Motherhood

 

By: Misty Murph'Ariens

"If I could tell the world just one thing, it would be that we're all OK and not to worry, 'cause worry is wasteful and useless in times like these." These are the words that come to my mind as my belly grows and I long for my mothers advice. These words, lyrics to the Jewel song 'Hands', are the ones my mom chose at the end of her life as her final message to her loved ones. We played that song at her memorial and, at her request, those words appeared in the program for the service. There is a book, called The Celestine Prophesy, that my mom loved and I am very fond of. It is an adventure parable, a story to convey the author's conception of how the universe works and our spiritual place in it. It posits that all souls are immortal, and it is our souls mission to gain experience and learn in each lifetime. Through learning these lessons, our soul gains greater and greater enlightenment. Ultimately, it is our destiny to leave a message for the world that will help the whole of creation to evolve spiritually towards an ever greater spiritual consciousness. In this conception of the universe, souls have a memory of past lives and are born, again and again, until we experience and learn all of the lessons a consciousness can conceive. To select opportunities for enlightenment, in the time between lives, we choose which parents we will be born to, as their life's message will influence the lessons we learn in our own life. In some lives it is very difficult to relate the major life lessons to one clear meaning, but for my mom, this one line of a song perfectly covered her lessons. If my mom had a vice, it was definitely worry. She was an amazingly smart, talented, beautiful and loving person, but she doubted herself, and second-guessed. She realized, right at the end of her life, that she had so much potential that went untapped simply because she didn’t believe in herself. All the same, I believe she lived a remarkable life in her short years and this one message she left for me is such a valuable gift. While what I long for right now, as I start my journey into motherhood, is to talk to her, to hear her voice reassuring me at each surprising turn, what I really need is to remember her lesson, to be brave and have faith in the limitless benevolence of the universe. Providing this comfort, the feeling of a hand behind you, is, I think, what it truly means to be a mother. Mothers make you feel like, although things will still go wrong in the world, there is always someone who loves you completely, and in a world where there is love, there is nothing to truly worry about. When you learn you are pregnant, you go out and read all the maternity and infant books you can, and with all that new knowledge comes the awareness of all the things that can go wrong, all the unplanned things that will be up to you to deal with. As I fret about how our lifestyle will accommodate a little one, or how we will make ends meet, I am reminded of another of my mom's favourite sayings, from the movie 'Shakespeare in Love', "It will all work out in the end...How? I don’t know. It's a mystery."