Today was kind of a rough day at our house– one of those days where you wonder whether or not your children are going to turn out alright after all. There were tears and time-outs and lots and lots of reminders of rules and expectations. It was not easy to do scripture time tonight, and bedtime was a welcome relief. As I read “Tell Me the Stories of Jesus” by Elder Neil L. Anderson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, I felt so reassured of the lasting impact our instruction can and will have on our children.
“If a child is not listening, don’t despair. Time and truth are on your side. At the right moment, your words will return as if from heaven itself. Your testimony will never leave your children.
As you reverently speak about the Savior—in the car, on the bus, at the dinner table, as you kneel in prayer, during scripture study, or in late-night conversations—the Spirit of the Lord will accompany your words.
As you do your best, the testimony of Jesus will gently distill upon your children’s hearts.”
Share in the comments what you love and learn as you study this talk.
Just the other day, my blog got featured as the best of “hot off the press” on the homepage of WordPress.com. I have no idea how it happened, but it created an insane influx of traffic to Diapers and Divinity. By 8:00 a.m., I had well over 500 hits, and finished out the day at unprecedented numbers. I felt temporarily famous, and it was pretty cool. Most of the feedback was positive, but at 11:00 a.m., I received this comment in my Inbox. I’m assuming the writer had perused the blog and my profile and such. (I edited out one phrase for the sake of decency.)
So you ended up being just a mother.
Just another mother, like a chimp, a cow, an elephant, a whale, just another mother, like an insect, or an octopus, or a worm. Just another mother.
Your kids will not thank you, your husband will not like you, your own mother will pity you for making her own same mistake.
Just another mother.
For a moment of frenzy, of uterine voracity, irrational and irreversible, you destroyed your body, your beauty, and your own intellect.
Parental-brain-atrophy-syndrome, where your brain biologically adjusts to the need of your infants, descending at their own subhuman level, with just one dimension, food, or perhaps two dimensions, food and feces. Continue reading →
I figure we should start off the new year with this rock-star talk from General Conference. Do you remember back in the 80s when Elder Bruce R. McConkie gave that famous testimony of the living Savior just days before he died? Well, this talk by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles ranks right up there as an incredibly powerful testimony; you can’t watch it and not be moved. The talk is called “Safety for the Soul,” wherein he boldly declares the truth of the Book of Mormon as the word of God. The talk was given during the Sunday morning session of the October 2009 General Conference.
(And just in case you randomly landed here by Googling something like “Is the Book of Mormon really true?,” the links in this post take you to a testimony by a living apostle answering the claims by some that the book is a fraud. I add my own witness to his that yes, the Book of Mormon really is true. I encourage you to listen to Elder Holland’s talk, and read the Book of Mormon for yourself. I’m confident that God himself will reveal its truth to you.)
“I want it absolutely clear when I stand before the judgment bar of God that I declared to the world . . . that the Book of Mormon is true.”
“I testify that one cannot come to full faith in this latter-day work—and thereby find the fullest measure of peace and comfort in these, our times—until he or she embraces the divinity of the Book of Mormon and the Lord Jesus Christ, of whom it testifies.”
———–
Thanks to those of you that have faithfully read and even commented as part of our Book Club. If some of you are just joining us as part of a New Year’s Resolution, welcome! (You’ll find details about GCBC here.) And a warm welcome back to other friends who are rejoining us.
Maybe I should have taken a break this week from GCBC, but I figure: What better time than Christmas to focus on the Savior? or what other week of the year needs more extra effort for quiet, peaceful reflection?
So, please join me this week in studying the talk by Elder Robert D. Hales, of the Quorum of Twelve apostles. The talk is called “Seeking to Know God, Our Heavenly Father, and His Son, Jesus Christ,” and is from the Saturday afternoon session of conference. I like how this talk lays out the basic doctrines about the nature of God and His son that we often take for granted, not realizing how powerful and rarely-understood they are. And mostly I loved his closing testimony as I felt the depth of his love for Jesus Christ, and remembered my own.
“The light of belief is within you, waiting to be awakened and intensified by the Spirit of God.”
“I testify that the way to know the truth about God is through the Holy Ghost.”
“With your own testimony of God, you will be able to bless your family, your posterity, your friends, your own life—all those you love.”
You can read it here, or watch it here, or listen here. It’s also on page 29 in the November Ensign. Please share some of your thoughts in the comments after reading the talk.
(Go here if you’d like more information about this General Conference Book Club.)
I really think that someone who understands life as a mother of small children should invent a “stink detector.” Lately, my days have been riddled with phantom odors that I can neither find nor identify. It’s making me crazy. If there were some kind of contraption with a raunch radar that could beep when you’re closer and closer and give you some kind of bacterial analysis and tell you what’s causing the smell, THAT is what I would call making the world a better place.
(Now wasn’t that appetizing?)
Main course:
Matt and I went out on a date last weekend and played this free “game” at Borders. We had 12 minutes to go find a few books that the other person would just love, then we met up, showed each other our books, sat on a couch and perused them. One of the books Matt picked for me was “Mother Teresa, in her own words.” Anyway, I read almost the entire book while Matt flipped through tomes about Chinese characters, the founding fathers, and Native American historical sites. She had so many great things to say, that Mother Teresa, but one that really jumped out at me was this (paraphrased, because I didn’t actually buy the book):
“God doesn’t expect us to be successful. He expects us to be faithful.”
I’ve been thinking about that for days, and how true I think it really is. God can be successful with or without our help; he’s omnipotent for heaven’s sake (no pun intended)! He only needs our faith, our devotion, our heart. Then He can work out our salvation. It made me reflect on how much I’m always trying to “accomplish,” when really I should just be increasing and acting upon my faith in Him. It was a quite liberating moment of enlightenment that ties in nicely to all the thoughts I’ve had recently (and we’ve discussed here in the comments and beyond).
And there was one other thing, too. Mother Teresa worked with lepers and poor people tirelessly. One person commented to her that they wouldn’t touch a leper “for a million dollars,” to which she replied (paraphrased again), “I wouldn’t do it for a million dollars either. I wouldn’t do if for two million dollars. But I would do it for the love of God.” How cool is that? It made me think of how so many women today opt out of motherhood because they wouldn’t make all that hard sacrifice even if someone paid them to do it. I’m no Mother Teresa, but I have to agree that I do the hard things I do because of the love of God… the love I feel for Him, and the love I feel from Him when I do what he asks of me.
Dessert:
Behold, a little Clark video we made to share with grandparents. Please do not tell me what a stellar mother I am, or how I’m doing a great job and all that other nice stuff you might be compelled to say (and that grandmothers are obligated to say), but you really should see this because it is SO sweet. Also, don’t be distracted by the sound of a dropping toilet lid in the background.
This is seriously just a simple case of great kid. (His idea, his testimony, his conviction.)
Diapers and Divinity 