I wanted it to be known that we live in a religious household. I'm not going to preach on here, but I'm sure those who know would agree that oftentimes the religion, or moral values you have will guide how you parent. For us, it's a very present aspect of our lives. Today is our day to go to church. For those who regularly attend church, it's such a different experience without and then with kids. Now, we're lucky if we're able to listen and obtain any sparkle of inspiration or anything while juggling the two kids and keeping them happily, quietly, occupied.
Nonetheless, we want to teach our kids to attend church, and so we, like many, haul them to church every Sunday. (along with a backpack of toys for each kid, which some of them rarely touch, which can be slightly frustrating since you will inevitably be the one to haul it around the whole time.)
Every now and then, as your kids get a bit older, they do something to reaffirm what you're doing. Today we had one of those moments. As we were driving to a dinner date at a friend's house, Moose says something along the lines of "Jesus made everything." So I egg him on to tell me what exactly he made. For a good 5 minutes on the way to our friend's place, Moose named everything he could think of (or anything he saw on the way): lights, gates, doors, construction machines, sky, cranes, trucks, buildings, apartments, and on and on. After a while it was a bit obnxious, because he wasn't listing this quietly. However, it made me smile inside that he remembers these little things independently and chooses to share them at random times of the day.
The teaching of children is a tough endeavor, no matter what the subject. But you can't help but smile inside when they remember something you've tried to teach them that's really important to you. We want to give our kids a good moral compass. We just want them to be good people. So it makes me happy when you can see bits and pieces of it. It gives me the boost I need to keep trudging along in this teaching effort. Because you'll learn that for every 100 efforts you go through to teach your children something, they might remember 1, or 2, or maybe 5. Depends on the kid and the subject. But everytime they remember, they actually learn what you're teaching, it gives you the strength, energy, desire, to keep on trying to teach them more.
Recently, I've found myself asking whether or not I'm getting anything out of church. We don't have a nursery leader so I have to stay with Nicholas in the nursery and back when they did have one Nicholas would throw a tantrum and not let up, so I would inevitably end up back in the nursery. Sacrament meeting is sometimes better, sometimes not. Then a couple weeks ago, Riley started asking me questions about things he learned in primary. He has also started asking questions about where Jesus lives and "heaven" (a question that comes up when he sees a picture of Sydney) and I suddenly realized that even if I feel like I don't get much out of church lately, he is and that alone makes it all worth it.
ReplyDeleteQuick story about heaven...we were looking at our family picture book that mom got him for Christmas and we got to the picture of Heidi, Ryan and Sydney and we talked about Sydney being with Heavenly Father and Jesus. A few days later we were in the car sitting at a red light and Riley said to me out of nowhere "Is Sydney going to come back to earth when Jesus is done with her?"