I was a bit taken aback when Gary Toyn contacted me about submitting an essay for this book. He said he was looking for prominent Latter-day Saints to comment on their mothers. If anything, I’ve considered myself a pretty obscure person.

I was born in a place called Moose Jaw. Can you get more obscure than that? My preschool years were spent living for months at a time in numerous small towns around southern Saskatchewan. When my parents finally joined the church in Regina, we attended a branch. I went to 6 different schools in Regina because we never stayed in a house longer than 3 years. It seemed each time we moved, I attended a new ward. I served my mission in Utah. I married someone who was a second generation Mormon on her Dad’s side and third generation on her mum’s. We live in Southern Alberta with our 4 children. I’m our ward executive secretary.

I’m just your run-of-the-mill Mormon: unremarkable, obscure, and unknown.

Yet here I am, talking about my mother, who is likely just as unknown. Whenever I am asked to write or speak about my mum, one word always comes to mind first: sacrifice.

Right from the very start, my mum has sacrificed a lot. She certainly wasn’t planning on my coming along, and it interrupted her long laid plans for school at a prestigious Canadian university. Hello, baby boy. Goodbye, full scholarship.

When she and my dad separated not many months after my baby sister was born, she raised the two of us on her own, working at pizza joints to support us. I can only imagine how stressful and hectic daily life must have been for her. My memories of the time are few, but I remember daycare (or at least being in the care of someone), her work, few friends.

I remember, as a three-year-old, making toast for my toddler sister because we were up before my mum and we were hungry. Looking back, I have to wonder if the reason we were up and she wasn’t was because she was exhausted. It’s not easy to work long shifts and come home to take care of 2 young children and all that entails.

Apparently, it wasn’t enough work though because she decided to answer an ad to care for 3 small boys of a single father in the city. So, here she was, a 21-year-old looking after her own 2 children and the 3 children of her employer while he was at work. The oldest was five years old.

And if that wasn’t enough, she ended up falling in love with the boys’ father and they were married, meaning she now had 5 children—5 and under—to care for all day long.

At one point, while the five of us suffered mumps, measles, and chicken pox all at the same time, our house was put under quarantine, and guess who remained in the quarantine the entire time? My mum.

When my stepfather was laid off about 4 years later, my mum went back to school. She never did get back to university, but she attended nursing school. Once graduated, she worked long hours at one of the local hospitals to contribute to the household income. It was a never ending battle to feed a family of growing children.

When my stepfather moved to Vancouver to find work and a home, guess who looked after 5 teenaged children on her own, then drove us through the mountains on her own with all the screaming, arguing, and fighting that comes along with a station wagon full of teenagers?

Does she still sacrifice for us now that we are all grown and some of us have teenagers of our own? Sure. Not too long ago, she scrimped and saved and sacrificed so she could pay for a week-long, all-expense paid vacation to Hawai’i. It was an amazing experience and a much needed break from the stresses of our lives back home.

But that’s not all.

How many nights has she sacrificed sleep while she lay awake worrying about whether her grown children had enough money or were making the right choices or were avoiding the mistakes she made? How many meals has she sacrificed in order to help out her children when they needed money for this or that? How many tears has she shed while shaking her head at some of the choices we’ve made? How many steps of pain has she taken to walk with her grandchildren?

I know this topic seems to be quintessential to motherhood, and I don’t write this tritely. I sincerely see my mother as someone who has sacrificed her entire life for the benefit of her children. Not because she is a mother and feels that’s what good mothers do, but because that’s just who she is.

Whether it’s volunteering hours in her calling as a stake family history director, single-handedly putting together two family reunions in two years, organizing all the logistics of a week-long vacation to Hawai’i, or the days each week she puts in as a temple worker, it’s just who she is. Whether it’s for her children or for others, she’s always sacrificing.

I’ve learned a lot from her. I’m nowhere near the sacrificer she is. In fact, in a lot of ways, I’m nothing like her. I often think of myself at the expense of others. But I do try. I know where I fall short, and I try to make improvements. I like to think I am better than I was, say, 5 years ago, but I am under no illusion that I am perfectly selfless, and I realize have a long way to go.

But thinking of my mum gives me hope. Hope that I can be better, and hope that there are others like her out there, making the world better.

I was reading it for the umpteenth time the other day, and I noticed two things:

• It doesn’t say that mothers should stay at home
• It doesn’t say that women should do all the housework

There are some parts where one could extrapolate the assumptions that women should stay home. For example:

“. . . fathers . . . are responsible to provide the necessities of life . . . for their families.”

One could assume that because fathers are singled out here that mothers must not have that responsibility. It’s just that, however: an assumption. Here’s another example of an extrapolation point:

“Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children.”

One could assume here that this implies a mother must stay home, especially when combined with the previous sentence. Again, however, this is only implicit and not explicit. Nowhere in the proclamation does it actually say that women must stay at home. Even the responsibility of nurturing the children doesn’t require the parent to be at home 24 hours a day.

Consider the next sentence in the proclamation:

“In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners.”

So, if fathers have an obligation to help mothers as equal partners in nurturing children, and they decide (as cultural tradition dictates) to work out of the home, how can they nurture their children? If fathers can nurture their children without having to be home 24 hours per day, certainly mothers can, too.

On my second point, there is just nothing anywhere that can be reasonably extrapolated to support the idea that women must do all the housework. There isn’t much else to say about that.

I remember though, that I am so grateful for these beautiful wonderful children and one day, yes, one day, this overly energetic son and my budding pre-teen daughter (cringe), independent 3 year old and baby coming and any more who will come to us, will be all grown up and I won’t have my babies to cuddle and children to protect and nurture. That will be their job with their children. So learning to enjoy and revel in this time is vitally important. So yes, I am learning patience. At least I hope so.

Just yesterday I had an epiphany.

I asked myself the following question, or rather, the following question came to my mind; Why do I love Jesus Christ? (or anyone I love, for that matter). Why do I feel humble when thinking of Him, why do I get an overwhelming sense of gratitude and love when I think about Him? Is it because of anything I have done? Is it because I feel I deserve or should be loved by Him? No.

And why do I have a desire to be better and to do what He wants me to do? Why do I strive (with limited success) to be like Him? Why do I want to be like Him?

It is because He loves me. And I don’t just think this, it is something I know and feel and am aware of on a basic level. His love for me is apparent when I feel the spirit, when I think of His life, how He lived and behaved towards people He came in contact with. This is independent of His teachings to obey the commandments. His love for me is unconditional. Remember, this is independent of His teachings to be obedient and follow the commandments. Loving me does not mean He expects less of me or will let me off the hook.

So all these things I feel and want to be are inspired by His love for me. Not for anything in myself or that I have created. This is the love that He wants us to have for others. For our husbands and wives, our parents, our children, our friends, our other family members, our acquaintances, those we have conflict with, those who are not like us, those who offend us, those who hurt us, those we have no reason to like, those who do things that annoy us. Everyone. He wants us to actually have this love so that they feel this love and are saved by it.

I understand what this love is. It isn’t the doing, it is the state of heart and mind, of truly loving, so that in our demeanor, attitude and behaviour towards others, we radiate this love. This is why people flocked to Him, why children surrounded Him. They knew His love was genuine and constant, they basked in it and wanted it. When He came to the Americas, this is why the multitude didn’t want Him to leave. This is the Spirit which cannot help but be present in the face of such love. It is a love that grows and needs no effort, because it is. It is something that is possible to attain through a lifetime of learning and growth. He has this love for all. We can at least, have this love for those around us.

This is a love I can develop over time, independent of my expectations of others, that I can come to with His help. But this is the true concept of the love of Jesus Christ.

As a parent, I’m not impressed with what our ward offers as far as the cub scout program goes.?Ǭ† For example, this week, their activity was “Putting away the chairs in the gym from general conference”.?Ǭ† Now, if that was ever the lamest cop-out of an activity, I don’t know what is!?Ǭ† I believe they passed it off as a “Service Activity”.

?Ǭ†This got my wife and I talking.?Ǭ† My nephews are also in cub scouts.?Ǭ† They aren’t members of the church, so they go to a community group.?Ǭ† I believe they have 50+ kids going to this community cub scout group.?Ǭ† There are quite a few parent volunteers who help out.?Ǭ† They are always working on badges, skills, getting ready for camps, fund-raisers, etc… all the things I remember doing when I was eight years old and in cub scouts.

Is the difference that we’ve made cub scouts a part of the church??Ǭ† Is it because it’s a calling that it only gets done half-ass?

?Ǭ†We’re considering the idea of taking our son out of the ward sponsored cub scout program and put him in the community one.

I feel bad for our local leadership.?Ǭ† I’m going to assume that they are trying to make the church experience the best it can be.?Ǭ† But from my perspective, it is seriously lacking.?Ǭ† When you have a program being so poorly run, how do you turn that around??Ǭ† How do you create an environment where people actually want to come to church and socialize and participate??Ǭ† How do you combat the apathy??Ǭ† Or perhaps we should strip out all of the unessential programs and leave it to community groups to do what they do best?

Has our society arrived at the point where it is assumed that mothers work away from home? Is it rare now to see stay-at-home mums?

A [USA] survey . . . published in The Journal of the American Dietetic Association found that 57 percent of those polled said that women should not have a right to breastfeed in public.

Only 10 percent of mothers who work full-time [still breastfeed] their baby at 6 months, according to a 2005 CDC report.

The Journal of the American Dietetic Association’s survey found that only 47 percent of [employers] favored longer maternity leaves, and only 43 percent supported giving women a private room to pump in at work.

A mom should breastfeed her baby for at least the first year of life, as recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics.. . . In 2004 . . . about 70 percent of U.S. mothers reported that they had tried breastfeeding, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). That’s up from 55 percent in 1993. . . . At 6 months, only 36 percent were still nursing. At 12 months, the number dips to 17 percent

Oh, and thanks to fMh for posting the link.

My 5-year-old son, my 10-month-old daughter, and I were waiting at the YMCA for my other daughter and my wife to finish getting the daughter changed from swimming lessons.

Our son said to me, “I’ll be right back.” and I watch him walk down the hall and turn into the male washroom. After three minutes, I thought to myself, “why is that boy taking so long”, so I went in to check on him, baby in my arms.

I asked him if he was alright and he unlatched the stall door and said he needed my help. I didn’t think much of it because he still hasn’t quite mastered the art of wiping yet. So while in the middle of wiping him, he says to me, “Papa? Can you wipe out my underwear too?”

Sure enough, he hadn’t quite made it to the toilet?¢‚Ǩ‚Äùdespite the deposit sitting in the toilet.

So here I was sitting in a bathroom stall with a baby in my one arm trying to think of how I was going to deal with his dirty?¢‚Ǩ‚Äùand quite wet might I add?¢‚Ǩ‚Äùunderwear and shorts. Then it hit me.

I went back to the waiting area and came back his backpack. Luckily he brought a plastic bag to hold his wet swimming suit and towel and, for some odd reason, had packed another set of shorts.

I put the baby on the floor, swished his underwear a few times in the toilet bowl to clean it out (flushing between swishes of course), put his shorts and slopping wet underwear in the same plastic bag, wiped off his feet, legs and the wall, and put new shorts on him. All this while moving my baby daughter away from the toilet twice and bringing her back from crawling under the stall door three times.

Then we both washed our hands. I washed mine twice.