Category: Fulfillment

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

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Kids/Parenting Fulfillment

The Zen of Play-Doh

I love new things. Pristine things. Perfect things. More than once as a child, I never used a wonderful, much-loved gift—because I didn’t want to ruin it or use it up. (I really did like it, I promise!)

At almost three, Hayden has not developed this preference. He has a few Play-Doh toys (including this fun duffel bag), and I have to open the canisters for him, so he still has several that have never been opened. But with his newest Play-Doh play set (this particularly awesome one), he’s requested nearly all of the cans of Play-Doh to be opened.

play-doh by dbrekke
photo by dbrekke

Not wanting to inflict my neurosis on him, I’ve obliged and opened each requested canister. The first time the white, purple or brown clay plops onto the table, still in its near-perfect cylindrical shape, Hayden promptly requests me to “Roww [roll] it, Mama!” I pick up the rolling pin and, with great sadness, proceed to ruin the perfect little Play-Doh shape.

The pliable Play-Doh will never again be pristine. Try as I might, it will never have that same shape. It will pick up bits of dried Play-Doh, salt and rice from the table. It will attract every other color of Play-Doh imaginable and mingle to a dull, muted version of its neon glory.

But y’know what? It’s still fun to squish through your fingers, to cut with dull plastic tools, to squeeze into oddly-shaped ropes and decorative molds. And you can’t enjoy it when it’s just in the can.

Sometimes looking back, it’s like my life before kids was an untouched cylinder of Play-Doh. It was nice. It was neat. (Hindsight is not always 20/20, as I’m sure my life was really none of these things.)

My life and Hayden’s Play-Doh are never going back to the way they were before. But y’know what? It’s still fun to watch as they discover everything from their fingers to their alphabet, to show them the wonderful things of this world, to try to teach them all the things they’ll need to know and then some.

And I think I wouldn’t enjoy life as much without them.

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Fulfillment

Writing Resolutions

January is everyone’s favorite time for setting new goals, right? I actually really don’t like making New Year’s Resolutions (come on, you know you don’t either)—because I hate setting myself up to fail, and if there were a statistic on the number of resolutions broken it would be astounding, I’m sure.

And yet I still feel the need to try to set goals this time of year. Sigh. Some of the goals I’m contemplating:

  • Better prayer and scripture study—kind of amorphous, isn’t it? But plenty of room for improvement there. I’m aiming for a 30 minute scripture study/prayer time first thing in the morning.
  • Run a 5K. There, I said it. Ack. Running a 5K is one of those things that I’ve always kind of wanted to do, even though I hate running. Go figure. I started training today. The race is March 14, if it’s the same weekend it was last year.
  • Eat more fruits and vegetables. Notice I am under no obligation to eat less junk 😉 .
  • Do more around the house. I don’t mean chores, though I really have got to get on top of those (still recovering from a two-week vacation!). We’ve been in this house for 3 years now and haven’t done a quarter of what we wanted to do with it.
  • Write tons a reasonable amount. I’m nearing completion on the first draft of my latest manuscript (don’t worry, you didn’t miss the good news—I haven’t published anything yet—I haven’t even submitted anything yet. Accursed, beautiful revisions.). I’d like to get through the first draft of two more this year—and finish those accursed, beautiful revisions on last year’s two manuscripts.

But those aren’t my most important goal this year. The ultimate goal in my life, for this blog, etc., is to be happy with my life—to be fulfilled. I’ve talked before about how “finding” fulfillment is misleading—so is finding happiness. As part of my Christmas trip, I stayed at my sister-in-law’s lovely home, and she had a painting there that said (paraphrased) “We talk about finding happiness when happiness is actually a choice.”

So, resolved, for 2009:

 

I will CHOOSE happiness.

 

How do you choose happiness? What are your goals for this year?

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Fulfillment

Creating fulfillment

It’s been more than a year since I last asked how I can help you:

I would love to help you find fulfillment in motherhood. I’m working on it, too, but I think we can help each other. I know that for every mother that values herself in her calling as a mother, I feel strengthened and heartened.

So what can I do to help you find fulfillment in motherhood? What do you struggle with? How can I remind you of the true worth of the little and sometimes tedious things you do every day?

I had a lot of very brave, candid moms share the challenges of their lives—and other than thanking them, I didn’t do a thing for them.

I want to do more.

So what can I do to help you to find fulfillment in motherhood? Would you like to be able to interact with other moms (in a forum maybe)? Would it help you to have a weekly post on MamaBlogga where we can all share something we did to enjoy our lives that week? Would you like “assignments” to help you find fulfillment? Would you like to see featured moms talk about what they do to find fulfillment?

Any other ideas?

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Fulfillment Faith

Joy in the journey part 2

I really liked this next passage from a recent address given by President Monson to my church (see part one from last week):

Stresses in our lives come regardless of our circumstances. We must deal with them the best we can.

I often fall into that same trap—believing that if only I didn’t have to do all this “mothering stuff”/work/housekeeping/good works/church/alone, it’d be so much easier. But frankly, I would probably still find something to stress out about even if I had one less thing on my plate.

And all too often, I let the wrong thing slide. President Monson continues:

But we should not let them get in the way of what is most important—and what is most important almost always involves the people around us. Often we assume that they must know how much we love them. But we should never assume; we should let them know. Wrote William Shakespeare, “They do not love that do not show their love.” We will never regret the kind words spoken or the affection shown. Rather, our regrets will come if such things are omitted from our relationships with those who mean the most to us.

Usually, I get stressed because I’m trying to do too much—and often it’s not stuff that I need to do anyway. Beyond basic housecleaning and a couple hours of work per day, I don’t actually have to do a lot of the things that I make myself do or that I want to do.

Instead, if I focus on the work of motherhood: loving, and giving my children attention, suddenly those stresses that make my life so difficult—the stresses that I have put on myself—seem to go away.

What helps you relieve or lessen the stress of motherhood? How do you show your children your love?

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Random Fulfillment

Finishing!

A little over two years ago, I began knitting a sweater for myself (this lovely wrap sweater, to be exact).

It took me about two months to get through all the various pieces—left front, right front, back, a sleeve (frogged), a redesigned sleeve, a second sleeve to match the redesigned sleeve, ties, and the neckband. In that time, I blocked it, dried it, and mostly sewed it together. I had only to sew on the sleeves and the ties and get the position of the slit for the tie to slip through when I put it down.

I picked it up again tonight. Less than 90 minutes later, I was finished with the sweater.

I really like the sweater, of course—a bright red, soft yarn, beautiful pattern. As its maker, I naturally see its flaws (not to mention body flaws I’ve acquired in the past two years!), but I think I’ll still be pretty happy to wear it.

However, it’s embarrassing how long it’s taken me to finally bite the bullet and finish it. Some of the delay, naturally, can be explained by flat-out forgetfulness—and procrastination.

Frankly, having waited so long for the reward of this sweater has made it less of a reward, and not because my body’s changed or the sweater’s any less lovely than it was two years ago—but because I’m embarrassed that I let something so close to finished languish so long and because it’s frustrating that I could have had this sweater two winters ago.

I’ll be glad to enjoy this sweater this year (and don’t worry, pictures to follow soon!), though.

Maybe this is another reason why motherhood feels so hard sometimes (a lot of the time!)—so we can appreciate the end product more. What do you think?

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Fulfillment

Maria Shriver on motherhood

Maria Shriver is a journalist and the First Lady of California. When she appeared on the Oprah show in 2004, she made an observation that I totally agree with:

How do we get women to stop saying, “I’m just a mother”? Or, “I used to be such and such, but now I’m just a mother?” We need to market motherhood. So I came up with a saying: “Motherhood: 24/7 on the frontlines of humanity. Are you man enough to try it?”

We’ve discussed this quote before and most of you felt that we needed to start by taking more pride in what we do as mothers and not allowing others to disparage or belittle it.

Do you still agree with that? What else can we do to stand up for ourselves and our callings?

Do you have a quote from a famous mom? Submit it to famousmoms (at) mamablogga.com and we’ll discuss it one week, and you’ll get a link (if you include your URL, of course).