Things as They Really Are: Motherhood
By Bethany Tolley
This post is part of a series called Things As They Really Are.
I was driving home, staring at the rural highway ahead of me as I made the 30-mile commute home. Tall wheat-like grass and verdant mature deciduous trees waved at me as I drove past. But I didn’t see them. They were a background blur, as my mind focused and toiled under the suspenseful reaching clutches of lost time. My life was moving on. All the things that I had expected would be a part of my life seemed now to be so very far beyond my grasp. I was too old—or very nearly so.
“I guess I’ll never have kids of my own,” I thought, dejectedly, as a stray tear traveled down my left cheek. “I guess I’ll be the great aunt stuck in a nursing home somewhere, because there’s no one who will feel obligated to take care of me when I get old,” I mumbled to myself, as miles of road passed under my car like the belt of a treadmill. “And who will I teach all the cool things I know? Who will I pass my physical traits and my talents on to?”
It was a drive of sober reflection—of the surreal of an unexpected and unwanted future which had suddenly become uncomfortably real.
“I will never be a mother.” There. I said it.
I had been married in the temple and had struggled through a difficult marriage for eleven years. Part of that struggle had been that it had ended in divorce. Yet, an even greater consequence from that struggle had been ending up childless.
“I’ll never be a real mother.” There. I said it again.
The word “real” was significant to me because I had long treasured the story The Velveteen Rabbit, by Margery Williams. That story had impacted me as a young reader, and it often came to mind when I thought of motherhood. I was certain, on that drive home, with the hum of the engine numbing away all my hope, that I would never be a real mother.
What is motherhood, really? I had always felt a little bit betrayed by all the conference talks that had reassured me that I was a mother, even if not a biological one. I didn’t understand why they kept telling me something that was so apparently untrue. Yet, perhaps, if prophets and apostles were telling me I was a mother, then it had to be more than biological reproduction—it had to be.
The focus of Latter-day Saint doctrine is eternal families, or in other words, eternal parenthood. While biological reproduction initiates the mental impetus to turn on our “motherhood” instincts, the reality is that our gender (being male or female) is an eternal characteristic (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 1995). Thus, as a female, motherhood is already an eternal part of our spiritual genetics. Motherhood isn’t an application we download. It’s part of our natural operating system.
Wow! By this doctrine, I already was a real mother. What, then, does a real mother do? I made a list of all the things a biological mother does. As I made this list, it became plain that the role of motherhood is none other than the role of godhood (Moses 1:39). Thus, motherhood is not simply the opportunity to get married and bear children biologically. It’s an opportunity to covenant with God to become like Him—and then to do it. It applies whether we have biological children or not.
As I pondered these truths about God’s work and glory and motherhood, I realized that the prophets and apostles had been telling me the truth. I also realized with great astonishment that I was already mothering. I was being a mother to my nieces and nephews and to my seminary students. I was even mothering my own biological mother, at times, because her parents had left some psychological scars that she was still trying to overcome. I was mothering friends, and even siblings. To continue to do so, knowingly, brought me immense joy and purpose.
Nearly six years after getting divorced, the Lord presented to me the idea of remarrying and the possibility of biological motherhood. He also presented the idea of seven stepchildren. Embracing and mothering seven stepchildren as my own was a joyful prospect, rather than frightening. And by a wondrous miracle, I was then blessed to biologically bear my own sweet daughter. When she was born, I thought my heart would burst with joy. And yet, in the moment she arrived physically on earth, I didn’t know any more then, than I already had known, that I was a real mother.
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