As my kids are getting older and taking on new roles for themselves, I really have had much contemplation on my greatest role as being their mother. I have sorrow for my older ones as they have been my lab rats in the sense that everything was practiced on them first. I find myself a much better and patient mother to my younger ones than I was to my older ones. I am grateful for repentance and forgiveness, as I try and become better today than I was yesterday. My greatest joys and sorrows have been because of my wonderful and beautiful children.
I wonder what I can do better today than I did yesterday? I feel so much that they have got to be valiant and strong and so do I as their mother. They are being raised in enemy territory with so much of the world pulling at them. I need to make my home a place of refuge and peace. Sometimes that is hard but I have got to be willing to do better daily.
I came across some amazing quotes that I would love to share. They have really helped me have the desire to do better and not get so down on myself when my children choose to go astray.
"Let the father and mother, who are members of this Church and Kingdom, take a righteous course, and strive with all their might never to do a wrong, but to do good all their lives; if they have one child or one hundred children, if they conduct themselves towards them as they should, binding them to the Lord by their faith and prayers, I care not where those children go, they are bound up to their parents by an everlasting tie, and no power of earth or hell can separate them from their parents in eternity; they will return again to the fountain from whence they sprang."
(Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, 11:215)
Another one that I really liked.
A successful parent is one who has loved, one who has sacrificed, and one who
has cared for, taught, and ministered to the needs of a child. If you have done all of these and your child is still wayward or troublesome or worldly, it could well be that you are, nevertheless, a successful parent. Perhaps there are children who have come into the world that would challenge any set of parents under any set of circumstances. Likewise, perhaps there are others who would bless the lives of, and be a joy to, almost any father or mother. My concern today is that there are parents who may be pronouncing harsh judgments upon themselves and may be allowing these feelings to destroy their lives, when in fact they have done their best and should continue in faith. (Howard W. Hunter, Conference Report, October 1983)
I hope to do better, be better and rely on the Holy Ghost to help me be the best parent I can be.
10 years ago
