Please! Not Another Mormon Mommy Blog

I’ve recently become aware of the phenomenon of the “Mormon Mommy Blog” where young housewives of the faith blog about their perfect husbands, adorable children, and the trips they take to Europe. They wax poetic about the $600 cashmere sweaters they wear from J. Crew and the hilarious antics of their family dog. They share their insights on how to lose that last 5 pounds so you too can fit into a size four and recipes for homemade granola using only organic products. They scrapbook 3 hours a day and take professional grade photographs of everything around them and it is all beautiful. They seem to have droves of followers who are living in the same picture perfect world and honestly I say good for them. But as I read the stories and look at the gorgeous pictures I find that I don’t relate to these women and their lives in any way except that we are members of the same religion.

By looking you would immediately come to the conclusion that I do not belong on the cover of Vogue. I could care less about homemade crafts and scrap-booking, I shop at J.C. Penny, and the last time I was a size four was the 7^th grade. My husband is not a dentist/doctor/engineer and my children are not all prodigies. My dogs are normal dogs and most of the time not stand up comedians.

I love learning about and discussing my own and anyone who will hold still long enough's religious beliefs. I watch Nova for fun and like to think about how and why things work they way they do in the physical world. My children and I bond by quoting Monte Python to each other. We live in an ancient self-renovated Baptist church in a tiny town in rural West Texas where the construction is on-going and never ending. I get tired and cranky at times and have a tenuous hold on my own sanity as I work full time, go to school full time, teach Gospel Doctrine every Sunday, and serve on the local school board.

And yet, the belief system that I share with these women is what drives me to do all of these things and love it. It is what causes me to focus on trying to be a good mom and wife and to see the humor and joy that is there amid all of the stress. It helps me to realize how fiercely I love my family. It may be that Mormonism has the same effect on them; it is just manifested in different interests and living conditions.  

So why write a blog? Mostly to give my husband and family a break. You see, my head gets full of thoughts and ideas and I harass the people I love with all of it until they just can’t stand it anymore. “Oh no, mom is talking about the law of consecration again. Run!” This, like most blogs out there I suspect, is going to be a creative outlet which maybe one person besides myself will read. Thanks Mom.

“A noiseless patient spider,

I mark'd where on a little promontory it stood isolated,

Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,

It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,

Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,

Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,

Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,

Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor hold,

Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.”

-Walt Whitman

This is going to be my way of throwing threads of myself out into space to see if any of them catch somewhere.

Cheers,

Brenda