For Mothers of Young Children
3 Ways to Find Joy in the Work of Mothering
From an address, “Finding Joy and Nobility in Motherhood,” given at Brigham Young University Women’s Conference on April 29, 2010.
With heavenly help, we can overcome discouragement and find joy in our mothering efforts.
It was an average Sunday morning. My four-month-old was being fussy during sacrament meeting, so I embarked on my usual trek to the mothers’ lounge. As I nestled into a rocking chair, I turned to say hello to my friend who was also nursing her baby. Instead of her usual smile, I noticed bloodshot, tear-filled eyes.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
She choked back tears and said, “Erin, I am a bad mother.”
She explained that she’d been struggling with and praying about her three-year-old son—why was he so disobedient? so irreverent? Now she was concerned about her newborn who needed regular medical monitoring to be sure she was breathing. Her daughter’s constant needs were making her efforts with her son even more challenging. She confessed, “I don’t know if my mothering is acceptable to God.”
While feeling deep empathy for her, I also felt a surge of peaceful reassurance wash over me. I knew my friend’s excellent mothering efforts. I knew she loved her children, and I saw their love for her. She is a good mother. I was sure that the Lord was pleased with her efforts. Then it dawned on me: He is pleased with my efforts too.
The Work of Mothering
When we do the work of mothering, we are engaging in the Lord’s work. It is a divine and noble work. But as mortal beings, we will do this perfect work imperfectly, which often leads us to feel discouraged and depressed. Still, Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ have encouraged us to embark on this divine but difficult motherhood journey. They know that we are not perfect, but They also know They can help us—not only with our work of mothering but also with our feelings about that work.
I am a mother to three children. I am also the provider for my family right now. This has not been easy. Sometimes when my faith wanes, I don’t feel much joy in all the work I do. But I remember that if I ask for divine help, I will receive it, opening my heart and my eyes to the joyful parts of motherhood.
Opportunities to Find Joy
Lehi taught that we were created to experience joy (see 2 Nephi 2:25). That also means that we can and will find joy in motherhood. But in order to find something, we have to look for it. We cannot passively expect to feel joyful. We should be actively seeking joy in our lives. When this search becomes difficult, asking for heavenly assistance is key.
Lehi also taught that our earthly experience includes opposition (see 2 Nephi 2:11). Sometimes when my sisters and I talk about motherhood, joy is not the first thing we talk about. Instead we talk about hard work or even discouragement. But Lehi helps us understand that it is because we work hard or feel discouraged that joy is possible. It has been explained this way: “As the sorrows of our lives carve and stretch those caverns [of feeling within our own hearts], they expand our soul’s capacity for joy.”1
In a beautiful priesthood blessing before I had my second daughter, my dad and my husband blessed me that being with my baby would provide me with many happy times. That daughter ended up having terrible colic and acid reflux, which meant I spent numerous nights trying to console an inconsolable baby. It was difficult to meet her needs and still be kind and patient with my potty-training three-year-old. But the words of that priesthood blessing stood out in my mind. They invited me to look more earnestly for the happy times and allowed me to find more joy in those times than I might have if my daughter had been an “easy” baby.
We know the real joy behind a child’s bright smile because we have also experienced the pain of her tears. We know the satisfying peace of seeing a child make sacred covenants because we have also experienced the sorrow of sin. Our everyday efforts, even the sad and discouraging ones, allow the carving and stretching of our souls to occur, “expand[ing] our soul’s capacity for joy.”
Here are three ways I have tried to seek and find joy in my mothering journey. I hope these will inspire you to find joy in your motherhood.
1. Joy in the Journey
The first way I find joy is by seeing motherhood as a journey—not a never-ending, monotonous, and laborious journey but rather an opportunity to learn, grow, and build eternal relationships.
Motherhood provides us with endless opportunities to love and to give (for example, changing diapers, giving baths, cleaning kitchens, and kissing owies). But every caring act I do does not automatically result in joy. My friend Kristine Manwaring offered insight into this in her essay “My Home as a Temple.”
She admits, “I have spent too much time in my home discouraged. …” (I think we can all relate to feeling some negative feeling about motherhood.)
“[But] I began walking in the mornings with a wise neighbor. … She speaks of chopping vegetables and cleaning bathrooms with her sons with something akin to reverence. …
“I was startled to realize that she saw as ‘sacred’ the very tasks that I always thought were obstacles to sacredness. … In fact, Christ used imagery of feeding and washing and cleaning throughout His parables and object lessons. ‘He shall feed his flock like a shepherd’ (Isaiah 40:11). He will ‘[wash] away the filth of the daughters of Zion’ (2 Nephi 14:4) and ‘sweep away the bad out of [His] vineyard’ (Jacob 5:66). He even likens Himself to a hen who ‘gathereth her chickens under her wings’ (Matthew 23:37).
“Even more striking to me, Christ … personally did [these things]. He fed multitudes with limited tangible resources in a miraculous example of His attention to our physical as well as spiritual hunger. He washed the feet of His disciples to illustrate the humble service required of a Master, and to reveal what He was willing to do that we might be entirely clean. … When seen in this new light, my perception of tasks like peeling potatoes and scrubbing floors began to [change]. It was becoming obvious to me that when we care for the physical as well as the spiritual needs of our families, we are patterning our lives after the Savior.”2
I echo Kristine’s beautiful words—caring for the needs of our family facilitates discipleship. This discipleship helps us learn, grow, and foster eternal relationships.
2. Joy in Our Efforts
The second place I find joy is in the evidence of my efforts: when my children remind me that we need to have family scripture study or family prayer, when they share with each other, offer to help me with the dishes, or throw their arms around me and say something like, “You are the best mommy ever!”
Unfortunately, looking for the evidence of my efforts can also be tricky because my work rarely seems done, and other women I admire seem to do their work differently, or better, than I do. Sister Ardeth Greene Kapp, former Young Women General President, pointed out another source of the evidence of our efforts: “And so it is that mothers of all ages may see themselves falling short of [the] ideal which they would hope might one day be within their reach. … The [mother’s] self-recorded ledger … may appear lacking because the recording is incomplete. It is in the heart and soul of the child, and not the ledger kept by the mother, that the record of her labors is more accurately recorded.”3
This reminds me that I need to have faith that my efforts are being locked away in my children’s hearts.
3. Joy in Accepting Help
Finally, we can find joy by accepting the help of others.
After our first child was born, my husband began traveling more than ever. Though he was working hard to establish a steady stream of work, we still relied heavily on my graduate teaching assistantship to survive. One night, with my eight-week-old daughter in my arms, I found myself feeling entirely alone with a heap of mounting responsibilities. I felt absolutely hopeless.
I prayed fervently that the Lord would help me, and He did. He helped me find women who nurtured my baby when I couldn’t be there. They loved me and my daughter. They encouraged me. They taught me by their example. They fed me physically and also fed my spirit through their quiet, Christlike service. They mothered me so that I could mother my baby.
Parenting Is an Eternal Effort
Being a mother is engaging in divine work. God is invested in the work we mothers do—feeding hungry children, washing dirty bedsheets, reading stories, and cleaning the family room for the fifteenth time in one day. When we seek heavenly assistance through faith, our Heavenly Father will bless us in our efforts, precisely because parenting is part of His eternal efforts too.
I’m not perfect at any of this. But I’m trying to live my life with faith that the Lord will help me feel joy in my efforts. I believe the Lord will do the same for you.