Just an Ordinary Mom

My daughter, Cindy, was recently chosen Alaska Mother of the Year.  I am so proud of her.  She, however, is feeling totally unworthy of the honor. 

“I haven’t done all those great and wonderful things that the other mothers have done,” she said.  I haven’t started charities or schools or businesses.  I’m just an ordinary mom.  What’s more, I lose my temper with the children.  Sometimes I’m so tired of their fighting I just send them outside.  I complain and cry.”

Maybe she is just ordinary, but she has done the small and simple things that lead up to great motherhood, often under very difficult circumstances.   As have you.

“Wherefore, be not weary in well-doing, for ye are laying the foundation of a great work.  And out of small things proceedeth that which is great.” 1 

So how do you eat an elephant?

Image by edbo23 from Pixabay

One bite at a time!

How do you climb a mountain?

How do you learn to play the piano?

How do you become a great mother?

Great and marvelous events seem to motivate us, and small things often do not hold our attention.  However, small simple acts sustained over long periods of time can help us grow our muscles, increase our abilities, tame our temper, let a child know he is loved.  An act of kindness, an inspired response, an effort made over and over and over, sustained over time becomes a source of great power and influence for good.

Performance and accomplishment are rarely the result of gigantic and dramatic efforts expended in a relatively short period of time.  We don’t eat that elephant all at once.  Little baby steps, when taken consistently and persistently, lead to effective performance and satisfying accomplishment.

Many people seek for promises of big results that occur quickly and all at once.  Look at the sales of lottery tickets.   Recall claims of advertising messages promising immediate weight loss.

We are offered instant health, luxurious hair, sudden wealth, and a more youthful appearance in just 14 days.  We want the rewards without the efforts.  We want to be perfect mothers now.  We don’t want to be tired, frazzled, cranky, and angry.  We want to be Mary Poppins.  We want to be that perfect Mother of the Year, with 10 children all dressed impeccably and excelling in every field, with a spotless house and an active life outside the home, as well as inside.  We are tired of the baby steps that don’t seem to get us anywhere.

We shouldn’t be impatient with ourselves when we blow it.  The beautiful thing about life is that if we don’t like the way we have done things in the past, we can change.  “Never let the things that could have been get in the way of those that still can be.” said Neal Maxwell.  The only purpose of looking back at the small failures of the past is to encourage us to make the small changes that will lead to small acts of goodness and rightness that will lead to great mothering in the future.

Sometimes we, as mothers, are so weary with whiney children, unending messes, constant demands, and too little sleep, that we can’t seem to be able to do even the routine things. 

I remember knowing it was time to fix supper and thinking it was just a too big job to do right then.  (I was pregnant with child number four, it was hot and we didn’t have air conditioning, plus in spite of cleaning all day, the house was a mess.  You get the picture.)  I thought if I could just chose one small step toward the goal of edible food on the table, it would give me the impetus to continue.  I decided I could set the table.  Then, while I was up and in the kitchen, I was able to look in the refrigerator and figure out what to fix.  Of course it would have all been easier if I had figured that out earlier and defrosted what I needed, but the point is that doing one small thing helped me tackle the larger thing.

I also learned that small baby steps can bless my family even when there isn’t time or effort available for the giant steps.  I could wash the smears around the light switch without waiting until I had time to wash the whole wall.  Maybe the whole wall needed washing, but just cleaning around the light switch was better than doing nothing.  Maybe you can’t clean the whole kitchen, but just clearing the counter will help.  Maybe you aren’t able to clean out all the drawers, but one drawer a week ends up with the same result.

Maybe you can’t teach your child to read before kindergarten, but reading a story tonight at bedtime will increase his love of books.  

Maybe a quick hug or a brief word of praise is just what your child needs.

Cindy has done these small and simple things, often under extremely difficult circumstances.  She lives off the grid, without running water, sewage system, electrical connections.  She feeds her children healthy food, but that means she raises chickens, grows a garden in amended gravely soil with specially chosen plants that will mature in the short Alaskan summer, bottles the food, occasionally butchers a half a cow or a pig, smoking bacon and rendering the fat for cooking and for soap.  She keeps her children in clean clothes but that means many buckets of pumped water heated on the stove and wet clothes hung on pegs over the wood stove to dry.  

She home schools her children, following their own pace and their own interests to make learning exciting.  She takes them to extracurricular lessons in the nearest city 2 hours away or to the museums in Anchorage 3 hours away.  They were getting too old to share their loft bedroom, and due to her husband’s illness, he needed a downstairs bedroom, so she and her husband built by themselves an addition to the cabin.  The children help with the chores and are learning independence, responsibility, and adaptability. 

Cindy’s husband has epilepsy which can’t be controlled by medication.  She has learned how to care for him and as a former nurse, has protected him from local inexperienced doctors that want to treat him in a way that will harm him.  She has tried natural remedies, learning how to titrate the oils of natural plants, that seem to help.  When I talked to her the other day, she said her water pump was leaking, her husband had had a cluster of seizures over that past few days, they were out of propane and firewood, and she had to go cut a tree.

Your challenges are probably different.  You may have never needed to cut a tree.  But you may be a single mother, or have a spouse that battles addiction.  You may have a debilitating illness, or you may have an ill child.  You may be financially precarious and wonder if you’re going to make it.  You may be caring for parents in addition to your children, have interfering in-laws, or other toxic relationships, or a rebellious teenager that is harming the whole rest of the family.  But as you struggle on, doing the small and simple steps of motherhood, you are doing something great.

Even if you don’t have extenuating circumstances, mothering is just hard.  It’s hard when your children are sick, it’s even harder when you don’t feel well, it’s hard when they make constant messes, it’s hard when they don’t obey, it’s hard when you don’t have time to do what you want to do, it’s hard when you have to punish, it’s hard when they need help with homework they don’t want to do, it’s hard when they won’t eat what you fix, 

or won't go to bed without getting up numerous times, or chose friends that are not a good influence, or have a blow-out diaper, or…ad infinitum.  It’s hard when the little ones wake up too early, or the older ones stay out too late.  It’s hard when we are so tired we only want to plop, but we have to take them to their piano lessons, or soccer game, or pick them up from a friend’s house.  

Often, when it gets so hard, we think it must be our fault…if we were just more patient or wiser or stronger or something-er, it wouldn’t be a problem.  We worry that our own inadequacies may affect our children so they won’t be okay.

“The fact that you keep going, keep cuddling, keep cleaning, keep planning and keep loving in spite of how hard it is, is your super power.  You’re doing the hardest job on the planet with dedication, grace and love—and there is nothing wrong in that.”2

Jane Clayson Johnson, who left a fast paced TV journalist life for the life of being a mother said, “The sanctity of motherhood can be hard to appreciate when you spend endless hours making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, singing along with Elmo, helping create elaborate science projects or enforcing late-night curfews. 

“Motherhood is full of small, mundane tasks.  There is no one to cheer when you finally fold the last load of laundry.  

But underneath the cooking, cleaning, reading, chauffeuring, nursing and so on is a mother’s real occupation.  That is loving, nurturing, and teaching her children.  The seemingly small things we do while our children are young—teaching them to pray, reading them a story, telling them how much we love them—tend to stick with them throughout life.” 3

A friend recently got a letter from her grown-up daughter thanking her mother for her constant love and stalwart standards throughout her turbulent teen years.  She said that although she fought every rule and even against the love at the time, it gave her a basis to come back to as she matured.

Mothers teach and model what Alexis de Tocqueville, social historian, called “the habits of the heart,” the civilizing “mores” or attitudes that create a sense of personal virtue and duty to the community, without which free societies can’t exist.

Johnson stated that “we go into motherhood expecting that it will require some strength; then we find ourselves in it and realize we’re completely out of breath—with miles to go.  Being “just an ordinary mom” is an extraordinary test of endurance and strength.

Our sacrifices, doing the small things we don’t want to do, may appear to be insignificant, but they are important.  

photo from Max Pixel

In a sense, our small and simple acts of mothering are the threads that make up the masterpiece tapestry of our children’s lives.  We may not see the whole pattern yet, and we don’t need to.  We just need to remember to take that one stitch at a time, and out of small things will come that which is great, woven by just an ordinary mom. 

1. Doctrine and Covenants 64:33
2.  Diana Spalding Dear mama: You’re not doing it wrong, it’s just “that” hard Motherly 
 Https://mother.ly/life/dear-mama-youre-not-doing-it-wrong-its-just-that-hard
3.  I Am A Mother Jane Clayson Johnson, Deseret Book, Salt Lake City 2007