Sunday, March 30, 2008

When I Grow Up


Sweetie has been obsessed lately with what she's going to be when she grows up. She asks everybody what they want to be. She changes her mind on a whim regularly throughout the day as she finds herself enjoying what she's doing. This morning I was doing an aerobics tape. "I want to be an exercise woman when I grow up," she said, as she did aerobics next to me, using the remote controls as hand weights. Later we ate bananas for a snack. "Maybe I want to be a banana eater when I grow up," she said, mouth full. And tonight we met family at Costa Vida (yum!) for dinner. "I want to be a baker when I grow up," she said as I held her up to see the woman making the tortillas.








The spring after my freshman year of college, my own "When I Grow Ups" crowded my thoughts. Should I continue to take pre-nursing classes or switch to history or even English? My pre-nursing classes had been fascinating, but hard; my history classes boring; and my English classes fun, but pointless.

I tried to make the decision the spiritual and logical way--I prayed about, I fasted about it, I made pros and cons lists, I talked to my parents about it. But I was still confused. "Maybe it doesn't matter to Heavenly Father what your profession is," my dad said. "Maybe you can fulfill His plan for you in His kingdom no matter what you major in."

I was unconvinced. I've never been a person who had trouble believing Heavenly Father cared about what I do. In fact, the opposite is true. I've never been able to imagine that a Father in Heaven wouldn't care about what I said, or what I did, or how I treated people, or what I would do for my profession.

Even now I think the omission of early guidance about a major and career was deliberate on the part of my Father in heaven. I think He knew that, being very self-motivated and driven as it is, I would put plenty of emphasis and focus on my major and career. He, in turn, would emphasize my eternal career--motherhood.

Now I try to do the same to Sweetie. I tell her that as a Mother, she can be all of the things she wants to be--a banana eater, exercise woman, baker, and reader. And I try to show her how I am doing the same and loving the opportunities that motherhood is giving me to learn new things to teach my kids, to do hands-on art with my kids, to bake with them, to exercise with them, to eat bananas with them, and to have some time of my own to do a little schooling, a little writing, a little experimenting. Some may think I am already grown up, but I am glad that I still don't have to decide yet what I will be when I grow up. Right now I am exploring the countless possibilities and I am thanking my Father in heaven for both the possibilities and the certainty that I will always be a Mother when I grow up.

1 comment:

smart mama said...

great post- I too love that motherhood still lets me dabble in many things and with my boys i get to relive my old passions- like biology, rock collecting, and history.