Compilation - All Kinds of Mothers

Interior images and endsheets: INGARA/Shutterstock.com

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

(CIP data on file)

ISBN 978-1-62972-747-9

eISBN 978-1-62973-961-8 (eBook)

Printed in China

Four Colour Print Group, Nansha, China

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Cover image: INGARA/Shutterstock.com

Book design Deseret Book Company

Art direction: Richard Erickson

Cover design: Heather G. Ward

One of the truths about motherhood
we all discover is that we can positively dislike our children when we are jolted out of sleep to go tend to them, and another is that once we get to their bedside we can be bowled over by the surge of love we feel for the small, soft, hopelessly dependent human beings nuzzling against our warm and sleepy bodies. In those moments we learn the lesson the Lord means us to learn about love and service: the deeper the space we hollow out by unselfish service to others, the greater the area available to be filled with the love that is our mortal link with divinity.

Beppie Harrison

I am at the grocery store with my three-year-old daughter. She has the pint-sized grocery cart and is pushing it along beside me with my regular-sized cart. We are quite a picture, the two of us shopping together, me initiating my little girl into the mysteries of the grocery world. I can see it in the approving expressions of the shoppers passing us in Aisle 7: Isnt that darling? What a lovely child. What a good mother.

Then we turn into Aisle 8, which is where the Oreos reside, right at the three-year-olds eye level. She chooses a package of cookies from the shelf and puts them in her cart. I pluck them out of the cart and return them to the shelf with a cheery if somewhat terse, Not today, sweetheart. Were not going to buy those cookies today.

Well, perdition hath no fury like a three-year-old deprived of her Oreos, and she immediately flings herself to the ground and begins screaming. And I can see it in the disgusted expressions of the shoppers passing us in Aisle 8: What a brat! Why doesnt her mother control her? Why would anyone bring a child like that out in public?

Well, which is it? Angel child, or demon spawn? Am I a good mom or a bad mom? All too often, people will form that judgment depending on the moment in which they catch me at my mothering.

I want to grab the tantrum observers as they pass by and tell them that this never works. I never buy Oreos under coercion. I am a sensible, intelligent mother, with appropriate boundaries. But they have made their judgments based on what they see. Appearances. They can indeed be deceiving.

Heres a challenge, though: Dont the scriptures say, By their fruits ye shall know them (see Matthew 7:17; 3 Nephi 14:16)? They do. What they forget to remind us is that sometimes fruit takes a long time to ripen.

Think about this. Have you ever bitten into a fruit thats not ripea hard strawberry or a green melon or something like that? Its gross. All you really want to do is spit it out. If you were judging the fruit based on that appearance at that time, you might think the fruit was not good. But if you waited until the fruit was ripe and then tried it, you would see how delicious it could be.

An important thing to understand about raising children is that children are the slowest-ripening fruit there is.

Those precious fruits of our mothering take a long time to mature, and whats more, they all ripen at different rates. So its unproductive and even dangerous to base our feelings of mothering confidence on where the fruit is at any given time.

I went on a quest to try to understand better the truth that Heavenly Father is not just capable of helping me in my difficulties but willing and anxious to do so. I went to the heading Trust in the Topical Guide and found some wonderful scriptures that have helped me see things a little more clearly. The first one that I want to share with you is Psalm 27:14, which says: Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord. This is not my favorite scripture because I have never been a very good waiter. It is not easy for me to have the courage it takes all along the way to wait for that child-fruit to ripen.

But waiting ultimately yields its rewards, little glimmers now and then that strengthen our hearts and give us hope that the fruit is coming along. That little girl who came to the grocery store with me occasionally (when I couldnt avoid it) is a good example of this. She has always had the blessing and the curse of knowing her own mind. The back of her bedroom door still bears the scars of where she used to kick it when she was in time out, learning to behave herself a little better. She wouldnt ever try to come out, but she would lie on her back on the floor and just kick the door.

That fruit takes a long time to ripen. It takes a lot of faith, and a lot of spiritual insight and divine encouragement, to see it as its really going to be. In the end, in order to have the patience we need, we have to remember how fruit ripens. Consider that we plant it, and we nurture it, and we water it, and we do what we can, but the ripening of that fruit is mostly up to the sun. Its the same with the fruit of our children. Ultimately, their maturing depends largely on the Son. We have to trust Him.

By our fruits we will be known. But not now. Not yet. We need to give ourselves time, and give our children time.

One last thought regarding this principle occurred to me when I was pondering it one day: What if the fruit of my parenting isnt my children at all? What if the fruit of me being a mom is who I am becoming as a result of being that parent?

That thought changes the whole picture. I start to realize that the children who are the hardest are very often the ones who are making me the most of who I need to be. The problem children (and theyre all problem children at some point, I think) are the ones who drive me to the arms of the Savior. Theyre the ones whose challenges put me on my knees to ask their Father, Thou who lovest this child more than I do, wilt Thou help me understand what I need to do to bring him back to Thee?

The fruit of my life is me, and most of what I know about believing all things and hoping all things and enduring all things (see 1 Corinthians 13:7), I have learned as a result of being a mom. To me, the most interesting thing about that is that I have friends who would say that everything they know about believing and hoping and enduring has come to them because they havent yet had a chance to be a mom. Isnt it amazing how Heavenly Father takes the circumstances of our mortality and uses them to mold us and make us who we need to be to return to Him?