Today I gave my third ever Mother's Day talk. It was a bitt different bc it was via zoom and it was only to the Garcia family (my parents and Craig joined us at home). Therefore, I made it more personal than I would have in a church setting. I'm publishing here for my posterity's sake:
What Ashley said in her testimony last week has made me think, especially in light of Mother’s Day. She said she didn’t think she was being a very good mother with all of the chaos brought on by the pandemic restrictions. Being cooped up with four kids who want to kill each other over a crayon will bring out the worst in anyone. Trust me, I know.
Elder Ballard said, “There is no one perfect way to be a good mother. Each situation is unique. Each mother has different challenges, different skills and abilities, and certainly different children.”
With this in mind, I have been thinking about an analogy for motherhood. Motherhood is like a muumuu. Like the kind of Muumuu that Abuela Maria wears.
- There are very essential parts that the muumuu needs to cover ( I think we know what those are). Equally, essential to motherhood is instilling teachings of faith, love, service, work ethic, and independence.
- Muumuus can show some leg, a few varicose veins and maybe even some cleavage if that zipper isn’t quite up. Motherhood can also reveal areas to improve, namely patience, peace amid sibling war zones, and survival skills.
- Muumuu patterns are beautiful and some may not exactly be in style. Motherhood shows patterns of spiritual growth and patterns of hard work, sometimes rewarded with success and sometimes rewarded with more hard work.
- Muumuus conform to your growth: you could be 80 pounds or 280 pounds and have a similar silhouette. But the beauty of the muumuu doesn’t lie in its utility, but in its comfort; it loosely flows around the wearer, sometimes shaping to movement and rhythm and sometimes it rests in a puddle around you while you reminisce about Cuba. Both options are wonderful.
• You can hide tricks up your motherhood sleeve like humor and when you are indecently exposed, there is a support system underneath.
- Most importantly, you can pull a tissue (as I have seen Abuela do on several occasions), or even a tissue box, out of it whenever it’s needed.
Elder Holland said, addressing mothers: “Yours is the work of salvation, and therefore you will be magnified, compensated, made more than you are and better than you have ever been as you try to make an honest effort, however feeble you may sometimes feel that to be.”
In light of this very personal audience of family, I hope it’s ok if I talk now about my babies and my journey in my motherhood muumuu.
I became a mother over 14 years ago. My mom left 2 weeks after
Elijah was born at which time I panicked. I remember looking at baby Elijah, thinking, “We are in this thing together buddy, both learning as we go.” I admired how patient he was with my faults (he still is), but at the same time I asked my visiting teacher how mothers ever managed to shower. She responded, “Shower? Who showers?” Several times as Elijah grew older, when I got so frustrated with life that I wanted to punch something, instead I’d lie down with my sleepy boy and feel my stress melt away. I felt peace and insight next to a child who had not a care in the world beyond which homeless man he could share snacks with the next day.
Christ taught us:
19 Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:
20 But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:
21 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
Claire was my cuddly baby who stayed in my front pack, attached to her milk source endlessly as we walked the streets of NYC. I have been thrilled as I have watched Claire’s determination and hard work making math, a subject she used to dread, become one of her strengths. Now my cuddly baby is on the brink of turning 12 and it has been awe-inspiring watching her progress through life.
Ether 12:27 And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them.
The shock of parenthood had diminished by that time
Iris was born. When I held her in the hospital I felt overwhelming love. Simultaneously, I had a spiritual epiphany. The natural man in me incredulously listens when people at a pulpit say that they love everyone in the room, despite not knowing most of them. But in that moment when I held my baby Iris, my heart grew three sizes: I felt not just an overwhelming love for her, but an increased love for humankind.
1John 4:7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.
A fruit of the Spirit is love. A key element involved in this love is the ability to put competing feelings on mute so that love become predominant. Honing and focusing love is what we are meant to do in this life. Christ had the keen, perfectly-honed ability to shut out the bad in the world and focus His love on the one. Christ especially focused on the children that kicked against the pricks and were struggling. He spent time with them. He taught them. He healed them. He loved them. And sometimes He waits at the door without a handle on his side. Waits for us to open it. Sometimes parents have to wait. We can teach correct principles and as much as we want to shove them down our kids’ throats, right along with those brussel sprouts, we only have the power to change ourselves and our perspective, to provide a pathway, produce a tissue out of the depths of the muumuu.
Even as Christ “was arrested and condemned on spurious charges, convicted to satisfy a mob,” as he hung on Calvary’s cross, he ministered to several people: the daughters of Jerusalem, the malefactors who hung him and stole his clothing, the penitent thief, John the beloved, and of course Maria, His mother.
We know that Christ’s “way is the path that leads to happiness in this life and eternal life in the world to come.”
Right now, we have that opportunity to turn off the world perhaps more than at any other time. In fact, the world is ordering us to shut it out: no more commutes to school and work eating into our day, no more retail therapy, no more camps or clubs or team sports or eating out… Just home. Not only family first, but family ONLY or else you might either die or kill. So, in this environment that ironically the world has created for us, we become a laboratory, we are guinea pigs to what prophets have been touting for years: Simplify. Focus. Eliminate. Be still.
Now for my last child. With
Sybil sometimes I cling to her, just like I’m grasping to hold onto motherhood, knowing that with my last baby is getting bigger, I will have to relinquish my “mother-to-little-kids” title. Years ago, in the depths of diapers and vomit I thought I would be very happy to move to the next phase. But motherhood doesn’t end with diapers or with teen angst (although that might be a nice place to leave off). And it doesn’t even end with grandkids. Motherhood is eternal in its scope and role. The world will have us believe that the most powerful and influential women are CEOs, presidents, and politicians, and while I celebrate those women and the breadth of their influence, it does not match the depth of the influence a mother has not only on her children, but on generations to come.
Some say that a child’s concept of God is a derivative of their relationship with their fathers. Now that the church has made Heavenly Mother more visible: in the YW theme and peppered through General Conference talks, I believe too that our maternal bonds give insight to the role of our Heavenly Mother. Being parented by perfect heavenly parents and practically perfect earthly parents and having a marvelous specimen of a husband has helped shape my motherhood into patterns that fit my frame. I’m more comfortable in it and when I’m exposed, waving in the wind, I have a supportive support team, hemming the frayed edges, and bringing me my house slippers.
