Motherhood

After reading my short book review on Michael Wilcox's book, What the Scriptures Teach Us About Raising a Child, a relative sent me a link to an article by M. Catherine Thomas on motherhood. I appreciated that she understood my heart, my fears, my guilt and my desire to be a good mother.

I share just a couple of thoughts from the book and the article, because they might become meaningful to someone else.

Principles
Brother Wilcox says, "The purpose of life is to learn to become like our Father in Heaven. Godhood is parenthood of a grand magnitude, but before we can progress to that degree of glory, we are given the opportunity to learn here on earth the essential principles of parenthood."

Some principles come to my mind immediately but I think I need to spend some more time pondering on this.

Yearning Desire
Having studied the Old Testament this year his next thought is particularly meaningful to me. He points out that Genesis is a book dealing with families and throughout Genesis and the Old Testament is seen a yearning desire for offspring. That children are a blessing is the first great message the scriptures impart about children. For Adam and Eve, children were a blessing from the beginning, "And God blessed them and God said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth" (Genesis 1:28).

Camille Fronk in her book Women of the Old Testament says the estimate is that one in four women died in childbirth in the ancient Near East. "Certainly a yearning to bring a child into the world was a life-threatening wish", she concludes. To see the great desire these women had to bear children tells me these yearnings are planted deep in a woman's soul. It's interesting to think comparatively about the dangers women face in modern developed countries versus the ancient Near East. I know that some pregnancies are fraught with difficulty and I'm certainly sensitive to those pregnancies, but I imagine the percentage of death is far below twenty-five percent. With the access we have to medical care, good nutrition, and pain control it's ironic that we also have declining birth rates. I remember before Emily was born the great yearning I had for another child. I found that there is an increase in the tenderness of your heart when you know that a stage of life will come to an end. For His reasons, the Lord put his timing in place and we are limited in the number of years that we can bear children. I do think, however, that the desire for children is eternal and thus we rejoice in the promise of eternal increase. I also remember feeling guilty about wanting another child because at the time I had a girlfriend who had two adopted children and was in a very arduous journey of trying to adopt two more. I felt like I should just be grateful for the children I had, and I was, but having four children didn't diminish the desire for more.

Lifting a Soul
"There is no accomplishment which will require greater dedication, intellect, and the refined emotions of the soul than to raise a child to dignity, independence, and holiness in a decadent and fallen world. Can we, as does our Father in Heaven, exalt and lift another soul to a higher level?" (MW)

This has to be my favorite part of being a mother. To help a child learn to read, tie a shoe, sing a song, paint a picture, type a paper, gain a testimony, these are the best days of mothering.

Guilt
I imagine I'm not alone in saying that I want to be a good mother. I want to teach and love and give my children everything they need. I'm also probably not alone with the sinking feeling that I make mistakes and cause problems for my children. And even now, I feel a lack of energy to really do for my last children what I did for my first and I also realize that I may not have enjoyed my first as I do my last.

Sister Thomas shares in her article that she came from an alcoholic home. I did not have that type of childhood, nor do my children. However, I think her observations ring true at least to a certain degree for most of us. She says, "I observed that if we don't learn peaceful feelings in our childhood homes, we may struggle to possess them when we reach adulthood, when we become marriage partners and parents. We may look continually for compensations for our childhood losses. The significance of spiritual rebirth through the Lord Jesus Christ and his gospel is that we can mature spiritually in spite of family imperfections, we can receive healing under his guidance, and we can gain abundant compensations for our deprivations".

I love that thought of what a spiritual rebirth can do for us or for our children. Even though parents make mistakes, children, by their choice to be reborn can be healed and compensated.

She continues, "Although we bring personal weaknesses to our parenting that may provide real opposition for our children, we do not need to feel that all is lost. We remember that our Heavenly Father knows the end from the beginning. He knew beforehand the ignorance, the failings, the confusion, the spiritual infirmities of each of his children - including those who would become parents. Knowing all these things, the Lord prepared the gospel plan and allowed us the experiences of mortality, with certain compensations and blessings and talents available within the child or along life's path that would help the child as he or she struggled with opposition. God provides ample opportunity to learn and recover from the opposition.

I don't like to think of myself as being opposition or a stumbling block to my children. Yet, I certainly recognize many personal weaknesses. What a relief, to let go of guilt and to think that God compensates them with blessings, talents, or experiences that will help them recover from opposition. That assures me of the true love of our Heavenly Father.

This life consists of tutorials designed to give us experience, to develop our divine nature, and to draw us to the Lord Jesus Christ. It is clear that parenthood was designed as much for parents as for children.

Sister Thomas asks, "Why do we learn many valuable parenting lessons after it is too late to incorporate them as fully and effectively as we would like to? Perhaps because it is never too late, really, in the eternal scheme of things. It seems that when Mother gets better, it helps others in the family to get better - not matter how old they are."

"If momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy", may be a cute saying but really it's a responsibility.

The Choice of the Child
"What a child chooses to do and be in life is a product of a unique reaction involving his personality, his agency, and his environment". (CT)

"What if the wayward child never returns? A parent can agonize over that question. She can storm the gates of heaven. She can cajole and teach until her children are sick of her and the gospel; she can reproach, plead with and threaten them. And then she learns: Her love must be governed by intelligence, patience, and faith, not by over anxiety that can block the Spirit's working in her". (CT)

Remember the prophet Jacob realized that he could only teach if he didn't stumble or was shaken from his firmness in the Spirit BECAUSE of being over anxious for his people. (Jacob 4:18) That is the best reason for replacing fear with faith, anxiety and worry for the Spirit.

There is so much more to share, but I'm just enjoying pondering these thoughts for now.