On motherhood - contributed by Tonya

To be a mother is to be uncertain. I spend a staggering percentage of my time unsure if I was too strict or too lenient or too enabling or too detached or too smothering or too serious or too flippant. But there is one moment that is so clear, so obviously wrong that a couple of times a week I find myself wishing for a second chance to say the right thing to my daughter. Like most kids at seven years old, she loves to hear about her beginnings. Unlike most kids, she is adopted. One night during our last conversation of the day, she asked me, "Did you wait for a long time to get a baby in your tummy?" A little off guard I replied, "Yeah. Daddy and I tried for a long time, but Heavenly Father wanted us to have a family in a different way. He brought you to us in a different way. We adopted you, and it is just as good." Her sweet, open face registered immediate confusion and alarm. She blurted out, "No Mom! I'm fantastic! The best! Amazing! Not just good." She certainly is. I'll never tell her less than exactly that.