Category Archives: family

Our Hearths

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In my church the women’s organization is called the Relief Society.  There are three main purposes of the Relief Society: 1. Increasing faith and personal righteous, 2. Strengthening families and homes and 3. Serve the Lord and His children.  I want to talk about the third purpose and an experience I had lately.  We have a program called Visiting Teaching.  Every sister in the Relief Society, who wants to, is assigned  other sisters in the ward (name of our local congregations) to look out for.  Once a month we are asked to visit our sisters and take them a spiritual message, we also ask if there are any needs and make sure our sisters know they are loved and that if they need anything they can call us.  It is an organised way of looking out for each other.  Visiting Teachers are the ones who take meals for new babies or sickness, they are a listening ear, help with the lonely and pray for and with our sisters.  It is a powerful program and I have seen many wonderful things come to pass because of visiting teaching.

This month our lesson was “Guardians of the Hearth”.  I loved this lesson, I have a strong testimony of the power of a good woman in her own home, and I know the importance of a righteous woman in her own home.  It was easy to see how this lesson applied to me, I am a mother of young children, and I take the job of building a shelter from the world in my own home seriously.  However, the sister I was gong to visit is an older lady, widowed, with grown children and grandchildren.  I knew this applied to her, but was having a hard time expressing my feeling on how this subject applied to her.  As I pondered how this truth applied to her the thought came to me “we all have different hearths at different times in out lives”.  It occurred to me that  a woman doesn’t have to have children at home to exercise this part of her divine nature: to love and nurture.  In fact a little girl is born with this drive and desire to love and nurture, I have many times seen a small girl pick up a baby doll and love it, without any coaxing.  All woman, young and old have their hearths to guard, depending on the season of their life.  Everyone, our young girls, our youth, the young single adult, the married with and without children, our single sisters and our grandmothers, all have important hearths to guard.

It is part of our Divine Nature

Discounting the Positive

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A couple of days ago punk #2 came home from school in a bad mood.  She is a very easy going person, who rarely gets upset and when she does she is more likely to cry than yell or rage around.  It can be hard, at times, to pick up on her bad moods, because she is so quiet about it, but that day it was obvious, she cried about everything!  When things settled down for the evening I asked her what was bothering her.  At first she couldn’t really say but as we talked some more about her day she realized that she was very upset about her grade on a math test that day.  She missed one point, one point out of one hundred.  Yes, she was upset over one. little. point.

I understood her disapointment, she really wanted to get 100% on this test and she worked hard to do so, however she still got an “A”.  I told how proud we were of her and that she should be pleased with her test, she worked hard and did a very good job.

She still wasn’t happy, “But I wanted it to be perfect,” she told me.

“Katie, you can’t aways be perfect,working hard and doing your best is what matters.”

“But I want to be perfect.”

I went on to explain to her that because she was so focased on perfection that she wasn’t allowing herself to be happy about all the things she does do perfectly.  Sure she missed one point, but she did 99 points perfectly, and that is what she should be thinking and talking about, and she should be proud and happy about those 99 perfect points.  We talked for a little longer, hugged and she went off to bed.  I think she understood what I was trying to say, since then she has told me of times that she caught herself discounting the positive. She is trying (little miss perfect) to stop doing that and focas on the postive.

Later that night I was thinking about our converstation, and I thought about all those times I discount the positives in my life.  Do I focas more on the one thing Dadzoo isn’t doing, and forget the 99 other things he does for me in a day?  Do I worry about that one (or two or three)  chore I didn’t finish durring the day and forget the 99 hugs, kisses and loves I did do during the day?  Do I fret over the one person at church that didn’t say “hi” and forget about the 99 other people who did?  (ok, not really 99 other people, but you get my drift.)

I think it is time I stop discounting all the positive in my life.  Let’s acknowledge the failures and move on celebrating the positives in our lives.

 

Some News

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Dadzoo thought a recent IM conversation we had was so funny he saved a screen shot.  I didn’t think there was anything funny about our conversation, what do you think?

Merry Christmas!

 

 

Beating the Bah Humbug

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I have a hard time with Christmas, I haven’t kept that a secret, I am a full on scrooge.  I usually go through the motions on Christmas, and I do enjoy parts of it, with a smile on my face while inside I am just annoyed with the whole thing!  This year I have spent time pondering on my rotten attitude.  Why do I dislike this season so much when so many other people love and enjoy this time of year?  I have come to the conclusion that there are two main issues I have with the Christmas season, the first being; all the time, money and hassle, the second;  gluttony.  I also came to the conclusion that if I ever wanted to enjoy this season I needed a major attitude adjustment.

Christmas does require a lot of work, time and money.  I do have some control over this.  I can’t control the amounts of parties and programs that I will be expected to attend, most of the time.  I can’t control all the 1$ and 5$ gifts that me and my children are asked to bring to these functions, I honestly feel that white elephant gift exchanges or even the small gift exchanges are are waste of money.  I know white elephant gift exchanges are fun, but I really don’t like to bring other peoples junk home and there are other ways to have fun.  Also doing a small gift exchange, where everyone bring a 1$ gift (especially in a childrens groups) can make people feel uncomfortable and hurt.  Recently two of my daughters participated in one, one of my girls didn’t get her gift picked up and she was so hurt that no one wanted what she had brought.  Why do we set people, especially children, up for this kind of hurt all for the sake of getting a gift?  There are other ways to have fun, and I think those girls would have been more enriched had they done a service project for Christmas and give to those in need, instead of a gift exchange of items that no one really needed and some people didn’t even want.  (O.K. getting off that soap box). 

However….

Just because there is some small aspect of a Christmas gathering I don’t like doesn’t mean I need to ban parties all together or just endure the whole thing.  I will never change this idea that we have to be giving and getting junk gifts to have a good time, but I can focus on the other activities that are good and enriching.  Being with the people we love, listening to them, loving them, rejoicing in their triumph and sorrowing in the hard times.  That is truly gift giving, that is what matters, what lasts and what heals hearts.  In my experience there is usually some kind of service going on, usually a box in the corner to deposit canned food to give to some charity.  This is good.  In the past I have grabbed some canned good as we were running out the door, not thinking much about what I was doing, almost grudgingly.  I wonder if the giving of canned goods couldn’t be made into a bigger part of my party preparations.  I don’t know exactly how I would do that with my children, maybe take them shopping with a budget and have them pick out the food?  I do think that we need to be careful in public setting with that kind of a service project.  Recently a dear person was unable to bring canned goods to a party and it was pointed out, that they hadn’t brought anything.  She didn’t say anything and it was dropped, but I know she felt bad, this year had been terrible for her and her family financially, she later said to me “people are giving me money, and helping me out for Christmas, I didn’t feel like I could give away the little I had, and then require more help”.  She was distressed, feeling like she wasn’t serving, I told her that she always has time, and right now being a good friend and loving people and giving of time was enough, and is in fact the greatest service of all.  I wonder, had we all pooled the money spent on our 5$ gifts and given it to her for medical bills, would we all not have been more enriched than we were by a 5$ tin of cookies.  Just a thought.

Last night I participated in an youth activity.  We went caroling and delivered baskets of food to the needy in our neighborhood.  It was a nice activity, full of service, those youth gave of their time to give to others.  I don’t know how needed the food was in those baskets, but I do know that there are families, and single adults and the sick who know that a group of people took time out of their busy lives, in the freezing cold for them.  And that is what the spirit of Christmas and giving is all about.  Giving of our time, our love, our lives to lift others up, when we focus on that and think nothing of  receiving and being entertained, that is how we combat the bah humbug and let our hearts grow and enjoy this Christmas season.