Tuesday, December 20, 2016

What Did Mary Really Know?


We were all snuggled up listening to some Christmas songs on YouTube the other night and Pentatonix’s version of Mary Did You Know came up.  A little bit later Monkey said she wondered how much Mary really did know. It got me thinking and the song has been stuck on replay in my head since.

We know for sure that she knew that by some divine miracle she was going to be the mother of the Son of God. We also know that she must have known her heritage and known that He would also be of her royal bloodline with the right to literally be King of the Jews. Guesses would say that especially as Christ was born and grew and the miracles and testimonies of His divinity continued to multiply she probably felt at various times awe, confusion, excitement, and worry and all range of motherly emotions.  Somedays she likely looked at him as just her child much like any other, sometimes the scriptures tell us there were at least hints of a grand (though probably not completely understood) future yet to come, and other times there was surely overwhelming testimony that she was responsible for mothering the Savior of the World although what that meant exactly was also probably still a bit hazy.

Now I won’t get into all of the deep down questions that could be asked or thought about that, I think there are really lots of interesting questions to ponder in regards to this but I wondered what I could learn from her.

Then it hit me.

I am a modern Mary.

Just hear me out for a minute. We believe that we are all children of God. Not in the same way that Christ was of course, but we each have some of God the Father’s divine nature within us. He is still the Father of our Spirits even if He isn’t the Father of our flesh. He cares about each of us more than we can know and wants us to be like Him.

As such every mother to an extent is just like Mary. We are all given precious little gifts from Heaven that He has entrusted to our care. We, like her, probably have times when understanding who they really are or recognizing their full potential seems hard to grasp. Most of the time we likely look at them with eyes of expected routine and normalcy. Sometimes we get glimpses of their greatness. If we’re lucky every once in a rare while we pause and remember that these are His children with an inner divine power beyond our comprehension.

Most of the time no matter where we are in our thoughts we’re just hoping we don’t mess them up. Here too we can look to Mary. She, like us, was completely human. I’m sure she made mistakes - probably lots of them. Still if we looked to what the scriptures teach us about how she handled it we see that she cherished the moments that came, remained faithful, and kept learning from and loving Christ throughout His life, even as she watched His final minutes of mortality.

We can do the same. We can keep making the most of each moment we have. We can learn from our children and share with them all that we can. Most importantly we can keep loving them through all their ups and downs tests and trials and give them reassurance that come what may we will always by their side to the very best of our abilities.

I’m not sure everything Mary knew or understood but I am thankful for what I can know because of her.

Saturday, December 17, 2016

Learning about Marriage from Cindy Lou Who WFL Guest Post

So today I had another fun guest post published on Ramona Zabriskie's Wife for Life Blog. I talk about one of my favorite Christmas movies and the lessons we can learn about love from it and how Cindy Lou Who can help us strengthen our marriages and relationships with those around us. Hope you enjoy!

Thursday, December 15, 2016

Ideas for Santa's Helpers


For most of her life Leace never really completely trusted Santa, the Easter Bunny, and especially not the Tooth Fairy (she said that anyone who wasn't your mom or dad coming into your room at night to take your teeth was just creepy). Part of this was probably because we’d been hesitant to completely confirm any of these legends and decided overall to handle it by mostly just avoiding any of the topics of belief. Anyways I still remember the Easter morning she demanded that we fess up the truth about the Easter Bunny and all the rest. We explained that in our house we focus on the spirit of the holidays instead of worrying so much about bunnies and big guys in red. As part of the consolation package that Christmas she got to be Santa’s helper and help fill the stockings.

She did really pretty well with understanding that she wasn’t allowed to ruin the belief of others – until Eddy was about 7. She felt it her big sister obligation to explain everything to him. Thankfully however, whatever she ended up saying he took it well and so that year it was his turn to be Santa’s helper with the stockings.

Last year that left me trying to decide how we would do stockings. I decided that all of the Santa’s helpers would swap and have a set amount of money to fill someone else’s stocking. It was fun and worked out pretty well. It did end up not being so secret by the time Christmas came but overall everyone ended up pretty satisfied on both the giving and receiving end of things.

This year Leace asked if we could change it up a bit. I gave her and Eddy a small amount of money they could spend on every other person in the family for stocking stuffers. Then we headed off to one of Leace’s favorite stores – the Dollar Tree. At first Eddy was a little hesitant but even he realized he could handle the task on his own and they each grabbed a basket and to shopping they went. Both kids really enjoyed being able to go out on their own in the store picking out things for everyone.

I know that everyone likes to do things their own way and I’m sure there’s lots of great ways to handle this (I’d love to hear any ideas that people have!) but I just wanted to share both of these ways since they have been so much fun for us. Seeing them take part in being able to pick out presents for each other has been much more fun than just taking care of it all for them. They not only get the chance to serve but get the rewards of growing up and taking on the good parts of responsibility.