On Mothering

It's May 2016.

I was supposed to be having my first baby this month, on May 21st.

It was all according to plan: go to Uganda. Come home. Wait 2 weeks for the malaria drugs to wear off. Conceive. Wait 9 months. Have a baby in May.

But at 10 weeks, our baby's heart stopped beating and we went down a different path with a different plan. It hasn't been easy and it hasn't been consistent. There have been many tears, some anger, avoiding friends and the internet, confusion, lots of questions. Sometimes other people's happy has been so, so loud.

This weekend is Mother's Day. My own sweet mom has been worried how I would feel approaching this month and this holiday, and I feel okay. I know that mothering is a lot more than birthing babies.

This is what mothering has looked like this year for me:

• Friends, some of whom have babies, some of whom have miscarried babies, and some who have never yet tried to get pregnant offering to bring us dinner the moment they heard of our sorrow.
• A professor from BYU who emailed me almost weekly while we were in Africa to make sure I was doing okay. She wasn't assigned to me, wasn't giving me a grade, and had no connection to my project at all except she cared about me.
• Another professor, who has never been married or had children of her own, bringing our class food week after week, texting me, being patient with me, helping me solve problems. 
• My mother in law bringing me a soft, special blanket right after my D&C procedure, and then sending me flowers months later when my period had come again.
• My visiting teaching companion and her husband coming to celebrate graduation with us, even though we are still getting to know each other and she has her own worries and trials
• The ladies who work in the temple, offering soft smiles, gentle directions, and sometimes whispered words of courage.
• The little girls in my primary class who sit on my lap and hang on to my hands and run to hug me.
• My own sisters, who have sent text messages at just the right time, have offered prayers, have leaned on my shoulder in quiet moments, have told me everything will work out.
• My Grandma, who gave me needed and necessary advice on a difficult day where I felt impressed to call her. I still think back to that phone call almost daily.
• Of course my own mother, who has been gentle and patient with every desperate text and phone call, bursts of anger, days of exhaustion and irrationality. She is always the one to go to to light up hope again.

I think Mother's Day is really a celebration of the divine gifts God has given to His daughters to nurture, love, forgive, be patient and long suffering, to sacrifice self and to pull strength up from depths we sometimes wonder if we have. 

So maybe this month other people's happy is also seeming too loud for you. Know that you're not alone. You are in good company with many women who have hurt waiting for their families to come to them (think of Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Hannah, Elisabeth, and others). Your offering as a woman and as a mother is no less, regardless of how many children you have. Your influence is still significant.

“How is it that a human being can love a child so deeply that you willingly give up a major portion of your freedom for it? How can mortal love be so strong that you voluntarily subject yourself to responsibility, vulnerability, anxiety, and heartache and just keep coming back for more of the same? What kind of mortal love can make you feel, once you have a child, that your life is never, ever your own again? Maternal love has to be divine. There is no other explanation for it. What mothers do is an essential element of Christ’s work. Knowing that should be enough to tell us the impact of such love will range between unbearable and transcendent, over and over again, until with the safety and salvation of the very last child on earth, we can [then] say with Jesus, ‘[Father!] I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.’11 ”

Full talk here