Eighteen's Enough

Mothers Who Know Day 1
Mothers Who Know Bear Children

"How many kids do you want when you grow up?" "EIGHTEEN." My answer was always emphatic. I knew what I wanted. Granted, I was only 7 or 8 when I set my mind on that number - and a year or two later would find me drastically altering it - but to this day my family still reminds me of my naivety with a little elbow jab.

"Faithful daughters of God desire children."

Every little girl dreams of being a Mommy. It is our nature. Our mothers are our world and why wouldn't we want to have the world? It's not until we grow up that some lose that innate desire. Perhaps it's the consequence of a shattered childhood or a wreckless adolescence or a selfish adulthood that the desire fades in many. But the faithful know. Their desire remains.

It's a funny thing this desire. It has made me ache through years of infertility, puke all nine months of gestation, writhe in agony from delivery, throw tantrums of exhaustion -- and yet, I want to do it again. That desire so easily overshadows and erases all the negatives. It's amazing.

“In the eternal perspective, children—not possessions, not position, not prestige—are our greatest jewels.”

But even with such a strong desire, sometimes I look at what I do and think "Is this it? This is what it's all about? hm... I expected something a little different. Where is the grandeur, the recognition, the praise? Isn't that what I should be looking for?" Call it the natural man in me - I can't help it, sometimes it's there - but that's where my mind wanders at times. Then a visiting teacher, or a Relief Society lesson, or a sister will bring me back to reality. Reality is usually such a negative word, but really this reality is a dream. It's a dream that I am a Mom. It doesn't seem real at all. I keep waiting to wake up. It's a dream that this is a life-long calling. My goodness. Can that really be true? I can't wrap my brain around it - it must be a dream. It's a dream that my baby is talking and my other baby is walking. They were infants just a moment ago. This can't be real. I'm dreaming. And though this is a reality, it all happens in a dream-like haze.

"There is eternal influence and power in motherhood."

Every mother has a story. I didn't really understand that until I suddenly had my own. It's the oddest thing. The stories are good or bad or ugly (or usually all three). Should I feel less success as a mother because I used an epidural or because I delivered in a hospital rather than my own bed? Is the story of my children's existence less profound because I couldn't do it on my own? Sometimes I think that. Knowing that I would be dead on some wagon trail 150 years ago makes me wonder. I've banned myself from watching "A Baby Story" on TLC because I can't help the sobbing. I always thought I'd get to experience that sensation of pressure that tells my body when to push. That my newborn infant would be placed in my arms moments after birth instead of only getting to sneak a moment's glance behind a curtain while my arms are strapped to a gurney. For me, that isn't supposed to be the way I bear my children. In fact, sometimes I have to catch myself living in a memory of normal childbirth. It seems so real, but it is only the memory I've conjured up in my fantasies since childhood. It's almost like when I think I've done something as a kid but it ended up that it was my twin sister. Her memories are mine. And like that, my fantasies have become my memories at times. But it gives me strength to know that I'm not dead on a wagon trail. I'm here and by the marvels of modern medicine, have two beautiful children to show for it. They are a huge success story. And I'm not ashamed. I am alive. And so are they.

I don't think it's an accident that the Lord uses the word JOY in two specific references. We are commanded to "multiply and replenish the earth that [we] might find JOY in [our] posterity" and "Men are that they might have JOY". So it's not just that we are commanded to bear children, but that is why we "are". We "are" here to have JOY and that JOY comes through our posterity. To have JOY we have to find it. And we find JOY through our children.

I know not everyone is blessed to have children. And at times I thought I would fall in those ranks. So I love what Sis. Beck says in that regard: "Some women are not given the responsibility of bearing children in mortality, but just as Hannah of the Old Testament prayed fervently for her child (see 1 Samuel 1:11), the value women place on motherhood in this life and the attributes of motherhood they attain here will rise with them in the Resurrection (see D&C 130:18). Women who desire and work toward that blessing in this life are promised they will receive it for all eternity, and eternity is much, much longer than mortality."

That is what I KNOW and now I'm putting it to the test. And who knows - maybe eighteen isn't too many after all (feel the elbow jab).