Category Archives: Divinity

The spiritual side of motherhood.

Why I cried three times today, or how a two-year-old can set the universe right again.

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Today has been a hard day.  I lost my wallet, again.  I spent most of the morning looking for it.  My house shows no remaining evidence of the thorough cleaning it received a mere three days ago.  I’ve also been struggling with a silly issue where I’m trying to accomplish something that I know is right, but I’ve felt a lot of opposition and frustration.  That’s been heavy on my mind for the past several days, with my asking myself “Why?” a lot.

I called Matt at work for my daily “hey, have you seen this item I lost?” call, and he even walked out to his car to see if my wallet was there.  No luck.  I felt discouraged, like maybe nothing’s going like it should.  Maybe I just don’t have it together.  Matt suggested to have the kids pray about it (their prayers always help) and he would too.  The boys were at school, so I hung up the phone and looked at little Natalie sitting on the floor playing with her button book.

“Natalie, can you say a prayer for me to help me find my wallet?”

She just kind of looked at me, and then went back to her book.  I turned my head and stared out the living room window.   Feelings of discouragement started to pile up and I felt myself on the verge of tears.  I don’t cry very often, so I just kind of swallowed the feeling and tried to control my emotions.  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Natalie looking up at me from the floor.  She closed her book, climbed up the couch on to my lap, and hugged me.  Hard.  The tears slid quickly down my cheeks.  After a couple minutes, she looked at me and said, “Why are your eyes wet?”

I told her I was a little bit sad because I couldn’t find my wallet, and …

She hopped down, walked over to a chair, climbed up into it and looked at me.

“Where is Heavenly Father?”

“Where is he?  He’s in Heaven?”

“Can we see him?”

“No, we can’t see him right now, but he can see us.”

“How can he see us?”

“Well, because he knows everything.”

“Does he have a telescope?”

“Maybe he does.  I don’t know.”

“Maybe he has a periscope.”

“Maybe.”

Something about her words made me remember that despite all His wonder, He watches us individually.  And I remembered a devotional I attended once where the speaker, who I knew personally and admired,  said this:

“I testify that he who will bring about the universal restoration of all things also brings to pass those intimate restorations that heal our wounds, cleanse our sins, and fulfill divine promises.”

I went into the kitchen to get Natalie’s milk ready for her nap, and while I did, a thought came to my mind.  I went and looked, and I immediately found my wallet.  Tears came back as I realized that this was a testimony that God was mindful of me and my simple problems.

I walked down the hall to tuck Natalie in, and she asked me to read her Llama llama red pajama, one of her favorite stories.

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It’s about baby llama who goes to bed at night and waits for his mom to bring him a drink.  As he waits and waits, he gets scared, then frustrated, then angry, and cries out frantically to his mother.  I’ve read the book probably a hundred times before, but today I felt like it was a parable for me and my Heavenly Father.  So, the tears ran down my face (again!) as I read this page:

Little Llama, don’t you know, Mama Llama loves you so?

Mama Llama’s always near, even if she not right here.

So, yeah, I cried three times today.  I also got a hug, an answer to prayer, and a little insight that maybe, just maybe, Heavenly Father does have a periscope.

This too shall (come to) pass.

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I want to talk about stages of life.

Since early 2003, concepts like “personal space,” “alone time,” and “R&R” have only been dreamed about.  Fantasized, even.  Small children are parasites.  They cling on you, suck the life out of you, and basically consume you– blood, sweat and tears.  Of course, they’re also darling little bundles of spirit and light that shape our souls like nothing else, but that’s not the point of this post.  Mothering small children is hard.

Today was the first day of school in my neck of the woods.  Early this morning, Grant got up and excitedly got ready for his first day of first grade.  He gathered all his stuff (and made a weird face when he was supposed to say cheese).

DSCF0081We all went outside and waited at the neighborhood bus stop with a gaggle of school-goers and their siblings.

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Then we went back inside and began loading up Clark’s backpack with all the goods he would need for his first day of kindergarten, half day in the afternoon.  He and Natalie played nicely together for most of the morning and we had a little lunch and readied him for his big moment.

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He was the most excited about finally riding the bus.

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And he was off.  Natalie and I walked inside and she was ready to begin “Mommy School.”

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We hopped in the car, went to the store, purchased cupcake ingredients, zipped back home, and made pumpkin cupcakes for the boys’ first day after-school snack.

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She finished dumping the batter into cupcake liners, washed her hands, and I put her down for her afternoon nap.

The house was quiet.  I paid bills.  I made phone calls.  I signed up the boys for swimming lessons.  I checked email.  Fifteen minutes before the afternoon bus returned my boys, Natalie woke up from her two-hour nap.  We frosted the cupcakes and went outside to wait for her brothers.

They arrived, happy and excited.

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Natalie proudly shared her surprise.

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They told me about their day, called grandparents and repeated themselves several times, and we took a trip to the library.  Now they’re all in bed, asleep.

It. Was. Awesome.

Ladies and gentlemen, I did it.  I graduated to a new stage.  A stage I thought would never come.  I now have some free time every day.  I have quiet.  I have personal space.  I could take a nap!!

So, I just wanted to bear my testimony that the stages in life you long for really do come. Did I feel a twinge of regret about the things I probably should have done with them, the things I should have taught them better, all those years while they were practically surgically attached to me twenty-four hours a day?  Yes, I won’t lie.  But mostly, I got an unexpected lesson about my stewardship, and realized that with this new stage comes a new level of accountability.  All those important things that have been left undone for years because “there’s just no way” need to become part of my new reality.  Either that, or I’m a hypocrite.  I need to be responsible with the time I’ve been gifted and use it in ways that make me proud and still bless my family.  My “calling” as a mother is still the same, and I need to hold tight to my priorities now more than ever.  I don’t want to waste my new-found freedom.

And some day when I hit other stages, like all my kids at school all day, or they’re off to college, or Matt’s finally retired, my responsibilities will rise to the occasion.  A few scriptures come to mind, including, “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven, ” and “It is not requisite that a [woman] run faster than [she] has strength, … therefore, all things must be done in order.”

So, this is basically a rally-cry to all you Stage One moms:  Stage Two really will come! And to all you Stage Two moms:  Let’s do this right! And to all you Stage Three and Four and Five moms:  I hate you. Just kidding.

The stuff we suffer will pass.  The stuff we hope for will come to pass.  Stages in life are good.  They are tangible markers of the progress of our souls.  I hope I leave a good mark.

“Hopefully you will find joy in your womanhood during all stages of your life.”  — James E. Faust

“The challenges you face, the growth experiences you encounter, are intended to be temporary scenes played out on the stage of a life of continuing peace and happiness. It is your understanding and application of the laws of God that will give your life glorious purpose as you ascend and conquer the difficulties of life.”  — Richard G. Scott

Priorities and empty wells, or why I need blog rehab.

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My inner voice has been nagging me a little bit.  It should.  This quote by M. Russell Ballard has been on my mind lately:

Women-drawing-water-“Water cannot be drawn from an empty well, and if you are not setting aside a little time for what replenishes you, you will have less and less to give to others, even to your children.”

You know how you nag your kids over and over about the same things, and if they would just do it your life (and theirs) would be much easier?  Well, that’s where me and my inner voice are right now, except that I am the disobedient child.  (And by the way, let’s give credit where credit it due:  my inner voice is not that bright; it’s really the Holy Spirit–the way God talks to me when He’s trying to get a message through.)  So I need to do an all-out better job of this replenishing business.  My kids deserve that from me and I deserve it for myself.  But there’s a catch, and I’m just starting to get it.

The word replenish means “to make full or complete again, as by supplying what is lacking, used up, etc.”  (Three cheers for dictionary.com).  For me, the only real way to replenish myself is to read my scriptures and pray more sincerely.  I’ve been allowing myself to get distracted by other things, even good things, and some of that replenishing has been left for the 11:00 p.m.+ hour.  And then, big shocker, I fall asleep.

Here’s my mistake:  I’ve been replacing replenishing with refreshing  (wow, that was very alliterate of me).  Clarification– I’ve been trying to do things that refresh me instead of things that replenish me.  I just figured out that to refresh is kind of like spraying a cool mist in my face, but to replenish is to drink deeply.  One makes me feel better, but the other heals me.  Does that make sense?

Case in point: this blog.  The purpose behind it is to help other moms (and myself) remember and recognize the divinity in motherhood.  It has been a “refreshing” outlet for me, but I cannot achieve its purpose or any of my other purposes if I am not sufficiently “replenished.”  So while things like blogging, or reading a book, or spending a gift certificate on a new pair of shoes might really give me a lift and get me through a rough day, they do not heal me.  I need to go to the source, the living water, if I really want the strength to do what I should do and be who I should be.

Then last month, I was reading an article in the August Ensign about the spiritual dangers of excessive online gaming.  I thought it was interesting in a very I’m-glad-I-don’t-have-that-problem kind of way.  It had a little quiz you could take to determine your level of addiction and I skimmed through it.  It occurred to me that if I replaced “gaming” with blogging or facebooking or dinking around online, I might be in trouble, so I payed more attention.  Behold (and beware) the quiz:

Am I Addicted?

A good measure to use when determining the value of a hobby is if it adds to or takes away from your sense of balance. Healthy activities help you feel revitalized, refreshed, and ready to tackle your challenges. Destructive activities leave you feeling drained and empty inside and less able to cope with the struggles of real life. Destructive activities also tend to leave you feeling compelled to continue rather than feeling in control of your decisions.

Although there is no specific test for addiction to online gaming, the following are factors that, taken together, may indicate an unhealthy involvement or addictive tendency.  [my own edits are in italics]

  • • Do you play compulsively?
  • • Do you play for long periods of time (often longer than you had planned)?
  • • Once online, do you have difficulty stopping?
  • • Do you play as often as you can?
  • • Do you sneak or violate family rules in order to play, even when facing punishment or loss of privileges for doing so? [or try to slip away from activities with your kids so you can check your email?]
  • • When you are not playing, do you obsess about the game, plotting and planning your next opportunity to play?  [do you not pay attention to something happening in your family right now because you’re drafting a blog post in your mind?]
  • • Do you sacrifice real-world things for your online world?
  • • Is your gaming negatively affecting your relationships with family members or other non-gamer friends? For instance, if you are a parent, does it cause you to neglect your children’s needs? If you are a child, does it cause you to distance yourself from your parents and siblings?
  • • Do you consider other online gamers (even those whom you’ve never met in real life) to be among your best friends? [Okay, I actually feel fine about this one because my answer is “yes,” but they are an added blessing to my real-life friends and I think it’s one of the blessings of a blogging community.]
  • • Is your school or work [or housework] suffering because of the time and energy you spend gaming?
  • • Are you having a difficult time [fulfilling your responsibilities like your calling or visiting teaching] because of the extended break from the game that will naturally result?
  • • Do you neglect personal hygiene?
  • • Have your sleep patterns changed since you became involved with online gaming? Are you staying up extremely late or getting up in the middle of the night to play?

So… um… yeah, that hurt a little.  There’s nothing worse than realizing there’s a part of you that’s exactly like the other people you judge (admittedly not right, either).

Anyway, I am recommitting myself to my real priorities.  I love my blog and I’m not going to abandon it; I’m just going to be more focused and come up with strategies to help me prioritize and use moderation.  This other quote from M. Russell Ballard will be my focus:

“Pray, study, and teach the gospel.  Pray deeply about your children and about your role as a mother.”

Anyone care to join me in your own tailored challenge to replenish?

(confession: part of this post is recycled from a year ago, but I needed to hear it again. Oh, and the image is from who.org)

That’s what I said.

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I walked right up to a complete stranger at the swimming pool last week.  She was talking with a girlfriend and I sheepishly interrupted her.  I said,

“This is going to sound really stupid, but I promised myself a while back to never suppress a nice thought.   There are a lot of moms here who are trying really hard to be sexy, supermodel moms, but when you’re out there in the pool playing with your kids and laughing, you’re authentically pretty.”

And I meant it.

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Image Credit

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“The gospel teaches us that true beauty is more than skin-deep. A young woman whose countenance is aglow with both happiness and virtue radiates inner beauty.” — Lynn G. Robbins

“This Light of the Spirit cannot be faked. All of the theater lights and stages and camera trickery and Photoshop manipulation may convince the unaware that artificial light has the same effect. It does not. Artificial light ends with the flipping of a switch. It is merely a backhanded tribute to Light. Christ is the Life and the Light—the Light that lightens hearts through thick and thin.” — Truman G. Madsen


“I can’t help you if you don’t listen.”

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DSCF0006Natalie is a squirmer, and she likes to exert her independence, so everyday when I try to get her dressed, or change her diaper or put on her pajamas, a small battle ensues.  I ask her to come here, and she scampers across the room.  I tell her to lie down, and she wiggles and flops around and giggles.  I tell her to put her arm in her sleeve, and she thinks it’s funny to roll from side to side.  It’s exasperating.  And it gets old fast.  I find myself saying things like this all the time:

“Natalie, I can not help you if you won’t listen.”

“If you’re not obedient, I can’t get you ready.”

“Do you want me to leave and come back and help you when you’re ready?”

The irony of this whole thing is not lost on me.  It makes me think about how much Heavenly Father probably wants to help us, and how it might be so simple to receive that help if we just listened and obeyed.  I can’t help but wonder how often I’m running around doing “my own thing” instead of paying attention to what he’s asking me to, and therefore, missing out of the help I need to do what it is I should do that day.  Spiritually speaking, I need to listen, come when He calls, lay still and let him dress me.

“There is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, uponpredicated— And when we obtain any blessing from God, it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated.” which all blessings are   (D&C 130: 20-21)

“I, the Lord, am bound when ye do what I say; but when ye do not what I say, ye have no promise.” (D&C 82: 10)