So many thoughts words can’t do justice, at least not my words. So lets see if I can find someone else's word to get me started today.
“ President Nelson has acknowledged with gratitude how much is being accomplished as a result of your faithfulness to previous invitations. He and the entire leadership of the Church desire to bring greater gospel joy—to parents, children, youth, singles, the elderly, new converts, and those people the missionaries are teaching” -Cook
You are doing something right, I am doing something right, We are doing so many things right (the prophet says so)
“World conditions increasingly require deepening individual conversion to and strengthening faith in Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ and His Atonement. The Lord has prepared us, line upon line, for the perilous times that we now face.” -Cook
We are prepared for the perilous times head (so don’t stress it)
“Young people, God requires hard things of you.” -Brough
“Because of Christ, we too can overcome the world.” -Brough
During October 2018 general conference I picked out 2 themes. 1) LOVE and 2) Plan
I remember thinking I need to love and that is something I can do, I got a bit overwhelmed by the idea of needing to serve others but I could love and that is all the lord needs from me right now. Plan, I had impressions that I needed to plan more family gospel instruction. I thought I needed to put more effort into scheduling, lesson planning for my kids, and put more effort and time into my planner/calendar. Since the conference I have read and marked all the talks from the November Ensign. As part of marking the talks I decided to pull out the 2 themes that had struck me during the conference. So I began to highlight the word love in pink and plan in orange. Turns out I got the, love others thing right on the nose.
Plan however took on a new meaning. Here I thought I needed to plan more and plan how to teach my kids more gospel topics. I was wrong. As I underlined the word plan every single time it was apart of some version of Heavenly Father’s plan. The Lord hadn’t been telling me I needed to plan more he had been telling me I needed to trust his plan more.
What does trusting his plan more look like in my life. Well surprisingly it meant I have been able to embrace my lack of planning and see it as a strength. Planning hour long lessons for my kids to teach them about the Savior is not what the Lord had in mind for me.
No not even close.
I needed to trust the Lord's plan and make scripture study my top priority. The Prophet’s instruction to the sisters to read the Book of Mormon by the end of the year did just this. I know that God has a living prophet on this earth today and my testimony of such as already been tried and tested it is a rock that will not move. So I trusted the prophet when he said “As impossible as that may seem with all you are trying to manage in your life, if you will accept this invitation with full purpose of heart, the Lord will help you find a way to achieve it.” Having now done something I once thought impossible I can say from personal experience the prophet was right. I didn’t have time to plan when to read my scriptures I only had time to do it. A minute here, or 5 minutes there, with my kids sleeping, with my kids yelling in my face, with every scenario in between. I held to the prophets promise as though I was on the end of a rope hanging over a cliff. And you know what, the Lord pulled me up to safety, I didn't have the strength to climb. Because he did that I was able to help pull on others ropes. And that is far as that imagery goes. I found myself, I found a burden lifted I didn’t realize I was carrying.
Back to not planning lessons. I have learned to open my mouth and keep personal scripture study top of any to do list in fact it’s best to do it before you make time to write a to do list. Yes that means if I haven't read my scriptures yet then you can bet my dishes are still a mile high in the sink. Come follow me and home center study hasn’t been about planning killer family home evenings or Sunday school lessons for me or my family. In fact quite the opposite. It has been about sharing thoughts with family and friends about things I learned or pondered during my personal study. It’s been about regular conversations with my kids. It’s been about helping my kids understand the why of the importance of obeying mom and dad (still working on that one).
Scripture study has stopped being about reading the scriptures and more about learning what’s in them. When telling my 3 yr old the parable of the sower it wasn't about making sure I got the details right or knew the historical context or even understood it myself, it was letting the spirit into the conversation and telling the story of what I remembered reading then sharing it again and letting the 6 yr old tell me what Jesus was trying to say and learning from her insights. Than another day watching a video from the gospel library app about the parable of the sower. Home centered study isn’t a classroom is just life. It’s the unplanned one liners that come to my mind during disciplinary moments. It’s coloring a picture or putting a puzzle together with my kids and having conversations listening to them and trying to see what the world is like for them. It’s sharing with them the moments that are answers to prayers. It’s looking for answers together to all of our questions. It’s apologizing and forgiving and changing and acknowledging that it’s all possible because of Christ. It’s not planned, it’s learning God’s plan. It’s never anything big it’s always small.
