Caretakers of Light

Today Steph posted The Sacrament of Birth on Empowering LDS Women. In her post she references an article entitled The Sacrament of Birth by Analiesa Leonhardt regarding women and their important role as mothers and the parallels to Jesus Christ. I took the time to go read the full article and it was just fascinating!

If you don't want to read the whole article, Steph shares some quotes she liked. Additionally, I liked:

In the human experience, the most extreme bodily sacrifice for another’s life is childbirth. A renowned obstetrician commented that birth, “has the potential to transform the ways in which we think about ourselves. As one patient said to [her], ‘I felt powerful and in touch with something within me that I never knew was there. I took my place among the lineage of women as mothers." This empowerment is not only a subjective experience. Neuroscientists have determined that hormones released in a woman’s body during pregnancy and nursing contribute directly to an increase in brain power. With a permanent and quantifiable increase in dendrites and glial cells a mother has a greater capacity to store long-term memory, develop increased motivation and empathy, increase multitasking and prioritizing skills, and decrease fear. Just as the Savior’s atoning act increased his capacity to love us, so a mother’s sacrifice increases her capacity to fulfill her great role. . . .

Motherhood and birth are so obviously saturated in sacredness, why is a mother’s work so often dismissed as common-place, tedious, and even dirty? Perhaps the answer is simply in the very commonness of it. It was the every-day familiarity people had with Jesus Christ that led many to dismiss him as simply the son of Joseph the carpenter.