Mothers Day Message

I attend church with many faithful and courageous men and women who valiantly serve this country in the armed forces.  Many of these courageous Saints have and are risking their lives to preserve our freedoms. But there is other group of individuals at church that make a similar sacrifice who we tend to overlook- mother's.

And they rehearsed unto me the words of their mothers, saying: We do not doubt our mothers knew it. (Book of Mormon, Alma, Alma 56:48)

This didn't make sense to me for the longest time.  The Son's of Helaman, the 2000 Stripling Warriors, in the Book of Mormon said that they learned their faith in God and in His power of deliverance from their mother's who knew and had experienced God's deliverance.  In addition to their miraculous conversion, these faithful mothers had never gone to war. When had their mothers been delivered?

Every time a mother is pregnant and delivers a baby, she is risking her life to bring a baby into this world.  Having and nurturing children also is integral to preserving our freedoms as a nation.  The armed forces are asked to preserve freedom by taking life, but women preserve freedom by giving it.  Without the rising of a righteous next generation, there would be no freedom-loving people to possess this land.

Satan is are great accuser.  Again and again Satan inspired people to say to Christ, "if thou be the Christ, save thyself".  Satan demeans and accuses mothers by inspiring some to ask mothers, "what else do you do?".   Everything we do in life and society, is to facilitate families raising a healthy and moral posterity to take our place in this land. I hope to never hear another LDS Saint ever accuse or attempt to make a mother feel like her life and sacrifice is not good enough. 

Many women have experienced considerable pain, trauma and even terror during pregnancy.  Consequently, in the same way our soldiers experience PTSD, mothers can experience post-partum and perinatal depression, anxiety and grief after a miscarriage or stillbirth. Our society doesn't give out purple hearts and silver stars to mothers who have been injured or displayed considerable valor in the face of great personal danger.  But we can and should honor and show appreciation to the women and mothers in our own lives. Everytime a mother is intoduced, like our soldiers, we can thank them for their service to this country.