Category: Fulfillment

Motherhood shouldn’t just be a drudgery. Find fulfillment in your most important calling–mother.

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Fulfillment

It’s Not All Gravy: Happy Mother’s Day

A couple of months ago, I came across a Mother’s day column reprinted by the author, Maryann Miller, on her blog, It’s Not All Gravy. Though the original was printed decades ago, so much of it really rings true—and still strikes at the heart of what makes moms struggle with nobility and fulfillment in motherhood: ourselves. (The emphasis here is mine.)

While I’ve been trying to sort out all these things associated with motherhood, I keep wondering why there is so much unrest among women today, even those who have had a satisfying career outside the home before deciding to become full-time homemakers. Then I realized the unrest comes out of a loss of pride. Modern thinking has managed to strip us of any glimmer of the kind of pride our mothers could feel for their role.

It’s true that modern ideology still advocates free choice, but somehow the choice of full-time homemaker doesn’t garner the same respect and interest as choosing to be an astronaut. . . .

Under the circumstances, it’s no wonder women are in such turmoil. Society has force-fed us its version of the “modern woman” — exciting, sophisticated, fulfilled, and working outside the home. So when a woman finds her fulfillment at home, she automatically starts questioning and comparing. That is especially true of the women who had a different career first.

I found this fascinating. I often wonder if I’d had more time to “establish” my career before I had children, if I’d had those years to live for myself (and my husband) after college, if maybe I wouldn’t struggle so much to find fulfillment now.

Conversely, though, I can’t help but wonder if that time living for myself would have just made it harder to “give it all up” to become a full-time mom. I mean, I had a hard enough time giving up what little I’d had.

What do you think? Does having a career outside the home before children make it harder or easier to become a full-time mom? How does your career (former or current) interplay with your fulfillment from motherhood?

Photo by Brian Talbot

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Kids/Parenting Fulfillment

Crazy self-talk

I think we all have one: one of those uncles who delights in teasing and tormenting us. Well, with our fabulous family reunion last weekend, that uncle was at my house. Thankfully, the reunion coincided with the worst week for naps in the history of this house (grumpy kids who don’t take naps, won’t go to bed, and wake up two hours earlier than normal + 22 extra family members = fuuuun!)

baby-becca-screamingI put Rebecca back to bed Saturday night after 10. Although she’d gone to sleep fairly quickly (after only 6 or 7 minutes of hysterical screaming) at the church during our family talent show, when we woke her to bring her home, she decided she’d rather stay awake. The two new teeth coming through don’t help. So despite repeated attempts at nursing her to sleep, she screamed for about half an hour.

My uncle who likes to torment me looked at me—probably drawn and exasperated—and says, “We all think you’re a terrible mother.”

And I smiled.

Because that’s exactly what most mothers think when their baby is bawling inconsolably. It’s the kind of recriminating self-talk that most mothers beat themselves up with. If I were a better mother, she wouldn’t be crying.

But to hear that same idea from my uncle, from whom I can’t take anything seriously, who I knew was just teasing me, made me realize just how silly that kind of self-talk sounds.

So thanks, Uncle Paul. I think.

Have you ever heard your own thoughts spoken by someone else—and realized how silly they sounded? How else have you analyzed your self-talk?

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Fulfillment

Motherhood: a thing worth doing well done

I can’t remember how I came across this poem. Isn’t that sad? But however I came across the poem, I noted it to blog later.

So go ahead and read the full text of the poem ”
To be of use” by Marge Piercy. (It’s under copyright, so I won’t put the whole thing here.)

The poem lends dignity to the kind of labor that often goes unnoticed—like the labor of motherhood does. The thesis of the poem is that this work isn’t degrading because it’s dirty or difficult. Instead, it’s almost ennobling:

But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.

rebecca smilingI can’t think of anything more “worth doing” than bringing up the future. That is the work of motherhood—to instill morals and character into the rising generation. And that job well done—when we get to see our family as good, functioning, contributing adults—I think (and hope and pray!) that will have “a shape that satisfies” unlike any other endeavor we can make in this life.

I’m striving to catch a glimpse of that shape that satisfies every day as I’m in the process of doing “a thing worth doing.” Little things—Hayden spontaneously thanking my grandfather for taking him on a walk, Rebecca blowing kisses, the two of them playing together nicely—are little daily evidences that the job is not only worth doing but going well so far.

How do you see the satisfaction every day?

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Kids/Parenting Fulfillment

Throw yourself into your work

Be sure to check out my guest post on literary agent Nathan Bransford’s blog today, The Top Seven Things Every Aspiring Author’s Website Must Have!

stepping_stonesI know it’s been a while, but I haven’t forgotten about our path to fulfillment!

One of the things that helps me to just relax and enjoy motherhood is doing just that. When I get down on the floor and let myself play with them—not worrying about how much I’d rather be writing or whether a new story or comment or email has come along—is not only (at least mildly) entertaining, it makes me feel like a good mother. Woot for a sense of accomplishment.

Now, this is hard for me, because I don’t really find my kids’ games all that stimulating. (They’re under the age of four; I’m not. It’s okay.) But placing that priority on my children and their play helps me to get my priorities in order.

kids-january-2009-005On the other hand, I’ve found activities we enjoy together—reading, for example. And even when the play isn’t something I would have chosen (I grew up with three sisters! I don’t know how to play cars!), I find that the best part is often watching my kids play, imagine and interact.

I can’t do it all the time, and I know that we have to always strive to take time for ourselves, but when I do make the effort to throw myself into my work as a mother, I actually enjoy it more and worry less.

What do you think? Have you found benefits from playing with your kids? What do you like to play?

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Faith Random

Freedom

This week, Ryan and I attended an awards gala for four Americans who have “fought for freedom with words or ideas.”

Mona Kashani Heern was born in Iran. After the 1979 revolution, she and her sister were expelled from school because of their Bahá’í beliefs. Their father was later jailed for the same reason. After months of waiting in the snow for hours to spend ten minutes with him once a month, they found out he’d been executed. Eventually, her mother smuggled their family into Pakistan, where they lived in jail until they gained refugee status. They later emigrated to Germany, where Mona and her sister had to learn German, English and French in order to graduate high school. Finally, they moved to the US.

Despite the persecution and hardship she’d endured, a prevailing theme in Mrs. Heern’s acceptance speech was the love and kindness that she’d experienced even in the worst, most oppressive circumstances. As a junior high English teacher, she has a passion for sharing her story with her students so that we Americans understand the privileges of freedom that we enjoy (and take for granted).

Sgt. Merlin German, another recipient, served our country in Iraq, participating in over 150 successful missions. When an IED exploded and knocked him from his Humvee turret, he was burned over 97% of his body and given no chance of survival. He defied doctors and not only survived, but relearned to breathe on his own, talk and even walk.

Concerned about burn victims who couldn’t afford the costly treatments, Sgt. German started Merlin’s Miracles. The foundation has helped thousands of burn victims pay for surgeries, compression garments and hospital stays. During a routine surgery last spring, Sgt. German passed away. His legacy lives on through the hundreds of doctors and patients he personally touched and his charitable foundation.

amflag

President Boyd K. Packer was the final honoree. He longed to become a pilot like his older brother. He promised God that he would devote his life to His service if he could live that dream. President Packer spent forty months in the Air Force during World War II.

Less than two decades after the end of the war, the Lord called President Packer’s promise due. Packer was called to be an assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, then to a member of the Quorum. Since then, he has devoted nearly forty years of his life in the full-time employment as an Apostle in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. His ministry has included service all over the world. He is now the President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, the second most senior apostle.

The first award recipient, Neil Holbrook, was one of the original eight Navy “Frogmen,” the predecessor of the SEALs. In his acceptance speech, he told of a friend who was standing next to him on deck when his friend was shot. They both fell to the deck and his friend struggled to say something, but died before he could speak. Holbrook has spent six decades wondering what his friend would have said.

I’m passing the torch to the future generations. Please take care of that Constitution that I can’t enjoy. … I don’t have the liberty to go home.

When we thanked him for his service afterward, Mr. Holbrook said he would do it again tomorrow for people like us.

To honor the sacrifice of so many people this independence day, we have to remember what they were fighting for. We have to remember that the freedoms we enjoy in this country are privileges that not everyone has. We cannot forget those founding freedoms, and sometimes we have to fight with words or with weapons to keep them, at home and abroad.

Please remember this today as you celebrate Independence Day—and tomorrow, and afterward.

Newspaper coverage of the award ceremony with brief bios

Photo by Benjamin Earwicker

Categories
Work Fulfillment

A contributing member of society

gilbert_keith_chesterton2We’re often told raising our children isn’t enough: we should be “productive.” We should have “real jobs.” Strangers ask us to justify raising our children when we’ve obtained higher learning. We should “contribute to society.” I promised you a rant on how nothing contributes more to society than raising children will, but lovely guest blogger G.K. Chesterton (at right) has taken that up for me.

He was way ahead of his time, you know. I mean, the man died seventy years ago, and he had the foresight to write this post for me. Okay, okay, so really this is just a long quotation. Emphasis, images and paragraphs breaks added.

Woman is generally shut up in a house with a human being at the time when he asks all the questions that there are, and some that there aren’t. It would be odd if she retained any of the narrowness of a specialist.

Now if anyone says that this duty of general enlightenment (even when freed from modern rules and hours, and exercised more spontaneously by a more protected person) is in itself too exacting and oppressive, I can understand the view. I can only answer that our race has thought it worth while to cast this burden on women in order to keep common-sense in the world.

But when people begin to talk about this domestic duty as not merely difficult but trivial and dreary, I simply give up the question. To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labors and holidays; to be Whiteley within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can understand how this might exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it.

globeHow can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the Universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone? No; a woman’s function is laborious, because it is gigantic, not because it is minute.

G. K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World, p 118-119

Thanks, G.K.! (Note that this is taken slightly out of context, but seriously, it’s a lot better this way. Don’t bother reading the stuff that comes before or after it; it’s not quite so “enlightened.”)

In other news, I’d like to note that I was one of five winners of literary agent Nathan Bransford’s guest blogging contest, and my guest post will go live on his blog next week 😀 .

Photo credits: question mark—Svilen Mushkatov; globe—Sanja Gjenero