my mother's day talk

Last Sunday Neil and I were pulled aside by the 1st counsellor and asked to speak the next Sunday. Which just so happened to be Mother's Day.

At first I didn't think much of it, just overwhelmed by the dread of talking in church in general. The beauty of my long hours at Citi in London was that I successfully avoided any request to speak in church. So it actually hadn't been since perhaps my Freshman year of HS that I had spoken in church. Needless to say I was terrified.

Then I became even MORE terrified when I realised just how sensitive a subject Mother's Day is to so many. There are single women struggling as to why they have not yet found their companion, married women who are finding issues with having a child, those who did not have a mother to look up to, and those that are struggling with the loss of their mother or their child. The topic makes it so easy to isolate such a large number of women. Needless to say, the talk was a difficult one to write. I was doing a web search for talk ideas when a woman posted her talk on her blog which I really enjoyed reading. While I ended up going a different route then her, I appreciated the example of showing how I could approach the subject without isolating those women. So I thought I'd post mine in the off chance that a similar google search may be done on an upcoming Mother's Day. I also put it here because my computer has a nasty habit of crashing and losing all my files (hopefully our new external hard drive should take care of the problem but you never know).

So this post is long. And not too interesting. And no one is expected to actually read it. But here is my mother's day talk:

Good morning Brothers and Sisters, and Happy Mother’s Day!

For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Jessica Mertlich and my husband Neil and I moved to New York from London just over three months ago.

To tell you a little bit about ourselves, my husband grew up in a city called Roy, Utah just outside of Ogden before serving a mission in Brazil. After returning home from his mission he started at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, where one day he hit on a girl in the cafeteria lunch line. That lucky girl was me. Little did he know that day, that I was a girl who had spent 15 years of my life out of the country due to my father’s career, and had no plans of staying in Utah past graduation. There was too much of the world to see, places to go and things to do!

Just as Neil and I began dating, I accepted a job offer for an analyst training program in London that would start just a few months after my graduation. Much to my surprise, Neil was willing to jump onboard, and before I knew it I was moving to London with a husband! We were there for 2.5 years and absolutely loved our London experience. After that time, we decided we were ready for our next adventure, so we packed up and moved to New York City. And so here we are! So far we love it, and are looking forward to getting to know the city - and its people - even better.

I must admit the request for my husband and me to speak on Mother’s Day brought about quite a bit of apprehension on my part. What a topic to try to adequately give justice to!

How does one in a 10-15 minute talk, sufficiently address the divine role of motherhood, while conveying gratitude for the women in our lives who have nurtured us? Even more so, how do I - someone who is not yet a mother - get up here today to speak words of interest to those of you who are already mothers?

It was a quote I found of Sheri Dew, who served in the Relief Society general presidency, who allowed clarity on the matter. She says:

While we tend to equate motherhood solely with maternity, in the Lord’s language, the word mother has layers of meaning. Of all the words they could have chosen to define her role and her essence, both God the Father and Adam called Eve “the mother of all living” —and they did so before she ever bore a child. Like Eve, our motherhood began before we were born. Just as worthy men were foreordained to hold the priesthood in mortality, righteous women were endowed premortally with the privilege of motherhood. Motherhood is more than bearing children, though it is certainly that. It is the essence of who we are as women. It defines our very identity, our divine stature and nature, and the unique traits our Father gave us.

It was then that I realized - if Eve was already seen by Adam and Heavenly Father as being a mother before she had the opportunity to bear children, then in fact Heavenly Father must already see ME as a mother! What a magnificent notion! As women of the church, we are all in different stages of our lives, but we all have one eternal trait in common. We have all been preordained to the eternal calling of Mother.

This realization made me ask myself: am I doing all that I can now to cultivate these inherent gifts, so that when the time comes I can be the woman and mother the Lord would have me be? After much pondering, I identified four areas in which we women can prepare and progress in our various roles of motherhood, regardless of our current stage in life.

The first is recognizing the divinity of motherhood

I think we are all well aware of the value of mothers. All of us are where we are today in large part because of the women who reared us. However society today tends to overlook the divinity of motherhood. Divine - as defined by Miriam Webster is “of relating to, or proceeding directly from God”. What an appropriate definition for the calling of women.

Elder Matthew Cowley said, "men have to have something given to them [in mortality] to make them saviors of men, but not mothers, not women. [They] are born with an inherent right, an inherent authority, to be the saviors of human souls and the regenerating force in the lives of God's children."

The role of mother is not what was left over after Heavenly Father blessed his sons with the priesthood. It is the most ennobling endowment he could give to us as women, a sacred trust that gave women an unparalleled role in the rearing of His children.

I loved the Mother’s Day address a few years ago by Jeffery R. Holland where he spoke of motherhood as an “eternal partnership with God.” When we fully recognize motherhood as a deeply ennobling calling can we truly come to appreciate the role that the Lord has given us.

The second area I identified is developing mothering characteristics

Growing up I had a precious stuffed monkey that I bought on a trip with my family to Kyoto, Japan. From that day on that monkey – which I had named Jinx – was with me where ever I went. In fact, when it came time to get a new passport photo taken I insisted on bringing Jinx along and having him join me in the photo. To this day I laugh when I see myself, no more than 6 years of age clutching the monkey I loved so fiercely. Of course it was not the photo that made its way into the pages of my passport, but in that 6-year old brain of mine, I could not fathom a day when it wouldn’t be necessary to have a passport picture of both myself and the monkey, since naturally he would always be flying alongside me.

By divine design, nurturing seems to be part of the spiritual heritage given to women. And even at the tender age of six, those nurturing characteristics were unmistakable. It is when we sculpt and refine those natural instincts that we are able to develop ourselves into something remarkable. We develop a keen sense of concern for others. We become a source of encouragement and compassion. We transform ourselves into leaders and become well versed in service. We become nurturers not only for own family but for all of those in need of love and care.

The third point I’d like to address is personal progression

President Kimball once gave an anecdote regarding personal progression:

“Mr. Hilton told about a plain bar of iron being worth about five dollars. But that same iron, if made into horseshoes, would be worth $10.50. If it were made into needles, it would be worth $3,285. And if turned into balance springs for watches, its worth would be over $250,000.

“Then it would seem that the value of the raw iron is only what it costs to process it from the hill. Its greater value is determined by what is made of it. People are much the same as iron. You or I can remain nothing more than raw material, or we can be polished to a high degree. Our value is determined by what we make of ourselves.”

One of the greatest gifts we can give as mothers is to never cease our own personal and spiritual growth. We have been taught that the plan of salvation is centered on the worth of the individual. Each life is priceless, with its potential to learn, and to appreciate all that is good and beautiful on this earth. The more we shape, improve and refine ourselves, the greater the inspiration we can be for our children.

My mother is a great inspiration of this. When my parents were young, my mother withdrew from college only a few semesters shy of graduating in order to support my father during his studies and career. Yet she did not let that stop her in terms of her learning. I can’t remember a time where my mom didn’t have a book by her bedside table. And each time we moved to a new country she would immerse herself in the culture, visiting local museums and studying the language.

Throughout the years she would take college courses in a variety of subjects just to satisfy her sheer desire to be constantly learning. Then, after all her children had left the home, she enrolled full time at the University of Utah and graduated with honors in Art History. Without a doubt, my mom exemplifies what it means to be a woman in pursuit of personal progression, ever seeking to improve herself.

The Doctrine & Covenants 130:19 encourages eternal progression, stating:
If a person gains more knowledge and intelligence in this life through his diligence and obedience than another, he will have so much the advantage in the world to come.”

Whether it be picking up a new book, attending a lecture, or dusting off that flute that that was played in High School; developing ourselves, our spirituality and our talents will continously improve us as women and mothers.

The fourth and final area I’d like to touch on striving to become a fully developed person.

There are times where no matter what I do, the woman next to me seems to do it better. There is the woman teaching Sunday School that is so admirably well-versed in scripture. There is the woman who is always impeccably dressed. There is the woman who seems as if her talents never cease. These women always seem, dare I say it, perfect.

Howard W. Hunter seemed to say it best when he wrote:

"Because we are being constantly exposed to the world's definition of greatness, it is understandable that we might make comparisons between what we are and what others are—or seem to be. We often allow unfair and improper comparisons to destroy our happiness when they cause us to feel unfulfilled or inadequate or unsuccessful.

I think the term perfect – which we hear quite often - is also a large culprit of this. Because we are asked by the Lord to strive for perfection, it is easy to feel like we are often missing the mark. But that term perfection can be misleading. When we think of the term perfect it seems like it is this unattainable goal, taken from external cues and indicators.

Now here is an interesting (and kinda nerdy) sidebar:

The word ‘perfect’ came into the English language in the 13th century from the Latin word “perfectus”. Jump back a little further in the genealogy of the word and we find its root in the Greek word “" tell-ee-ahs”. This, in fact, is the original word that was used in the New Testament. And what does it mean?

It means “complete, finished, fully developed.”

The Lord is not asking us to fit a cookie cutter notion of perfect. There are no external cues from those around us we should be aiming for. Instead, the Lord is asking us to become a complete, finished, fully developed version of ourselves.

There is a quote that I love from John Steinbeck’s In East of Eden that I think sums it up nicely - “Now that she knew she didn’t have to be perfect, she could be good.”
….

Dear Sisters,

Regardless of our current stage in life, we can prepare and progress in our various roles of motherhood. We can relish in the divinity of motherhood, we can fine tune our natural mothering instincts, we can cultivate our minds and souls through continued learning, and we can work towards becoming a complete, finished, fully developed woman. In these preparations each one of us can become a woman that is good.

I would like to take a quick moment to thank you, dear women. Dear mothers. Thank you for all that you do. The world is a better place indeed because of the marvelous, magnificent work of mothers.

I hope you will indulge me in one final quote. It is one of my absolute favourites from our dear Gordon B Hinckley:

You are creatures of divinity; you are daughters of the Almighty. Limitless is your potential. Magnificent is your future if you will take control of it.

I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.