We are warriors! As mothers in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints we can be battling on many fronts to protect and enrich our children’s childhood. How can we be most effective? What’s the most essential, highest leverage thing we can do everyday?
In an essential talk that I already wrote about here, Elder Lawrence E. Corbridge talks about how “deception is a sign of our time”:
“When the Lord described the signs of His coming and the end of the world, when He described our day, He mentioned many things, including wars and rumors of wars, nations rising against nations, famines, pestilences, earthquakes, and many other signs, including this one:’
“For in those days [this day] there shall also arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders, insomuch, that, if possible, they shall deceive the very elect, who are the elect according to the covenant.”
We can be stressing about our families being deceived, and also the above tumults mentioned above, in the world in which we live all the time. It is normal to feel stressed and overwhelmed. Besides global calamities and external signs of the times, Elder Corbridge goes on to list “the broad spectrum of deception” that can create chaos internally:
“There are many who deceive, and the spectrum of deception is broad. At one end we meet those who attack the Restoration, the Prophet Joseph Smith, and the Book of Mormon. Next we see those who believe in the Restoration but claim the Church is deficient and has gone astray. There are others who also claim to believe in the Restoration but are disillusioned with doctrine that conflicts with the shifting attitudes of our day. There are some who, without authority, lay claim to visions, dreams, and visitations to right the ship, guide us to a higher path, or prepare the Church for the end of the world. Others are deceived by false spirits.
“At the far end of the spectrum we come to an entire universe of distractions. Never has there been more information, misinformation, and disinformation; more goods, gadgets, and games; and more options, places to go, and things to see and do to occupy time and attention away from what is most important. And all of that and much more is disseminated instantaneously throughout the world by electronic media. This is a day of deception.”
With that big wide spectrum of deception,
Parenting has never been so hard.
As we think about teaching, protecting and fortifying our children we need to be essential.
The most leveraged thing we can do each day is to parent with heavenly help.
We need time to personally connect with Heavenly Father and His Son and to build spiritual resilience through prayer and scripture study every day.
When we spend time nurturing our spiritual selves it can help us with the worry, the discouragement and the chaos that we come into contact with every day. As we spend that time praying, reading, journaling, meditating, and pondering the day before or behind us, it will absolutely fortify us. If we can carve out a little time each day for this essential task we will be strengthened by His Spirit.
I know.
As I have made prayer and scripture study more of a priority, I have learned what a game changer that heavenly endowment of power can be. It has made all the difference.
You will say, “When can I do that? I am exhausted all the time.” I think I had no sleep, all through my forties, with teenagers and a toddler. I wish I knew as a young mother, how much this would have helped me. I would read and pray but more as a check off. I did not approach my own spiritual nurturing and fortification as the most important habit I could do as a mother.
If we have the celestial mindset that I wrote about here , we can go to bed early, so we can wake up early, or we can find other times in the day to be fortified and nurtured. We can make it the keystone of all of our habits.
Elder Corbridge says,
“Pay whatever price you must pay, bear whatever burden you must bear, and make whatever sacrifice you must make to get and keep in your life the spirit and power of the Holy Ghost. Every good thing depends on getting and keeping the power of the Holy Ghost in your life. Everything depends on that.”
We can pass this peace and spiritual resilience we gain from our daily efforts, on to our children. We can become more patient and stronger, as will they. This peace will help us not to worry and to be more hopeful about our future. This peace will permeate all the cracks of concern and despair in us, over the times we are raising our children in.
More than 45 years ago , President Harold B. Lee said:
“We have been called to difficult tasks in a difficult age, but this could be for each of us a time of high adventure, of great learning, of great inner satisfaction. For the converging challenges posed by war, urbanization, dilution of doctrine, and domestic decay surely provide for us the modern equivalent of crossing the plains, enduring misunderstanding, establishing a kingdom throughout the world in the midst of adversity. I pray that we may do our part during the journey, and be with, and leading, the caravan of the Church as it enters the final chosen place—His presence.”1.
Isn’t that beautiful? What great promises we are given! What do you do to make sure this essential habit happens? How has this habit affected your days?
"Peace Like A River…" 