A mother's body: a living sacrifice

One of the challenges of being a mother is the toll it takes on the body. (The emotional, mental, and spiritual challenges are a whole other matter entirely.) Pregnancy, labor, delivery, nursing each child several times a day and night for months on end, then carrying and holding the baby as it grows bigger, not to mention the diapering, feeding, car-seating, etc. etc. etc. With each successive child, I have found it harder to recover, harder to "bounce back."

(bad photo of a photo, the night before going into labor with Clara)

I was thinking about all of this and the sacrifice that a loving Father in Heaven asks me to make by becoming a mother. I thought about the Savior and the Sacrament. At the Last Supper, the Savior breaks bread and shares it with the twelve apostles saying, "This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me" (Luke 22:19). When a woman gives up her body to be used as a sanctuary for a growing baby, a portal for a spirit to enter the world, and then uses every part of herself thereafter to care for that child, she is following the Savior's example. He gave His body for me, and now I am following Him by sacrificing my body for another.

 (pregnant with Robbie)

Because we live in a fallen world with gravity and stretch marks and fat cells and aches and pain, my body is forever changed after having a baby. Each additional child is an additional toll on the body. However, it is not a sacrifice in vain. Indeed, "sacrificing" my vanity helps me become more holy and keep an eternal perspective in a world that focuses almost solely on the body and the outside appearance.

Will I ever "get my body back"? No, not the one I had before. And why should I want my body to be the same? Do I want to look as if I had never had a child, that having children and the changes of childbearing and nursing are shameful and should be erased? While I don't think that having children and being fashionable and fit are at all mutually exclusive, I also think that there is honor in having a changed body.

 (pregnant with Henry)

In the mean time, I am trying to "present [my body] a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is [my] reasonable service" (Romans 12:1). Is it not "reasonable" to ask me to use this glorious gift of a body to raise others of His children when He has sacrificed His own Son's entire body on my behalf? He accepts the sacrifice of our bodies when we are serving Him, even when those bodies aren't working quite right or don't perform at the level we wish they would. Christ's own body is a constant reminder to Him, and us, that He loves us:

"Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands" (Isaiah 49:15-16).

 For a nursing mother, that comparison is powerful. I want to embrace the body I have now and give thanks for the opportunity to sacrifice, in a small way, the same way the Savior sacrificed. As a mother, I want to rejoice and lift other mothers up in our joint efforts to follow His example instead of feeling less than other mothers because my body doesn't look as svelte. I want to look at myself in the mirror with the confident assurance knowing that I am doing a good work with this body of mine, despite my weaknesses and imperfections. Through the noble service of mothering, I am choosing to give my body back to the Lord--the body He has given to me--knowing that He will, in His mercy, replace this one some day with a resurrected body, pain-free and totally awesome in every way.