Mother’s Day as we know it is 105 years old this year. But the celebration of the goodness of mothers is eternal. Whether you are a mother or love someone that is, this is a special time to contemplate the blessings of the human family and all of our mothers since the beginning.

If you love a mother in your family tree, why not write something special about her and share it in FamilySearch/Family Tree this week?  Go to The Family History Guide then select Memories in Project 2 to learn step by step how to add stories and photos of these amazing women?

The painting by Pino is one I love. It is called Sacred Steps. It evokes such ethereal, elevated, and eternal feelings and thoughts of the sacred nature of motherhood. The painting brings the memories of raising our children to me, perhaps more than the actual day to day journey to the empty nest.

As I watch our daughters, go through this process now through the eyes of my own experiences, I am enthralled by the sacred steps taken to define who a woman becomes on the journey of rearing her children. Being a mother is a wonderful and challenging endeavor.  Sacrificing your complete self in the process seals you to it. To love a child in that way is to fill the measure of our creation as women like nothing else I know. Other things matter but not as much.

There are no perfect mothers but there are legions of mothers with hearts full of perfect intentions. Those mothers who want the very best for their children and who sacrifice and give and serve constantly.

There are no releases in this calling of motherhood.  Our children are just as important to our lives, out of the nest, as in it. We still worry and fret and yearn for their burdens to be lightened or their shoulders strengthened to carry their load. We continue to seek ways to help them, in those daily struggles as long as we live.

Although our bodies may get weary, we still desire to lift and pull and pray and give to edify and love and support them.  Because that is just what most mothers do, without even thinking about it.  I will always remember my sweet mother sitting in her wheelchair in her 80s, offering to help lift my burdens as I scurried around doing things in the kitchen.  Her body was fragile but her heart and her love untamed were as strong as ever.  Motherhood is a miracle. It is organic to who we are as women in most cases.

What joy is as profound to a mother as the happiness and successes of her child?  No mother wants anything negative to befall them.  No matter what they do or who they become we love them completely.  We love them all equally, which is to say, unconditionally.

This holiday means more to me each year as I learn of the sacrifices of my own individual foremothers.  They had been women that have been valiant in their stewardship of motherhood through the centuries.   Motherhood was not easy then, as it is not easy today.  We’ve had different trials, but equally challenging in many ways. This world will never be trouble free, but our mother’s efforts have benefited us through the ages.

In our own family, there have been women who packed up and shipped out of England, Sweden, Wales, and Italy to keep their children from starving to death.  In some cases, they rescued them from the possibility of never being able to improve their lot in life while remaining in their homelands. They are women who crossed the plains in fear and deprivation, but also with great faith in a brighter future because of it.  This is a sacred heritage that I have seen back to the 1600s.  The study of these, our people, through the centuries has strengthened and fortified my faith in countless ways.

They have experienced hardships and poverty and dangers and dying children in almost every generation, sometimes more than one or two at a time.  They have been uprooted and they have survived childbirth on the prairies and in sailing ships crossing the ocean with no privacy and no cleanliness and often under insufferable, horrific conditions.  There was starvation, illnesses, and sorrows of every kind.  Yet they pressed forward with a perfect brightness of hope in the future, for their children and ultimately for us, their posterity.

I think that each of us when we look back to our ancestors can see the same attributes to love and admire.  These are the things that strengthen us and make us want to be the best we can be for future generations, as we learn about our family history.

To know them is humbling and enlightening to say the very least. There is no more sacred or important thing we can do than to help children through the joys and sorrow of this life.  What a trust God must have in us, his daughters.

All of us are blessed with having or being a mother.  Some of us are both.  But not all.  To all women everywhere that help by being wonderful stepmoms or foster mothers or fabulous aunts, or loving friends that have helped raise us, thank you!  You too have been our teachers and nurturers and loved us as your own children. To give birth is not required to love like a mother, and we honor you this day as well. You have been great blessings in our lives.

I love my own mother so very much.  If she were alive she would be turning 100 years old on May 17th this year. I just copied and pasted this onto my mother’s page in FamilySearch to commemorate her birthday this year.  My thought is that a child is the only one that hears its mother heartbeat from the inside. It stays within us all of our lives…passing on something of substance from each generation to the next.  No matter where our mother is, she is never far from us.  Enjoy this day in remembrance of her.