Come Listen to a Prophet's Voice

This weekend was the 179th semi-annual conference for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We got to spend 10 hours (counting last Saturday's session for the women, and this Saturday's session for the men), being spiritually fed by the leaders of our church. Conference Weekend is always something that I look forward to with anticipation and am sad to see it end. This weekend was no exception. I don't have much time to expound right now, but I just wanted to share a few of my thoughts from this Conference.

There were two over-arching messages that I took from this Conference. The first was the importance of personal revelation from the Lord in our lives. So many of the messages seemed to emphasize our need to learn to receive and rely upon insight from the Holy Ghost. Heavenly Father has given us a marvelous gift to allow us to know His will for us in our lives, and to ultimately help us to return to Him someday. It is vital that we learn how to use it to guide us through our earthly journey. The second main message I left with was the necessity of teaching our children. We can't leave anything to chance in the raising of our children, if we want them to be able to grow up faithful in this increasingly troubled world. The talk by Elder Christofferson in Sunday afternoon's session was one of my favorites. In it he warned us of the need to provide constant daily spiritual experiences for our children. He cautioned that "the adversary is not neutral in his approach with our children" so we can not afford to be neutral in our teachings of our children.

I also thoroughly loved President Thomas S. Monson's Sunday Morning talk. It was all about service. The main message of the Savior's earthly ministry was of love and service. If we are to be true disciples of Him, we must learn to love and serve our fellow-men. Service and love seem to be the legacy of President Monson's life as well. I feel a renewed desire to find ways to serve others around me more often and to help my children to do so as well.

I love conference. I love the opportunity it gives me to gain insight into the areas I need to improve on in my life right now. I love that the "main messages" others received from this conference will be different that what I received because of what the Spirit emphasizes to each of us as the most important things for us to learn and do to help us become what we need to be right now. I love that Heavenly Father still loves and speaks to us and has provided a Prophet to lead His children today as He did in the past. I love the peace and hope I feel as I hear the words of the Lord's chosen servants. I can't wait to re-read and ponder all that was said this weekend. Until then, if you want to listen to it, you can go here.

Lessons From the Garden

School is out! Our whirlwind Family-Reunion trip to Yellowstone is over. I'm officially done teaching piano lessons for the summer! Now that the commotion is settled a bit, it's time to try to organize our crazy life. This week we are focusing on weeding our back-yard gardens. They have been somewhat neglected in this last month's push to get everything done. The kids have been troopers, weeding every morning for an hour or two.

Today was our fourth day working in the yard and with the heat of summer finally arriving, it was a bit harder getting I-mac motivated to work this morning. I had been thinking about how, even though our yard still needs a lot of work, because of the efforts we have made this spring, it looks so much better than it did last year. I thought about how that was like life, we are never perfect, but the more we work at improving, the better we get, and the easier it gets to do what we should. I thought I would entice I-mac to work by asking him to help me think of ways that gardening is like life. Believe it or not, there is little he likes more than philosophizing about life with an interested adult. My enticement worked and he was soon working beside me, enlightening me with his insights into weeds and life. Here are some of the lessons I learned from him today:

1. We are the plants. Like plants, we need good things in our life to help us grow and become what we need to be. Some of those good things include reading the scriptures, praying, going to church and making good choices.

2. Weeds are like sin. When they come into our life they choke out the good things in our life. If we don't get rid of them they will eventually kill us (spiritually speaking). Some weeds (ie. sins) are harder to get rid of than others. It's important to get rid of them when they are little or they can be nearly impossible to get rid of later. Morning glory is easy to pull, but it grows fast and quickly chokes out the plants. I-mac thought this was like t.v. or other things that aren't necessarily sins, but don't really help us to be better. When we do them too much they cover up who we really are and it is hard for us to choose to do the good things we need to grow.

3. Weeding is like repenting. As we repent, we remove the bad things from our life. We can't do the weeding ourselves, we have to turn to the Savior for repentance. He is like the gardener in our life. He fills us with the good, and allows us to get rid of the bad. It is important to get the roots out or the weed will just keep coming back. This is the part of the repentance process where we turn from our sin and promise never to do it again.

4. The soil is like the gospel. Plants in good soil, grow stronger and bigger, and the weeds are easier to get rid of. These are people with the gospel in their life. Plants in poor soil are smaller and the weeds are really hard to pull. These are the people without the gospel.

These are just a few of the ideas that he shared. This kid never ceases to amaze me. He thinks so deeply. He often comes up with things that I never thought of before. What a blessing it is to be taught by our children.

Always Serene

Madonna Del Granduca by Raphael

I have probably mentioned before that I love Charlotte Mason's philosophy of education. She places a lot of emphasis on atmosphere being vital for a child's education. I have been thinking a lot lately about how to improve the atmosphere in our home and recently came across this quote from Charlotte Mason's School Education, the third volume of her Home Education series. This idea really resonated with me, it is a long quote, but very worthwhile, so bear with me.

“It is not for nothing that the old painters, however diverse their ideas in other
matters, all fixed upon one quality as proper to the pattern Mother. The Madonna,
no matter out of whose canvas she looks at you, is always serene. This is a great truth,
and we should do well to hang our walls with the Madonnas of all the early Masters if
the lesson, taught through the eye, would reach with calming influence to the heart. Is
this a hard saying for mothers in these anxious and troubled days? It may be hard, but
it is not unsympathetic. If mothers could learn to do for themselves what they do for
their children when these are overdone, we should have happier households. Let the
mother go out to play! If she would only have courage to let everything go when life
becomes too tense, and just take a day, or half a day,
• out in the fields,
• or with a favourite book,
• or in a picture gallery looking long and well at just two or three pictures,
• or in bed,
without the children, life would go on far more happily for both children and
parents”

Virgin of the Lillies by Bouguereau

I realized long ago that the oft quoted saying "If mamma aint happy, aint nobody happy." was more than a trite phrase. There is much truth in this saying. I know that I hold the key to the emotional atmosphere in our home. Too often though I am anything but serene. I tend to stress out when there is too much going on, and there is almost always too much going on in our lives. This is something I have been praying for help with for quite some time. I do think I have seen some improvement and I hope it continues.

The Sketch of the Head of Madonna by Leonardo Da Vinci

I decided to search for paintings of Mary and have included some of my favorites here. My two favorites are probably The Virgin of the Lillies; it is just so beautiful and truly "serene", and the sketch by DaVinci because she looks so tender and full of love. It was true, that in all the many paintings I looked at of Mary, the adjective that would best describe Mary's disposition is serene. Now I realize that these are just paintings, and we don't know that Mary was truly always serene, but I believe in the ideal. I know that we may never achieve the ideal in this life, but it is important to have that goal to reach for. I believe that the closer we can get to that ideal the better and happier we will be.

The Madonna and Child by J0rg Breu the Younger

I love the idea of surrounding ourselves with the ideal so that "the lesson, taught through the eye, will reach with calming influence to the heart." I think that is why the leaders of our church stress the importance of having pictures of the Savior and The Temple on the walls of our home. I also think that is why it is important to read as many uplifting books and articles on the ideals of motherhood as we can. I recently reread one of my favorite talks on motherhood by Julie Beck called "Mothers Who Know". There are many things she talks about that I know I am falling short on, but I love her talk because it paints the picture of the ideal mother and gives me something to work toward.

The Nativity by Carl Heinrich Bloch

I also see the wisdom in "going out to play!" It is important to find joy in life. Finding time to do those things that fill our reservoirs is necessary for keeping our sanity. Spending time with a good book, enjoying the peace and tranquility of nature, and riding my bike are all things that help fill me up and give me the energy to keep doing the things I need to to be a good mom. I also think that in this day and age too many parents spend too much time focusing on "me time" and too little thinking about what is best for their children. It is a difficult balancing act. One I am always trying to discern if I've got right. I think sometimes when "life becomes too tense" it is also good to "just take a day, or half a day,
• out in the fields,
• or with a favourite book,
• or in a picture gallery looking long and well at just two or three pictures,
• or in bed,
with the children." Sometimes what we really need is to reconnect with our children and strengthen our relationships with them. Go out and play with them! When we do that it can help remind us of the joy of being a mother and give us the energy we need to keep doing all the many little things that are required to keep our homes and children "running smoothly".

Madonna Adoring the Child with Five Angels by Sandro Bottecelli

Hopefully as I strive for balance, working toward the ideal, relying on the help of the Lord, I can become at least a more serene mother, if not "always serene".

Character Training

Ever since I began homeschooling I have heard quite a bit about "character training".  All the homeschooling books talk about it, there are even entire character curriculum's out there that you can purchase.  I have never really worried about it though because I felt that our scripture study and family home evenings were covering that material.  A few months ago I read a book called "Help for the Harried Homeschooler"   and the section on character training really impacted me.  I realized that I had a very specific set of goals for my children's academics, but I was leaving their character education somewhat to chance.  I decided to make a list of Character traits found in the scriptures that I wanted my children to develop in their lives and then we would spend one week to one month focusing on that trait.  Here is the list I came up with:

From the 13th Article of Faith

-Honest

-True (Integrity)

-Chaste

-Benevolent

-Virtuous

-Doing good to all men (Service)

D&C 4

-Faith

-Hope

-Charity

-Love

-Eye single to the glory of God

-Virtue

-Knowledge

-Temperance

-Patience

-Brotherly Kindness

-Godliness

-Humility

-Diligence

President Hinkley's Be's

-Grateful

-Smart

-Clean

-True

-Humble

-Prayerful

-Positive

-Still

-Involved

We decided to start with President Hinkley's Be's.  The plan is that when we first introduce the virtue we will be focusing on we read what President Hinkley had to say about it from Way to Be! in our morning devotional.  Then each day for the next couple of weeks (depending on how long it takes for the principle to sink in) we will memorize a scripture or two about that virtue and read stories or poems about it each morning in our devotional.  

We have made it all the way to Be True so far and I think it has really been beneficial for our family.  We have had some good discussions and been able to focus more specifically on areas we need to improve on.  Over the next few days I will try to share some of the scripture and story resources I have found to go along with each of these character traits. It is quite easy to do though.  I just search on lds.org for the virtue we are studying and use the resources that are most applicable to our family.  This has been one of those things that I have wondered why I didn't think of it sooner.  Oh well, better late than never, right?

  

Book Reviews

I thought I would review the books I have finished so far for my 999 challenge.  

The first book was a family read-aloud, The Wheel on the School.  We loved this book!  It was a wonderful story of how a dream can become a reality if we dare to believe in it and are willing to work hard to make it happen.  It illustrates the beauty of human relationships and the fact that we all need each other and everyone has something to give.  It was also just a wonderfully written, fun, and often suspenseful story.  I highly recommend this book.

The next two books were Honey for a Child's Heart, and Honey for a Woman's Heart.  These were both books about books, one of my favorite subjects. =)  The author of these books, Gladys Hunt, shares my heart for reading.  Throughout the books she gives reading recommendations, but she intersperses these suggestions with thoughts about books that capture my feelings for them and the joy they bring to my life perfectly.  Two of my favorite quotes from a Child's Heart were, "Books are no substitute for life, but a keener pleasure comes to life because of books."  So true!  In speaking about the value of good books for children she says, "...by continual exposure to a variety of people and experiences, (in books) the real values of life are taught most profoundly.  What we are doing is helping our children collect "bits of perfection" of ideas and values on which to build their lives."  I couldn't agree more.  Aren't books wonderful!

Just after beginning this post I had a fun experience with books that I just had to share.  G. Diddy was having a rather trying day.  One thing after another was causing him to burst into tears.  I tried sending him to bed for a nap, but that wasn't going to fly, so I had the thought that I should go in and read with him on my bed.  I picked "Where the Wild Things Are", and "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day".  They seemed to fit his mood for the day.  First I read "Where the Wild Things Are".  He enjoyed it and of course, wanted me to read it again.  Then we read "Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day." He hadn't read this book before and it definitely resonated with him.  We read it twice too and then I asked him if he was having a terrible, horrible, no good very bad day.  He admitted that he was and so I asked him if he was thinking about moving to Australia (if you haven't read the book you need to to understand the question).  He laughed and then squeezed me so tight for about five minutes.  It feels good to think that someone understands us, and that we are not the only one to feel the way we do.  I think this book helped him to feel that way.  Throughout the day, he still struggled with his moods, but whenever he would get upset I would ask him if he was thinking about moving to Australia and he couldn't help but smile.  I love how books help us to communicate and understand each other in new ways.  That little phrase now means so much to us can help conjure up those good feelings of time shared together and a sense of being understood.  The power of books is immeasurable.