My Quest for Strength

" And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them."  Ether 12:27

This morning I had a chance to squeeze in one verse of scripture study.  It was a sleepless night and a stressful morning,always happens when I wake up late, but I have a goal to read every morning no matter what because the scriptures give me strength to face anything.

When my oldest son woke up this morning he said that he wants to move to a new house.  I told him that I want to move as well, but we need to learn to be happy in the moment.  "Come what May and Love it."  Joseph B. Wirthlin.

"Secure not Stressed", 

 is a principle of Leadership Education, that I am working on at the moment.  

When I tell people that I home-school, I inevitably hear "I am not patient enough for that",  or "I could never do that".  A question that comes to my mind is one that comes to a lot of Mom's minds that home-school.  

When are we planning on acquiring the attribute of patience?

  Jesus said "Be ye therefore perfect."  It is a commandment that Jesus is giving us to constantly be striving for perfection.  

I believe no one is born patient,  believe me, I know that.  My babies are not patient (when they want to eat,  they do not wait).  

So, it is up to us to learn patience through our experiences in life.  We can either accept the fact that Heavenly Father is going to give us weaknesses and decide that we need to learn how to make those weaknesses into strengths or Heavenly Father will teach us those lessons in other ways.  

No matter what....

He will teach us patience and give us many experiences to learn to be patient.  Because this is what life is all about.

 I chose to learn how to develop this attribute of patience through spending time with my kids.

I love being a Mom, and homeschooling,  but the idea of 

"Secure not Stressed"  is vital...

Today,  when my kids were not listening to me,  I decided to go upstairs and take a shower. 

I took care of myself.  Then I came downstairs calmly and said "Let's have some free time for 20 minutes and then we will do family jobs.  They needed that and so did I!!!


No one wants to spend time with someone who is yelling at them and nagging them to do something.  When homeschooling you need to spend a lot of time with eachother and your kids should enjoy being with their Mom.  

One thing I've learned instead of saying "Go do this..."  or "Go do that..."  I say "Let's do this...."  or "How about we do this..."  This way it's a joint venture instead of my kids singling them out telling them what to do.  They shut down when I'm ordering them around,  but when I get down and do things with them,  then they love it,  and then usually,  they will begin to enjoy whatever it was that I needed them to do. 

FAMILY JOBS

Another,  aspect of being "Secure, not Stressed"  for me is having a clean house.  I believe that when homeschooling  you really need to get to know yourself and know your triggers. 

Mine is a messy house.  I don't believe learning can take place in a messy house .  So, we have Family Jobs.  It would be a lot easier for me to tell my kids " Do this job or do that job",  but again they do not like to be nagged, plus they don't know how to do most jobs the way I do them,  Instead,  I say we have 30 minutes to do our family jobs,  they each have a job in an area of our house that I am working on with them,  I help them with their jobs and we learn to work together and work fast.  This has helped me become a lot more "Secure not Stressed".  I sometimes offer them an incentive for when the time is up and if we have completed our task, then we can read and have a snack like popcorn.  This usually works.  Family Jobs are great!!!

One last aspect of being  "Secure not Stressed" , is I have to have time for myself.  I try to do this by waking up early,  but with a baby this doesn't always happen.  When I have a good day,  I wake up do the elliptical, read my scriptures, read my book while I'm doing the elliptical or when it's nice outside I listen to LDS conference talks or TJED audio seminars while I go for a jog.  
Then,  I come back take a shower,  make my bed, do makeup and hair and then I am ready for the day. My kids know that I need this time in the morning, so my older kids usually help with the babies while I get ready.

Finally,  I divided up morning jobs to two kids emptying the dishwasher and 1 kid is in charge of putting one load of laundry each morning.  All of them would rather take laundry than dishwasher, so I assign them the laundry job for a week at a time.  This has worked great,

Having routines, not necessarily scheduled times,  timers, family jobs and taking care of myself have all helped me be "Secure not Stressed".  

I am grateful that I am given weaknesses so that they might become strengths unto me. 

I better go get to work now...