no reason for them to be subservient to men. I don’t know why women have been treated as helpless incompetents at various points in history, but I do know that trying to ignore or erase the differences between men and women is no magic formula for happiness. As women, we have given up so many things that make us powerful. Previous generations understood that by protecting our “virtue” as they quaintly put it, we could entice men to settle down and protect and provide for a family. The feminist movement declared that love should be freely given and received with no commitment or consequences. The commitment certainly disappeared; the consequences are plaguing our nation. Our society puts all our value on our appearance and none on our ability to do what only women can do – create the next generation. As women, we need to lay claim to our victory and our capacity. Women have different gifts than men, and as mothers, we need to show our children that we’re not ashamed of our gifts. As a mother I need to be tough in the face of the world’s opposition – to show pride in my man, our beat up dirty suburban, our messy home, our sweet kids, and to know that money, honor, a fabulous career, the waistline I had before kids, are all dust in the wind compared with the honor and privilege of having a good man at my side, and a quiver full of daughters and a son.
As Jeffrey R. Holland has said,
- Yours 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. Yours is the grand tradition of Sarah and Rebekah and Rachel, without whom there could not have been those magnificent patriarchal promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob which bless us all. Yours is the grand tradition of Lois and Eunice and the mothers of the 2,000 stripling warriors. Yours is the grand tradition of Mary, chosen and foreordained from before this world was, to conceive, carry, and bear the Son of God Himself. We thank all of you, including our own mothers, and tell you there is nothing more important in this world than participating so directly in the work and glory of God, in bringing to pass the mortality and earthly life of His daughters and sons, so that immortality and eternal life can come in those celestial realms on high.