Better {LaTe} than Never

This is my "picture of the day" for Mother's Day this year... It was a busy day... went to church... sat with all 4 kids, alone, while Cameron sat at the front and gave a talk during Sacrament meeting (I got a compliment on how good the boys were - they sat and listened/read their Friend magazines quietly the whole time. Ella slept in her little car seat) ...listened to my sweeties sing me their cute songs with the primary (Austin was MOST excited about singing to me)...taught YW...came home and spent the afternoon cooking because I had to bring dinner to a lady in the ward who'd just had a baby (Cameron helped me and helped me clean up, I should have made something simpler - didn't realize chicken cordon blue would take me all afternoon)...wished I was outside on a walk, instead of inside cooking...opened my little home-made Mother's Day gifts - I love these! Besides what he made me at school, Landon even gave a big plastic bag full of candy bars from his Halloween stash (yes, he still has Halloween candy in his top drawer!), which was a big deal because he's been saving them for... I don't know what... but you gotta know Landon to know giving me his candy means he REALLY loves me! Austin planted some flower seeds in a little pot he painted. He wouldn't let me take a picture of him with it because Isaac tripped on it and knocked it over.

I loVe LoVE lOvE my kids. Who knew being a mom would be such an awesome blessing... and who knew being a mom would be SO much work. It's not easy. And sometimes the rewards are hard to see (like the day I went to Austin's preschool class for his "Mother's Day Tea" and I told him I got a babysitter for the other kids so I could take him to lunch after, just me and him. He cried because he wanted to go home and play with Hannah, the babysitter... just can't win sometimes!) But everyday each one of my kids does something that makes me smile, and I remember I do have a purpose.

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In Cameron's Sacrement talk he quoted Jeffrey R. Holland from a General Conference address. I've thought a lot about what this woman writes. Not only do I relate, but it sums up my feelings on Motherhood and puts it into perspective:

"One young mother wrote me recently that her anxiety tended to come on three fronts. One was that whenever she heard talks on LDS motherhood, she worried because she felt she didn't measure up and wouldn't be equal to the task. Second, she felt like the world expected her to teach her children reading, writing, interior design, Latin, calculus, and the Internet - all before the baby said something terribly ordinary, like 'goo-goo'. Third , she often felt people were sometimes patronizing, almost always without meaning to be, because the advice she got or even the compliments she recieved seemed to reflect nothing of the mental investment, the spiritual and emotional exertion, the long-night, long-day, stretched-to-the-limit demands that sometimes are required in trying to be and wanting to be the mother God hopes she will be.

"But one thing, she said, keeps her going: 'Through the thick and the thin of this, and through the occasional tears of it all, I know deep down inside I am doing God's work. I know that in my motherhood I am in an eternal partnership with Him. I am deeply moved that God finds His ultimate purpose and meaning in being a parent, even if some of His children make Him weep.

" 'It is this realization,' she says, 'that I try to recall on those inevitably difficult days when all of this can be a bit overwhelming. Maybe it is precisely our inability and anxiousness that urge us to reach out to Him and enhance His ability to reach back to us. Maybe He secretly hopes we will be anxious,' she said, 'and will plead for His help. Then, I believe, He can teach these children directly, through us, but with no resistance offered. I like that idea,' she concludes. 'It gives me hope. If I can be right before my Father in Heaven, perhaps His guidance to our children can be unimpended. Maybe then it can be His work and His glory in a very literal sense.' "

To all the wonderful women in my life: Happy {belated} Mother's day!!