Mother's Day (blog observed)

I was out-of-town last Sunday, so I was unable to post on this very important day and I refuse to let it pass by unacknowledged.
You might find it interesting, that the very woman who campaigned Congress for years to set aside a day of observance for mothers, Anna Jarvis, was an unmarried woman who was not a mother herself. Isn't it great that there's an official day to celebrate our mothers who devoted their life, love, and bodies to give us life, teach, train, and provide us with opportunities. Here are four passages I recently came across about moms that I thought I'd share:

"But let it never be forgotten that in the establishment of this great country there were women also, and those not a few, who molded the bullets, who planted the ideas out of which grew the rhetoric of their sons and husbands, who skimped and saved and even starved to make possible eventual victory, who bore and nurtured the sons who became the dead of those vicious battles of war, who were left widows by husbands who are remembered as heroes. And what was true then has been true in every subsequent crisis. Where anything of lasting value has been created or built, almost certainly women have played vital and at times even pivotal roles."
-Gordon B. Hinckley, "Motherhood: A Heritage of Faith"

"The true strength of any nation, society, or family lies in those qualities of character that have been acquired for the most part by children taught in the quiet, simple, everyday manner of mothers."
- Gordon B. Hinckley, "Motherhood: A Heritage of Faith"

"The love of a true mother comes nearer [to] being like the love of God than any other kind of love."
- Pres. Joseph F. Smith

"Rock Me to Sleep"
Backward, flow backward, O tide of the years!
I am so weary of toil and of tears...

Tired of the hollow, the base, the untrue,
Mother, O mother, my heart calls for you!...

Over my heart, in the days that are flown,
No love like mother-love ever has shone;...

None like a mother can charm away pain
From the sick soul and the world-weary brain.
Slumber's soft calms o'er my heavy lids creep;
Rock me to sleep, mother, rock me to sleep!

- William Cullen Bryant