Sanctifying Motherhood

I spoke in church today on the sanctifying power of motherhood. Here is the text of my talk:

I want to begin my talk by summarizing a short story written by a nineteenth-century American writer named Bret Harte, called “The Luck of Roaring Camp.”

The story begins in Roaring Camp, a mining settlement up in the Sierra Nevada during California’s Gold Rush. It was like most other mining camps, and it’s residents were like most other miners. The term “roughs” applied to them was a distinction rather than a definition. Perhaps in the minor details of fingers, toes, ears, etc., the camp may have been deficient, but these slight omissions did not detract from their aggregate force. The strongest man had but three fingers on his right hand; the best shot had but one eye. One or two of them were actual fugitives from justice, some were criminal, and all were reckless.

Now, these roughs were all collected before a rude cabin on the outer edge of the settlement because something was happening inside that cabin that had never happened in the camp before. Deaths were by no means uncommon in Roaring Camp, but a birth was a new thing. And at just that moment, a sharp, fussy cry — a cry unlike anything heard before in the camp — rose into the air.

The gathered crowd rose to its feet as one man! It was proposed to explode a barrel of gunpowder, but, in consideration of the situation of the mother, better counsels prevailed, and only a few revolvers were discharged; for, whether owing to the rude surgery of the camp, or some other reason, the mother, Cherokee Sal, the only woman in Roaring Camp, was sinking fast. Unfortunately, she wouldn’t last through the night.

The camp put Stumpy in charge of caring for the child. He, after all, had been the putative head of two families; in fact, it was owing to some legal informality in these proceedings that Roaring Camp was indebted to his company. Still, the camp wondered how the child could live without his mother. But the camp was home to a female donkey, so like Romulus and Remus of old, the child was fed. They used an old candle-box for the baby’s crib.

The next morning, the men of camp filed through Stumpy’s cabin to see the child. As old Kentuck bent over the candle-box half curiously, the child turned, and, in a spasm of pain, caught at his groping finger, and held it fast for a moment. Kentuck looked foolish and embarrassed, but when he left the cabin, he related with great gusto how the babe had rastled with his finger.

Over the next few weeks, Stumpy reared the child, whom the camp named Tommy Luck, for the fortune they’d had since he was born, and the men sent to Sacramento for certain articles: lace, filigree-work and frills, the best that could be got. The Luck, as the child was usually called, flourished, and almost imperceptibly a change came over the settlement.

It started with Stumpy’s cabin, which was kept scrupulously clean, then spread to the rest, and then even spread to the men. Stumpy imposed a kind of quarantine upon those who aspired to the honor and privilege of holding “The Luck.” This was a cruel mortification to Kentuck — who had begun to regard all garments as a second skin, which, like a snake’s, is only sloughed off through decay. But such was the subtle influence of innovation that he thereafter appeared regularly every afternoon in a clean shirt, and face still shining from a fresh scrubbing.

The camp’s moral and social conduct was likewise spruced up. The men started to converse in whispers and profanity was tacitly given up, especially in the sacred precincts of Stumpy’s cabin. Vocal music was encouraged, being supposed to have a soothing, tranquilizing quality, and on many a night, melodious utterances danced through the camp.

When the men went out to mine, they brought The Luck along, and laid him on a blanket. Throughout the day, the men would bring flowers and sweet-smelling shrubs to garnish his bed. Kentuck was especially fond of azaleas. The men had suddenly awakened to the fact that there were beauty and significance in these trifles, which they had so long trodden carelessly beneath their feet.

The men offered Tommy the best that they could find, and it was hoped that he was content.

Then, one night, during the spring thaw, the river suddenly leaped over its banks and rushed through the camp. When the morning broke, Stumpy’s cabin, which was nearest the river-bank, was gone. Among the wreckage downstream, the men found a man lying in a gulch, cradling an infant. It was Kentuck, cruelly crushed and bruised. As the men bent over the strangely assorted pair, they saw that the child was cold and pulseless.  “He is dead,” said one. Kentuck opened his eyes. “Dead?” he repeated feebly. “Yes, my man, and you are dying too.” A smile lit the eyes of the expiring Kentuck. “Dying,” he repeated, “he’s a taking me with him, — tell the boys I’ve got the Luck with me now”; and the strong man, clinging to the frail babe as a drowning man is said to cling to a straw, drifted away into the shadowy river that flows forever to the unknown sea.

You may find it curious that I chose to tell this story on Mother’s Day. There is only one mother in it, and she appears only briefly. All of the other characters are men. So what does it have to do with mothers?

Well, motherly duties stand out when they are being performed by rough-hewn miners. In the same way that stories about the distant future, or fantasy worlds, or galaxies far, far away can teach about living in the here and now, I think that by removing all of the mothers, this story actually teaches us about motherhood.

First, it illustrates how motherhood blesses those who are mothered. Most obviously, motherhood keeps babies alive. Without the intervention of the men of Roaring Camp, little Tommy wouldn’t have lasted very long. Children come into this world completely helpless. Without mothers to feed them, burp them, clothe them, change them, bathe them, soothe them, and put them to sleep, they would not be long for this world.

But the miners weren’t content to provide mere sustenance to The Luck. They surrounded him with goodness, music, and beauty. Cared for in this way, the child didn’t just survive, but he flourished.

Likewise, our mothers do so much more than merely give us life, but they enrich our lives. The love that they give us makes us more than what we could ever hope to be without it. The difference they make in our lives is impossible to quantify, but is undoubtedly there. As President James E. Faust once said, “There is no greater good in all the world than motherhood. The influence of a mother in the lives of her children is beyond calculation.”

But it is not only children who benefit from motherhood. Mothers are blessed through it as well. Caring for The Luck brought out the best in the “roughs.” Before he came to camp they were crass, rude, and dirty. After, they became graceful, civilized, and clean. Kentuck, specifically, was transformed by the bond he felt when The Luck had rastled with his finger. Through motherhood, through the bond that mothers enjoy with their children, they are refined, strengthened, and even sanctified.

Sometimes when the baby needs to be fed in the middle of the night, or her diaper needs to be changed again, or he’s spit up on the third outfit of the day, I’ll bet that it may not feel that way. But as mothers climb out of bed, or pinch their noses and they reach for the baby wipes, or change into that fourth, and hopefully last, outfit, even if they grumble for a few seconds under their breath, they are becoming more like Christ.

We learn in the scriptures that charity, the pure love of Christ, “suffereth long, ... seeketh not her own, ... beareth all things, ... [and] endureth all things” (Moroni 7:45). I can think of no better description of motherhood.

Multiple times throughout the scriptures Christ compared himself to mothers. “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb?” (Isaiah 49:15) he rhetorically asked. The question is almost ridiculous. No one could ever conceive of such a thing. But as ridiculous as that is, it is not as ridiculous as Christ forgetting us. And Christ once lamented, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often I would have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!” (Matthew 23:37).

In a very powerful and profound way, mothers emulate Christ and his atoning sacrifice. That is beautifully illustrated in Kentuck’s sacrifice to save little Tommy. Crushed and bruised as he is, he is a vivid example of the Savior.

Few mothers are asked to make that ultimate sacrifice, but motherhood, by its very nature, is sacrifice just the same. When I was a young missionary, tired, sweaty, and struggling to understand what was said to me, much less say anything worthwhile in a foreign language, I remember thinking that I would rather die for the people that I was called to serve than have to knock on any more of their doors. But as I entertained that thought, another came into my mind to take its place. My calling wasn’t to die for the people in my mission. My calling was to live for them. Likewise, a mother’s sacrifice is to live for her children.

Christ taught that there is no greater love than laying down one’s life for someone else (John 15:13). Mothers spend their lives feeding, burping, clothing, bathing, changing, and coddling their children. They read to them, teach them right from wrong, and help them with their homework. They cheer them on at one sporting event after another, they scold them when they need to be scolded, and they console them when they need to be consoled. They exult in their triumphs, and sorrow in their defeats, and stay up worrying when they are out later than they should be. And after all of this, they let them leave home, so that they can spend every night worrying that they will make friends, make good choices, and make something of their lives. If that isn't laying down one’s life, I don’t know what laying down one’s life is.

In a recent General Conference talk Elder Holland taught about this lifelong sacrifice. “You see,” he said,

it is not only that [mothers] bear us, but they continue bearing with us. It is not only the prenatal carrying but the lifelong carrying that makes mothering such a staggering feat. Of course, there are heartbreaking exceptions, but most mothers know intuitively, instinctively that this is a sacred trust of the highest order.

He then went on to quote a letter he had recently received from a young mother:

How is it that a human being can love a child so deeply that you willingly give up a major portion of your freedom for it? How can mortal love be so strong that you voluntarily subject yourself to responsibility, vulnerability, anxiety, and heartache and just keep coming back for more of the same? What kind of mortal love can make you feel, once you have a child, that your life is never, ever your own again? Maternal love has to be divine. There is no other explanation for it. What mothers do is an essential element of Christ’s work. Knowing that should be enough to tell us the impact of such love will range between unbearable and transcendent, over and over again, until with the safety and salvation of the very last child on earth, we can [then] say with Jesus, ‘[Father!] I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.’

Today is a day in which we celebrate our mothers, and justifiably so. Heaven knows that they deserve, at the very least, one day of being pampered, treated, and showered with praise. So, without detracting from any of that, I want to point out one last lesson that we can learn from “The Luck of Roaring Camp,” and it is this: that motherhood is not confined to those women who have carried children in their wombs, it is not even confined to women.

As the men of Roaring Camp fulfilled the duties of a mother, they were as entitled as anyone else to motherhood’s blessings. Whenever we do for others what they cannot do for themselves, whenever we sacrifice for our fellow human beings, especially children, we are playing the part of a mother. Whenever we take the time to plan a Primary lesson, whenever we hand out a Nursery snack, whenever we maintain our patience when what we really want to do is run out the room screaming, we are being sanctified.

I pray that all of us can recognize the blessings of motherhood in our lives, both from being mothered and from mothering. I testify that as we do, we will come to appreciate all the more that motherhood draws us closer to Christ.