Mothers Move the World

Last week one of my students broke through her dyslexia barrier and to everyone’s astonishment (including her own) shattered her personal writing record. Much as I’d have loved to take credit, I recognized I’d only been privileged to witness a tipping point. Instead of garnering glory, I learned a lesson: Mentors may motivate, but mothers move the world.

Reagan* phoned me Thursday morning as I was simultaneously kissing my school kids good-bye and hugging my preschool class hello. Her daughter, McKenna, had completed her third tutorial with me Wednesday afternoon, and I thought she might have encountered some questions. “We have something to show you,” Reagan announced. The first two of my six three-year-olds were already building blocks in my living room, but I could hear Reagan’s urgency. “Come right over,” I invited.

They arrived in minutes, their faces aglow—and not just with eight-thirty sunshine. McKenna pulled a notebook from her pocket and started to read. Wednesday night, she couldn’t sleep; so she’d put pen to paper and recorded her day. “Sheralee told me to write, so I’m going to,” claimed one of her opening sentences. She must have filled three or four pocket-sized pages with musings.

What made those musings remarkable was that, stifled by her dyslexia, McKenna had never independently written so many consecutive sentences before. Her brain creates stories that suck me right in to lands lying deep in my Thanksgiving dinner or to history behind the Canadian coins in my pocket; but her dyslexia strangles her actual writing.  McKenna circumvents her handicap by illustrating her stories and then dictating them to her mother. Reagan’s biggest concern with McKenna’s first tutorial was that Reagan couldn’t possibly keep taking daily story-book-length dictations and meet all the other demands of her motherhood. “We’ve got to narrow it down to the sentence-level,” she insisted. “I can’t keep up; I’m exhausted!”

I’d be exhausted, too, had I devoted the energy to McKenna that Reagan has exerted for the past six years. Her efforts extend way beyond dictations. She has assumed responsibility for her daughter’s education. She has enrolled her in literature classes. She has researched literacy programs and liver cleanses, micronutrients and ear training, brain gym and brain integration and brain repatterning. She has sought the dyslexia’s roots, and any she can’t eradicate, she is bridging. As McKenna’s breakthrough attested Thursday morning, Reagan hasn’t wasted her effort. One seemingly insignificant step at a time, she is moving mountains and working miracles.

Mothers are the mentors that move the universe. Though not everyone expresses it quite like Abraham Lincoln, most individuals owe all that they are or hope to be to their mothers, angelic or otherwise. As E.T. Sullivan expressed,

When God wants a great work done in the world or a great wrong righted, he goes about it in a very unusual way. He doesn’t stir up his earthquakes or send forth his thunderbolts. Instead, he has a helpless baby born, perhaps in a simple home and of some obscure mother. And then God puts the idea into the mother’s heart, and she puts it into the baby’s mind. And then God waits. The greatest forces in the world are not the earthquakes and the thunderbolts. The greatest forces in the world are babies. (qtd in Gordon B. Hinckley, “These Our Little Ones,” Ensign Dec. 2007)

Babies and mothers, Montserrat Wadsworth, 2013 Nevada Young Mother of the Year, expounds. “While battles rage, diseases spread, and evil rears its ugly head, God is working quietly behind the scenes using mothers and babies to change the world” (Lucy Scouten, “Nevada Mom Changes the World One Baby at a Time,” Church News and Events, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints).

I saw that world-changing impact Thursday with Reagan and McKenna. They reminded me why Charlotte calls her egg sac, not her Wilbur-saving webs, her “magnum opus” (E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web, 144). They reminded me why it is even more important that I mentor my sons than my students.

Rachel DeMille captured mother’s potential impact when she wrote,

Raising children is the thing that changes the world the most. Everybody knows this, but Modern Feminism has convinced us that it is cliché, even patronizing. Eve didn’t think so, nor did Sarah. Raising children and mentoring the next generation is the most important thing we can do to change the world. It is the primary role of all women and all men, married or single. It is who we are. It is why we were born. We must train up the leaders of the future with confidence, power, and grace. We must deliver. We must achieve results. . . . If we fail, the world will fail. (“Steel to Gold: Motherhood and Feminism,” A Thomas Jefferson Education Home Companion, 65.)

I hugged McKenna Thursday morning. “Thank you so much for sharing with me,” I said. “You made my whole day.”

Reagan hugged me. “She made my whole year,” she proclaimed.

I nodded and waved and watched mother and daughter go back home to keep moving the world.

*Names changed to protect privacy.

Whole

The Equation

Our family reunion addictions workshop illuminated more than just my obsessions with schedules and peanut butter. It exposed the mirror through which I view myself: fragmented, patched with Elmer’s, representable by some complex equation:

x = (y-z)(a+b+c+d) - (f+g+h+i)

where

x = me

y = my net worth, in dollars and cents

z = female accomplishment since the dawn of time

a = hours spent housecleaning, scripture-reading, or weight-losing

b = cub scout badges sewn on sons’ uniforms

c = dollars earned in home business or saved in bargain shopping

d = cookies or casseroles delivered to needy neighbors

f = decibels my voice rises at any point on any given day

g = desserts consumed

h = to-do list items remaining un-checked after midnight

and i = should-do items that never even made the to-do list

Examining this equation, I suddenly understood why sometimes, I yell at my children—even when I’ve resolved not to. Why sometimes I slam doors, curse clocks, and cry buckets. Why I rarely feel praiseworthy and regularly slap my own figurative face.

The “x” is usually negative.

The Truth

But the equation’s a fraud.

That’s what I learned at the family reunion: My equation is counterfeit, but God’s is real, and His works.

My parents could have named me Independence. (Independence or Nancy Drew, but that’s another essay altogether.) I pommelled my way to earth without any kind of medical attendant, debuting so abruptly that my dad delivered me, relieved he’d paid attention in Prenatal 101. My grandmother claims by two I lisped my slogan: “I can do it by all myself.” Thirty years later, my husband will tell you, not much has changed, save—in the spirit of “they twain shall be one flesh” (and that, by the way, is its own essay, too)—”all myself” now includes him, my indisputably better half.

The problem with do-it-yourself determination is self-evident: you can’t. Not even multiplied by world’s best spouse. I know. I’ve tried. Note the equation. It doesn’t work. And, contrary to twenty years’ fallacious reasoning, I’m not the one exceptional misfit who comes out of the equation in red. It doesn’t work for me and it doesn’t work for anyone—not even Sister Incredible who seems to have it all together. Every “x” ends up negative when defined in those counterfeit terms.

The good news is my Heavenly Father never measures in my equation. He offers another:

x must = X

where x = me, his daughter

and X = Him, the Omniscient, Omnipotent God, the Eternal Father

Of course, just as my bundles-of-newborn-baby-chub-and-cuddles are infinitely precious but incontestably less capable than I, even so I am nothing compared to my Heavenly Father. Though I want

x = X,

reality is that

x < X

and will be forever and ever.

Always.

The Way

Knowing this would be the case, that Eternal Father prepared means whereby the problem might equate. His Son, Jesus Christ, in the meridian of time propelled His own way to earth much like I did: unattended save by parents, in a stable, bedded in straw. Unlike me, He claimed Deity as Father of His body and spirit. He exercised power over temptation. He fulfilled all righteousness. At His ministry’s end, He offered Himself as sacrifice for my shortcomings and sins. He gave Himself as ransom, the Infinite Atonement. He suffered, bled, died, and on the third day, rose again. For Him, and Only for Him, God’s equation works:

JC = X

He is the Son, God is the Father, but in every respect, they are one and the same.

To me, this means hope. Of myself, I am nothing; but with Him, I amount to more. At baptism, I took His name upon me. Determined to serve Him to the end, I promised to take His name, keep His commandments, and always remember Him. When I keep my baptismal covenant, He swallows me up in His perfection, in the enabling power of His Infinite Atonement. In algebraic terms, that looks like this:

x + JC > (y-z)(a+b+c+d) - (f+g+h+i)

Always.

What’s more, because

JC = X,

x + JC will one day = X, too.

Through His Infinite Atonement, I become One with Him. And when I am One with Him, He makes me whole.

Limitations Breed Creativity

A few months ago, I fell in love with a one-liner:

Limitations breed creativity.*

Which explains why my four oldest boys stalked down our alley that April morning, armed with e-cloths and water bucket. “We have a plan!” they exulted, conspiring on its details all the way to their destination. They had to wash two windows without being caught. It was the first of eight challenges in our PD Day “Amazing Race.”

The limitation-creativity relationship first struck me on a different PD day. At the time, inspiration was my only name for it. I knew our family needed some unifying diversion, or I’d spend the whole day policing computer turns. I couldn’t afford the energy, time, or money to sponsor anything extravagant; it had to be local, child-driven, free, and unquestionably fun. A Young Women activity came back to me and inspiration struck: From ten to two that Friday, my kids scrambled through the neighborhood on a service scavenger hunt, washing walls, walking dogs, and tidying yards to tally 335 collective family points by the end of the afternoon—exceeding by 35 our original family goal. Of course, my cleaning at our house racked-up points, too—and that was the beauty of it. We were all a team. Even my daily chores contributed. And when the neighbors wrote, “Thanks!” beside their initials on the boys’ scavenger lists or shook their hands the next Sunday at church, the boys and I both beamed. And it didn’t cost a cent or more than ten minutes’ effort to type a list.

I closed that day praying in gratitude for the gift of a thought and the delight that it bred. I knew Whom to credit; I’m not that creative, thrifty, or fun.

My opportunities to thank Him for similar blessings continue the longer we live under life’s inevitable limitations. Who’d have thought we could successfully serve leftovers at our monthly babysitting exchange? But limitations plus the Spirit transformed the leftovers into “Restaurant.” A few scribbled menus and our classiest Correlle later, my husband and I became servers to four giggling mademoiselles and five wiggly monsieurs who devoured our leftovers as though they were poshest delicacies. In April, when we needed another priceless team-builder? Limitations plus inspiration and voila, Amazing Race. Now it’s September, and limitations have bred my tutoring business. The Writing Mentor has enrolled students to exceed my loftiest expectations. I’ve turned the turbo back on in my own education, resurrecting the writer who has lain dormant the past dozen years. God’s hand guides every detail. He leads the way through the limits.

It takes me back to my oldest son’s infancy, when I visit-taught a frugal mother in her D.I.-furnished front room. “I’m so grateful for our financial limitations,” she confided. “We get to teach our children that true happiness isn’t purchased, that the riches of eternity only cost our obedience.”

Tonight, I thank God again for blessings from heaven’s windows: a budding business, aspiring students, six squirly sons, a hard-working husband, Amazing Race, amazing Grace, and a little limitation.

* See Bruce Feiler, The Secrets of Happy Families, Chapter Five: “The Buck Starts Here.”