It Was Mom a Campaign Celebrating Mothers

I know I am one of many who knew I could do absolutely anything if my mom was there. Any football game, violin recital, school play, or swim meet she would do whatever she could to be there. Looking back now at pictures and videos, whether I was cute or awkward, I can see that these events were most often long, tiring, and sometimes hard on the ears. But my parents always came and my mom always supported me in anything and everything I set my mind to.

Isn’t it funny about how when you leave home and are away at school or starting a family of your own or even just on an extended vacation, one of the hardest things to deal with is being sick. You feel terrible and it seems like that’s always the time when all your roommates decide to go on a trip out of town, all your papers are due at once and you still need to make food. It was always mom that could make you feel better.

Even if I’m not that sick and I’m just having a bad day, it’s so much better when I talk to my mom and she listens to my (sometimes silly) angst about the day. Then after I’m done she tells me to go on and do something about it. It was always mom who could always turn situations around on us so that we have to change something and make an effort to enable the change we desire. This attitude of constantly trying to be person you wanted to be and to change the world around you for the better and has been vital to my spiritual development. You can read scriptures, pray or do service all day long but unless there is a real change in your heart, it won’t benefit you at all.

Mothers–Anthropologically Speaking

Ashley Montague, a British-American anthropologist spoke from his experience in watching mothers perform their absolutely necessary roles saying, “It is indeed, in the home that the foundations of the kind of world in which we live are laid, and in this sense it will always remain true that the hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world. And it is in this sense women must assume that job of making men who will know how to make a world fit for human beings to live in.”

It is our mothers who shape us into who we are and then put it on us to go out and change the world for the better. I can see  constant chaos in the world around me along with every other characteristic of our fallen world: sadness, listless wandering, exploitation of the world and of other people for selfish personal gain.

The children of men perpetrate violence on one another in hate and anger. I honestly think that the numbers of people participating in these actions and the numbers of people being victimized by them would be greatly reduced if the mothers of these people were watching.

What Would Your Mother Say

A common saying in primary and many homes around the world is “Would Jesus do that?” or “What would Jesus do?” Another saying to add to the list, especially after leaving our homes to go out into the big world, should be “What would your mother say?”. If we had our moms always in the back of our minds, there would be a dramatic decrease in the number of stupid things we do because we would never want to bring shame to our mothers. It was mom who taught me to do good and to be good and losing that would be the greatest of all blows. But if there’s one thing that the world needs to remember, it’s that it was mom who taught us to love.

Indeed, one of the greatest qualities of mothers, of the whole human race, is the love mothers have for their children, their siblings, their spouses, their grandchildren, the little Primary kids they teach on Sundays and everyone around them. This love binds homes together and pushes those who participate in that love to a higher plane of unity and happiness.  When we come home from college, come home from work or whatever battle we fought that day, our homes are, as a poet described it, “our fortress in a warring world, where a [mother’s] hand buckles on your armor in the morning and soothes your fatigue and wounds at night.”

Selflessness of a Mother

A Mom’s Christ-like Love

Whatever love I needed, watching my mother through the years has taught me that a mother’s love is unconditional, absolute, unreserved and most definitely, unqualified. All these different duties that mothers perform with all their different kinds of love are showing us how to serve, how to take care of ourselves, how to support others no matter the inconvenience or the quality of the performance and how to get out and do something to make a change for the better, displays a level of love unmatched except by Jesus Christ and our Heavenly parents.

Jesus Christ was and is the perfect example of this kind unconditional love. He taught with his powerful example and taught things plainly so His followers would understand him. My mom shines as an example in her constant work in the church and in teaching me all the little things of how to make my house a home. She and all moms are pros at explaining all the more complicated parts of the gospel to us in simpler terms from when we are young so we can understand them. It’s no wonder women and mothers are over the primary – to pass on the love of Christ to the rising generation.

Mothers love in a way that surpasses understanding simply because they have so much of it! The gentle and quiet love that occurs everyday sometimes escapes our notice but it is one of the most powerful kinds. I think Elder Neal A. Maxwell said it best in his talk The Women of God from the April 1978 General Conference.

“Women, more quickly than others, will understand the possible dangers when the word self is militantly placed before other words like fulfillment.Women rock a sobbing child without wondering if today’s world is passing them by, because they know they hold tomorrow tightly in their arms. So often our sisters comfort others when their own needs are greater than those being comforted, That quality is like the generosity of Jesus on the cross, Empathy during agony is a portion of divinity. . . When in the real history of mankind is fully disclosed, will it feature the echoes of gunfire—or the shaping sound of lullabies? Will what happened in cradles and kitchens prove to be more controlling that what happened in congress? When the surf of the centuries has made the great pyramids so much sand, the everlasting family will still be standing, because it is a celestial institution, formed outside telestial time. No wonder the men of God support and sustain our sisters in their unique roles, for the act of deserting home in order to shape society is like thoughtlessly removing crucial fingers from an imperiled dike in order to teach people to swim.”

Christ loves and strengthens us everyday and then comes our moms. Moms often sacrifice careers, comfort and even dignity in the nitty gritty chores that come with raising a family. But these are the building blocks that help make us the people we want to become. Like Elder Maxwell said, “Empathy during agony is a portion of divinity.”

 

My Mom & Yours

I know my mom has done nothing but help and serve me in the last 22 years and I don’t know of all the times she has had struggles completely unknown to me as I pestered her to help me with my papers or that science fair project I left until the last minute. I have not yet had the opportunity to love as much and as broadly as mothers do because I am not a mother yet but I know that it I could be half the woman my mom is, I’ll be the best version of myself.

This mother’s day, love your mothers if for no other reason then because they love you more that you know. Their love is only matched by the love of our perfect Heavenly Father and his son Jesus Christ and our Heavenly Mother. Whether your mother is with you or not, whether your mother is looking out for you through a Skype screen or through heavenly spheres, whether or not your mother is related to you by blood, celebrate the mothers in your life. Remember their love and their sacrifice because it was mom. It was always mom. Happy Mother’s Day momma! And Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers out there!