Parenting is supposed to suck

My mom is awesome.  My dad is pretty wonderful too.  Because they did such a great job raising me, I really thought that when I had kids, it would be completely great and fulfilling and just... awesome.  My mom made it look that way, and I'm not exaggerating.  She found so much joy in parenting.  

Imagine my surprise when I had a baby (and by the way, pregnancy sucks, too!) and then that baby CRIED.  Like all the time.  I looked around at my friends and their beautiful, bouncing babies, and realized something: I was a broken parent.  I couldn't do anything right.  Nursing was a nightmare and I quit after only six weeks. I was incapable of going out because I always forgot the exact thing I needed.  I ran out of diapers, I didn't pack the changing pad when there was a monster blowout, I needed more bottles, more formula, I had the wrong toys, the list went on and on.  No matter what I did, I didn't measure up.  I couldn't seem to keep my little brat happy.  

Then he got older and marvel of marvel... it got HARDER.  I had another pregnancy, this one even worse.  I then had an unruly toddler AND a new baby.  I was fat.  I felt tired all the time.  My older child didn't listen.  My home was a mess. 

I was a failure.   

Now, bear with me for a moment.  I am going somewhere with this.  

Mormons believe something a little radical, I guess, when it comes to our origins, and who exactly we all are, and more importantly, who we can each become.  We believe that there are three individuals who make our salvation possible.  The first is God the Father.  The second is God's only begotten son, Jesus Christ.  The third is the Holy Ghost.  These three work together to form the Godhead, or the group of deity that allows all of us to become more than we are.  Think of us as lumps of clay, and their goal is to make us more like themselves, to mold us into masterpieces.  

Each of these three individuals must do something amazing, nay, something PERFECT, and MIRACULOUS in order for Christ's suggested plan of salvation to work for us.  

First, God the Father, all knowing, all powerful, has to allow his only begotten son to sacrifice everything for us.  I always see God the Father painted as the Just God.  The one who makes the rules and expects obedience from us.  Except He can't be quite that severe, can he?  He can't be that black and white, because He has to do what I feel I would utterly fail at if it were asked of me.  He has to stand by and watch while His perfect son lives a perfect life of service, and then suffers untold pain.  He has to stand by and do... nothing, but guide His son, then with all His power, He must watch as His son suffers and dies.  That must take an amazing amount of love for the rest of His children, and willpower not to step in.   He is not the cold figure I sometimes imagine.  He must love perfectly, as you would expect of the God of all the earth.  

Next is His son, our older brother, Jesus.  He must come to earth, walk among us lumps of clay, standing nose to nose with all our imperfections, and He must still love us enough to teach us (the scriptures are, after all, the words the prophets are recounting as messages for us from Jesus). He must live a perfect life, set an example, always doing exactly the right thing, and then He must take all our sins and sorrows upon himself and suffer the punishment and pain for each so that we can be saved.  Then He must allow humanity to scourge Him, to mock Him, and to kill Him. Then He must choose to live again, able to die due to the mortality of His mother, able to take His life up again because of the immortality of His father.  By so doing, He breaks the bands of death, so that we all can live again. 

The Holy Ghost is the one we know the least about, but can feel the most clearly in our own lives.  We do know that He was willing to postpone coming to earth, receiving a body, and becoming like our Heavenly Father, so that He can bear testimony to each of us in our hearts and minds of the truth of the gospel, of the love of our God, and our older brother Jesus Christ.  He is willing to give up His time and wait on His own progress to help us all feel the divinity we have within us.  What a sacrifice; I have so much gratitude for it. 

Now, back to my point.  My routine day is long and tedious.  I have five children.  My youngest is five months old and wakes up at night. He needs to be held all day long.  My oldest is nine and goes to school.  He is in scouts and takes piano lessons and is learning, learning, learning.  I have three girls sandwiched in between who hit the spectrum between my two boys.  Sometimes they need to be held, sometimes they need to be prodded, and sometimes I send them off to school.  My day begins around six am and goes until ten at night.  I wake up kids, get them dressed, get them ready and off to school.  I feed babies, I clean up messes, I teach, I chide.  

I say no a lot.  

Then when they all come home, I help with homework, I push for piano practice, I take them to activities, I feed and clean, and review school stuff.  I pack lunches and I do laundry and we read scriptures and say prayers and then the whole thing reboots.  This sounds pretty vanilla, really, but once you throw in the tantrums, the begging, the whining, the ingratitude, the extraordinary messes, and you mix it together with a heaping helping of tedium, exhaustion and leave very little to no time for me to do anything I want to do... well, it sucks.  

Let me say that again: being a mom sucks.  

I think sometimes about Satan's plan for us.  He wanted us to come to earth and be forced to do what is right. We wouldn't whine.  We wouldn't be greedy, we wouldn't make mistakes.  Because we couldn't.  We would come to earth, get bodies, and then turn around and march back to heaven.  

I'm not gonna lie.  It kinda sounds awesome.  

Except in that plan, I start out as a lump of clay, and when I get back up to heaven... I'm still a lump of clay.  God wants us to become like him.  He wants us to grow, to take shape, to become a miraculous, spectacularly beautiful work of art.  If you're like me, when you read about the Godhead, about our Heavenly Father, about our brother Jesus, and about the Holy Ghost, you felt the beauty of what they are, of who they must be to act as they do.  They are creators.  They are shapers.  They are givers.  They are perfect and wonderful and amazing, and you yearn to be like that. To be more than you are now.  More than a lump. 

Well guess what?  When I'm a mom, when I'm doing the things that suck, the things that beat me down and wear me out... I am a creator.  I am a giver.  I am emulating the three most perfect beings I know about.  I am becoming like them.  Because I am imperfect now, because I'm a lump, that process really sucks.  I'd rather sit around comfortably as a lump of clay.  But God knows better.  

My kids whine.  They are ungrateful.  They hit one another in the face.  They tell me I am the worst mom in the world.  They pout and they complain.  They sneak around, they lie, they take advantage of one another.  But inside all those flaws, there are flashes of brilliance.  There are little kindnesses and there are these leaps of growth that give wings to my heart.  God must feel the same way about all of us.  He sees our flashes of brilliance, the light in our souls that He wants to develop.  

So here is my point: our job as parents is supposed to suck.  If you're doing it right, being a parent isn't fun.  It's miserable, and God has given us this difficult, exhausting, miserable job because He knows it is a very expedited way for us to become more like Him.  He wants to mold us, and helping little brats become people of substance is one way to do that.  

I am grateful for my job, even though it's hard.  Even though it sucks.  I am grateful for the chance I have to be like my Heavenly Father, to give of myself, even if it's begrudging sometimes, even if it's not nearly on the same level as the selflessness of the Godhead.  

But ultimately, my point is this: being a parent sucks, and that's how I know I'm doing it right.