January 2025

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Sunday Afternoon Session of the April 2008 Conference.

Elder Ballard gave the sweetest talk in this session! I remember him becoming softer and sweeter after his wife died in 2018, but I guess he was sweet all along and I just didn't know it! In my memory, he was stern and intimidating all the time, but now that I re-read them, his talks really aren't like that at all. Yet another thing I got wrong as a young person.

This talk is called "Daughters of God" and you can really sense how much Elder Ballard loves and admires the women in his life. He mentions using hand puppets to entertain his kids in sacrament meeting. And he shows genuine understanding for all kinds of situations women face:

There is no one perfect way to be a good mother. Each situation is unique. Each mother has different challenges, different skills and abilities, and certainly different children. The choice is different and unique for each mother and each family. Many are able to be “full-time moms,” at least during the most formative years of their children’s lives, and many others would like to be. Some may have to work part-or full-time; some may work at home; some may divide their lives into periods of home and family and work. What matters is that a mother loves her children deeply and, in keeping with the devotion she has for God and her husband, prioritizes them above all else.

He also says this about the demands of motherhood:

Through my own four-generation experience in our family, and through discussions with mothers of young children throughout the Church, I know something of a mother’s emotions that accompany her commitment to be at home with young children. There are moments of great joy and incredible fulfillment, but there are also moments of a sense of inadequacy, monotony, and frustration. Mothers may feel they receive little or no appreciation for the choice they have made. Sometimes even husbands seem to have no idea of the demands upon their wives.

You should read the talk yourself, because he gives some beautiful (and very wise, I think) advice to husbands about supporting their wives, and even talks sweetly to the children saying "pick up your toys, thank your mother for meals," and so on. But my favorite advice he gives is to young mothers, and it is very simple:

Recognize that the joy of motherhood comes in moments. There will be hard times and frustrating times. But amid the challenges, there are shining moments of joy and satisfaction.

I think I am not a "young mother" anymore, which is strange, because I still have young children and I don't feel like I've mastered motherhood sufficiently to be considered a "non-young mother." Ha. But maybe that is why I can now see the profoundness and the truth in the statement "the joy of motherhood comes in moments." I was thinking about it in the first decade of parenting, but I think it has only become more meaningful to me in the second decade, as I've seen both how fleeting and how anchoring family life can be. As a "young mother," maybe I would have heard that statement and said "Joy in moments? I don't want just moments! I want joy always! What's the point of all this work if all I get is moments?" But now I think I get it. Moments are the form in which joy comes. Those moments aren't lessened by their brevity; in fact, they are deepened by it. And because the "shining moments" are glimpses of a better and truer world, they can come even during times of the most painful and exhausting "mortalness." They can't replace those hard things. They come in and through those hard things. They help you endure the hard things with your gaze on what life is really about.

Maybe this is true to some extent for everyone, but I can testify it is especially true for mothers. I don't know if I could have grasped it earlier than I did—perhaps you can't really feel it until you've lived it for a while. But it's interesting how different certain tasks of mothering feel to me now—now that I can see an end to them. This semester I've been taking the little kids on "field trips" while the bigger kids are at rehearsal for their Choir. I've often had to do that; entertain the young ones while taking the older ones somewhere. It used to feel so pointless and exhausting. Sitting in the car or at the library trying to keep them entertained, the baby screaming in a carseat or on my lap nursing, the toddlers constantly needing to find a bathroom, the preschoolers being noisy or fighting or asking me for help with everything, and all I wanted was to read my own book for a second or be able to string two thoughts together! I haven't forgotten how hard it was, and I don't minimize how hard it was! (And of course I don't have babies now, and that makes these times much simpler.) But though I'm still busy, I just don't feel those resentful or exasperated or panicked feelings as much now. I don't constantly feel like I should be doing something else. I am more peaceful about just watching the kids, talking with them, sitting there and experiencing those moments with them. I know they won't last forever. And I can feel and believe they won't last forever and it actually makes me so sad! I've learned to more easily recognize the beauty in those small, ordinary, boring, even frustrating little moments where my children truly want or need my presence. I'm still not always as patient in them as I should be! But I now know, deep down, that these moments really are the building-blocks of joy.

Other posts in this series:

Giving and Becoming—by Rozy

Power to Overcome—by Jan

I'm a great one for "last walks," it seems. I've gotten in the habit of praying while I walk or run, and now I feel I can't face any big event or important change without having a good long walk and talk with the Lord about it. I feel downright unsettled until He and I have had our time together and I've poured out to Him all the things I'm feeling—doubly so when there's a lot of uncertainty or fear or sadness mixed in. Before we came to Québec, after we came to Québec, when we moved from our old house, before each baby was born, during miscarriages, whenever I get a new calling—whatever it is, you can bet I will be out walking or running to try and make sense of it all.

Of course I say plenty of prayers on just regular old everyday walks too—but I become very sentimental and especially remember these significant "last" or "first" ones! This walk was beautiful; such a gift on the last morning in Quebec. There was new snow and the sky was clear and brittle, and the sun rose and turned everything a cold pink and blue. Oh, I miss this city.

Eglise St. Matthew

Looking back down the hill on Rue Honoré-Mercier. The wind is always bitter on this street—I'm not sure why; maybe the tall buildings make a sort of tunnel for it?

The fountain in front of the Assemblée Nationale all wrapped up in plastic for the winter. The lighted trees help it look somewhat prettier :)

Up onto the plains of Abraham, chasing the sunrise

Lamps still lit

Looking back sideways across the parc

Up onto the walls of the citadelle

Lots of spires visible here—the tall elegant one is the Wesleyan church ("Chalmers-Wesley United Church," I see upon looking it up), with the Price Building (art deco-ish skyscraper) near it, and down below you can see the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity (tall and green) and Notre-Dame-de-Québec (hollow and octagonal). The two little twin lit steeples near the Wesleyan church are the tiny Sacré Cœur Chapel-that's-not-a-chapel-anymore across the street from it.

Château Frontenac peeking out

Avenue Saint-Denis

Saint Lawrence River reflecting the sky

I tried to get a picture of me in my big puffy coat but I couldn't stretch my arm far enough. But rest assured I am as warm as a little pig in a blanket.

You can see the toboggan slide down there through the trees

Steps covered in snow

And the little Terasse Pierre-Dugua-de-Mons (whoever that is)

The river was icy! But not frozen solid. It usually doesn't freeze all the way across, people told us.

Avenue Saint-Denis, closer now

Looking down into Quartier Petit-Champlain

It looks like such a jumble of roofs! But half of those are the Château.

Another steep set of stairs. You can't escape them in Old Quebec.

Down to Terasse Dufferin

And the sun finally peeked out, behind Lévis

You can see the exact point when the sun rays finally crossed the river. From this—

to this!

I was watching with considerable interest as this snowplow plowed the Terrace. There was a turning screw (?) (kind of an auger, I guess?) that churned up the snow between the tractor's wheels and funneled it into a long chute to blow out the side. That is possibly how all snowplows work? I haven't watched them much before. But it was different than the push-plows I see on our roads, anyway.

This toboggan slide didn't open till a few days after we left, and the kids were sad about it. We watched them constructing the track and railing all through the beginning of December.

Big pile of snow from the plow

Such beautiful golden light reflecting off the windows!

You can see both Notre-Dames from here: "de Québec" on the left and "des Victoires" on the right. And between them, the Samuel Champlain statue and that big clock building that just says "Post Office" on one side but I KNOW it has to be something else too.

Bishop Laval statue. And Parc Montmorency in front of him.

I could hear the bells ringing time for Mass at Notre-Dame-de-Quebec.

So I went in to warm up and listen to Mass. The priests (monks? from the Séminaire de Quebec? I never figured out if there are still monks there) were singing Matins when I went in. I was delighted to see the huge Advent wreath in the front, with two candles lit!