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We have a total of three children. We had the older two three years apart and the last one is seven years younger than her closest sibling. I wasn’t sure I wanted to have more than two children. When I got a boy first and then a girl, I thought our family was complete: two happy and healthy children, one boy and one girl, three years apart. It was ordered and neat—perfect you may say.

About a week before we were sealed in the Washington, D.C. Temple, my husband (Les) and I were praying together and I thanked Heavenly Father for any children we might be blessed with in the future. As I ended the prayer I had a vision of a little girl in a white dress. I began to cry and my Les asked me what was wrong. I told him I could “see” our little girl.

Although I have the option to have more children, it hasn’t felt right for almost a year. I have had depression in varying degrees my whole life, and also suffer from anxiety and a toxic level of perfectionism. As much as I try to shield my kids, two boys at four and two years old, it’s difficult to do so when it aggravates my symptoms.

There I sat, across from a long time friend at a lunchtime bakery. She was a bit older in mom years than I, but we had cemented a bond through the new years of motherhood when we had met living on a remote tropical island. Together, we had supported our husbands in the anxious early years of career training while we both cloth diapered and made homemade tortillas from necessity.

The decision not to have any more children was supposed to be clear and definite. At least that’s what I had been told. “You will just know” kept resonating in my mind. After having four children and then realizing I should have another, I “knew” I’d be done once that fifth child joined our family. Yet, after our fifth child came, I wasn’t so sure.

Our story started on June 15, 2002 at the Los Angeles temple, where we were sealed for all eternity. We talked about having children pretty quickly due to us already being in our 30’s. After the first year with no luck, I turned to my doctors who ran every test possible. I was told that there was absolutely nothing wrong with me.

My patriarchal blessing promises that I will be a mother, and that many faithful and choice spirits will be sent to my family for me to raise. Ever since I received that blessing as a 17-yr-old girl, I looked forward to the day when I would raise a large, loving family with many children of my own.

We sat on our couch, my head in the crook of his shoulder, and looked at the wall. My bloated stomach pressed against my sweatpants, feeling like it pulsed with my rapid heart beat. I felt the rock of dread in my stomach and I knew, in that instant, that this was going to be my only pregnancy.

I was standing over our large gray trash bin in the backyard. I had just thrown away the green Winnie-the-Pooh umbrella stroller we bought at K-mart when our daughter was born. Was it $9? $12? By now I can’t remember. I do remember that with each baby I pushed in it, I felt more satisfaction at our thrift in making it stretch through all of my children.

Eva Witesman is a professor of public management at BYU, and also serves as an advisor for several non-profit organizations. Her path has surprised her at times, as she has sought revelation from God and made deliberate choices to follow the counsel of the Spirit. She is the mother of four living children (including one adopted daughter), and two children who were born still. She and her husband cooperatively parent as they support each other’s personal pursuits.

Eva Witesman, a professor of public management at the BYU Marriot School of Business, joins Meredith Nelson in this episode. They discuss Eva’s viral BYU devotional, “A Future Only God Could See for You,” which commented on the right each woman has to her own personal revelation regarding her educational or personal path. In this podcast, Eva follows up on some of the ideas in her devotional, and talks more about her own career and family journey.

Making waves may be a stretch, but maybe ripples. Our stake president has typically held a dinner in between stake conference sessions for different groups each time. Once it was high councilors and wives, once it was new converts, once it was bishops and wives. He asked for ideas of others. I immediately piped up that he should invite RS Presidents, YW Presidents and Primary Presidents and husbands. And let them be served instead of making the meals.

When I think back on my leadership experiences, the thing I regret the most is not taking advantage of the opportunity to build better relationships with other women auxiliary leaders. In my current calling as Stake Relief Society President, I have relied on my relationship with the Stake Primary and Young Women’s presidents. I am strengthened by their testimonies, and I have learned from watching their leadership.

Charity Sunshine Tillemann-Dick developed a strong testimony of faith and a love of singing at a very early age. These gifts helped comfort her through the death of loved ones, and saved her own life on multiple occasions. Charity is an opera singer, an author, a recipient of two double lung transplants, a survivor of cancer, and she’s not even 35 years old. She discusses all of this in her new memoir, The Encore: A Memoir in Three Acts. Charity has learned to value the gift

In this episode, Meredith Nelson interviews Rachel Hunt Steenblik about her recently published book, Mother’s Milk: Poems in Search of Heavenly Mother, illustrated by Ashley May Hoiland. Rachel talks about the fading taboo of talking about Heavenly Mother, about her own research and personal searching regarding Mother in Heaven, and about the lovely small poems she wrote to illuminate this searching.