My Thoughts

So, yesterday Michael gave Kolby and Eli each a “father’s blessing” as they are about to start school. For our friends who are not familiar with this, I’ll try to explain a little bit. In our church worthy men hold the priesthood, which gives them the ability to be an instrument in God’s hands. One of the responsibilities of priesthood holders is to give blessings to those in need. They can give blessings to the sick or blessings of comfort. They are acting for God, so if the priesthood holder is worthy and receptive to the Spirit of God, the blessing comes from God, not from the person giving the blessing.

So, yesterday we decided that Michael would give the boys a blessing of comfort before starting school, and then the younger boys each wanted one too. Afterwards, Michael asked if I wanted a blessing, and so he gave me one. And I just thought that it’s so perfect – that God knows me and knows what is important to me in my life. There have been a few times lately that I’ve felt a little frustrated with all the work of taking care of our boys (and cleaning up their messes and repairing the damage they’ve caused around the house).

And last month I went to a good meeting for the women at our church where one person in particular spoke about how to increase the spirituality in our lives, which I sometimes feel like I struggle with because of my lack of time for anything other than taking care of the boys and attempting to keep our household running. That night the speaker referred to an article in a recent church publication that discussed ways to increase our spirituality, where the author suggested having a morning devotional including prayer, meditation, and scripture study. In the article, it even mentioned a young mother with six children who the author counseled to wait until her husband left for work and her kids left for school and find a quiet place in the house to have this devotional. That sounded like a good idea to me, except for the fact that in my life I often go for days at a time before I have more than just a moment when I’m alone – especially a moment in the morning, when I don’t have to worry about falling asleep, like I do in the evening after the kids have gone to bed.

But I have been trying lately. For a while I have struggled with my scripture study – feeling like I don’t have enough time, not feeling motivated to study, not being able to follow through with a study plan that I started, or just forgetting altogether. But when I first moved here there was a lesson in one of my church classes that discussed a topic I had never really thought much about: the hymns. Our church has a hymn book of songs about gospel topics, and I have a small copy of the hymn book that I keep with my scriptures. I have sung the hymns at church all my life and am familiar with many of the more common ones, but the thing that was discussed in church that day was that the hymn book could be studied as you study the scriptures. In the hymn book there are scripture references for each song. So, I decided that day to start each morning by reading one song from the hymn book, and then reading the couple of scriptures that are referred to for that song while I have breakfast in the morning. Although I’m not reading chapters of scripture at a time, I am making more progress than I was before, and I’ve been successful at doing this not every single day, but at least much more regularly than I’d been studying before that.

So, when I went to that women’s meeting and the speaker talked about having a morning devotional, I felt good that I was at least making an effort, although many mornings I spend more time telling the boys that mommy needs to read than doing the actual reading, but I’d been trying.

Anyways, when I had that blessing last night one thing that Michael said really stood out to me. He was talking about me caring for our boys, and his words were, there will be “angels to help carry your burdens.” I just thought that was amazing – a couple weeks ago I was feeling so frustrated with the boys one day that everything seemed like it had gone wrong, and while I was feeling especially down I wondered how I’d ever be able to raise them to be good people when they grow up. I had since started to feel better and improved my attitude about the boys’ behavior, but it’s still hard sometimes to deal with all of them when they are being difficult, or just to try to get all of the everyday things done that need to be done when I have so many “little helpers” hanging on my legs. So when I got that blessing, it was really significant to me. My thought it that I can try as hard as I can to do all that needs to be done, and if it gets too hard for me, I will have help.

So, this morning I was reading the hymn book, and I came to hymn number 43, ‘Zion Stands with Hills Surrounded,’ which is a song that I am not familiar with. The third verse of this hymn says, “In the furnace God may prove thee, Thence to bring thee forth more bright, But can never cease to love thee; Thou art precious in his sight. God is with thee, God is with thee; Thou shalt triumph in his might.” Wow. I think that only went to confirm what I had learned from the blessing the night before – that God is mindful of me and what is important to me, and although life won’t always be easy, I will have the support I need to get through the rough spots here and there. It really is such a comfort to be a member of a church that teaches such comforting truths.