Motherhood :: Increasing Returns

I had been a mother for less than a year when I realized an awful truth: I didn't enjoy being a stay-at-home Mother. It came like a slap in the face and left me riddled with guilt. I knew that I loved my son, so why didn't I enjoy spending all of my time with him?

I had graduated from college less than a year before my son was born and had worked full-time teaching at a private school during my first trimester. Soon after I quit teaching, the pregnancy got complicated and I ended up on bedrest until Joseph was born. After being on bedrest, then recovering from a c-section and living every young mother's sleep-deprived life, I felt like I'd been sucked dry.

In the following months, I loved watching my son grow and sharing sweet moments with him, but I was just plain bored. Mothering offered few intellectual challenges and it was lonely. I didn't have the freedom to get out like I had before, and I suddenly realized that many doors were closed to me--literally. People whom I had socialized with before didn't want to come over to hang out at my place with an infant. They wanted to go out to eat then see a movie, things which I wasn't willing to take my son along for. My social life was slowly caving in.

Pretty soon, I came to that moment of crisis: wishing that there was more to my life. I envied my husband each time he came home and told me about his business lunches eating filet mignon or gourmet food. Sometimes he would bring me home a cookie from his catered meetings and I felt like I was in heaven. It was a piece of the outside world! My husband was traveling frequently and I was feeling more and more sick of Utah. My wings had been clipped and I was one sad bird.

I tried to push the feelings aside but eventually I knew I had to face up to them. I started doing intense gospel study to try to understand my role and the importance of what I was doing. After much reading, I developed a deep appreciation for my significance in the grand scheme of things. Here is one of the great articles that I discovered during my research:

Wife and Mother: A Valid Career Option for the College-Educated Woman by Sydney Reynolds

I listened to an old BYU fireside a few weeks ago titled, "A Law of Increasing Returns" by Henry B. Eyring. His talk brought much of my research on motherhood together under the idea of "Increasing Returns." To understand this idea, you need to understand the law of diminishing returns.

Elder Eyring teaches, "[Y]ou understand something called the 'law of diminishing returns.' Most of you use it when you cut a lawn. You cut it in one direction, then may cut it in the other, to get it smoother. But not many of you would cut it a third time. Why? Because you'd say, "It isn't worth it. I've gotten about all the smoothness I'm going to get. And more than that, cutting it the third time will take nearly as much time as it did the first.' "

In other words, the first time across the lawn is very rewarding. Your effort is clearly rewarded. The next time across the lawn will provide significantly less reward but the same amount of effort. And a third time across the lawn would provide virtually no reward but require the same effort.

The law of increasing returns is explained by Elder Eyring this way: "The simple fact is that there is a God who wants us to have faith in him. He knows that to strengthen faith we must use it. And so he gives us the chance to use it by letting some of the spiritual rewards we want most be delayed. Instead of first effort yielding returns, with a steady decline, it's the reverse. First efforts, and even second efforts, seem to yield little. And then the rewards begin, perhaps much later, to grow and grow."

Motherhood is the greatest example of Increasing Returns. Children are darling and fun when they're newborn, but they also demand some of the most tiring effort a woman can give. Then they reach the Terrible Twos, the "Mom will you drive me to...?" years and eventually teenagerhood! There are certainly rewarding moments, but they grow and develop through a lifetime, not reaching maturity until after they've started homes of their own. The wonderful thing about mothering is that the rewards never diminish. They continue to grow and grow and become more beautiful throughout eternity.

Of course, working mothers (and fathers) are blessed by Increasing Rewards with their children as well. Still, mothers who are able to stay at home all day have an amazing chance to have a hands-on role in the process that is incomparable.

That's not to say it isn't boring sometimes. Or difficult. Or messy. Or stinky. Or frustrating. It is all of those things and worse, but the rewards will continue to grow. For that, I am deeply grateful.