I Just Love Conference.

General Conference weekend is like a holiday weekend to me. It's a weekend in with the family when you can snuggle up and listen to words that fill you. The emotional and spiritual filling often leaves you feeling even physically uplifted.

True, it's harder to get as much out of it with three kids in the house than it used to be, but knowing that I can catch up on what I missed and re-listen to what I loved afterwards on lds.org is comforting knowledge. Especially when someone is speaking that you know you always love to hear from and "Mommyyyy!!! I need help wiping!!!" rings out from the bathroom.

This year most people watched with added anticipation because we knew three new apostles were going to be called. It was nice to hear from them and I look forward to learning more about them. Elder Perry, Elder Scott, and President Packer are missed though.

Now, Elder Holland's talk. "Behold Thy Mother." I really like to think that I don't have favorite apostles, but Elder Holland's talks tend to make it into my top 5 list most conferences. Without even exerting mental energy I can recall where I was when I heard several specific talks he gave that have stuck with me over the years.

This year he was only a couple of minutes (maybe) into it when I realized, "This is it. This is my talk." He even gave me and my sisters a shout out, did you catch it?

"To Mother Eve, to Sarah, Rebekah, and Rachel, to Mary of Nazareth, and to a Mother in Heaven, I say, 'Thank you for your crucial role in fulfilling the purposes of eternity.'"


Really though, after a particularly hard few days in the difficult two months that I've had recently my motherhood tank was almost at zero and this filled me. I had another one of my "Those are the words!" moments after he read a letter in his talk.

"Those are the words" moments happen every once in a while for me. I am not one of those people that has a gift for articulating ideas/thoughts/feelings in a concise way, especially verbally. It's just not one of my talents. In my head I often find myself saying, "Oh what are the words?!" So, sometimes someone will say something and I think, "Those are the words! That is exactly how to say what I feel about (fill in the blank)!"

This mother's words really resonated with me because of the words she used:

"A wonderful young mother recently wrote to me: 'How is it that a human being can love a child so deeply that you willingly give up a major portion of your freedom for it? How can mortal love be so strong that you voluntarily subject yourself to responsibility, vulnerability, anxiety, and heartache and just keep coming back for more of the same? What kind of mortal love can make you feel, once you have a child, that your life is never, ever your own again? Maternal love has to be divine. There is no other explanation for it. What mothers do is an essential element of Christ's work. Knowing that should be enough to tell us the impact of such love will range between unbearable and transcendent, over and over again, until with the safety and salvation of the very last child on earth, we can [then] say with Jesus, '[Father!] I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.'"

Oh my goodness, that quote has so much meaning behind so many of the words in it for me! "How can mortal love be so strong that you voluntarily subject yourself to responsibility, vulnerability, anxiety, and heartache and just keep coming back for more of the same?" Responsibility, vulnerability, anxiety, and heartache. I have already experienced strong tastes of the first three and have to work hard at pushing away the great fears I have of ways motherhood can bring me the fourth. And yet, here I am just shy of being 14 weeks pregnant, because I want more.


I have maxed out on all my energy sources several times in the last couple of months, and yet the last few days have been blissful and I can't believe how much these three little boys (and Jayce) mean to me. I'm not just throwing around the phrase, "I can't believe" there either, it really is beautifully amazing to me how much love we can feel for others. They are precious to me. "Knowing that should be enough to tell us the impact of such love will range between unbearable and transcendent, over and over again..." Those are the words.

I could keep going on and on about different thoughts I had during other talks in Conference. Elder Renlund's story of facing the parents of the boy he performed a failed heart surgery on, Elder Nelson's great words to the women of the church, Sister Stephens' comic relief story about her granddaughter, and how many people who watched Conference aren't "ponderizing" this week?

Those will have to keep, for now I'll just download the ones I want to listen to in my free time this weekend. I just love Conference.