My goal this year is to attend the temple at least once a month, it's a lofty one considering my numbers in 2016 were grim. I try not to beat myself up, the first half of the year I was pregnant and busy and exhausted and the second half of the year I was nursing and busy and exhausted--I honestly did the best I could. But this year I've got myself a little checklist and you know how excited I get about ticking off boxes so I'm destined to succeed! The temple is such a holy, special, beautiful place and every time I go I remember why I need to go more often. We are so lucky to live across the street.
More than attending the temple, however, I have a goal to make my home a temple. I want to feel--and I want my children to feel--those same holy, special and beautiful feelings within our own walls. Sometimes our home feels more peaceful than others, but when the chaos strikes I also want to model behavior that shows my kids that I know who is in charge. Even ugly moments can yield beautiful lessons. This last week I was at my breaking point. Quinn had been screaming for 2 1/2 hours because she didn't want to pick up some toys she defiantly spilled in the boys room, the boys were fighting over Pokemon, homework, and dinner, Cora was crying because Quinny's screams had woken her up from a 15 minute nap and to top it off the house I had perfectly cleaned while the boys were in school was somehow a disaster once more. By 5 o'clock I was in tears and honestly didn't know how I'd make it through the day so I did the only thing I knew could calm me down--I prayed. It started simple, Please help me Heavenly Father. Please help me Heavenly Father. I walked around the house and loudly asked Heavenly Father to help me get through the day, and then it got more specific: help the boys feel love at home, help Quinny control her body--or at least help me know how to handle her rage, help Coco know how loved she is and comfort her in her exhaustion. There I was, walking around praying loud and proud! To be honest the rest of the day was just as hard as that afternoon had been, but we got through which may have been a miracle! The next day I was telling the story to James over breakfast and Talmage said, "Yeah Mom, I noticed that you were praying out loud. Did that make you feel better?" And we had a short and sweet discussion on choosing our reactions to circumstances that we didn't choose at all. He gave examples of when he could use prayer to help him not be frustrated at Evie taking his toy or Quinny ruining his magnatile creation. I think our house felt a little holier and maybe templish as we were discussing ways to be a stronger eternal family.
Later that week, I stumbled across this story from Chieko Okazaki and I know it wasn't by chance. I was only going to share a little bit of it because it's pretty long, but then I realized that this is something I want to remember forever so I must post all of it! I'm grateful that the Savior can and will follow me from one dirty room to the next--and I hope I always remember to invite Him to be a dear friend in my life.
"Our spirituality will increase, I believe, not necessarily as we spend more time with Jesus, but as we let him spend more time with us, in our daily activities. We tend to compartmentalize our lives, or divide them up, into separate little cubbyholes labeled 'family,' 'church,' 'gardening,' and so on. I think we sometimes have the mistaken notion that religion is like a special room in our house. WE go into this room when we need to "do" religion. After all, we cook in the kitchen, we entertain in the living room, we wash in the bathroom, we sleep in the bedroom, and we "do" religion in this spiritual room. You know what's wrong with that view of the religious life? It means that we can walk out of that room and close the door behind us. It means that we have compartmentalized our lives to that religious experience is just one cubbyhole out of many. It also means that we spend most of our time in other rooms. And we feel guilty because we keep hearing that it should be the most important room in the house and we should spend most of our time there. Does this sound just the tiniest bit familiar?
Instead, perhaps we should think of our spiritual lives, not as a separate room, but as the paint on the walls of all the rooms, or maybe a scent in the air that drifts through all the rooms--the way the fragrance of spaghetti sauce or baking bread has a way of drifting through all the rooms of the house, becoming part of the very air we breathe. Our spiritual lives should be our lives, not just a separate compartment in our lives."
Let me put it another way. Suppose the Savior comes to visit you. You've rushed around and vacuumed the guest room, put the best sheets on the bed, even got some tulips in a vase on the dresser. Jesus looks around the room, then says, 'Oh thank you for inviting me into your home. Please tell me about your life.'
You say, 'I will in just a minute, but something's boiling over on the stove and I need to let the cat out.'
Jesus says, 'I know a lot about cats and stoves. I'll come with you.'
'Oh no!' you say, 'I couldn't let you do that,' and you rush out carefully closing the door behind you.
And while you're turning down the stove, the phone rings, and then Jason comes in with a scrape on his elbow, and the visiting teacher supervisor calls for your report, and then it's suppertime, and you couldn't possibly have Jesus see that you don't even have placemats for Pete's sake, and someone forgot to turn on the dishwasher so that you're eating off paper plates, and then you have to drive Lynne to her basketball game. So by the time you get back to the room where Jesus is still patiently waiting for you, you're so tired that you can barely keep your eyes open -- let alone sit worshipfully at Jesus' feet to wait for those words of profound wisdom and spiritual power to wash over you, to make you different, to make everything else different -- and you fall asleep whispering, 'I'm sorry, I'll try to do better. I'm so sorry.'
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