The Essay: What I Find Most Fulfilling in Family Life as a Young Mother.

Wow! This was difficult. To narrow down what I find MOST fulfilling, and then to fit it onto one page. Here goes:

“Put your heart, mind, intellect and soul even to your smallest acts. This is the secret of success.”

~Swami Sivananda

Finding fulfillment in motherhood was not something that came easily to me. When I left the corporate path to stay at home with my children I envisioned that my great sacrifice would merit a smooth ride to maternal bliss. Instead, I found myself scraping dried oatmeal from the kitchen walls while trying to comfort a colicky baby and keep the toddler from streaking out the front door . . . again. At night, I would kneel and ask, “Heavenly Father, why on Earth did you have me get two graduate degrees if I was going to end up incessantly changing diapers and Band-Aids, scrubbing floors, mating socks, refereeing quarrels, and coercing reluctant musicians?”

God did not answer me immediately or all at once, but I heard Him whispering when my three year old son prayed, asking Him to heal a little sister’s smashed finger; when I listened as my twelve year old daughter “buried the hatchet” and comforted a younger sister after a hard day; when my nine year old sneaked into the baby’s room to whisper a favorite bedtime story; and each time I discover a crayoned note under my pillow. I felt Him answer as I sat in the living room and listened to a (slightly off key) Mother’s Day recital. My children played and sang, “Mother, I love you. Mother, I do. Father in Heaven has sent me to you.” God’s answer to my exasperated prayer is, “My child, can’t you see? You aren’t a maid, a nanny, or a chauffeur. With My help, you are becoming something truly great.”

At times I still struggle to see the divinity in my daily activities. It is easy to lose the vision and view raising children as little more than nature’s way of ensuring survival of the species. Nature, however, did not make me a mother. God offered me the chance to participate in creation, and I chose to accept it. He gave me intelligence, creativity and a desire for greatness for a reason—to enable me to pour my heart, might, mind, and soul into my divine role as a mother—to give me success.

A wise Christian leader* noted, “To do well those things which God ordained is the truest greatness.” My fulfillment comes as I use my God-given gifts in pursuit of true greatness; through the struggle to discover—and the joy of finding—the divinity in what I do as a mother each day.

* Howard W. Hunter, Ensign, May 1982, p. 19