Mothering

Here is my confession: I am terrible at being a mother.

Growing up, and I will just say for the record I have the best mother ANYONE has ever had, and believe me, I have watched and evaluated. My point here though is that everything was easy for me. School work was pathetically easy. I almost never did my homework--until moments before class began. Even papers I wrote between classes until they had to be typed. And even then sometimes I wrote them between classes and got a B for not typing them. I made straight As without even breaking a sweat.

Drama was easy. Sure I didn't always get the parts I wanted, but I got good ones and it was not hard. Speech and debate was REALLY easy. I never worked hard, never practiced, used the canned stuff I came up with at camp and won. Swimming was simple too, though I wasn't always that great at it.

Then in college, everyone said school would be hard. I worked (usually several jobs--again, easy) and took full loads--18-24 credits. Now I am not bragging here. This was really easy for me. And again, I got almost all As. Then I went to law school! Easier than undergrad!! You only had ONE test, so you basically only had to study 4 or 5 days out of the whole semester. I worked during my first and all future years of law school even though you are told not to...

EASY. Working at G&L when I had been such a slacker in law school was hard. For the first few months. Then, that too was EASY.

So I assumed that being a mom would be easy. After all, millions of people do it now and billions have done it in the past. Piece of cake.

NOT SO. I am horrible at being a mom. That is different than saying I am a horrible mother. I actually think I am a pretty good mom most of the time. I am saying I am bad at being a mom. For the first time in my life I really have to work at something, struggle with it. I was up last night at 2:45 with Dora (who still won't sleep at night) and pondering two phrases. The first is, "Slept like a baby" to indicate you slept WELL! HA. I think the irony in that is self explanatory.

The second phrase is kind of the point of this post. Everything worth anything is hard. Now maybe that's not really a platitude people say but it's a concept I have heard before. It's true. I value being a mother that much more because it's HARD. It is the hardest thing I have ever done, to mother my kids, and it is also worth more to me than anything has ever been. Talk about your investments in things--I have invested more time and more effort and more love in my two kids than in anything else I have ever done. It makes me love them that much more.

I am not saying I love my kids more than the moms for whom mothering is easy. But the point of all this rambling is that last night I finally had some insight into why maybe our Father in heaven made this so hard for me. Because you truly appreciate that which is difficult. I hope Eli and Dora never wonder whether I love them. Of course I do--with all my heart.

-Mom