Following the Leader

Mothers Who Know Day 4

Mothers Who Know Are Leaders

In elementary school being a leader meant team captain on the football field at recess. I was good at that. In junior high it meant leading the boy on the dance floor in order to save my toes. In high school it meant serving on the seminary council and joining club after club to get my picture in the yearbook as many times as possible. It was easy to be a leader as a kid. Is that weird? Kids are so good at following. They hang on your knee and walk in the tracks of your snow boots. They say what you say; they pick their nose if you happen to; they wear your over-sized shoes; and discipline their siblings like you do. And yet, it seems so much easier to be a leader as a kid or adolescent than it does now. At least the kind of leader I always thought.

Mothers who know build children into future leaders and are the primary examples of what leaders look like.

I wouldn't consider myself a leader. I'm not in any leadership position in church. I don't help my community, or volunteer in schools. And yet, I am to be the "primary example" of what a leader looks like.

In equal partnership with their husbands, they lead a great and eternal organization. These mothers plan for the future of their organization. They plan for missions, temple marriages, and education. They plan for prayer, scripture study, and family home evening.

It's so much simpler than volunteering in the community or organizing great social events. Yet so much harder. Leadership has always meant something tangible, something I could see immediate results for. The leadership Sis. Beck describes seems much more difficult because the process is so slow. Yet so simple. That is something I struggle with -the simple things. Put me in charge of an organization that requires hours of manpower and hard work before its project's reveal date and I'm your woman. Put me in charge of an organization that requires a little here and a little there of the simple things and I fall short.

But this is the kind of planning and execution my little "organization" requires. The steps are there - laid out so simply.

Leadership now means leading by example. And I can do that.