Mothers...God's greatest gift!

Someone once coined a phrase that goes something like this, "God can't be everywhere at once, so he gave us mothers." What would we do without mother.

This was my 3rd Mother's day as a mom and it was the best one ever! It wasn't the best because I got some extravagant gift or because I didn't have to do any dishes, it was the best because I realized a few things. You know when you think you know something just because you hear it all the time, but then you realize that you didn't really know it all along. I always thought that Mother's day was a day to honor mothers, which it is, but in an ironic way. Instead of feeling honored by my children, like you would typically think for Mother's day, I felt like it was more of an honor to have them, more of an honor to be a mother. Yes, I did feel honored by my children, they have their ways even though they are so small and innocent, and I felt honored by my husband. But it was a much bigger deal for me to realize that I am a mother. I felt like Mother's day is for me to celebrate the honor of having my children rather than my children having me.

I looked at my girls today and felt that I have everything I could ever want. I felt complete, I felt love and I felt joy. As I was preparing my primary lesson I read a talk from one of our past Prophets, he said, "Happiness comes from living the gospel...". That struck me because I'm human, I worry about paying bills, I worry if we're ever going to be done with school, and I worry about getting a big beautiful house with a basketball hoop in the driveway.When it comes down to it, I realize I don't need those things to be happy. I look at where I came from and where my husband came from. Neither one of us come from a huge mansion (and we both didn't have a basketball hoop in the driveway), but we were taught to live the gospel, and we were and are happy. I looked at my husband and my girls today and I knew what I needed to be happy. I am so grateful to be a mother and I truly feel that it is an honor and the highest calling from God.

Now I also wanted to share a little about each of our mothers:

My mom is an amazing woman!

Let me give you a little background first.

I come from a family of 9 kids. (I'm the 8th) My parents divorced when I was 7, so my mom did what she could to hold our family together. She went back to school to earn her teaching degree, worked 3 jobs, walked and rode the bus everywhere because we didn't have a car and she raised all of us.

I remember this one time in 4th grade I wanted to be in the school band and I really really wanted to play the saxophone. So I talked to my mom about it. We knew there was no way we could afford to buy one, plus probably not the best idea to buy one right off anyway. We found out it would be $35/month to rent one and my mom figured out a way to come up with the money. A couple weeks later we went down to the music store to see if we could rent one. Well, my mom had warned me about there being a chance that they wouldn't let us if her credit wasn't good enough, but hey I was 9 years old and that didn't mean anything to me...well, at least not until we walked away from the music store, me, with a short perspective and tears running down my face and my mom with a heavy heart.

A couple days later, my mom came home from school and came upstairs to my room. She had this small black worn case. It was much too small to be a saxophone. She handed it to me. As I opened it she explained to me that she knew it wasn't what I wanted but that it was all that she could afford and that I would still be able to be in band.

It was a flute. The clasps on the case were broken, some of the pads on the keys stuck when you pushed them down and when I put the flute together the end piece slightly bent.

It didn't matter to me. I could tell that my mom loved me. Some how she found time amoungst her jobs, school and us, to go to pawn shops and find me something that would give me the opportunity I wanted. She gave us everything she could. She found ways to provide for us and she did her best to meet our emotional needs, but most of all she taught us that we are children of God and that He loves us and he sent His son.

She taught us to live the gospel...she taught us to be happy.

Not a day goes by without me wondering how she did it.

I love you mom...I still have the flute.

(This is a picture of my mom with my 5 brothers. I have this perfect picture of me and my mom but it's on our other computer that isn't hooked up right now.)

I know I said that I was going to post something about both our mother's but I have to do the other one tomorrow. It took me too long to find a picture and now it's almost 1am. I love you Wilma, I just gotta go to bed.