This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Sunday Afternoon Session of the April 1997 Conference.
In this session, I especially liked Sister Elaine Jack's last talk (she had just been released as General Relief Society President). She talked about her grandfather and how he was a stonemason for the Salt Lake Temple. He got to lay the very last stone before the temple was dedicated, and he wrote, “It was not the capstone, but a small stone at the front gate entrance.”
Then she compared her grandfather's "small stone" to the offerings we all make toward the building of God's kingdom. Her "small stone" in this analogy was her calling as General Relief Society President, but she described how any of our time, talents, or willingness to serve can serve as our own small stone. I loved the image of adding to God's great work my small humble stone, nothing remarkable, but representing my efforts and desires to follow Him.
I also liked this part of Sister Jack's talk:
I find many parallels with building a temple and fulfilling a calling. We begin with bare ground, and we start to work. We survey the situation, pray for inspiration, thoughtfully formulate plans, send them for review, adjust, and plan again. We firm up a foundation and then add walls, a roof, and even gardens.
In my current church calling, I'm still in the "surveying" stage, but I remember with other callings eventually getting to the "gardens." It's so nice when you get past the feeling of just hanging on for dear life, hoping you don't forget anything, to being able to actually plan ahead and make conscious choices about how you want to arrange things. And I was thinking about how motherhood goes through those stages too. It's more of a cycle, maybe, but it seems important to reassure young mothers that those drowning, floundering feelings do go away! You can improve at motherhood—at being patient, at making a home you love to be in, at cooking and at managing your time. I think sometimes working mothers who have to turn the bulk of their home management over to other people don't realize the satisfaction that comes from figuring it out themselves, bit by bit.
Don't get me wrong, every mother works hard, and I still do plenty of floundering as I survey the "bare ground" of each new stage and each new child. But I'm not completely at a loss the way I was at the beginning, and in a few areas, I can even start thinking about "gardens." And motherhood has become so much more of a joy for me as I've found those areas!
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