March 28, 2011

This is the first day of my challenge to myself to look for times when I have felt the Lord's hand touching our lives. As I was thinking about my day today, I realized that I am dealing with my children's not so agreeable moods more lovingly. After quite a few really hard days, and a few tearful evenings where a couple of my children in particular didn't believe that I loved them, I think that I have learned a little secret. About two weeks ago, the frustrations hit their ultimate high, and Hannah told me “Mom, I think that you love me, but you are not very good at showing your love.” Talk about crushingly honest constructive criticism! I was so confused, I thought that I was doing very well at showing my children that I love them. I hug them often, I take care of all of their physical needs, I tell them that I love them...what more could they need? After a few prayers concerning the subject, I remembered a conversation that I had with one of my friends a few years ago. She had told me that she had read “The Five Love Languages of Children,” and that she had learned a lot from it. I was hesitant to check it out from the library because a few years ago I decided that I didn't like self-help parenting books anymore. They were mostly contradictory, and made me feel like my motherly intuition was incompetent. I checked it out anyway and decided that maybe, just this once, inspiration could use a little help from the experts. I have enjoyed the book very much, and I think that it has a lot of good information in it. In a nutshell, it gave me ideas on what might be lacking in the ways that I show my love individually to each of my children. I have tried to be more encouraging, to hold my tongue more when my children aren't actively involved in what they know they should be doing, to spend a little less time nagging, have a little more patience and take a little more time to talk about what really matters to them. I have noticed a huge difference in the spirit in our home, and a shift if my priorities. A verse from the hymn, “Know this that every soul is free” came to my mind: “He'll call, persuade, direct aright, and bless with wisdom, love and light, in nameless ways be good and kind, but never force the human mind.” I am thankful for inspired people who write good books, and I am thankful for the Holy Ghost for helping me decipher the useful portions of these good books.