I cannot use a vegetable slicer. I’ve never been hurt by one, nor have I seen anyone get hurt, yet whenever I see it, a strange fear grips me—as if it might cut my hand. For that reason, I’ve never used a vegetable slicer even once.
One day, while grocery shopping, I told my mom about this. Then I heard an astonishing story. When my mom was pregnant with me, she was seriously injured while using a vegetable slicer. She cut her hand deeply and bled a lot. She had to go to the hospital to get the wound stitched, but because she was pregnant, she could not be given any medication. She endured the treatment without anesthesia. My mom said she sometimes wonders if the pain she suffered then was somehow passed on to me in her womb. Perhaps that is why—even now, as an adult—I cannot bring myself to use a vegetable slicer. Maybe the memory of that moment still lingers in my unconscious mind.
As my mom said, it may be that I, who have never even touched a vegetable slicer, feel fear toward it because of the pain I shared with her in the womb. The thought that I felt my mother’s pain as a fetus and still remember it unconsciously even as an adult feels like a mysterious bond between mother and child—one that no study in this world can fully explain.
I believe that the relationship between mother and child is God’s providence to help us realize our relationship with God. If we are children of Heavenly Mother, then when Mother is in pain, we must also feel sorrow, and when Mother is grieved, we must share in Her suffering. Yet even after being called as a child of God, I did not truly consider Mother’s pain. I looked upon Her sorrow as though it were someone else’s concern. I lived forgetting that Mother personally came to this earth for us and bore the sufferings we should have endured. As a sinner of heaven, I was busy trying to avoid hardship, always seeking only the easy path.
As children of Mother, to share in Her pain and participate in Her suffering is, I believe, the very proof that we are Her true children—the spiritual bond that connects us to Her. I offer infinite thanks to Mother, who has sacrificed Her entire life for Her children, who has waited patiently until now, and who has endlessly loved us. From now on, I will be a child who sorrows and rejoices together with Mother, sharing in both the suffering and the glory of the gospel.