The Best, Hardest Thing

My wonderfully talented sister-in-law, Lindsay, took our family pictures last month, and I've been meaning to post some of them for a while.  Also, I've been meaning to post some of my thoughts on motherhood, so I figure I might as well combine them into one.

See that face?  That is my challenging, delightful, exasperating, wonderful three-year-old.  I feel frustrated and blessed every day because of him.

This is my youngest, a true "angel baby" in everything but sleep habits.  When I look into those sweet eyes I feel humbled by my responsibility to be his mother and teach him all he needs to know to navigate this wonderful and sometimes frightening world of ours.



Motherhood is hard.  It is also the best thing I have ever done.  I like what Boyd K. Packer, an apostle in our church, has to say about it:  "[A mother] understands that no service equals the exalting refinement which comes through unselfish motherhood" (From an address given at a BYU Education Week devotional on 17 August 1999).

I like that phrase, "exalting refinement."  I'm only three years into the process and already I can say that motherhood tries and refines you in ways you didn't even know you needed refinement.  After managing a classroom of 40 seventh graders, I thought I had learned patience.  (Yeah, you read that right.  40 in one class period.  Yikes.)  But nothing has tried my patience and shown me how much I still need to work on it like spending all day every day with two children.  And nothing has shown me how much I still have to learn about love and forgiveness as when I lose my temper at J and then feel bad and start to cry, only to have him come up, wrap his arms around me and say, "It's otay, Mommy.  It's otay."

I love these children so much.  I pray every day that I'll know how to teach and guide them and won't do too much damage along the way with my imperfections.  Thank heaven I don't have to do it alone.

Boy, I love that man.  But that's a post for another day.  In parting, here's one last shot of C.  I like it because I think he looks a little like me as a baby in it.