Reassessment

I’ve been kind of struggling recently and there are a myriad of factors that go into it but the more I think about it, the more I realize that the way to fix my problems are all the same. Well, I don’t mean “fix” like everything will be fine all of a sudden, but let me explain. For the last 6 years I had done daily scripture study, twice daily family prayers, and weekly Family Home Evening with my kids, all done very consistently. I can honestly say that I can count on one hand the number of times that we have missed one of those things. But since the first of the year I have really dropped off in making these things a priority in our lives.

Why is that, after all these years? There are a couple of reasons that stand out clearly in my mind. First, with the new Come, Follow Me curriculum really just ended up with me lecturing my kids every night about scriptures that they don’t care about. What we have done almost exclusively with our previous scripture study is play the recording of the Book of Mormon for a short period of time and then usually have some brief discussion about it everyday. But with the new curriculum, it’s not a “no brainer” like listening and discussing the Book of Mormon everyday was. Not that no effort went into our BOM study, but it was a simple and stream lined event, pull up our bookmarked app, press play, and then briefly discuss. It is very difficult to do that with the new manual.
I was making a daily outline to follow every Monday, but I think that I included too much stuff because I really love that about the scriptures, I want to give background and help them understand why what they are saying is important, but honestly it just turned into a lecture and no one was having fun, but there were some good discussions. I then tried a week where we just watched the videos linked in the manual and then discussed some of what that stuff meant, but watching it on my phone with every one trying to watch it was problematic.
I think it all boils down to that we usually listened to the scriptures in the car while we were driving and talked about what we read then, still while driving. I haven’t been able to find a way to incorporate Come, Follow Me study into a car oriented routine. We are so busy, especially since we started an exercise program three nights a week, that I really would like the car to be an optional place for us to study. Everyone can hear the content and no one an leave. There are minimal distractions because cell phones are allowed to be used in the car unless we are on a very long road trip, there is no TV or anything like that. The kids are a captive audience at that point and they can hear the scriptures just fine.
The second reason why I think I’ve dropped off is because my kids are older and the teenage years are beyond painful. It’s just poor, lazy parenting on my part because at night before bed, after I realize that we still need to do scripture study, it’s late and I’m tried and I’ve already been fighting with my daughter all night and she’s up in her room, I know that the second I call her down for scripture study she’s going to have a tantrum and it’s just going to be more fighting and screaming and then the Spirit will be gone and then what’s the point. So I have just slothfully told myself that it’s not worth it because it will just be a fight and I should just save myself the effort and go to bed.
Again, I fully recognize that I have given up and that my children’s lack of spiritual growth is fully on me. And really, I don’t pray with the kids both together much anymore, mostly because they are both doing something somewhere else in the house and I don’t want to fight with them to get them to come down and pray. So I’ll either pray by myself, with my dogs, or with just my son. And it’s really embarrassing too because the kids will just stop wherever they are when I tell them to fold their arms and then as soon as I start praying they restart their movie or game or whatever they are doing on their phone or they start walking away or going to their room, etc.
For Family Home Evening, we usually do dinner and a short lesson with my extended family, but we don’t always, or mostly for the last few weeks we’ve just gone to dinner with no lesson and this week we just didn’t have it at all because everyone was so tired and had things come up. It’s not my family’s fault that we don’t have always have consistent lessons every week because, honestly, it is my responsibility to teach my kids the gospel and no one else’s. So when the ball gets dropped on the lessons, then it is my responsibility to make the difference. It’s really fun to do, get together for dinner and a lesson or even an activity for FHE with everybody once a week, it’s really great, I like it a lot, but I just need to be aware of the things that can slip between the cracks and pick up the pieces when I need to.
In the last couple of months since the beginning of the year, I have noticed many differences, and a lot of things have changed for us, both good and bad. First, the good: we started this exercise program that we do Tuesday, Thursday, Friday nights and Saturday mornings. It has been a really long time since I did anything physical because I’ve always worked so much, and I don’t really like going to the gym and walking on the treadmill or anything like that, but I really love this program. Even though we don’t HAVE to go that much, I really want to because I really like it, it wears the kids out, especially my son, and I like the people there. It has helped me feel better physically and I feel like this has been a great blessing, but it does take up quite a bit of our time. We don’t usually get home from our nightly escapades until 8pm at the earliest and then we have showers, etc.
The second absolutely amazing thing that has happened since the first of the year is that my nephew was born. We have been waiting for him for so long and he finally made it and it has changed everything for everyone. He’s so cute and amazing and I’m so grateful to get to go on this journey with his parents. I have been trying to be as helpful as I can and I try to do that as much as possible. This is truly such an amazing blessing for our family and I love him so much. My kids are super cute with him too.
One of the things that hasn’t been as great is that my house is being torn apart and treated for mold which means I haven’t had a kitchen and I’ve been down one bathroom for almost 2 months now and it will be probably at least 2 more weeks. This has been tough because not only does it mean that we are super limited in our food options at home, everything is in a constant state of destruction. With us eating more fast food than I would like, this affects how we feel, how much money we have, and the quality of our sleep. Hopefully that will be resolved soon.
The interesting part for me came when I felt no guilt after deciding to skip family scripture study for the night or family prayer. I’ve been so tired and overwhelmed that I’m just like “whatever.” But whereas I usually feel looming guilt when I am thinking about foregoing one of these spiritually uplifting and necessary tasks, this time I just feel nothing, no guilt, no relief, nothing. I’ve taken that lack of guilt to mean that Jesus is ok with us skipping, which is counter-intuitive, but I’ll take the win where I can. And I don’t feel any guilt when I decide to skip a scripture blogging day, and I’ve done this study pretty consistently for a long time.
But, of course, I’ve been struggling personally quite a bit over the last few weeks. I’ve been struggling with resentment, anger, complaining, irritation, etc. about my job, my house, my living situation, my money, my family, the weather, etc. Honestly, it took until today to realize that perhaps these two things are connected, my lack of spiritual activity with my kids and my negative feelings and even the negativity that my kids have been displaying.
I guess what all of this is coming to mean is that I don’t think that my motivation to do spiritual work is supposed to come from guilt now, I think that I’ve supposed to learn that doing the daily spiritual things that I know I need to do is their own reward and choose to have them in my life because I value them, instead of to avoid feeling guilty. I think when I get home I’m going to have a meeting with the kids, and they are going to have to meet me at 7:15 every morning so that we can do a quick scripture study and family prayer properly before school and work. I’m hoping that this effort will bring peace to my home and family and protect us spiritually as we go throughout our day.
And finally, family prayer isn’t going to just be me speaking really loudly while they do whatever they want and hoping for the best. We will be meeting together after scripture study in the morning and before bed at night so that we can all focus on the prayer and our togetherness. I’m also going to lock electronics and get a schedule and chore chart. I think that this spiritual renewal also needs a temporal component as well with good food, clean homes, and adequate sleep. Hopefully all of this together will help us all to focus, feel, and thrive with the Spirit.