Today’s guest post comes from Emily Orchard. Emily lives in Meridian, Idaho with her patient husband, four young children, a dog, a fish, and a snake. Her favorite daily activities involve her kids but she also enjoys working a few hours a week as a speech therapist. Before her household wakes up in the morning she runs and after bedtime she eats chocolate chips from the pantry and reads Segullah. She secretly does some writing of her own but she is rarely brave enough to share.
Back in seminary and institute, I likened myself unto to Naaman’s young Israelite servant. One of the chosen few women in the Old Testament, she had the courage to share her belief in the prophet Elisha with her master Naaman, a foreign army commander. She testified that the prophet could heal her master of his leprosy. I have felt her strength.
But now, from the back row of gospel doctrine, with an overflowing diaper bag stuffed under my chair, it’s Naaman I get. He expected something extraordinary from the prophet’s counsel for him. Instead, the prophet told him to wash seven times in the River Jordan.
This River Jordan wasn’t exactly the cleanest river to wash in.
Why did it have to be done this way?
He was expecting something different.
I want to be a mother and I believe it is what I should do, even more than Naaman believed the prophet could heal him. But I believed motherhood would be different for me. I would listen in anticipation when the prophets spoke of the importance of motherhood. I was educated, I was talented, I LOVED children, I would stay home with them and I would lovingly incorporate the lessons I had learned in child development classes! Motherhood for me was the right choice, not just my only option.
Eight years and four kids into the thick of it and I find myself washing in murky water when I had hoped for more “convenient” miracles. One recent afternoon I was rinsing out a pair of toddler panties in the sink (potty training again) and my feet stuck to a purple popsicle stick that had almost made it to the trash. I felt my cheeks flush with anger. The diapers, the snacks, the dishes, the messes, the bath times, the bed times, the tantrums and the timeouts blurred together.
In an effort to reach me in a moment of need, the Spirit whispered, “This is where you are supposed to be.”
“REALLY?” I laughed out loud.
This was not the motherhood that I had pictured in Young Women or testified of in my singles ward at BYU. This was not the moment that I had looked forward to when I brought my first baby home from the hospital weeks after completing my masters degree.
This water isn’t even very clean.
Why does it have to be done this way?
I was expecting something different.
Yet I find I have Naaman’s pluck too. In the back row of Sunday school, with graham crackers spilling out of my diaper bag, I resolve to reenter the murky waters of motherhood. I will bathe, feed, clean, teach, and love not just seven times or even seventy times seven. And much of that before dinner tonight. I will see the miracles underneath the mess: the smiles, the love, the laughter, and the privilege it is to follow a prophet’s counsel.
Again, again, again and again. Again, again, again.
Related posts:
Continue reading at the original source →