I remember when Peter was still only a baby, how it seemed like every time I had a few days that made me feel like I finally had the Mom thing all figured out, the next day everything would fall apart.
He would be extra fussy and wouldn't take his naps and any number of other things, and all of the sudden I felt like I had no idea what I was doing again.
Just yesterday morning my kitchen was still clean and sparkling from my clean up the night before, and I genuinely wondered how I ever manage to let it get messy. Then we had an extra busy day. Between a play date and the doctor's appointment and trying to hunt down a toddler size walking boot, we were in and out of the house all day. By bedtime I looked around at the war zone that was my kitchen and thought to myself how quickly things spiral out of control.
Even today, one moment Peter and Carolyn were laughing and playing on the floor together and I was soaking in the sweet wonderment of my adorable children, and the next she was SCREAMING at the top of her lungs because Peter bit her finger when she grabbed his face and my tender moment had been replaced with all three of us crying or yelling.
The funny thing is, EVERY time I have one of those "I have everything together" moments, I feel like there's no way it's all going to come crashing down. Not this time. This time I've got it figured out.
I think it's easy to fall into that same trap spiritually; of thinking that because we are doing well today, we are immune from spiritual weakness.
I remember chatting with a friend of mine a while back who was serving as a bishop in his ward, and we were talking about his experiences with people leaving the church. He said that without fail, among those he has counseled, each one had stopped reading their scriptures and praying every day before their testimonies were in jeopardy.
It's not that everyone who stops reading their scriptures and praying daily leaves the church, but apparently something about neglecting that step leaves us vulnerable.
I've noticed that whenever I have long stretches of "bad days", it's always correlated with not reading my scriptures daily. This could just mean that there are a lot of times when I'm not doing my daily reading, because that would certainly be true, but I've decided that there is protective power in that daily communing with God and studying of his words.
And as impervious as I may feel from Satan's fiery darts today, I need my testimony to be able to handle it if everything falls apart tomorrow.
Labels: Motherhood