She wakes up every morning at 6:30 after spending what is usually a sleepless night. Between the 17 month old baby girl and the three year old boy (and the occasional bad dream from the older boys), I don't know that she averages more than 4-5 hours of sleep every night. She labors unceasingly throughout the day, homeschooling our 6 year old and providing home cooked, made from scratch meals nearly every night. She changes diapers, cleans the house, nurses sick kids when they need it, cleans up cuts and scratches, goes grocery shopping and runs our house like a well oiled machine....and what I just mentioned that she does is only a drop in the bucket. She does so much more!
Some may read this and say that she must be unfulfilled or that her life may be dull and uninteresting. Unless she is hiding something it is something quite to the contrary. Before we even got married Amber told me that it was her dream and desire to be at home with her children, raising them, loving them, being there for them. Even as today's society looks down upon motherhood as a second class job opportunity, my wife delights in the growth and development of her kids and with a grace, joy and beauty of unselfishness relates to me the special little moments that she takes in with them each day.
Some of my favorite memories are laying in bed at night and hearing her mention something that she did with the kids that day...or something they said that just made her laugh. The love that she has for her family just glows from her as she talks. When I think about all that she has done, does and continues to do, I wonder how she does it. How can she be laying on the operating table with baby number four having just been taken Caesarian section and before she is even stitched up ask the doctor to make sure to tell her if she can have more children? How can she out her body through the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual difficulty of 6 children in our nine years of marriage? How does she do it all? And with a smile on her beautiful face?
As I contemplated it tonight, I could think of only one explanation that made sense...it is explained in a few verses in Moroni chapter seven:
45 And charity suffereth long, and is kind, and envieth not, and is not puffed up, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, and rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.
46 Wherefore... if ye have not charity, ye are nothing, for charity never faileth. Wherefore, cleave unto charity, which is the greatest of all, for all things must fail--
47 But charity is the pure love of Christ, and it endureth forever; and whoso is found possessed of it at the last day, it shall be well with him.
48 Wherefore... pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that ye may be filled with this love, which he hath bestowed upon all who are true followers of his Son, Jesus Christ...that when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is; that we may have this hope; that we may be purified even as he is pure....
(Moroni 7:45-48)
How does she do it? Charity! She loves with such a perfect love that she is unfailing. She is literally willing to endure all things out of the love that she has for her children. She puts her life on the line for them in a very real way to bring them into the world. She spends every waking (and often sleeping) moment in efforts to lead them to God and to raise them to be the kind of people that she knows that they can be through God's help. All other reasons would fail, but because my wife loves her family the way that Christ loves all of us, she has the strength and the ability to go through the valley of the shadow of death and come out triumphant on the other end.
I don't know that I can express in words how grateful I am for her, and how amazed I am at her goodness. I know I certainly don't express it enough, but I couldn't have more respect or admiration for any person on this earth than I do for my lovely wife. She is the most Christ like human being that I have encountered and never ceases to amaze me with her strength, her wit, her joy and her grace. The blessings that she has received from our Heavenly Father are many and more than impressive in nature. God be thanked for the gift of mothers everywhere. Mothers who give their all for all of us and bless our lives in so many ways. Allow me to end with a thought from Elder Neal A. Maxwell from his April 1978 conference address that I think describes my wife so well (and my mother as well):
"We salute you, sisters, for the joy that is yours as you rejoice in a baby’s first smile and as you listen with eager ear to a child’s first day at school which bespeaks a special selflessness. Women, more quickly than others, will understand the possible dangers when the word self is militantly placed before other words like fulfillment. You rock a sobbing child without wondering if today’s world is passing you by, because you know you hold tomorrow tightly in your arms.
So often our sisters comfort others when their own needs are greater than those being comforted. That quality is like the generosity of Jesus on the cross. Empathy during agony is a portion of divinity!
I thank the Father that His Only Begotten Son did not say in defiant protest at Calvary, “My body is my own!” I stand in admiration of women today who resist the fashion of abortion, by refusing to make the sacred womb a tomb!
When the real history of mankind is fully disclosed, will it feature the echoes of gunfire or the shaping sound of lullabies? The great armistices made by military men or the peacemaking of women in homes and in neighborhoods? Will what happened in cradles and kitchens prove to be more controlling than what happened in congresses? When the surf of the centuries has made the great pyramids so much sand, the everlasting family will still be standing, because it is a celestial institution, formed outside telestial time."
You two. :)
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