What does it take to be a mother.

A friend of mine sent me an email asking for help with a young women's lesson. She was having an activity about mothers and wanted to know what qualities make a good mother.

Many have said more about this topic and much more eloquently, but this is what I came up with in the few short minutes I had to form a reply.

Being a mother is the hardest job on earth.

You need patience to keep from strangling your kids when they pour a gallon of oil on your kitchen floor.

You need courage to kill bugs or feed snakes or watch your kids walk into kindergarten the first day knowing they have to do it alone.

You need stamina to survive on 4 hours of sleep and one shower a week when your kids are newborns, and then you need it to get them to seminary or wait up for them to come home when they are teenagers.

You need communication skills,to talk baby talk or princess talk or text talk.

You need the ability to laugh when you want to cry and hope when all seems hopeless.

You need to be able to love the unlovable, soothe the unsoothable, and feed the child with a endless hunger.

You must stretch a dollar farther than elastoman.

You must be able to make a princess costume from three sequins, 2 pipe cleaners, and a bed sheet.

You must be a cheerleader to cheer your child on whether to victory or defeat.

In total it seems like an impossible job, but somehow, by doing the best you can your kids manage to grow up in spite of you and the many mistakes you make.

So what would your answer be to the question "What qualities do good mothers have?"