Women's Issues

Go on, admit it. Every mother’s been there. It’s what we do every single day of our lives. We are faced with this huge task of taking a totally dependent little bundle of joy from point A to point B (where they are a happy, productive adult member of society). Subconsciously, we just know we are failing. Subliminally, we recognize that we’re just making things more difficult for ourselves. Yet, we can’t seem to force ourselves to do things differently. We cling to the silliest things, and let go of some of the most practical. We secretly idolize our own mothers (whether we hate them or not) because they did manage to make it to point B, but we have no real idea how they did it. We openly fear exposure of our inadequacies and keep on going as if we know exactly where we are headed and what we are doing.

There is so much information available to us as mothers. Information that tells us: just what to expect, when to expect it, where to take our children on vacation, why we shouldn’t feed them red dyes, reasons to co-sleep and reasons not to co-sleep. We are completely informed, and completely helpless. Surely, we can’t be considered good mothers if we aren’t reading to our children for at least 30 minutes every day, or let our 1-year-old watch television while we take a shower. Shall I continue?

For my own part, I think I have figured out at least one thing. It’s all about love. I love my children so much that I’m almost desperate to make sure I don’t inadvertently mess up their entire lives. The key is that love. I need to remember that love, stuff, activities and bedtime stories are different. Maybe all I really need to get to point B is simply love. Love the way my child understands it, rather than the way I think they should understand it.

Perhaps the places we need to look are really simplistic in nature.

James E. Faust gives some beautiful advice for mothers. His advice?

“May I suggest that you take your challenges one day at a time. Do the best you can. Look at everything through the lens of eternity. If you will do this, life will take on a different perspective.”

James E. Faust, “Instruments in the Hands of God,” Ensign, Nov 2005, 114

Then, we can get a little more specific.

“It is my prayer that the Spirit will burn within you, that you will have a greater desire to strengthen your family now and prepare for your future family. The scriptures are filled with ways to teach us how to strengthen our families. There is no greater teacher than the Savior. As you study His teachings and follow His example, you can make your family life better. Let’s talk about three principles that will help you strengthen your home and family:

• Nurturing
• Sacrifice
• Prayer

To nurture means to support each other, to encourage each other, to nourish and love each other. Are we doing this in our families?

The Savior Himself taught us to nurture. Many times He said, “How oft have I gathered you as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and have nourished you” (3 Ne. 10:4).

The Savior is so proud of you. He knows what you’re going through. He understands how hard it is for you to make sacrifices. The Savior taught us to sacrifice. He sacrificed His life for all mankind.

As you help strengthen your family, prayer must be a consistent, daily part of your life. Prayer will protect you from the adversary, give you peace, and help your families love each other more.

How can you use prayer to strengthen your family? Because Heavenly Father loves you so, He wants you to talk to Him. Whatever struggles you may have, you can pray about anything. . .

Pray over problems that worry you! Don’t give up. Heavenly Father can and will answer your prayers. I have had many prayers that have been answered. I also have prayers that have not been answered yet. Our prayers will be answered in the Lord’s time when we are ready.”

Carol B. Thomas, “Strengthen Home and Family,” Ensign, May 2002, 94

A mother’s love is desperate and eternal. We face such a great challenge trying to raise our children up to their full potential. It’s often overwhelming and sometimes discouraging, but you are not left alone. Look to the simplest part of your love, the core at the very center of your heart that mirror’s God’s own love for you. Draw from the strength that can give and focus on the basics.

Take it one day at a time, with:
Faith
Nurturing
Sacrifice, and
Prayer

I didn't always aspire to be a stay at home mom.

I aspired to be many things and not one of those things was being a housewife (does anyone else hate that word as much as I do?). I've always enjoyed the challenge of a professional career. I worked hard for it, even went on to graduate school so that I can pursue the career that I've always wanted. Being a stay home mom was the furthest thing from my mind. I will even go further and say that being a stay home mom didn't come naturally to me.

Now in case you're wondering, I do enjoy being a mom. I love being a mother. I do indeed believe that being a mother is the most important job that I can ever have in this life. For me, it wasn't a question of one of the other, but both. I firmly believed that I can have it all - a career and a family. Well, I was right in some ways but I was also wrong in so many others.

Like many professional women, a lot of my identity was tied up in what I do, my career and my professional interests. Having a career validated who I was in many ways. I was someone who had accomplished something in her own right. I wasn't just someone's wife, or just someone's daughter, or just someone's mother.

I don't know exactly when the big realization came for me. Perhaps, it was gradual and it crept up on me a little bit at a time. It really doesn't matter how it happened, what matters is that it did. I came to really understand that the greatest accomplishment that I can ever hope to lay claim to is to raise my children to be honorable in all their dealings with their fellowmen and with their Heavenly Father.

President Gordon B. Hinckley (15th President and Prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) spoke lovingly of our sacred duty as mothers:

You have nothing in this world more precious than your children. When you grow old, when your hair turns white and your body grows weary, when you are prone to sit in a rocker and meditate on the things of your life, nothing will be so important as the question of how your children have turned out. It will not be the money you have made. It will not be the cars you have owned. It will not be the large house in which you live. The searing question that will cross your mind again and again will be, How well have my children done?

If the answer is that they have done very well, then your happiness will be complete. If they have done less than well, then no other satisfaction can compensate for your loss.

And so I plead with you tonight, my dear sisters. Sit down and quietly count the debits and the credits in your role as a mother. It is not too late. When all else fails, there is prayer and the promised help of the Lord to assist you in your trials. But do not delay. Start now, whether your child be six or 16...

God bless you, dear friends. Do not trade your birthright as a mother for some bauble of passing value. Let your first interest be in your home. The baby you hold in your arms will grow quickly as the sunrise and the sunset of the rushing days. I hope that when that occurs you will not be led to exclaim as did King Lear, “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!” (King Lear, I, iv, 312). Rather, I hope that you will have every reason to be proud concerning your children, to have love for them, to have faith in them, to see them grow in righteousness and virtue before the Lord, to see them become useful and productive members of society. If with all you have done there is an occasional failure, you can still say, “At least I did the very best of which I was capable. I tried as hard as I knew how. I let nothing stand in the way of my role as a mother.” Failures will be few under such circumstances.

For me, it came down to this - I had to be there for my children when it mattered. This meant being home full time. I needed to be there when they come home after a particularly bad day. I needed to be home when they come home bursting with news from school or from a friend. My children didn't just need me to be home when they were newborns or toddlers, they need me home as preteens and teenagers. In fact, they need me home during these trying years even more than ever before. This realization enabled me to take a leap of love - embracing and loving my status as a stay at home mom and not with reluctance and regret as I did before.

Of course, I realize that there are many mothers who work outside the home out of necessity. I applaud those moms for they are doing what they need to do to take care of their families. If my situation were to change tomorrow and I had to support my family, I would gladly work full time again but today I'm grateful that I can stay home. For me, it was a leap of love that has blessed my family in countless ways. Being a stay home mom might not have been what I'd envisioned as my "dream career" but today I can't imagine doing anything else.

Shortly after we were married, my husband and I discussed starting our family. We both wanted a large family we had talked about this before we even decided to marry. But suddenly, everything that had been theoretical before now had practical applications. I had grown up an only child raised by a single mother. I was a “latchkey kid” and was the only member in my family, having only been baptized into the Mormon church 4 years earlier. I really didn't feel like I knew what I was doing or that I was ready for it.

One day in our Celestial Marriage class at the Institute, I was introduced to a talk given by President Ezra Taft Benson, “To the Mothers in Zion.” He talked about the importance of not postponing children unnecessarily and how mothers needed to stay home with the children except in unusual circumstances. All these things I knew before I got married. But somehow this day, it really hit home what that meant to me personally. I freaked out.

I was on the verge of tears all day. I argued with my husband. I was upset because I felt like I was being told to stay home barefoot and pregnant which meant that all the effort I had put into my college education thus far was a waste and it was just obvious I should drop out now because it was costing us money for me to go to school and since I wasn’t going to have a career, we should save that money for something else and I should go home and wash my husband’s laundry and start making his dinner! I was definitely not at peace.

That feeling of rebelliousness lasted all day. I was so angry and unhappy. I’m sure that my new groom was wondering what on earth happened to his glowing bride. It must have been very distressing for him to see me like that—ranting and raving all day long. Finally, it was bedtime, but my anger was not spent yet. He offered to give me a priesthood blessing. With my emotional state being what it was, I’m surprised that I allowed it.

I don’t remember what was said to me in my blessing. But I do know that I was able to fall asleep quickly afterwards. And in the morning, I woke up refreshed. A change had happened in my heart overnight—a gift from God. Instead of being offended and upset at what I had read the day before, I felt a desire to have children and to stay home with them. The stumbling blocks of school and money that had seemed insurmountable the day before, I suddenly had a good plan for that would make it all work out. Soon we were pregnant.

Now I am pregnant again with my eighth child. Even during our darkest times of financial distress I have stayed at home with my children knowing that especially during those times of stress and struggle that it would cause more anxiety and be more disruptive to their lives to have me out of the home and away from them—even if it did bring in a little more money.

I have a five year old now who comes home from Kindergarten each day. As soon as he opens the door, he calls out and says, “Mom, I’m home!” And if I don’t reply immediately, he comes looking for me. I understand what President Benson meant when he said:

First, take time to always be at the crossroads when your children are either coming or going--when they leave and return from school--when they leave and return from dates--when they bring friends home. Be there at the crossroads whether your children are six or sixteen. In Proverbs we read: "A child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame" (Proverbs 29:15). Among the greatest concerns in our society are the millions of latchkey children who come home daily to empty houses unsupervised by working parents.

I was one of those latchkey children and I know what it felt like to come home to an empty house or to someone who wasn’t my mother. It is my privilege to be able to be there at the crossroads for my children, to be able to do their laundry and make their meals. Yes, I stay home with them and deny myself--during this season of life--some of the other pursuits I might have liked to have followed.

But the truth is that it gives me the greatest joy in my life to be able to answer my kindergartener with “Here I am! How was your day? Are you hungry for lunch?” I love giving him a big hug when he comes home and looking at the things he made in school. I love knowing that he knows where to find me. Right at home. Staying at home with my children has been one of the greatest blessings of my life.

Today I was re-reading President Benson’s talk. I don’t think I’ve read it again since that first time that it made me so angry. Today I found it so beautiful that it brought me to tears.

LDS families are counseled to study the scriptures daily as a family. I’ve found that it’s a great foundation for gospel instruction and a starting point for gospel discussion. Beyond that, it has been a personal anchor to me in the tempests of life. When I have been struggling personally, our family scripture study has kept me grounded and strengthened my weak faith. It strengthens our family and shows the children how much we value the word of God.

In the beginning, we had a hard time with family scripture study. When our first child was too young to understand, it was often difficult to set aside the time for it. And, frankly, I felt a little foolish. I didn’t grow up in a home where we studied the scriptures and I felt awkward doing it with just my husband and a small baby who was unaware.

As she grew older, we bought her some scripture reader books published by the church. We all enjoyed going through and showing her the pictures and telling scripture stories and identifying characters in the picture. And although it wasn’t formal scripture study, it was something we did together as a small family and it was perfect for her level of understanding.

A few years later, though, we knew we needed to do more. But we hadn’t quite made the adjustment yet. One summer, my husband left for an internship in Belgium, leaving me alone with our three small children. I felt completely overwhelmed and utterly alone and inadequate to the task. I knew that I needed more divine help than I was currently receiving and that if I wanted that assistance and those blessings, I would need to do the best I could at what I had been asked to do.

So I started studying the scriptures with our three children-- ages 4, 2, and 1. When my husband returned it became a natural part of our family culture. In the evenings before bed we would sit down for scripture study. We would usually start with a prayer and follow that with a song. Then we would read. At first, we could only read one or two verses. That was all the time we had before their attention wavered. It was very hard to follow the story line, but we did it. And just over two years later our little family finished the 531 pages of the Book of Mormon. I had a wonderful feeling of accomplishment and felt I had fulfilled an obligation to the Lord to teach our little ones.

As the years went by, we were able to lengthen our scripture study to ten verses at a time and sometimes as much as a chapter a day. We continued to have little ones whose attention spans are short. Some days we could do more than others. We continued to study in the evenings before bed, with Mom or Dad reading. I admit that I was a "scripture hog." I loved to be the voice and read the scriptures in what I felt was a meaningful way that the children could easily understand. I liked to put in facial expressions and emphasize certain words depending on whether the person was behaving well or poorly. And I found that as I read that way, I personally got much more out of scripture study than I had before. And although over time we have omitted the song, we still always ended with a family prayer.

On occasion, we stop from our regularly scheduled scripture study to memorize certain scriptures that teach important doctrine. On those nights, we read and discuss the scripture and then over the next several nights we practice reciting it and see who can get the farthest without making a mistake.

Recently, we have had to make another change in our family scripture study. Because of the increasing activities taking place at night, finding a time when we were all home in the evenings for scripture study became very difficult. So we made the big switch to morning scripture study. I admit that I was skeptical and not very supportive of the change at first. I thought it would be too difficult and cause too many problems. But I have been pleasantly surprised as the Lord has blessed and helped our family.

It has been remarkable to start the day out together as a family and not just frantically taking care of our own personal morning needs. I feel like I am sending my children out into the world prepared to fight the good fight and wearing the armor of God. We gather at 7:15 in our living room. I purchased some inexpensive copies of the Bible, since we are currently reading in the Old Testament, so that we could all have a copy that was to be kept in the living room (as opposed to everyone scouring the house for their personal, leather-bound copies). In the past, Mom or Dad usually did all the reading. But now that we each have a set handy, it’s easy and it helps everyone pay better attention if we each take turns reading a few verses. I also like having everyone read because then each of the kids gets to hear their siblings reading the word of God, not just Mom and Dad. Plus, there’s the added benefit of providing an auditory as well as a visual learning experience for our many different types of learners. After we finish a chapter, we kneel down together as a family and Dad usually picks someone to say the family prayer for us.

I do miss having the together time as a family in the evenings that we used to have when did our family scripture study then. And since it’s easier to do the rest of our morning routine without little ones, we don’t bother to wake our 18 month old or our 3 year old for family scripture study. Although, if they wake up on their own they are welcomed and loved, of course! There’s nothing better than morning cuddles from the little ones while you study scriptures. But I think it’s rather sad that our little ones are so often left out of our morning family scripture study. And so I’m thinking that I’d like to add something back into the evening routine for whoever’s schedule allows them to be there for it. I just want to make sure we aren’t missing anyone.

But this is the beauty I think of families. Each one is different with different needs and different strengths and talents and resources to take care of those needs. So that when we are counseled that we should study the scriptures and pray daily as a family, each family will find their own way to go about doing it. What is your family scripture study like?