It's Worth The Sacrifice

Speaking of Eve...

The scriptures teach us, God gave Adam and Eve two commandments while they were in the Garden of Eden; take care of garden and have kids (Genesis 1:28). I've made the same promises with Him to have children, teach them the gospel making God's kingdom even stronger here on Earth. I've often wondered why then it's not easier to make and have babies? The following is a small portion of what I've come up with.

Eve, in her child-like, honest and trusting state wanted the chance to be a parent like our Heavenly Father and Mother. It's no wonder that she trusted Satan when he told her that eating of the fruit would be the only way to be able to accomplish this. Can you blame her? She had a handsome, faithful husband, the means to provide for a child, loved the Lord, but still couldn't figure out how to get the kids to earth! Then Satan comes along and tells her He knows how she can acquire these children.

God told her what would happen if she ate the fruit. However, Eve's righteous desire to bear children, to raise them and parent them, was more important than the pain and the sacrifice she'd feel when she was cast out of the garden of Eden, physically separating herself (and eventually Adam) from God. Likewise, our desire to be mothers is something that at times requires great sacrifice in addition to pregnancy, labor and child rearing. For some it is being unmarried and continuing a chaste and virtuous life, for others it is bedridden and hospitalized pregnancies, some struggling homosexuals count their position as infertile, even others don't marry until they are past child-bearing age. Those that have children sometimes care for them into their adult years because of physical or mental disabilities, others don't live to see their child's first birthday. I place myself among those Bibical women like Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist, and Hannah, mother of Samuel. They were barren, infertile, and hoping for a miracle.

In the Book of Mormon, 2 Nephi 2:22-23 it says, "If Adam [and Eve] had not transgressed he [she] would not have fallen, but he [she] would have remained in the garden of Eden...And they would have had no children; wherefore they would have remained in a state of innocence, having no joy, for they knew no misery; doing no good, for they knew no sin." If they wanted kids they had to make a sacrifice. However the next two verses are my cherries on the top, "But behold, all things have been done in the wisdom of him who knoweth all things. Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy."

Sacrifice, pain, frustration and sadness are real and true feelings not to be ignored, dismissed or swept under the rug. Even among our healing we will ask why me, be hurt and need to come to terms with feelings of loss and inadequacy. But in those hazy and lonely moments we too can find hope that "all things are done in the wisdom of him who knoweth all things." We will find joy.