I didn’t always aspire to be a stay at home mom.
I aspired to be many things and not one of those things was being a housewife (does anyone else hate that word as much as I do?). I’ve always enjoyed the challenge of a professional career. I worked hard for it, even went on to graduate school so that I can pursue the career that I’ve always wanted. Being a stay home mom was the furthest thing from my mind. I will even go further and say that being a stay home mom didn’t come naturally to me.
Now in case you’re wondering, I do enjoy being a mom. I love being a mother. I do indeed believe that being a mother is the most important job that I can ever have in this life. For me, it wasn’t a question of one of the other, but both. I firmly believed that I can have it all – a career and a family. Well, I was right in some ways but I was also wrong in so many others.
Like many professional women, a lot of my identity was tied up in what I do, my career and my professional interests. Having a career validated who I was in many ways. I was someone who had accomplished something in her own right. I wasn’t just someone’s wife, or just someone’s daughter, or just someone’s mother.
I don’t know exactly when the big realization came for me. Perhaps, it was gradual and it crept up on me a little bit at a time. It really doesn’t matter how it happened, what matters is that it did. I came to really understand that the greatest accomplishment that I can ever hope to lay claim to is to raise my children to be honorable in all their dealings with their fellowmen and with their Heavenly Father.
President Gordon B. Hinckley (15th President and Prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) spoke lovingly of our sacred duty as mothers:
You have nothing in this world more precious than your children. When you grow old, when your hair turns white and your body grows weary, when you are prone to sit in a rocker and meditate on the things of your life, nothing will be so important as the question of how your children have turned out. It will not be the money you have made. It will not be the cars you have owned. It will not be the large house in which you live. The searing question that will cross your mind again and again will be, How well have my children done?
If the answer is that they have done very well, then your happiness will be complete. If they have done less than well, then no other satisfaction can compensate for your loss.
And so I plead with you tonight, my dear sisters. Sit down and quietly count the debits and the credits in your role as a mother. It is not too late. When all else fails, there is prayer and the promised help of the Lord to assist you in your trials. But do not delay. Start now, whether your child be six or 16…
God bless you, dear friends. Do not trade your birthright as a mother for some bauble of passing value. Let your first interest be in your home. The baby you hold in your arms will grow quickly as the sunrise and the sunset of the rushing days. I hope that when that occurs you will not be led to exclaim as did King Lear, “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!” (King Lear, I, iv, 312). Rather, I hope that you will have every reason to be proud concerning your children, to have love for them, to have faith in them, to see them grow in righteousness and virtue before the Lord, to see them become useful and productive members of society. If with all you have done there is an occasional failure, you can still say, “At least I did the very best of which I was capable. I tried as hard as I knew how. I let nothing stand in the way of my role as a mother.” Failures will be few under such circumstances.
For me, it came down to this – I had to be there for my children when it mattered. This meant being home full time. I needed to be there when they come home after a particularly bad day. I needed to be home when they come home bursting with news from school or from a friend. My children didn’t just need me to be home when they were newborns or toddlers, they need me home as preteens and teenagers. In fact, they need me home during these trying years even more than ever before. This realization enabled me to take a leap of love – embracing and loving my status as a stay at home mom and not with reluctance and regret as I did before.
Of course, I realize that there are many mothers who work outside the home out of necessity. I applaud those moms for they are doing what they need to do to take care of their families. If my situation were to change tomorrow and I had to support my family, I would gladly work full time again but today I’m grateful that I can stay home. For me, it was a leap of love that has blessed my family in countless ways. Being a stay home mom might not have been what I’d envisioned as my “dream career” but today I can’t imagine doing anything else.
