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But I Don't Have Time!
By Natalie
J. Hale There just don't seem to be enough hours in the day. With laundry, meals, bills, church callings, and little noses to wipe and diapers to change — oh, and not to mention a marriage to keep together — our time is pretty much spent.
Full-time mothers have so much to do. Whoever said that homemaking is boring or not stimulating for the intellect obviously hasn't stepped inside a true homemaker's house!
LDS mothers are very busy people, understandably, but somehow we still wonder with all the demands of our time, do we really spend enough time with our children? Should we have to choose between spending time with them and building the kingdom with our callings at church? What are our priorities?
The Lord has declared that the family is the basic unit of the church. As we build families, we build the church. As Elder Russell M. Nelson puts it:
You build up the kingdom of God as you place your family first. A husband's highest priesthood duty is to love and care for his wife, to bless her and their children. A wife's highest calling is to love her husband and nurture their children. As you serve the Lord, know that your “duty is unto the church forever, and this because of [your] family” (D&C 23:3). (Russell M. Nelson, “Identity, Priority, Blessings,” Ensign , Aug 2001, 11)
So family comes first, and as we build our families we build the kingdom of God. Service done at home, where the Relief Society president or other ward members are not watching — and where real needs are often manifest — is where service is at its noblest and truest.
And as President Harold B. Lee counseled:
God will never ask any man to sacrifice his family in order to carry out his other duties in the kingdom. How many times have we tried to stress that the most important of the Lord's work we will ever do as fathers and husbands will be within the walls of our own home? Fathers are on the one assignment from which they cannot be released. (Harold B. Lee, Teachings of Presidents of the Church , 149.)
And the same is true of mothers.
Our families are what Elder L. Tom Perry in October General Conference of 2002 said as he quoted The Family: A Proclamation to the World:
Husband and wife have a solemn responsibility to love and care for each other and for their children … Parents have a sacred duty to rear their children in love and righteousness, to provide for their physical and spiritual needs, to teach them to love and serve one another, to observe the commandments of God and to be law-abiding citizens wherever they live. Husbands and wives — mothers and fathers — will be held accountable before God for the discharge of these obligations.
Now that a clearer understanding of where parents' priorities are as set forth by God through his prophets (See D&C 1:38), it would be prudent to better understand how to get a better hold on things at home.
Modern homemakers still have the same 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, as their ancestors did. And we actually have more disposable time, because modern conveniences have opened up a considerable time slot. Where forebears had to chop wood to cook or stay warm, we just turn a dial on our ovens or adjust the thermostat on the heater. Where they had to beat the laundry on the rocks by a stream, we just dump ours into a washing machine and let it do all the beating. Can you imagine having to take your rugs and beat them instead of just running a vacuum over them?
With all these modern technologies, just look at all the time we've saved already!
And what have we saved all this time for? That's really up to our discretion. Heavenly Father does not and will not overstep the bounds of agency. He makes that clear in His scriptures and through His prophets. But remember what Elder Perry said about what we will be held accountable at the final judgment? If we have children, they should our priority in how we spend our time.
Sometimes we justify that if we just spend quality time with our children, it will make up the difference for quantity time spent doing something else. It's easy to want to put off the raising of one's own children to someone else — anyone else! We justify this by saying it's for the child's own good, or we need to serve in the Church, or we are too stupid to help them, or whatever else parents have come up to try and shirk their responsibility.
Raising children is hard work. There's no doubt about it. The Lord knows this, and so do his prophets. Elder M. Russell Ballard of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles acknowledged this when he said:
Taking care of small, dependent, and demanding children is never ending and often nerve-racking. Mothers must not fall into the trap of believing that 'quality' time can replace 'quantity' time. Quality is a direct function of quantity — and mothers, to nurture their children properly, must provide both. To do so requires constant vigilance and a constant juggling of competing demands. It is hard work, no doubt about it (M. Russell Ballard, “The Sacred Responsibilities of Parenthood,” Ensign, Mar. 2006, 26).
Perhaps a method of juggling is to set up a routine or schedule for each child. That way mothers will know what is supposed to be done each day and can help children begin to learn self-reliance and responsibility for their own things.
I have designed a series of weekly charts for boys and girls and published them at my website for free. So please download as many as you want here http://www.enlightenedhomemaker.com .
In closing, I will leave you with another thought by President Boyd K. Packer.
I invoke the blessings of the Lord upon you, all of you here, with reference to your home and your families. It is the choicest of all life's experiences. I urge you to put it first. The center core of the Church is not the stake house; it is not the chapel; that is not the center of Mormonism. And, strangely enough, the most sacred place on earth may not be the temple, necessarily. The chapel, the stake house, and the temple are sacred as they contribute to the building of the most sacred institution in the Church — the home — and to the blessing of the most sacred relationships in the Church, the family (Boyd K. Packer, That All May Be Edified, 235).
Home truly is the center of the Church. As we work to prioritize our daily lives and give our families the quality and quantity time the Lord has asked us to, he will help us. The Lord did not send children to parents that they could fail. He is looking out for the families of His children. We just have to do our part and make time for His purposes in our lives.
© 2007 Meridian
Magazine. All Rights Reserved.
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| About
the Author: |
Natalie
J. Hale is founding editor of the Enlightened Homemaker newsletter.
Coupling years of research and experience from parents, she implements
daily issues into doable activities. She also hosts a book club
for homemakers where they study books on any of the many topics
of homemaking, and publishes their reviews. For more information,
or to subscribe visit http://enlightenedhomemaker.com
Natalie is also
a member of the Society of Children’s Writers and Illustrators,
has had two short stories published, written articles and reviews
for several other publications including Renaissance Magazine,
Children’s Book Insider, and Writer’s Weekly. Plans to
self-publish her first children’s books are underway.
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