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Where Mother Is...




A while ago I was trying to make an important decision about a significant opportunity in my life. It would have been a dream come true for many people and it seemed too good to pass up. The only problem was that no matter how I tried to make it work, it would require a significant amount of time away from my growing family.

I prayed, stewed and turned it over in my mind. One day I was driving home and I looked up to the mountain. Something caught my attention that I had never noticed before. Going down the mountain was a line of trees surrounded by brown – brown being the common color in our arid climate. I knew they were following a water line and that that was the only way for trees to grow in this mountain desert. And then suddenly I had a thought flash into my mind: “where mother is, children grow.”

This was a decision maker for me. I knew that as much as I wanted this opportunity and as much as it “made sense” in every conceivable way, it was not right because I would be depriving my children of the mother’s presence needed for their growth.

Children need attention, they need nurturing, they need a mother who cares and who is available. We can so easily be busy with our occupation, with our social gatherings or with our volunteer work. But children need mother. They need her around.

I found this unattributed quote in a talk by President David O. McKay: “True motherhood is the most beautiful of all arts, the greatest of all professions. She who can paint a masterpiece, or who can write a book that will influence millions, deserves the admiration and plaudits of mankind; but she who rears successfully a family of healthy, beautiful sons and daughters, whose immortal souls will exert an influence throughout the ages long after paintings shall have faded, and books and statues shall have decayed or have been destroyed, deserves the highest honor that man can give, and the choicest blessings of God.”



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