Latter-day Saint Life

Bearing with Children: Why It's Hard to Always Have Christlike Love for Our Children & Why That's Okay

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MR says: As Latter-day Saint parents, we all want to do the best we can for our children and help them feel loved and valued. But sometimes, when they are throwing food around the kitchen or screaming in the cereal aisle of the grocery store, it's hard to feel Christlike love and patience. And that's okay. Parents need to remember to be patient with themselves too.

During the Saturday afternoon session of General Conference, I found myself driving my children home through rural landscapes mellowed by fall, flecked with amber and crimson. We listened as we drove, and it was pretty near perfect: my heart slowly filling as the miles unspooled before me. (To be honest, I probably got more out of the talks this way, with my three-year-old buckled into a car seat, instead of climbing all over me).

Then Elder Holland started to speak. My reaction at first was purely intellectual–I’ve always been fascinated by semantics, and I caught the significance of “carry” and “bear” almost at once. But then he said, “no love in mortality comes closer to approximating the pure love of Jesus Christ than the selfless love a devoted mother has for her child.” My throat constricted, and not in a good way. By the end of his talk, I was blinking away tears.

Let me say that I love Elder Holland. Some of his talks have been anchor points for me in my life, and I know many women needed to hear what he said. But all I could think was, if my mother-love approximates God’s, we are all in big trouble

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