Mothers Who Know Bear Children

Tonight, I was looking through a box of stuff my sister in law, Juli, gave me before she moved to Utah last week. I thought I had seen everything in the box but when I got to the bottom, I was surprised to find a whole stack of papers, filled with quotes about womanhood and motherhood.

Also, in this stack of papers was a talk printed out by Sister Juli B. Beck entitled, "Mothers Who Know". If you go to Juli's blog you will notice the title of her blog is "A Mother Who Knows". A couple of pages into her blog, you will also find this post where she writes about become a mother who knows. If you go to her Twitter page, you will notice her Twitter name is Mother Who Knows. With all of these things staring me in the face, I am ashamed to admit that I never went and read the actual talk until it was in my hand this afternoon.

I wish I would've read it sooner because it really helped me and I now have a new goal...to become a mother who knows. I am going to do a 7 part series, focusing on each point of Sister Beck's talk individually because each deserves their own post. I hope you will join me in learning about how to be a mother who knows. And please, go read Sister Beck's talk.

Mothers Who Know Bear Children

"Mothers who know desire to bear children. Whereas in many cultures in the world children are “becoming less valued,”2 in the culture of the gospel we still believe in having children. Prophets, seers, and revelators who were sustained at this conference have declared that “God’s commandment for His children to multiply and replenish the earth remains in force.”3 President Ezra Taft Benson taught that young couples should not postpone having children and that “in the eternal perspective, children—not possessions, not position, not prestige—are our greatest jewels.”4

Faithful daughters of God desire children. In the scriptures we read of Eve (see Moses 4:26), Sarah (see Genesis 17:16), Rebekah (see Genesis 24:60), and Mary (see 1 Nephi 11:13–20), who were foreordained to be mothers before children were born to them. Some women are not given the responsibility of bearing children in mortality, but just as Hannah of the Old Testament prayed fervently for her child (see 1 Samuel 1:11), the value women place on motherhood in this life and the attributes of motherhood they attain here will rise with them in the Resurrection (see D&C 130:18). Women who desire and work toward that blessing in this life are promised they will receive it for all eternity, and eternity is much, much longer than mortality. There is eternal influence and power in motherhood."

This first part of the series will probably be the easiest for me. I am already a mother who wants to bear children. But I believe that this means more than just getting pregnant over and over again.

I believe that being a mother who wants to bear children also means that we want the best for the children we bear. Getting pregnant in itself is a miracle and is the starting point but it cannot end with the bearing of our children. We need to bear our children, knowing we are going to do everything in our power to help them in this life.

As mothers who know, we cannot ever give up. As President Benson said, "children...are our greatest jewels." They need to be treated as the special individuals that they are. And we should never become stagnant. Even if we think we are doing everything right as a mother, there will always be more to learn. We need to be teaching our children daily and focusing on the children we have, even if we are waiting to bear more. To me, this means more playtime with them and less computer and cleaning time. I also believe it means that after they are in bed, I am still trying to better myself as a mother. This week, I have started studying the scriptures personally, which is something I haven't done in a long time. But I have noticed a patience with my children that I didn't have before.

We need to have the desire to have children but we also need to have the desire to raise those children throughout all eternity. Once we are mothers, we are always mothers. The choice we make to bear children is one of the biggest and most rewarding decisions we will ever make.

I hope you will join me in studying this talk by Sister Beck. I know it can help me become a better mother to my children, which is what I strive for daily. I know I will never be perfect but I can always be doing better.

And that's how Suze sees it.