This guest post is by Cory Jensen.
In March of 2011, Stacie Crimm cried with joy upon learning that she was finally pregnant at the age of 41. It was a happy, miraculous moment, as doctors had previously told her that such would be impossible for her. Tragically, this initial elation was short lived. A few months into the pregnancy, Stacie began experiencing severe headaches. A medical scan revealed that she had an aggressive cancer spreading through her head and neck. Without treatment it would be terminal. Doctors informed her that the cancer could be treated with chemotherapy, but that would likely prove fatal for her baby. Stacie faced an excruciating choice: her life or her baby’s.
She chose life for her baby, fully knowing that it would cost her own. She declined the chemotherapy. Her one wish was to live long enough to hold her newborn daughter. One afternoon in mid-August, Stacie collapsed in her home. Another scan at the hospital showed that the tumor had spread and wrapped around her brain stem, slowly killing her. After two days in the hospital, Stacie’s heart stopped. While resuscitating her, the doctors decided it was best to deliver the premature baby by C-section even though it was still weeks before the due date.
The delivery was successful—a two-pound one-ounce girl named Dottie Mae, who was immediately placed in intensive care. Stacie was revived, but her health continued to deteriorate in the weeks following the birth. Both mother and daughter required constant medical attention and were kept apart. By this point, the cancer had paralyzed Stacie’s throat making it hard for her to speak or to be understood. She drifted in and out of consciousness. In September, her heart stopped once again. She quit breathing and lay dying, but again the
doctors were able to revive her.
Everyone knew that Stacie’s remaining time was very short. They also knew of her wish. She had still not been able to hold her newborn daughter or count her tiny, perfect fingers or look into her blue eyes. A few days later, Stacie regained consciousness briefly. Nurses brought baby Dottie from intensive care and placed the tiny infant on her mother’s chest. For several minutes, mother and daughter gazed into one another’s eyes, while the nurses watched and wept. It was a sacred moment. No one said a word. A few days later Stacie passed away.[1]
Women as Types of Christ
On this Mother’s Day, consider how mothers (inclusive of all women) are types (or reflections) of our Savior. They reflect Him in at least three important ways:
- Like Christ, mothers also shed their blood and descend into the vale of death to bring forth new life. In some cases, as with Stacie Crimm, the mother forfeits her own life in order to bring forth a new one. Mothers then continue to sacrifice to raise, nurture and bless their children.
- Paul taught that the veil of the temple is a symbol of Christ’s flesh (see Hebrews 10:19–20). Given that, if Christ is the veil through which we must pass to eternal life, then I would submit that a mother’s womb is the veil through which all mankind passes to enter mortal life. Mothers are a veil on one end of our journey while Christ is the veil on the other end. The temple endowment provides us with an important reminder of this truth as the sisters are veiled as part of their temple clothing.
- A mother’s love is often the closest thing a child experiences to God’s own love for us and it is through a mother’s love that we may first experience and begin to understand God’s love.
In these three ways, women are important types of Christ. May we each find a way to express our love and appreciation to the Mothers in our lives for the many sacrifices they make.
[1] Account based on Sonya Colberg’s NewsOK.com article, “Oklahoma cancer patient trades her life so her baby could survive” (October 16, 2011).
Cory B. Jensen is the author of three books on the temple endowment: Preparing For Your Endowment, Understanding Your Endowment, and Completing Your Endowment. This post is a modified excerpt from the first book, Preparing For Your Endowment, available in paperback, audio and kindle versions. Free PDF copies of the final volume are available online at www.templeendowment.com.
Wheat & Tares 
“On this Mother’s Day, consider how mothers (inclusive of all women)…”
There it is.
* Heavy sigh*
This is just the kind of romanticised view of being a mother that leaves me wanting to hit someone. Hard. We heard a similar story in a church class (sunday school?, yw?) back when I was in my teens, presented in much the same manner. I was horrified then, and I’m horrified now. Using someone else’s tragedy to glorify extreme self sacrifice that apparently should be expected of mothers is not nice. At all. I’ve also heard the stuff about childbirth being a descent into the vale of death before as well. It generally is men that seem to go for this romanticised framing of the lives of women. Ugh!!!
Though some women also seem to buy into it… Lynette’s post has some relevance:
http://zelophehadsdaughters.com/2011/11/01/the-two-trees/
Thank you, J and Hedgehog. I’m not sure I would have been brave enough to say that, as a real life mother, I find this stuff cloying and suffocating. And it’s why Mothers’ Day in the church is more of an icky burden than an appreciation.
Hedegehog- I need to better understand why this is not OK for some people, and help my daughters with it. Can you, or someone else spare the time to explain this to me? I just accept it.
Handlewithcare, the way I understand it is that stories like this one set an unrealistic standard of appropriate behavior for mothers. The message that I get from it is that anything less than dying for her children would mean that the mother isn’t doing enough. And like Hedgehog says, it seems overly romanticized. I want to be careful not to judge the people involved, as I think their decisions were right for them. But they wouldn’t be right for everyone.
Full disclosure: I identify as a man, so I may not be the most qualified to speak on this thread. Hedgehog et al., I hope you’ll add to it, or tell me how you see it different.
I’ll take a stab at why that story is a cliché (sorry, Cory).
It doesn’t tell us anything about the mother. Did she abandon other dependent children by choosing not to undertake life-saving or prolonging treatments? Was she severely depressed and seizing an opportunity to give up? Was she an accomplished career woman who was taking her shot at motherhood late in life? Was she an abused woman who had given up her own identity and any concept that she was worthy of having a life to live?
It doesn’t tell us anything about the child. Did he or she live with survivor’s guilt for being “responsible” for the woman’s death? How did he or she negotiate getting the care they needed to survive and thrive? Or did they in fact?
It doesn’t tell us anything about the unit. And what is the point “mothering” without a child or children to protect and teach and impart values to? The everyday being there when things are good or challenging or just another part of the routine. There’s nothing of what that relationship means or how to provide an alternative.
It doesn’t tell us about any other children or loved ones who might have felt abandoned or, surely, the loss. What kind of person was she? What did she contribute to their lives? What would they struggle to provide without her? What hole would be left in their hearts?
It just tells us she was a successful egg bearer. She did her job! She hatched her egg. Hooray for her to do it so heroically. And what about the rest of you who just deliver a child and then another one and another one and fret over how to make the ends meet to keep them thriving and wipe the tears and give them the support to go out and get hurt again? Should we all be apologizing to our kids that we didn’t exhaust and expend ourselves on their behalf? How selfish of us to want to accomplish something too. To have a life that doesn’t fit into a cookie cutter concept of “Mother”!
The problem with the trite is that it projects an image almost impossible to achieve and provides nothing to instruct on how — or IF — to approach it..
Anyway, that’s my take on it.
I’ll give it a go handlewithcare, but I’m not sure it’ll be any clearer than my first comment. Firstly, it’s a visceral reaction that I want no part in such a universe. It feels like a prison to me. Partly I think it is the idea of all women as a block, no room for individual variation. But it also feels manipulative. Secondly, there are good mothers and bad mothers. Thirdly, I find the comparison with Christ to be tasteless. I don’t know if it’s a peculiarly Mormon thing to be looking for types of Christ in all sorts of places, but it feels like hubris (not sure if that’s quite the word I want, but it’s close).
In my ward growing up, there was a woman in the ward who was found to have cancer whilst pregnant, and she did die. Her sister and husband adopted the baby. A tragedy, and a circumstance in which individuals should be left to make their own personal decision, for them.
Childbirth experiences differ between women as well. Some have a much harder time of it than others. Just as others don’t have any children.
It all feels so limiting.
My sincere apologies to anyone who found this post offensive, irritating or trite. It wasn’t intended to be so. When I first heard of Stacie Crimm’s story, it moved me to tears. I wept for the agony she must have gone through and for the tragedy of her story. She didn’t have any other children and had wanted them for many years. I don’t pretend to begin to understand what she must have gone through, and I recognize that hers is an extreme case, but to me her story is symbolic of the countless unrecognized sacrifices of so many mothers. It is this symbol of love and sacrifice that is touching to me (without judgment of her or any others who may have different circumstances or choices). Though I did not know Stacie, I think of her every year on Mother’s Day and I wonder about her little daughter.
My own mother is one of the greatest blessings of my life. She sacrificed much in raising me. I’m certain that if she had faced the same choice, she would have made the same decision for me. I try to live my life in a way that would honor her and reflect the love I have for her.
In the case of my own daughter, she battled a ten year addiction with hard drugs that began as a teenager. Despite everything I could do to try to help, and despite several re-habs, etc. she was never able to stay clean. It got so bad that for several years, I expected to receive a phone call anyday informing me that she had overdosed and to come identify her body. Nothing worked and we tried everything. It was the hardest 10 years of my life. One day she came home to tell me she was pregnant. Though she was very upset and didn’t want the pregnancy, it was a turning point for her. From that day, she quit everything cold turkey and has stayed clean for several years now. She has a beautiful daughter and is doing her best to raise her. In my daughter’s case, becoming a mother literally saved her life.
I recognize that everyone’s story and situation is different. Everyone has their own battles and their own pain. It wasn’t my wish to trivialize any of this but simply to recognize the tremendous love that people can express. To me Stacie’s story is a reflection of the Savior’s teaching (paraphrasing): Greater love hath no one that this, that a man [or woman] lay down his or her life for a friend. (John 15:13). In Stacie’s case this was literal. In most cases, mother’s lay down their lives in unselfish care for their children one day at a time. But the motivating love behind such acts is the same.
Finally, there’s the aspect that those who believe the OP may feel justified in doing nothing to improve the lot of women and mothers because if its hard well that’s just what women do, and if they have to die, well Christ suffered too, and died…
Thanks, Cory.
Wow, I just read this story and thought how grateful I am my mom wasn’t in that boat, nor I with my children. The story tells how she finally got pregnant at 41 so there were no other children to worry about their neglect by the mom choosing not to have chemo, for those commenters worried about non-existent other psyches.
Folks, these stories aren’t about you and me. They’re just about the ones involved. Something meant as a tribute to one woman and her unique choice has absolutely nothing to do with our choices. So make your own inspired choices just like she did and give glory to God you get to make yours free and clear of baggage from anyone else’s. There’s positively nothing in the story that implies you or I need to do anything at all. Such pressure comes from within our own feeble minds. Let that crap go, and if you need a little help I have a great tonic that works wonders….just sayin’.
Really grateful for those who have clarified their felt experience on this thread, it’s really hard for me to counter such a high level of emotionalism in the original story and I lose language. At the same time, I accept the experience of someone else, and fear impinging on that, but feel emotionally steam rollered by it. Makes it hard to use my brain.
And then,what is the temple about then, if it’s not about this stuff? Another layer of puzzlement.
Rockies Gma, I take your point that the story in the OP is about one woman’s experience. That in itself isn’t the problem. It’s the context of the presentation of the story that’s the issue for me. Firstly there’s the context of telling it on a mother’s day (actually it wasn’t mothers day here in the UK, but the post was intended as a mother’s day post for all those celebrating the US date), and secondly there’s the juxtaposition of the story in the post with the ‘women as types of Christ’ section. It’s that whole that is the problem, not the story of the individual woman per se.
I don’t know whether it’s a generational thing that some of us react the way we do to this post, and other similar representations of women and mothers. I don’t know if it’s rooted in the material we were fed in our sunday school, yw, seminary and institute curricula about what being a woman and a mother supposedly entailed we now compare with our lived experience that feeds that reaction. I feel very ragey thinking back on some of the implicit and explicit messages in those seminary films we were shown in the 80s. We were manipulated then. And having recognised it after the fact, we are perhaps more prone to see manipulation where it may not be intended.
But there’s also the thing for me personally that I just find it objectionable to use an extremely tragic story. I hated that conference talk of Elder Holland’s a few years back about responding to emotional challenges, because he used the example Stephanie Nielson. If anything that was worse for me because her life isn’t over, and the ending is as yet unknown. And yes, I know she has her own blog, but I still found it tasteless in Holland’s talk.
Handlewithcare, so far as the temple goes I’m thinking there’s likely a big overlap between the groups responding badly to this post, and those who have problems with or are disturbed by the endowment ceremony.
To be honest, I don’t get the connection between women giving birth and women wearing a veil in the temple. If the women’s veil represented birth, wouldn’t the men (and women I suppose) need to go through it somehow to even enter the endowment room? Plus, At the point where women are veiled the distinction isn’t between pre-mortal and telestial world, but terrestial and celestial. Everything about the symbolism of women veiling themselves seems to be about shielding the women from being too present for the priesthood prayers rather than shielding the men from being too close to the priesthood prayers.
And this… “Like Christ, mothers also shed their blood and descend into the vale of death to bring forth new life.” Actually they don’t. Having given birth quite a few times, I can say it’s painful and not fun, but barring complications and thanks to modern medicine, there really isn’t much of a risk of death. With an epidermal, I’m usually up and ready to go home within a couple of hours. Death is the last thing I’m experiencing.
If you are arguing that life doesn’t start until birth, does that mean that we should all be okay with abortion because since the mother hasn’t shed blood yet (like Christ) the fetus isn’t really alive yet or on this side of the veil? (I’m guessing not.)
As you can probably tell, this analogy really, really doesn’t work for me. Part of that is that it doesn’t make much sense to me. Part of that is that I live on a farm where conception/birth/death are monthly occurrences and thus are seen as natural parts of biological systems rather than romanticized. I mean, are animals also crossing a veil when they are birthed from their mother’s bodies?
I’m going to guess the op isn’t a woman and has a very limited experience with both birth and death.
A mother’s love is like the love of God? That’s great if you happen to have had a loving mother and not a mother who was say an alcoholic or violent or abusive or narcissistic. The love of God is something much higher than any human can hope to offer. Mothers (and women in general) are just people like everyone else. They come in all varieties, good, bad and indifferent.
Honestly, I’m trying to stay calm as a write this. The idea of the love of our Savior, which is powerful and healing beyond description, being compared to what you get from a frail and flawed human being just enrages me.
Thanks HH, really, really useful to hear this from someone else.
I have a difficult time with these types of stories as well, but I know a lot of women appreciate them. Mother’s Day is often understood as a time set apart to express gratitude for an often thankless job.
Handlewithcare, even the most conservative church leaders who discouraged the use of birth control acknowledged that the life of the mother was a priority. The current position of the Church on birth control is, “Husband and wife are encouraged to pray and counsel together as they plan their families. Issues to consider include the physical and mental health of the mother and father and their capacity to provide the basic necessities of life for their children.” Incidentally, this is why I also had a problem with the Mormon Messages video from a few years ago, “You Never Know,” which glorified the sacrifices of a mother to benefit everyone around her on one particular day, eventually making her miss out on an eagerly anticipated meeting with a friend. If a woman is consistently looking out for the needs of others and ignoring her own needs, the risk of a mental health crisis grows. As someone who has a mental illness, this is something I’m particularly sensitive to.
Also, like ReTx, I’ve always understood the personal veils in the temple to be about hiding women. Honestly, getting veiled was one of the things that made the concept of Heavenly Mother click a little. My face may be hidden, but I’m still present and participating, so maybe there was a person like that out there. I’m uncomfortable with the concept of a woman’s main role as bringing humans across the veil into mortality, and a man’s role (or Christ’s role as in the post) as bringing humans across the veil into celestial glory. I think the temple ceremony can be definitely taken that way–Eve’s usefulness in the plan was to take the fruit and initiate movement into the mortal condition. Thereafter, her only access to God and redemption is through Adam. It’s an accurate reflection of the reasoning you see in Orson Pratt’s 1852 teachings on plural marriage. The men are kings, lords, and Saviors to their own households, and the divine purpose of women is to bear the souls of men. But for me, that line of thinking is incredibly discouraging, not inspiring.
I was uplifted by this woman’s courage. I assumed the simple and best scenario in the details not filled out. My wife almost died having our first child, although not by choice. (She asked the doctors if they could just put her to sleep for a few days, then wake her up and hand her the baby.)
I understand rationally the burden these stories can put upon women- to promote the idea that if they are not doing everything they can for their children up to and including dying for them, a slow minute-by-minute death of sacrificing their time and energy continually, they do not measure up.
I have little to add to this discussion and great potential to harm it, but I will say this. Among the worse boy scouts in my troop are the ones whose mothers do everything for them.The mothers sincerely think they are doing the right thing. But one of the great functions of scouting is to take boys away from the influence of their parents for a couple days and try to teach them how to start the reverse process. Which is when children end up taking care of parents, it happens to most of us. (The same principle applies to girls, I just don’t have as much personal experience with them.) You can do too much .
So my too-late mother’s day message is to tell your children ( especially if they are approaching teenage or older) that they can fix dinner for you. Or whatever other favor would please you. It is a Sabbath from motherhood.