Mother's Day

I love Mother's Day. I am so thankful to have such a great husband who has learned to make Mother's Day a big deal and who works really hard to make it special. He always comes up with something sweet. Hannah decided Friday night that what we really needed was "Mother's Weekend Off"! So yesterday I left for the whole day while Seth and the kids cleaned the house and went grocery shopping and made preparations for today. It was awesome. (I didn't spend the day at the spa or anything, I just went to work on an organizing project at my friend's house, and then had a tango rehearsal. Still, it was freedom to do something I wanted to do!)

This morning I woke up to a delicious breakfast of Belgian waffles and a pile of homemade cards. They are so cute. Joshie made four cards that said:
card #1: I love you Mom.
#2: I like you Mom.
#3: I miss you Mom.
#4: I missed you Mom!

He is so sweet. It's nice to know he missed me while I was gone yesterday. He is definitely my little Casanova...I can hardly do anything during the day for all the kissing he wants from me. (Side story: he loves this old song called "Tonight You Belong to Me". One time, I asked him if he belonged to me that night, and after thinking about it, he said "No...forever!" So the other day I asked him if he would belong to me forever, and he looked at me sadly with those huge blue eyes and said, "I can't when I grow up and get married....but I will miss you!")

Hannah gave me card with a "mystery fake thing" inside it (a fake dollar she had made) and a money riddle to solve (adding up the value of the coins she drew...she's been learning about counting money at school this past week :) She is so creative and I never get tired of the ideas she comes up with. The Mother's Day "card" she brought home from school went like this: "Mom you are as pretty as a rose. You are as ferocious as a lion. That is why I want to be like you. By Hannah." The rose part is just sweet, but the lion? My first reaction was, that can't be good thing...maybe I yell too much? But when I asked her about it she said that if a bad guy came to our door and wanted to kidnap her, I would punch him and push him away and keep her safe, and that's how I would be ferocious. And she's probably right! Then inside the card she made in Primary today she wrote "Wishing you a happy Mother's Day!" Funny to see that formal greeting card message written in her first-grader handwriting. She is so cute.

Eli is just super cute. When I went up with Hannah and Joshie and the other Primary kids for the Mother's Day song in sacrament meeting today, he freaked out and started crying "Mama! Mama!" So I just let Seth hand him over to me while I stood up there. As soon as he reached me he said "Sing!" and everyone laughed. (He was the only one of our kids happy to be up there!) Of course he only let me hold him for a minute and then he wiggled his way down and started wandering around the stand aiming for the organ...luckily the song ended before he managed to get to it!

I'm so thankful to have these wonderful, sweet little people in my life, even though the demands and challenges of mothering as so great. I was recently reminded that we don't always like the things that we are grateful for, and that's definitely true with being a parent. I am very thankful for each of them, but there are many days when I just don't want to be doing it because it's hard! And frustrating! Any mother knows this. The frustration comes from your kids not behaving the way you want them to, or not being the way you want them to be. And my most fundamental job as their mother is to simply teach them how to be. But it is so frustrating when they just don't cooperate with that.

As I thought about this recently, I remembered something. In college part of my major was human development. How kids turn into, well, mature humans -- the process of growing up and making choices and becoming the way they need to be to have success in this life and the life to come. And of course I know how they need to be, and how I need to be, but the part I was overlooking was development. What I need to be doing is guiding them through a process - a very long process that they will continue throughout their whole lives. They don't need to be perfect to still be progressing along the path of self-improvement that we all need to follow. They don't need to cooperate all the time or be nice to each other all the time or be good listeners all the time. Eventually yes, we all need to reach perfection, but we will not get to that point until well after this life. Because even as adults, we are still going through that developmental process -- having experiences and making choices and learning from them, trying to get closer to the way we need to be.

My job, then, as a mother, is not to make sure my kids are perfect right now. It is simply to get them started on the path, so that once they grow up they can continue the process on their own -- a process of trial and error, self-reflection, repentance, and continued determination to keep trying. It is so easy to tell your kids, "Stop doing this or that", or "Why can't you just listen and obey?" The answer is the same for all of us -- because as children of God we are all  still developing and won't reach our potential for being completely Christlike as long as we are on this earth! This perspective makes it so much easier to praise them for the good they do and the potential that they have, recognizing that although they are not doing it all right now, they are developing in the right direction. And the encouragement that I give them as they begin their journey to perfection and salvation is what will give them faith in the hope we receive through the Atonement. They will understand that making mistakes is okay and even expected of us, but we always try again and again and again to do and be better.

I'm very grateful for the example of my mother who has always worked so hard and been so patient and selfless. I can't even imagine the day that I would be able and willing to do what I have seen her do throughout my life. I'm so thankful for the challenges and blessings of mothering my children, and for Seth, without whom I would not be able to do even half of what I do now. He is truly the greatest support and help-meet there could be. I love you!