My blog is normally reserved for general snarkiness and flippant disregard for all things serious. With that said, I'm not exactly sure why I'm posting this here, but I did want to warn anyone reading this beforehand: if you're expecting this to be funny, it won't be. Ooh, that sounds far more serious than I meant it. Sorry. What I meant to say was that this is a talk I was asked to give in church last Sunday for Mother's Day, so it's not directed at your funny bone. This is your last chance to stop reading before it gets too serious. I mean it.
The year is 1989. The place is East Harlem, otherwise known as
The Barrio. Walking east along 103rd
Street between Fifth & Madison Avenues, you spy an 11-year-old boy,
Luis. The school day is over, and he’s
heading to his home in the projects just a few blocks away where he lives on
the 17th floor with a mish mash of family and relatives squeezed
into a two-bedroom apartment. As he left
PS171, he descended a small set of concrete stairs in disrepair and littered
with hundreds of discarded crack vials – the school a popular place for the
local dealer and his clients to do their business and feed their
addiction.
It’s December, and the first snow has
long come and gone, leaving the snow banks along the gutters black and dirty
from the exhaust of cars and trucks racing by on their way to someplace
else. There is a chill in the air, and
Luis tightens his scarf and ensures his coat is zipped up to his chin. He shoves his hands as deeply as he can into
his pockets almost to the point of ripping the seams, and he soldiers on toward
home.
Luis passes through a short brick tunnel
under the railroad tracks that separate the northbound and southbound sides of
Park Avenue as a Metro North train rumbles overhead. He’s reminded of the night he passed by this
very spot on an errand to the local bodega when he came upon a man whose throat
had been slit, the blood fresh on the sidewalk, just as a police car pulled up
with lights flashing – he just kept walking.
This was not the first time he’s had a front-row seat to what plays out
on the mean streets of The Barrio.
Crossing Lexington Avenue and nearing the
projects that he’s known as home since he came to the United States, Luis spies
a solitary figure walking toward him struggling under the weight of a bag full
of clothing in one hand and groceries in the other – he quickens his pace. The very sight of this figure puts the
visions of crack vials and violence completely out of his mind, and the chill
disappears. Who has this seemingly magical
power to transform and transport him from The Barrio to a place where, for even
a mere moment, there’s no worry about drive-by shootings or being pressured by
the local dealer to be one of his corner boys on the lookout for approaching
police? Who else but his mother, Maria!
She works at a dry-cleaning plant in
Brooklyn six days a week and has to take two trains and a bus each way just to
get to and from work. On her way to and
from the local subway station each day, she drops off and then collects
clothing that needs to be tailored, mended, and hemmed for extra money. She is a dutiful visiting teacher with
sisters living at the extremes of Manhattan island – this involves even more
trains and buses. And she holds two
callings: Sunday School teacher and Second Counselor in the Relief
Society. The demands on her time are
endless. And yet, she has never let a
moment of doubt slip into Luis’s mind about whether he is her priority. When I served in the New York City Spanish
Speaking mission back in the late ‘80s, I met a mountain of mothers like Maria
and witnessed time and time again the transformative power of their love in the
lives of their children. Knowing women
like this – knowing women like my beautiful wife and my own wonderful mother –
it seems almost a disservice to dedicate only one day to the celebration of
mothers. In fact, I would urge you today
to make it a point in your own way to celebrate the mothers in your life as
often as possible – let’s face it, we wouldn’t be here without them.
Just out of curiosity, I Googled “great
women” and was greeted by numerous entries from magazines and profiles. I clicked through a whole host of these
entries and learned some very fascinating things about these wonderfully brave
women – the common themes running through these sites were “political
successes”, “net worth”, and “overcoming insurmountable odds”. All great feats, of course, and ones that are
laud worthy! One woman especially intrigued
me, and as I read through a short biography, the writer extolled her many
virtues and accomplishments that detailed both her revolutionary and
iconoclastic nature. Kudos to her! However, in this and other profiles, it is
never once mentioned whether she’s married or has children. I had to go to the source of all truth,
Wikipedia, to learn that she is, in fact, married and has children and
grandchildren. Why do I mention
this? The reason is simple: the world –
especially popular culture – does not rank “motherhood” as something that
qualifies for greatness. That’s sad!
The French poet, Charles Baudelaire, once
wrote, “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he
didn’t exist.” I’ll add to Chuck’s
insightful observation: the second greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was
convincing the world that motherhood is not one of the absolute pinnacles of
accomplishment. For too long, women have
been relegated to roles of subservience.
In many cultures, women are still considered second-class citizens. This is the doing of a world who has been tricked.
In order to understand the true value and
equality of women in the eyes of Our Father, you need only turn to the
Scriptures for myriad examples.
Motherhood is so central to a plan conceived and implemented by a loving
Heavenly Father that the Christ child was introduced to this world by being
born to a woman – to a mother! Mary was
not just a willing soul who happened to be in the right place at the right
time. In Luke, Chapter 1, verse 28, we
read of Gabriel’s pronouncement to Mary of her value – that Our Heavenly Father
knew her by name and chose her specifically: “Hail, thou that art highly
favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.” After Christ was crucified, laid to rest in a
borrowed tomb, and three days passed, to whom did the resurrected Savior very first
appear? A woman – Mary Magdalene. This was not a chance meeting. Christ’s esteem for Mary was incredible! He surely sought her out. In fact, He made a point to visit her even
before He had ascended to Heaven to complete his resurrected transformation. We mustn’t forget the undaunted courage and
unwavering devotion of the two thousand young men who followed Helaman into
battle and specifically and unreservedly credited their mothers for their
strength and success. You would be hard
pressed to convince those two thousand boys to believe that motherhood was NOT
at the pinnacle of accomplishment – in fact, if you tried, you might find
yourself on the business end of a very sound beating.
I believe it’s fair to say that
motherhood is among the most far-reaching and important callings in life. It has possibly the greatest effect on lives
that stretches from the cradle to the grave and into the eternities. We would underestimate the value and power of
motherhood at our peril!
There’s a song by the band Madness called
“Our House”. Throughout the song, the
lyrics describe the comings and goings of the different family members and the
fact their house is the central gathering place for the entire
neighborhood. After describing the
madness within the walls of their home, there’s a line: “Something tells you
that you've got to get away from it.”
But the very next part of the song is very telling – you hear this,
referring to their mother: “She sees them off with a small kiss. She's the one they're going to miss in lots
of ways.” And that may perhaps be one of
the toughest but most noble aspects of motherhood: letting them go with the
hope that they’ve prepared their children to take on the world. Fortunately, though, we have an eternal promise
found in Proverbs 22:6: “Train up a
child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from
it.” This sentiment is echoed in Doctrine & Covenants.
As I prepared this little homage to
mothers, I searched the scriptures and found many wonderful examples to cite,
but I had a great deal of trouble putting my own thoughts into words. So, in light of this loss for words, I
decided it would be better to quote directly an Apostle of God, Jeffrey R.
Holland, who said it perfectly in a Mormon Message found on the Church’s
website: “May I say to mothers collectively, in the
name of the Lord, you are magnificent. You are doing terrifically well. The
very fact that you have been given such a responsibility is everlasting
evidence of the trust your Father in Heaven has in you. He is blessing you and
He will bless you, even—no, especially—when your days and your nights may be
the most challenging. Rely on Him. Rely on Him heavily. Rely on Him forever.
And ‘press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness
of hope.’”
To that, I can only add the
following: Motherhood is a divine calling – it is at least equal to if not
greater than the calling of prophet.
Without mothers, we would not have prophets and a Savior!
