I've also found strength in the quote: "Shift your prayers to find joy with what you have." Instead of begging Heavenly Father for another baby or answers, I'm trying to show more gratitude and notice for the family he has already blessed me with and the opportunities to nurture I have daily and that has been changing.
I never knew Mother's Day was a difficult/sad holiday for so many until I was in college. I remember sitting next to a friend a few years ago on Mother's Day Sunday as she talked about her struggle with getting pregnant and the sadness the holiday brought. Her husband also struggled with it because his mother had passed away. It is a conversation I will never forget, because up to this point I never realized the sadness and heartache this holiday brought to some. It was eye-opening. I'm happy to say they just had a baby boy recently though :)
As another Mother's Day comes again this year, I'm especially grateful for the mom I am today and for the mom I'll be in the future. I've been blessed with an amazing mom myself and fortunate to have so many great examples in my life.
This post is kinda all over the place, but just some recent thoughts and things on my heart. I also wanted to include some of my favorite quotes about motherhood that I've got that gives me patience and perspective and joy in this calling:
"As your arms encircle your little ones, his arms are there, too. Feel secure, for his arms are lengthened out towards us all the day long" - Mary E. Foulger
"The joy of motherhood comes in moments. These will be hard times and frustrating times, but amid the challenges there are shining moments of joy and satisfaction." M Russell Ballard
"I wonder if you sisters can fully appreciate the innate gifts, blessings, and endowments you have simply because you are daughters of God. It is a mistake for women to think that life begins only with marriage. A woman can and must have an identity and feel useful, valued, and needed whether she is single or married. She must feel that she can do something for someone else that no one else ever born can do. Being a daughter of God means that if you seek it, you can find your true identity. You will know who you are" -James E. Faust
"Being a mother is learning about the strengths you didn't know you had. . . and dealing with fears you didn't know existed" -Linda Wooten
"When the real history of mankind is fully disclosed will it feature the echos of gunfire or the shaping sound of lullabies? The great armistices made by military men or the peacemaking of women in homes and in neighborhoods? Will what happened in cradles and kitchens prove to be more controlling than what happened in congresses? -Neal A. Maxwell
“I don't want to drive up to the pearly gates in a shiny sports car, wearing beautifully, tailored clothes, my hair expertly coiffed, and with long, perfectly manicured fingernails.
I want to drive up in a station wagon that has mud on the wheels from taking kids to scout camp.
I want to be there with a smudge of peanut butter on my shirt from making sandwiches for a sick neighbors children.
I want to be there with a little dirt under my fingernails from helping to weed someone's garden.
I want to be there with children's sticky kisses on my cheeks and the tears of a friend on my shoulder.
I want the Lord to know I was really here and that I really lived."―
"The last role I want to talk about today, which is to be a mother. And this is who I am in relation to my creation or my progeny. As a creator, Eve was so desirous to be a mother that she sacrificed Eden for it. And she did that willingly and knowingly. Adam called his wife’s name “Eve” and you know what it means. It means she was the mother of all living. But I find it so interesting she had no children when he called her that. But she was given a title, a divine title, that means there is heritage in this. And so whether you have children in this life or not, when you have your endowment and you are given the name, you are an inheritor of that. And it means that you have the title to be a mother. And so for somebody like me in the gospel, fifty years old, single, no children, and all that I’ve gone through emotionally to get to this point in my life, the gospel gives me the inherent title to be a mother. And it is mine through my covenants. And whether I actually attain that in this brief span on the earth, or afterward, it is my promise in the kingdom. And to me that is so incredibly powerful. It’s powerful to me on a personal level. And I can’t get that anywhere else." - Sharon Eubank
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