Some M Day Thoughts of Mine

Mother's Day has always been my favorite.

It often falls on my Grandma's Birthday. The whole family gathers at my Mom and Dad's house, and we celebrate all the mothers who created our beautiful family, starting with the mother who started it all: my Grandma. 

Will, Mary, Christian, Grandma, Kelly, and I all have birthdays within the same week as Mother's Day. We have a backyard dinner, and I finally convince myself that summer is here to stay. I can dress my baby in shorts and stop wearing cardigans. 

Then I realize that my wardrobe is sadly drab without my cardigans, and I wish it were cooler so I could wear them. I am definitely a spring/fall kind of dresser.

This Mother's Day was especially sacred to me. My life is so much richer because I'm a mother.

Because I'm a mother, and can see something much larger than myself. Every second of ever hour is spent putting someone else before myself. I am learning to be more giving. I am widening and sharpening my perspective all at once.

 Because I am a mother, I see a whole new realm of beauty. I used to think a canyon or a river to be the height of God's creation, but I get to keep the greatest of his World Wonders in my own home. I get to care for it, see it every day, feel a love that is the closest thing to heaven I have ever known. 

And I have seen heaven.

Because I am a mother, I find myself saying I love you every third phrase of the day. How can my day be anything but extraordinary - how can my life be anything but perfect - when it is filled with so much love? I have a whole new appreciation for my wonderful mother. She is my best friend and greatest example of everything I want to be. I am a lot like her, and happy to be. While the strength, sacrifice, and love she has shown me was more evident in my months of recovery, I know that that she has offered me this strength, sacrifice, and love in the same way and magnitude my entire life. I'm just finally paying more attention, appreciating it more, and trying to emulate and return.

When I think about the fact that I have spent the last eight months of my life in heart failure, I have to laugh a little. It is just the most ridiculous thought! Of all the things that went wrong after Peter's birth, heart failure feels to strangest concept. As doctors tell me my heart has problems, it doesn't function fully, it needs time to heal, I sit there thinking, "My heart has never worked so well. Hearts are ours to love. And I've never loved so much or so strongly."

Church was so lovely! I no longer felt guilty accepting the Mother's Day chocolate they hand out during sacrament meeting. I earned that chocolate, and I savored every bite as I walked home in my springy skirt with my beautiful little family. I cherish my family. We worked hard to stay together. 

I loved hearing the primary children sing. 

"Mother, I love you. Mother, I do. Heavenly Father has sent me to you." 

He sent me to you.

My baby is a gift. Heavenly Father sent him to me. I received him, just as I will receive the other spirits waiting for us, watching us, and preparing to come to us in an equally miraculous way. I felt the love of the Lord so strongly as I heard him remind me that my family was together in spirit before the foundation of this earth. We are a family because of our spirits. 

While I love that Peter has my eyes, ears, mouth, and nose, that's not what makes him mine. I knew his spirit before I ever knew what it was like to hold him physically. I stared at a picture of Peter for days in the ICU, and as I looked into his eyes, I wasn't searching for signs of myself. I saw his spirit, and it was a spirit I knew. Our children aren't ours because they have our nose or our freckles. They are ours because they are those same spirits who have been with us from the beginning. I will know my other children by their spirit as surely as I knew my Peter.
 

But that doesn't mean that I don't admire his big toe every time I change his socks.

My day was filled with some beautiful gifts. Johnny gave me pictures from the very first hours of Peter's life... hours that I missed, that I've never seen. I cried the instant I saw them, and I wanted to hide in a closet where I could bond with those pictures, as if they could tether me to the moments I missed. It was the most beautiful gift from a considerate brother.

This little is the greatest gift of all. Each Mother's Day, I have a built-in gift in him that I get to receive again and again. Thanks for making me a mother!

“Eve was given the identity of “the mother of all living”—years, decades, perhaps centuries 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 my heart that it is first and foremost a statement about our nature, not a head count of our children.”

-Patricia Holland, One Thing Needful: Becoming Women of Greater Faith in Christ