The Blessings of a Mother’s Journal
My mother, Joyce Mary Field, was born in 1917 in Kexby, Lincolnshire, and her earliest memories focus on the fact that, as a child, she was always hungry. Her father had served in the Army during the First World War but was discharged after being gassed. He didn’t have a regular job and food for his three children often came from fish given to him by friends. “Mother and Father were poor,” she writes.
Mother’s earliest recollections of Church focus on Sunday meetings and on her baptism. “Our church life wasn’t like it is today,” she wrote in 1986, referring back six decades. “We met in a dark, small wood paneled room. At that time there weren’t many members.”
If Mother’s spiritual journey had humble beginnings, it also had traumatic ones: “I was baptised when I was 10 years old in the river Humber, which was tidal, and often very rough. That early morning, the tide was high, it was cold and I was terrified, and thought I was going to drown.”
But Mother still went through with the ordinance, showing the strong character trait of perseverance, even bravery, a characteristic I quickly came to admire as I read of Mother’s ensuing health problems, and the unexpected postponement of her marriage for more than a year, after Father lost his balance on an airplane hangar construction and fell 40 feet to the ground.
As I re-read Mother’s journal, I try to look beyond the narrative for character traits that I can work on, to help me to become a better person. For example, Mother was an angel of service, using her skills for the benefit of others. Such acts of service were not limited to assisting church members. Mother would help non-members just as readily. To Mother, they were all God’s children.
I’m sure that Mother’s spiritual strengths came from her love of the temple. She and Father were set apart as ordinance workers in the London Temple in 1972. Mother would share with me her spiritual experiences in the temple — how on one occasion, for example, a female spirit, eager for ordinances to be completed, started pulling at Mother’s clothing. There was a voice, too, saying, “Don’t forget me!”
For Mother the spirit world was a reality. From her journal, I learned not only about the vital role the temple plays in our latter-day lives, but also in the lives of our departed loved ones, who are real people with real emotions. These are sacred memories that Mother clearly wanted us, her children, to know about, memories that now resound louder, given President Nelson’s encouragement for members to gather Israel on both sides of the veil. Mother’s experiences help me understand that many of our departed loved ones really want to be gathered.
What greater blessings of a mother’s journal could there be?