Sharon Eubank has penned a terrific piece on motherhood for this Mother's Day. I'd like to hit some of the high points for you.
Eubank talks about how she grew up on a farm and always thought she would become a mother, but never did. As can be imagined, the celebration of motherhood brought her sadness. But she began to think about things differently. Here's an example:
"Elder Neal A. Maxwell described that “God lives in an eternal now where the past, present, and future are constantly before Him (see D&C 130:7)” (“Care for the Life of the Soul,” Apr. 2003 general conference). So, if at any time in my eternal journey I am going to be a mother (along with those spectacular skills I honed as a teenager), heaven must see me that way all the time. It must be that my Heavenly Parents don’t view who I am at any static moment in time, but instead see the person I am meant to be and the person my accumulated choices will let me be."
That's a very interesting point of view, isn't it?
She also recounts how she helped deliver supplies to the Yazidi after ISIS had attacked them in Mount Sinjar, and the epiphany she had along the way:
"Charity, or the pure love of Christ, is motherhood in a very practical and real way—sacrificing so that others might thrive and seeing beyond present circumstances to the way things really are. This motherhood is part of my covenantal identity. My mother-work will come directly through the whispers of the Holy Spirit. And it is no less real for being unrelated by blood and bone.
"Elder Jeffrey R. Holland spoke once about the motherly characteristics of Christ the Messiah:
“No love in mortality comes closer to approximating the pure love of Jesus Christ than the selfless love a devoted mother has for her child. When Isaiah, speaking messianically, wanted to convey Jehovah’s love, he invoked the image of a mother’s devotion. ‘Can a woman forget her sucking child?’ he asks. …
“This kind of resolute love ‘suffereth long, and is kind, … seeketh not her own, … but … beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.’ Most encouraging of all, such fidelity ‘never faileth.’ ‘For the mountains shall depart and the hills be removed,’ Jehovah said, ‘but my kindness shall not depart from thee’” (“Behold Thy Mother,” Oct. 2015 general conference).
"On that Iraqi plain, motherhood suddenly became defined for me as those who behave the way good mothers do. . . . I am a mother because I behave as a mother. . . . It turns out we really are all mothers in Zion. We have a work to do. It stretches into eternity. And like the Master we follow, our love “never faileth.”
I like both of those thoughtsvery much. I like that our true self is the self that our Heavenly Parents know about us from past, present, and future being continually before Them. And I like the idea of mother-work as being a powerful force in the world despite it being so often unseen and unsung. There is a hidden power holding this world together, and it is the power of women. The power of women is the hood of our Mother, our mother-hood.
Happy Mother's Day to all!