I had to speak in Stake Conference about how to have a Christ centered home, it was scary! Glad it is over! We took some pictures after church.
My talk:
2 Nephi 25:26 And we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ and we write according to our prophecies, that our Children may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins.
I have had this verse running through my mind the past few months. I had a revelation come to me, that if we are not talking of Christ in our home, then our children aren’t going to gain their own testimonies, or know how important Christ and his church are to me. We spend plenty of time talking of sports, TV shows, friends, and school projects, but not enough time talking of Christ. Since this realization has come we have made more of an effort to share our testimony with our kids more frequently and to help them recognize spiritual experiences, and when the Holy Ghost has influenced us or them. A lot of times we have these experiences but we forget to share them with them.
Having a Christ centered home is so important! We live in a busy, crazy world! Our homes can be a safe place and a place where the spirit can easily be felt. This does not mean that chaos doesn’t happen in our home, we still have boys running 87 laps and counting through the kitchen, and screaming, squealing girls. What it does mean is we are trying our best to do the basics of teaching our children the gospel and creating a loving environment.
Sister Reeves in General conference shared three basic things that we should be doing in our families. She said prayers, scripture study, and weekly family home evenings will help take away our daily stresses. I like the idea of less stress!
Establishing a pattern of family prayers is not something that came easy to us. When we first started our family we should have started the habit, but we didn’t want to wake a sleepy baby (or mommy) when Ryan left early for work. As our kids started going to school we felt the urgency. I couldn’t stand the thought of sending our little kindergartner out the door without first praying with her. Thankfully that is when the tradition started and has stuck. Don’t send your babies out into the big world without praying with them and for their safe return. Having a child or spouse gone is not a good excuse for not having prayer. We have lots of evenings when Ryan isn’t home yet from work, but we still gather everyone together and pray before bed. It is not easy to establish a pattern, but eventually it will become a need, and you will be surprised that you can remember every day!
We started reading the book of Mormon every day as a family before our kids could read. Ryan would read a word at a time and they would repeat it when it was their turn to read. Doing it this way was very slow and not many verses were covered every morning. After 11 long years we completed the Book of Mormon for the first time as a family!! We were so excited! We have 100 pages left to go in our second time of reading it as a family. We have cut our time in half! It’s progress! We still don’t cover a lot of verses in a day, but we discuss what we are talking about and sometimes we are left with some pretty good “cliff hangers” We can’t wait to read the next morning to find out what is going to happen! We have just established a habit, we keep the stack of blue Book of Mormons close, and we read! Everyday. A lot like prayer though we had to make the conscious decision to do it, until it became a habit. All of these things do take work, but are very simple and such a blessing!
Family Night. Our kids have been the number one reason why we hold family night. They don’t let us forget! I understand if you have older children, then they probably are the opposite! We have been fortunate to have good kids who want to do things as a family and LOVE family night! Our family night are very basic, we have a little chart on the wall that shows assignments and it usually turns into a argument if it got changed since last week or not, and who has the activity. Family nights generally go pretty well, we do have a wild 3 year old that likes to take his laps around the kitchen at that same time, but for the most part it is uneventful. We always end our lesson with everyone sharing their testimony right down to the baby. It is a great time for the kids to get used to bearing their testimony in a secure, non-scary place!
If you recognize that there are things that are distracting you or your kids from doing these basic essential things then I suggest you change. Our 11 year old daughter has been saving her money for a lap top for a year or so. It occurred to me that I needed to let her know that we weren’t going to let her buy her own laptop even if she earned the money. She is too young and doesn’t NEED a laptop. I not thinking clearly after I saw how disappointed she was, suggested maybe she could save up for some other device. It wouldn’t take her as long to save because it is 1/3 of the cost. I figured I was safe for a while, and what a great teaching tool for her to learn to save. WELL, I underestimate her quite a bit, she is amazing! She had the money magically saved up in a matter of a few months! How is this possible? She is Miss Money bags, she always has a stash of cash and special jars for this and that that she is saving for. This is a great quality and one I am glad she has, but this became detrimental. She saved the money just in time for her birthday so we let her buy the device, and were happy to split the cost with her since she had worked so hard to save the money. But soon I could see her becoming consumed with this awesome new toy. She woke up playing it, went to sleep playing it, and was very upset if it was taken away, and was NOT going to share it. She wasn’t the only one with the problem either. By January every kid in our family had some kind of device. And we are not light users, we are very HEAVY users, I realize not all people are this way, Ryan could care less to crush candies, or farm virtually, but the rest of us were getting pretty addicted! It was pretty obvious what we were worshipping, and it wasn’t Christ! As I would go down to check on our older girls and make sure the devices were turned off by the appropriate hour I could see a glow coming from their rooms. This scared me! I locked every device from internet use, which worked until I would let them log in to get a new book or something “worth while” and forget to lock them back up. This was not working for us and was becoming very scary to me. I have heard lots of talks even here from this pulpit about media fasts, and keeping the filth from entering our front doors. I never worried about it much. I can see what comes through my front door and filter it very well. But Satan is tricky, he can send, smut and vulgarity and all sorts of terrible stuff invisibly, without me even knowing it, into MY home through internet waves! I was quite at my witts end, and was fearing for my children’s safety, and eternal safety. Tired of confiscating, tired of crying, tired of fighting, just plain tired! This was consuming my whole family in a matter of two short months! I was letting Ryan know it one day when he was on his way home from work and he said I have an idea. We will talk about it at Family Night tonight. I didn’t know what he had come up with but it became apparent pretty quick as he started the lesson with a blank sheet of paper. He said, now there is to be no weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth during this lesson. After he explained what that meant he drew a T chart on the paper. Ryan grew up in a house full of T charts, his dad is always using them in the farming business and so it is no wonder he had this idea come to him, and I believe, also through the influence of the Holy Ghost. We labeled the top with DEVICES and then put Pro’s and Cons above each side. The kids were excited and love an experiment with dad! We started listing all the good things about devices. Ashley is a smart one and about half way through she put two and two together and could see where this lesson was going. She was pulling out any good thing she could think of. To her and our surprise the pro side was very short, less than 10 good things about these devices. We started listing the cons, or bad things about them, the list went on, and on, over double the good. The kids created this list with very little help from us, and could see with their own eyes that we don’t need devices. That doesn’t mean they don’t want them, oh they want them really, really bad! Right then we came up with a new family rule, no devices except for on long trips in the car. (where there is no internet!!) The tears started flowing, not just from the kids, but from me too. They were devastated, as was I, but so happy. They understood this concept, even though they did not like it they understood! Our home is no longer consumed with another new game, or who’s turn it is. The girls aren’t too tired to say prayers and read scriptures because they played their new game for two hours and now its lights out. I understand that this is drastic, it is for us too. It is amazing how quickly they got over it. They still ask on occasion if they can play with one, but I just remind them that we all together made a new family rule, remember? Don’t let you or your kids become so consumed with anything that they don’t have time, or are too tired to do the most important things.
I have a testimony that our Heavenly Father loves each of us and wants us to be successful and happy. He has given us a plan, and a loving Savior to redeem us from our mistakes. I love this Gospel, I love my family and want to do the best I can protecting them and making sure they have the best chance possible to return to our Father in Heaven also. I pray that each of us will have the strength and the motivation to continue talking of Christ, rejoicing in Christ and Preaching of Christ to those around us and those we love. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
