Honoring Christ's Sacrifice as a Parent

Like many seven-month-old babies, ours prefers to do church anywhere but inside a classroom or chapel.



This reminds me of comments from one mother, writing at Segullah, who talks about the challenge of learning something at church while caring for young children. A teacher asks a class she attends what class members thought of a talk given that day by a ward member.

She writes,

There was a short silence as everyone tried to think back to the talk and formulate a response. Normally I would have joined them. But … I couldn’t. 

You see, although I had been at church during Sacrament meeting, I hadn’t heard Brother Abo’s talk. I had been sitting in the foyer with my son, handing him cheerios and trying to keep him from stealing toys from the other kids who were also in the foyer being fed cheerios by their moms. 

So instead of reflecting on what had apparently been a very moving talk, I sat there in silence, unable to participate. And cried. ... I cried because I had not really heard more than a handful of talks, if that, in the past year since my son had been born. And I really like talks.

... 

But that wasn’t the only reason the tears came. They also came because right on the heels of those feelings of loss, frustration, and, yes, even a little resentment, came another feeling, equally as strong and even more surprising. It was a feeling of love, and of peace that, to be honest, I hadn’t yet really felt towards motherhood or my son. 

If I could articulate the feeling in words, it would have been like a soothing voice from the Savior, saying something like this: “I know you love talks, and I know you love reverent reflection, and I know you can no longer participate in the sacrament in the quiet, meditative way you used to. But now you get to participate in it in a new and different way. Now, instead of thinking about my sacrifice for you while you take the sacrament, you get to make your own small sacrifice, and in this way you honor mine even more.” 

It was perhaps not a profound thought. In fact, I might have been able to articulate the same thing before that day, but this was the first time I felt it. In my heart. In my soul. 

Motherhood is a sacrifice. And in some ways, I’ve decided, it’s a lot like like laying your own life down for another’s; according to scripture, that is the greatest act of love (John 15:13). So while I can’t profess to now blissfully follow my toddler through the halls while the talks and hymns and sacrament I love so much happen in a room three feet away from me, I can say it has helped me to cope better, to be a little more patient with my son as he explores his exciting new world, and it gives me hope that I am on the path to becoming the mother I want to be: one who finds balance between meeting her own needs and those of her children, but who finds joy in attending to theirs when that is what the hour calls for.