The Sequel

Here we are in July and I'm going to post about Mother's Day. Typical.
The thing is, it was my first mothers day, and it was an unbelievably epic day for me. I guess God just knows how to drive a point home. It seems he can so perfectly manipulate experiences so when a real good lesson comes our way it's all he can do to prompt & tweek scenarios to make things really stick.
This last Mother's Day was a day like this for me.
It all started innocently enough, with a few incidences here and there to get me thinking; a small breakdown about how I just couldn't seem to slip into this thing called Motherhood, how my life just didn't feel fulfilled without the other things in it that make me me. (see post)
Then on this holiday came a completely unexpected email from a dear friend from College. This is a friend who lives with mountains inside of him, and the peace that accompanies the hills. He's happily married and the father of two beautiful girls.
I think because the email was so unexpected it arrived as the perfect paradime shift. He wrote, and I hope he doesn't mind me sharing:

"I think most (if not all) good mothers struggle with that shocking adjustment to the responsibility of rearing a child. I hope that just because you feel the adjustment hard, or like a sacrifice, that you don't think you are somehow less because of it. In T'ai Chi I used to wonder why I was standing in the postures in class trying relax when all it seemed to be doing for in the moment was making me sweat and giving me sore legs in the morning. My teacher liked to quote his teacher about how in t'ai chi you are not suffering when you hold the postures, but you are investing. You are giving something up now for a greater return in the future. . . So it is with the difficulties of motherhood.
We all have our strengths and weaknesses and I'm sure that Heavenly Father gives us children that will thrive in the atmosphere that our best selves can create for them, albeit the atmosphere in your home will differ from that of mine. You are a great mother. I imagine that you were mostly venting on your birthday, but I thank you for writing and helping me to think more about the sacrifice of mothers and to be able to better appreciate just what Megan 'sacrificed' for our family (and I'm sure what my mom sacrificed). I wish I could get both you and Megan to really know that you are better for choosing to spend more time with you children, instead of more time with something less important."

Stops you in your tracks, doesn't it?
Later that day I found out that my niece Megan had mentioned me in a talk, describing me as someone that had chosen motherhood and stood as an example to her. Me. As an example.
Before we left Logan that evening, my mother-in-law sought me out to look me in the eye and say outloud "Melissa, the sacrifice you are making is not going unnoticed. I recognize how difficult it must be to work full time, be a mother full time, be a wife full time. I see how hard you are trying and I want you to know how much I love you for it." She said those words, all of them, out loud.
There's just nothing like feeling completely understood.
And there you have it - the most amazing Mother's Day in the world. I was filled, lifted, surprised, regenerated, cheered, championed, and humbled.
These moments I tucked deep inside of me. Then, just a few days ago (months after Mother's Day) I ran across this talk by Neal A Maxwell titled "Grounded, Rooted, Established, and Settled" where he gently took my thoughts to the next level, championing the high adventure of ordinary life, and calling those who don't find this satisfying "those with a lack of love" - pretty harsh words, but I took them as a call to raise myself up and embrace the blessings that I live with.

He writes: "Occasionally I see individuals who are meeting life's challenges reasonably well but who unfortunately fail to appreciate the general adequacy of their response. They let the seeming ordinariness of life dampen their spirits. Though actually coping and growing, some lack the quiet inner-soul satisfaction which can steady them. Instead they seem to experience a lingering sense that there is something more important they should be doing or that their chores are somehow not quite what was expected, as if what is quietly achieved in righteous individual living or in parenthood is not sufficiently spectacular.
Feeling unrequited as to role and feeling underwhelmed do not occur, however, because of a structural failure in this divinely designed second estate. Rather they occur because of a lack of love, for love helps us to see and to respond to those opportunities which have been allotted to us and which lie unused all about us. Before we complain about the curriculum in mortality, or more particularly our current class schedules, we would do well to remember who designed the curriculum and to allow for however many other places it has been successfully used.
True, there are more things to be done than we do, more opportunities for service than are used. True we make mistakes. Even some of our achievements are flawed by a lack of finesse. True there are seeming flat periods in life when we may feel underwhelmed. In such situations, however, we had best get back to the basics of why we are here. In the terse communiqué from the Gods about our being placed on this planet, the basic objective of life on this planet was stated:
And we will prove them herewith, to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them. [Abraham 3:25]
This is a pithy but sweeping declaration of divine intent. The second estate has been carefully structured so as to carry out that intent. To misunderstand this straightforward and tutorial purpose of life as a proving process is to make a fundamental error which ensure that thousands of additional errors will naturally follow. If our focus on the fundamental purpose of life is blurred, we will not see "things as they really are" (Jacob 4:13). . . . . .
Even so, some may still say, "Should I not be doing something else?" Ah, but that is not the real question! The real question is: "Why should I desire more than to perform the work to which I have been called?" (Alma 29:6). That is the question. . . . Brothers and sisters, when anciently we shouted for joy in anticipation of this mortal experience, we did not then think it would be ordinary and pedestrian at all. We sensed the impending high adventure. Let us be true to that first and more realistic reaction... .
Thus when life is viewed superficially, it seems routine and even pedestrian. However, what appears on the surface can be a thin cover for developments of great spiritual significance. . . . .
So much depends, therefore, upon our maintaining gospel perspective in the midst of ordinariness and the pressures of temptation, tribulation, and deprivation. As we come to love the Lord more and more, we can understand, rather than resent, his purposes. He who should know has said that there is no other way. Besides, when the Savior urged even his closest disciples to "settle this in your hearts, that ye will do the things which I shall teach, and command you" (JST Luke 14:28), he spoke of the high cost of discipleship, "signifying there should not any man follow him, unless he was able to continue" (JST Luke 14:31). Clearly Jesus was underscoring the importance of having his followers become thoroughly grounded in the gospel, rooted in resolve, established in their expectations about life, and settled in their devotion to the Savior. May we so become I pray."

So the perfect lesson has been prepared, and I am a student. Life is full of growing pains these days. I'm learning that I'm not alone in feeling alone. . . . that feelings of inadequacy accompany even those who are adequate.. . . that sometimes feeling understood is better than someone taking everything and fixing it . . . . that doing things that are hard is about sacrifice and the character that is built because of it. It used to be the reason to climb to the peak, now its the reason to learn to love.