Wisdom from My Mother

(Hey! I finally figured out how to type AND hold my baby at the same time! Two words: Baby Bjorn. It's magical.)

My mother came to take care of us the first week after my baby was born.
THANK YOU MOM!! 

She is so wise and thoughtful, I am grateful for the insights she shared with me. Two in particular have stuck in my head, and I'd like to share them with you. I have not gotten permission to write about her, but consider this an early mother's day present ^_^

One day I confessed to my mother that ever since I became pregnant, and even after giving birth, I had this terrifying, irrational fear that I would drop the baby. I would imagine these detailed scenarios, such as walking up the stairs or down the street, all resulting in me dropping the baby. It kind of paralyzed me with fear while I envisioned these horrifying scenes.

Instead of brushing it off or saying I was silly, my mom told me a story about her mother. When my grandmother (whom my daughter's namesake is partially attributed to) was a young mother with her first child, my grandfather was a traveling salesman. He would be gone for weeks at a time, leaving my poor grandmother alone to take care of the baby and home. She was terrified of being alone. She worried herself sick about her baby and having to be the sole parent watching over him. Then one day she decided she couldn't do it any more. She couldn't handle being frightened all the time, so she turned to the Lord. She gave Him her fears and told Him that they were now His responsibility. She would do the best she could, and let Him do the rest. After she did that, the paralyzing fear she felt was gone.

That is the power of the atonement, and I think it's beautiful. I imagine a lot of people feel like they should solve their own problems, and only go to Christ when they have committed some big mistake. Like Christ's suffering was too grand of a gesture for regular folk to go to Him with regular problems. I know that Christ suffered for the big and the little problems we have. The atonement is for sins of commission, omission, done by us or thrust upon us by others, or those things that are in our minds that are not sins at all. Christ's power covers all of it, even a frightened mother who has an irrational fear about dropping her baby.

                                                   

The second bit of wisdom came from my mom when my milk came in. I got so engorged, and even when I wasn't engorged, the let-down sensation was painful! She reminded me of this scripture where Jesus says:

Isaiah 49:15
Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.

                                                            

Wow. Wow wow wow. This scripture means so much more to me now that I do have a "sucking child." I know that I can not forget to feed my baby. My body won't let me forget!
Yet Christ says that I would forget to feed my child before He would forget me. I feel the power and gravity of those words now.

Sometimes we feel alone and abandoned from God, but we're not. He perfectly knows what we are going through. I can speculate and give several reasons why people feel like God has forsaken them, but instead I'll just refer you to this amazing talk by Elder Holland. All I know is that God is real and wants the best for us. He is there for us always, as Christ so directly and clearly stated in the scripture above.

Thank you mother for these wonderful insights into the atonement. Your teachings and example have not gone unnoticed or forgotten. I treasure them, and I am so grateful to have been born into my family.