The Sabbath -- A Delight

yesterday's Sacrament Meeting was especially wonderful in the provo 3rd ward. not because anything out of the ordinary happened; it was a regular Sunday with the usual elements of our services. but for me it was above average, likely because i went with the right attitude, with my spiritual ears open and ready for whatever the Lord might want to tell me. i have long been a fan of President Kimball's famous quote, "if the service is a failure to you, you have failed." and i really believe that's true.

we started off with a wonderful hymn, "Our Father, By Whose Name," accompanied by our wonderful organist, brother bush, who makes every hymn a delight with his beautiful playing. the hymn was particularly appropriate for fathers day:

our Father, by whose name all fatherhood is known,

who dost in love proclaim each family thine own,

bless Thou all parents guarding well,

with constant love as sentinel,

the homes in which Thy people dwell.

the speakers were really good (as they often are in our ward), and the first speaker began with a quote i really liked, from President Ezra Taft Benson:

"fatherhood is not a matter of station or wealth. it is a matter of desire, diligence, and determination to see one's family exalted in the Celestial Kingdom. if that prize is lost, nothing else really matters."

that quote really got me thinking for the rest of the day about our roles as parents, and i feel President Benson's words apply to mothers as well as to fathers. my number one job is to get this family back to our Heavenly Father's presence and to help them claim the blessings of eternal life. if i fail to do that, truly nothing else matters. if i don't get to spend eternity with my family, my life will have been wasted. everything i do, every day should be working toward getting us to that ultimate goal. i am blessed to have my wonderful eternal companion to help me, and together we shoulder this burden. not every parent is in the same situation, for one reason or another, but we all share the same responsibility to get our children back to our Heavenly Father. how blessed we are to have His divine assistance in everything we do.

i am lazy by nature and have realized that this laziness interferes with my goals to be a good mother. recently my prayers have more and more been that i will find the energy and inspiration i need to constantly be found doing good where my children are concerned. there are endless chances to teach them, every single day. sometimes i let my household responsibilities overwhelm me and keep me from taking as much time with them as i would like to. then i stop and realize that my family is all that matters -- they are my everything. all my energy should be focused on them. yes, there are other things that need to be done, but i have to find a way to balance those "need to's" with the "absolutely have to's" which deserve the bulk of my time and attention.

i worry immensely about sending my kids out into the world where they are exposed to the lessons of the adversary -- someone who never gets tired and who never loses sight of his ultimate goals. chris and i have been entrusted by a loving Father in Heaven with (at least for now) four of His wonderful children, and we are responsible to teach them the Gospel -- what it is and how to use it. i'm thankful for the mercies of our Father, who blesses us every day in this venture; certainly i have no training when it comes to parenting, and He constantly helps me to succeed where i could not do so on my own.

of course as the children grow older they will more and more find they want to use their agency to make their own choices; sometimes they will make choices that are wrong and maybe that lead them off the path. does that mean my responsibility has ended? just because they grow up and no longer live in my home, does that mean i no longer have that responsibility President Benson spoke of? of course not. i won't have the same opportunities to teach and lead and persuade them, but i will still be responsible -- to have taught them to the very best of my ability and then to continually set the example for them of how they should be living. and i hope they will still allow me to teach and lead them, in a little bit different way, even after they are grown.

i have to share this awesome story told by one of the other great speakers yesterday. of course the topic was fathers, and he was speaking about how his father always taught him and his siblings to show respect for their mother. the man telling the story said that his mom had made vegetable beef soup for dinner one night and that his little brother refused to eat it. his dad took the brother down the hall into another room, where the mother overheard him saying, "son, no one hates your mother's vegetable beef soup more than i do, but she made it for us, and we are going to eat it."

i laughed so hard! how funny! but how poignant also, that this man had enough respect for his wife to eat something he didn't like just because she had worked to prepare it -- and that he taught his children that important lesson. i love it!