Except for the fact we didn’t meet at BYU, we were the Mormon cliché. Six children, the first a month old on our first anniversary. I quit my job to become a full-time, stay-at-home mother nine months later. Over the next twenty-one years, my mothering expanded to include six children, all now grown.

And now I watch young mothers in my ward pursuing formal academic achievements and careers. I celebrate the widening opportunities available to women, but I also feel a pang of something — envy? Judgment? As I tug at the corners of those feelings, I discover the questions beneath — Did it matter? Did my sacrifice matter? 

“[Mothers] should be home to teach and train and receive and love their children into security.” It was 1987. In our tiny apartment kitchen, my husband and I discussed the prophet’s counsel. The decision to quit the job I loved was mine — to be home to raise our children. I felt a call, individual and personal, to be a stay-at-home mother. In my journal I wrote, “I’ve felt really ambivalent as my last day of work came closer. I’ve worked for so long; I feel like I’m cutting a lifeline.”

Before marriage, I’d spent several years working as a teller. The banking industry fit me like a tailored suit. I loved the click and rattle of my old-style, ten-key adding machine. The hunt for an escaped transaction hiding amongst the digits and decimals was riveting. Holding a roll of quarters, I knew by the heft of it when it was one or two quarters short. The sheer math-ness of my work was satisfying; everything was brought into balance before I locked up my cash drawer and came home. 

Cutting costs to live on one income was the beginning of the sacrifice. It included washing smelly cloth diapers to skip the expense of disposable ones. My beloved silver Honda Civic, the car I’d paid for with my teller’s salary: sold. Our one car went to work with my husband. I could manage without it. I’d push my son in his stroller to the neighborhood grocery store, only able to buy the groceries I could carry in the stroller. Bags squashed in the little sling under the stroller seat, on the shade canopy, and nestled next to my son — a centerpiece amongst the produce — for the walk home. Later, I grew accustomed to the sidelong glances in my direction at the grocery store, with one child in a backpack, one in the seat of the grocery cart, one sitting with the groceries, and a child walking on either side. A cluster of children. Usually, one child had a shirt on backward or a runny nose. I sometimes had oatmeal or someone’s snot on my shirt — so those glances felt like judgment, even if they were only curiosity. Occasionally, an older shopper would pause to tell me, “God bless you.” And very rarely, someone would comment on how well-behaved my children were, which was miraculous, and I felt my work was seen.

But I didn’t feel I was very good at it — stay-at-home mothering — especially in the preschool years. Some days felt dark, because I was exhausted by my desire to “get somewhere” while a child examined a dried worm on the sidewalk, and because I was bored by Candyland, and I really preferred not to play Barbies, or pretend of any sort. I did because the disappointment on the face of my small child reminded me of my choice — to stay home and mother. I began listening to talk radio just to hear the sound of an adult voice saying things not involving Teletubbies or poop. There was rarely “balance” at the end of the day. But those chubby, sticky arms around my neck were bliss, as were whispered words, “Yuv you, Mama.” They brought me treasures — pasta necklaces, Matchbox cars, rocks, dandelions, and ladybugs — with a generosity that astounded me. We all loved playing at the park, although I dreaded pushing them in the swings for what seemed like five hundred years. 

There were moments of illumination, when I knew I mattered. Our oldest son was placed in gifted programs in elementary school. Yet I knew the world bowed at the altar of intelligence and would quickly make “smart” the measure of his matter. He was so much more. In middle school, the teacher of his gifted class shared how kind he was and how he excelled at connecting with his peers where other “gifted” kids struggled. All those conversations at home about the importance of kindness, the times we celebrated the achievements of others. I saw the imprint of my work in his becoming.

As each of my children got older, we talked about the books we were reading: Where the Red Fern Grows, The Hobbit, and Harry Potter among our favorites. They developed wicked senses of humor, with a tinge of sarcasm. They joined clubs — or just got the T-shirts and never actually attended any meetings, like one daughter — and marched with the band, and played soccer, and danced, and performed in musical theater, and created art, and ran track, and played rugby. They complained about church, and wrecked our cars, and hated and loved each other, and my husband and me, and now they are fascinating, complex adults, whom I celebrate and admire. 

If I had chosen another path, would it have been different? Would they be these fascinating, complex adults I love? Would they still be my friends if I’d chosen a career? Those questions shimmer like mirages at the periphery of my path, unanswerable. I long to know that my work mattered. 

⋑ ⋑ ⋑

James and John asked Jesus to promise that they would sit on either side of Him in heaven. I used to view their exchange as a cautionary tale, a warning not to seek fame. But these siblings, who’d left behind a thriving fishing business to become essentially homeless, accompanied this man who performed miracles and spoke in riddles. Did they feel invisible as they moved, shabby skiffs in His wake? Puzzled by His parables? Eclipsed by this Son? Did they, perhaps, look at the seating arrangements in heaven as a way for their work, a sacrifice, to be seen? 

Jesus answered, of course, in His poetic, enigmatic way — he who would be a leader must be a servant. I wonder if in His answer, He was also pointing them toward mattering.

⋑ ⋑ ⋑

Florence and Bernice were bank customers and sisters. They were among the bank’s older clientele — women who usually brought their deposits in envelopes saved from the mail. Sometimes, the envelope was wrapped with something repurposed: a string, a rubber band, or a strip of fabric with a safety pin. Bernice wore turbans! Which in 1980’s Utah was a daring fashion statement. She was “losing her mind,” as Florence would say, with such exasperation and love in her voice that I recognized her grief and ministry. They invited me to lunch with them one day. Although my memory of the conversation has dissipated like mist, I do remember being impressed with their joie de vivre, puzzled by their interest, and absolutely tickled that they looked past the function of my job and saw in me a friend. 

In the book of Genesis and again in the book of Moses we get a glimpse at the creation of our “heaven and earth” — not an IMAX view — more like driving past it on the freeway, at least 20 miles over the posted speed limit, so that we get only a glimmer of the highlights as they blur past our window, bright and puzzling. Joseph Smith said the earth was not created ex nihilo — “from nothing.” Instead, he said, “The pure principles of element are principles which can never be destroyed; they may be organized and reorganized, but not destroyed,” which makes me wonder if the Creation was a repurposing, like the safety pin, the envelope, the scrap of fabric. Maybe Florence and Bernice were repurposing their time to include a young teller who was confused and grateful. Creating. In their mattering, I mattered.

⋑ ⋑ ⋑

In the midst of writing this essay, my daughter called from the obstetrician’s office. She had miscarried, for the eighth time. Could I come? As she sobbed, I held the shadows of her anger and grief. I wove words of loss and love and strength into a mantle to hold her until I arrived. With a recognition of the freedom I had to mother at a moment’s notice, I walked to the kitchen, where I chose an apron to pack and looked through my recipe binder, picking out some of my daughter’s favorites.

As the piles next to my bed grew, waiting to be packed in a suitcase, I felt sad and worried for these young parents who had already endured so much. But I had a growing awareness of my strength — that in my 58 years of life, God, the Great Mercy, had seen my need for it and had pressed outward against the sides of my mothering, expanding, shoring up. A lifelong renovation. 

The next morning, I kissed my husband, a tender man, and started the drive to Indiana, arriving nine hours later to enfold my daughter and son-in-law in a wordless hug. We moved through the windstorm of grief together, finding pockets of respite. We cooked comfort food, with plenty of cheese. Watched Hallmark movies because there is always a happy ending. And because love for a baby still needed somewhere to go, we carried a kitten home from a local shelter. In the storm, this daughter still fit into the hollow of my body, my arms around her, her head resting on my heart. 

Returning to my writing, I wonder if I’m being a little indulgent, to be worrying about whether or not my stay-at-home mothering mattered? I recognize that to have a choice is a privilege, one my daughter desperately wants even as her journey is taking a discouraging, painful detour. I know mothers who work from economic necessity, who labor in thankless, grinding jobs, because there is no other way. And while stay-at-home mothering sometimes felt grinding and thankless, I never had to worry about whether the bills would be paid, whether we would have a place to live and food to eat.

But isn’t any sacrifice an act of faith? A prayer against hopelessness? And when our sacrifice matters, don’t we feel a spark, a halo against the darkness of anonymity? A light, said that quiet, homeless Man, who was also The Light, that can’t be hidden under a bushel. Not shoved in anyone’s face, lest we singe a brother or sister — but held up, and out, into the darkness of someone else’s insignificance, to kindle a spark in them, too. Isn’t that how light works? And in moments, or days or weeks of darkness, don’t we all clutch at our candle or kindling, and feel small, and hope someone will see us? 

The word “matter” when used as a verb means “having significance.” But when it’s used as a noun, it means “something that occupies space.” 

As do we all. ⋑

LeAnne Bingham Hansen is a writer living in Overland Park, Kansas, with her husband and Jack, the cat.