Are We Not All Mothers?

This weekend we have the opportunity to celebrate women in their capacity as Mothers.  I am highly aware of the fact that Mother's Day is not exactly an anticipated day for many women.  For them, it is a painful reminder of dreams yet to be fulfilled.  I have felt more than a twinge of that in past Mother's Days.  As this holiday approaches this year, my thoughts are spent between the contemplation of my new-found role as a physical Mother and my eternal role as a nurturing Mother.

The physical role of Motherhood is not always attained in this life--for reasons that I myself will be curious to understand in the life to come.  However, and most importantly, the eternal role of Motherhood is one that we as women are endowed with upon our own birth into mortality.  No, actually, before our birth into mortality.  When our physical nature perhaps lacks the opportunity or ability to bring children in to the world, our God-given ability to nurture can still bring life to it.

I was blessed to have a saintly and stalwart woman give me life and navigate me through the commotion and confusion that is the process of growing up.  As I now stand at the head of that journey with my own son, I am amazed at what she accomplished...six times over.  She has nurtured and loved me in ways so perfect for my development.  She spent a week with me, just after my son was born.  The day she left, she spent one last time bathing, dressing and cuddling her new grand-baby.  Her gentle lullaby to him opened the floodgates of memories of love, warmth and security that enveloped my childhood. And I wept.  Something I did in Heaven must have secured me a spot in her home.  I could not have chosen a better Mother.  And my heart is full of new perspective and respect and love for her.  If I become a fraction of the Mother she is, I will count my effort a success.

But, I also have had other "nurturing" Mothers that have shaped me, taught me, teased me, laughed with me, cried with me, encouraged me and gave me a vision of what I want to become, simply because of who they are.  Their official titles were something like, grandma, aunt, neighbor, school teacher, Primary teacher, Young Women's leader, visiting teaching companion, cousin, sister, mother-in-law, sister-in-law, co-worker and friend.  This is the eternal nature of Motherhood that requires nothing more than a love for and desire to nurture others. 

I have been inspired by Sheri Dew on this subject:  Motherhood is divine, innate and as relevant as and equal to the inherent roles of men, in their own right--and it's in every woman.  Today I was also inspired by recent thoughts of the leaders of our Church.

So, this Mother's Day, as I contemplate myself as the physical mother to my son, I also contemplate myself vis-a-vis all of the elect women whom I know, and who have mothered me, and resolve to be a better Mother.