Children,Church,Lessons Learned

Sunday Mornings

posted on : April 19, 2018 posted by : Somethingsihavelearned 2 Comments

Sunday mornings at our house were always hectic and chaotic while trying to get everyone ready for church.  My husband usually had church responsibilities that took him away from home Sunday mornings and it always seemed I had a new baby or was pregnant a good many of those crazy years, which meant I was extra tired!  Somehow we always had the 9:00 church schedule when I had a new baby which added to the difficulty of getting there on time and since my babies always nursed every two hours I had to feed a baby twice before actually getting out of the door.  It was stressful but I found a few things that helped Sunday mornings to go a little smoother.  Most of the time I got up earlier than my children and got myself ready in the quiet of the morning, and that left me free to  help my children after I got them up.  I usually made a simple breakfast which helped entice my non-morning children to get up, and I didn’t worry about cleaning up until after we got home from church.  After church I confiscated socks and shoes and put them away so they would be easy to find the following week, which actually worked most of the time.  Any older child that was ready was assigned to brush the hair of a younger brother or sister and help get his or her shoes and socks on them.  I read once that it sometimes helped to have your children pick out their clothes the night before and I tried this and found my kids changed their minds by morning, so it didn’t work so great for me.  The biggest thing I did to help everyone be ready on time was to set my ready-by time one half hour before church began.  So if church began at 9:00 I tried to be ready by 8:30 which then gave me time to look for lost shoes, missing ties and deal with any problems that came up.  One time one of my daughters had a talk to give and had gone outside after she was ready for church and had taken her talk with her.  She set it down outside somewhere on our 4 acres and couldn’t remember where she had put it.  That half hour even gave me time to deal with that as we frantically looked for, found her talk and got to church on time.  I think one of the reasons I tried so hard to be on time was that I was aware we were a large group and caused a commotion when we entered late, which detracted from the reverence of the meeting.  I also felt quite of bit of stress to be on time and if we were running late I found myself yelling at everyone to hurry up which is ironic to go to church yelling at your kids. It doesn’t do much to create feelings of reverence and love to enter the building having been yelled at.  Most of all, I really liked having about 10 minutes to enjoy the music and shift my thinking from chaos to reverence and focusing on the sacrament.  It didn’t always work and sometimes no matter what I did there were bad mornings where nothing seemed to go right.  But the sweet thing was that most of the time it did work.

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A No Thank You Bite

posted on : April 16, 2018 posted by : Somethingsihavelearned 0 Comment

At dinnertime, when my older children were younger, any food that looked out of the ordinary or different would immediately provoke a comment such as “I don’t like that” or “can I have cereal instead?”  Of course we would always respond “you’ve never even tried it so how do you know you don’t like it” and then a battle would happen with frustrated parents and crying kids.  Since I like to cook and often tried new recipes this was an ongoing occurrence.  One day we got smart and  introduced the “no thank you bite.”  If someone didn’t want to try something new, or even some of the suspicious looking foods I fixed that weren’t new, they would have to take a “no thank you bite.”  One bite and then if they didn’t like it, they didn’t have to eat it-no snide comments or probing questions asked. At first it was kind of a battle to get them to go along with it but as they tried things and said they didn’t like them, we just thanked them for trying the item and let the matter drop.  The process became much easier, and the battles and coaxing stopped and we found that about 90% of the time they ended up liking the new food they tried.  This became reinforcing, so it was no longer difficult to get them to try something new and of course as other kids came along this system was already in place and followed their siblings example.  My kids became adventurous eaters even trying new and different things in restaurants, sometimes trying things that looked even suspicious to me!  I knew we had been successful with this when one day a friend of mine observed “your kids will eat anything!”

Faith,Lessons Learned

Diligence

posted on : April 12, 2018 posted by : Somethingsihavelearned 0 Comment

I have a 16-year-old daughter with Down Syndrome.  She is an amazing person who was born with faith and when I tell her something, she believes me.  She loves going to church and participating in Sunday School and Young Women’s classes, and she takes seminary classes through her high school.  She always reminds me to do family scriptures and prayer and I know she reads her scriptures on her own and says her prayers each night, and she always remembers to ask for a blessing on her food- even in a restaurant.  Sometimes after she gets home from school when she’s had seminary or after a Sunday School class I will ask her what the lesson was about or something that she learned.  Her reply is always said with a little frustration “I don’t know.”  I can ask her several questions to try to prompt her memory but she genuinely doesn’t know what was talked about.  In some ways it’s even more remarkable that she persists in doing these righteous behaviors since she doesn’t remember what she’s taught or read. I have thought about her diligence in attending these classes and doing her own personal reading and remember the scripture in the Bible from John 14:26 which says in part “…the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance…”  The knowledge is in there and some day, because of her diligence, she will have all things brought to her remembrance through the Holy Ghost.

Faith,Lessons Learned

Obedience

posted on : April 10, 2018 posted by : Somethingsihavelearned 0 Comment

I remember a time when I was young sitting in my family’s car with my brother and poking him with my finger just to annoy him.  I was probably about 10 and he was about 8 years old.  Of course my brother complained to my mother, who was driving our car, and she told me to quit poking him with my finger.  So I started poking him with my elbow and of course he complained again and of course she told me to quit poking him with my elbow.  Then I went to pinching him, and then to hitting him with my leg and anything else I could think of to be annoying while still being “obedient.”  I was having a lot of fun playing the game of being obedient but not really obedient, because I was doing what my mom said while still trying to get around it.  Since then I have learned the difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law and doing something to be obedient and doing something because I love God.  Too often even now I do things because they are right to do, not because I love God and want to serve Him and show my love through obedience. And although it’s better to be obedient and do something that is right than to not do it, it’s even better to do something because of my love for my Savior.  I recognize that obedience as well as other gospel principles and doctrines really require giving my heart to God for me to get the most out of them and so really  serving God with my heart and being obedient out of love benefits me the most.

Lessons Learned,Life

Motorcycles and Life

posted on : April 2, 2018 posted by : Somethingsihavelearned 0 Comment

Many years ago I had a friend who rode his motorcycle from Minnesota to Provo, Utah to go to school at BYU.  He did it to save money on gas and to get his bike to school, and he said that while he was driving to school no matter what was going on he had to stay on the bike. He rode in rain, wind, heat as well as pleasant weather. He rode when cars passed him and splashed water or mud on him.  He rode when his body was stiff and sore and he was tired of sitting on the bike, and when he wanted to sightsee.  His goal was to get to school in a certain time frame so he had to keep on riding no matter what.  Obviously I have thought about that over the years and how it compares to life, and even though I don’t have the same time crunch, I really need to keep on going no matter the circumstances, no matter what life throws at me.  Of course sometimes it’s a pleasant ride and life seems good. But sometimes life is hard and I would like to curl up in a ball and hide until it’s all better. Sometimes it’s not going to get better soon, so I need to remember my goals and where I am going, I need to keep making good choices and loving people, I need to stay on the bike.

 

 

Life

Doing What I’m Suppose To Be Doing

posted on : March 29, 2018 posted by : Somethingsihavelearned 0 Comment

I went to graduate school with some amazing women.  Since we have graduated over 30 years ago these women have done great things in the world to make it a better place for others.  After graduating one of them started the Families in Crisis Center in our area and later she went to Law School and combined the two degrees to become an international expert on adoptions and helped countries write their adoption policies.  She became a professor at an university and took students to Africa every summer to help the people on that continent.  Another of the women I went to school with went on to get her PhD in Marriage and Family Therapy and worked with  LDS Social Services to help developing countries set up their foster care systems.  Later she became the vice president of student life at an university helping many people succeed in college life.  Both of these women were my good friends in grad school and I admire and respect them greatly.  After grad school I worked for a short while, got married and started having children and became a stay-at-home-mom.  Sometimes when I looked at the accomplishments and the good these two women have done, about 2% of me feels a little sad and disappointed in myself for not doing great and wonderful things to make the world a better place. But at the same time, there’s a quiet voice that reassures me that I’m doing what I’m suppose to be doing.  I have learned that there are different ways to make the world a better place, some grand and on a large scale and others on a much smaller scale such as quietly serving my family and neighborhood.  All contribute to a better world. Overall, I have been content with my place in the universe.

Lessons Learned

Rose Bushes and Ziplock Bags

posted on : March 26, 2018 posted by : Somethingsihavelearned 0 Comment

There is a quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln that I particularly like: “We can complain because rose bushes have thorns or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”  It reminds me that life is how you look at it and perspective can make all of the difference.  When my husband and I had been married only a few years and money was very tight and I would wash and reuse ziplock bags over and over again.  I hated washing them and having them out to dry and I looked forward to the day when I could afford to buy ziplock bags and just throw them away after I had used them.  Fast forward several years and the day did come when I could just toss them after using them, but then recycling became fashionable and I found myself washing bags and reusing them so I could be ecologically minded and help save the planet.  Funny thing is I didn’t mind washing and reusing them then, in fact I even felt good about myself and my effort to be a conservationist.  Nothing had changed but my attitude and in reflecting upon this I have wondered how many other situations I could have improved by changing my attitude. There are many things I have little control over but I always have control over my attitude and perspective.

Children,Lessons Learned

The Black Eye

posted on : March 22, 2018 posted by : Somethingsihavelearned 0 Comment

When my oldest daughter was 4 years old she got hit in her eye.  I don’t even remember how she got hit or exactly what happened, but I remember telling her that she was going to get a black eye and then we put a cold wash cloth on it to help with the swelling.  She was very upset, wailing that she didn’t want a black eye.  I reassured her it would be fine and not to worry about it but that it was definitely going to turn black.  She went to bed that night still very upset, and the next morning she came running into my bedroom with a very bruised eye.  She jumped up on my bed and very excitedly said “Mom, I looked in the mirror and my eye’s not black, it’s still green.”  What was so obvious to me was not so obvious to her at all.  I had no clue that she didn’t know what a black eye was and that she thought I meant the color of her eye was going to change.  I’d like to say that was the last time I thought I was communicating clearly only to find out later that I wasn’t, but I have gotten better over the years at clarifying, asking questions, trying to understand and to be understood.  It’s always a work in progress but it helps when I remember this incident of the ‘Black Eye.’

Faith,Lessons Learned

The Answers to Life’s Questions

posted on : March 19, 2018 posted by : Somethingsihavelearned 0 Comment

Any time I have had a question or a big decision to make I have found my answer by reading my scriptures. Many years ago my husband and I were trying to decide about buying a house.  It would entail taking on considerable debt, and debt scared me then and still does now, and also leaving a house we had just finished remodeling and I thought was about perfect. We had put a ton of work into the yard and it seemed a little like the garden of Eden to me.  We had managed to get the house and the yard just about perfect for us. The new house we were considering was on 4 acres of land and had a nice barn on it.  For years my husband and I had talked about finding a home on some land for us to spread out on.  He had grown up on a couple of acres of land and had great memories of building forts and climbing trees and other kinds of things kids like to do.  He wanted the same thing for our kids, and he really liked the barn.  It would give him a place to build things, something he loved doing. The house was nice and would give us extra room for our large family.  It was a hard decision to make but we decided to put an offer on the house and as usual I turned to my scriptures to receive confirmation or not as I prayed fervently.  This time though I thought “there’s no scripture that says go buy a house or don’t buy a house” so I thought my prayers would have to be answered some other way.  I continued to study my scriptures hoping that I would receive my answer by immersing myself in spiritual things.  One day as I was studying I came across a verse in D&C 45:65 which says in part “gather up your riches that ye may purchase an inheritance” and the print seemed five times the size of the other print and I felt the confirmation that the decision to buy the house was the correct one, which to me is always an amazing process to me.  It amazes me because it is an overwhelming concept that God knows who I am, and can and will answer my individual prayers. It was a great relief to get an answer and to know we were on the right track.  I also learned that there is a scripture that says “go buy a house” and that the scriptures provide the answers to all of the questions of life!

Family,Lessons Learned

A Magic Wand

posted on : March 15, 2018 posted by : Somethingsihavelearned 0 Comment

If I could wave a magic wand and undo some things, one of the things I would undo would be how I handled the dishes after dinner when my kids were teenagers.  In my mind my kids were busy with homework and other equally important activities so after dinner I would usually clean off the table and do the dishes.  They had their after school jobs already done and I thought I was facilitating getting homework done. In reality I was teaching them to be oblivious to cleaning up after dinner. Even as adults, after family dinners they would leave the kitchen and gather in the family room to visit and play games. I would start cleaning up already tired from food prep and cooking for a large group while hearing laughter and talking and fun going on.  If I asked for help someone would gladly come in and do one thing and then go back to the group. At first I was upset by this but since these kids of mine are usually kind and helpful people, I thought about it and decided that it didn’t even occur to anyone to help clean up, and it was because I had trained them to be oblivious.  After discussing the situation, everyone has been much better at helping clean up, with bringing food and working together, and now there’s laughter and talking and fun going on while we’re cleaning up from dinner. Hmmm, maybe I do have a magic wand after all!