As some of you may or may not heard, I am working on Personal Progress to help strengthen my testimony and my relationship with my Heavenly Father and my Savior. If you'd like to join me, you can find the Personal Progress Program online at the new lds.org. Unfortunately, you can't track your progress online, unless you are a young woman or a young women's leader, but I'm just writing about it in my journal every night.
So, tonight, I'm working on Faith #2 and I'm supposed to talk to a mom, so I thought I'd post here to see what you moms have to say! Are you up for helping me?
"Discuss the qualities a woman needs in order to teach children to have faith and to base their decisions on gospel truths. How can these principles help you in your life today and help you prepare to be a faithful woman, wife, and mother?"
I'm interested in seeing your responses and seeing what I can learn from your good examples! Thanks, ladies!
Hi Steph! Kudos to you for your hard work! I've been thinking about your question, and and here's my two cents:
ReplyDelete1. Endurance: Moms have to be able to get little sleep and still run the house, cook the dinner, go to the store, and most importantly, love their kids even though they're exhausted. And, even when Moms are sick, somehow they still do all these things too. How do we learn it? Well, I think we learn it by just doing it. If we don't, diapers don't get changed, dinner doesn't get cooked, and dishes don't get done. So we move forward and see how little sleep we need to function...until it catches up to us.
2. Spirituality: I think it takes a Mom and a Dad to teach spirituality, but I think it helps a lot when a Mom has a solid foundation in these skills. It helps us rely on God a lot more, and be His instruments to teach these children He's loaned to us. It also helps us get through hard days and handle things better. How do we learn it? By seeking out Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ more and more, and striving to learn about them and obey them.
And you have these skills, my wonderful friend. Love you!
The first qualities that came to my mind were
ReplyDeleteScheduling/consistency: The first years of our marriage, and up until Abby was nursery age, we'd find every excuse to skip church on Sunday. I would describe our church attentance as semi-regular. However, when Abby entered nursery, I was bound and determined that she would go, and not through a fit EVERY time we dropped her off. So, I made it a GOAL to attend church every week, that way Abby was consistently going to nursery, and getting used to the routine. And it's been that way ever since. She loved nursery, and now she loves primary, so I don't want to deprive her of that. Along the way, I've also come to really love attending church in a way that I never have. I also think that if we just try to fit things in like scripture study, family prayer, temple attendance to when we have free time, we'll never get it done regularly. We have to schedule it, or make it a habit.
Spiritualy minded: I think I've found the best way to teach gospel principles to our children is by finding teaching oppurtunities through out our daily lives. We can teach about prayer if someone is sick and we want them to get better, or, for us, we drive by temples all the time, so temples are always a topic we discuss. If we aren't seeking out these oppurtunities to include the gospel in our everyday life, they might pass us right by.