Confessions & Inspirations

I have a confession to make. I love reading other peoples blogs and it doesn't matter if I know them or not. I know kinda weird hu! Most of them are friends of friends or maybe I found a link to their blog off of a friends, friends blog. Either way, I love to read about other people, get new ideas and see cute pictures. There are a few that I follow and check in on about everyday. I never comment because, well that I why I made my blog private. I had people checking my blog that I didn't know. They were probably just harmless and have the same obsession that I do but either way a comment from some one that you don't know is just weird!!! So the other day I was ready this blog and was really touched.

I got permission and would like to share it with you. Check out her blog by clicking here. She is such a great example to me.
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Life has been full lately but I had to finally take a moment and write down some thoughts about the weekend. We had a wonderful Stake Conference. I sang in the Conference choir, something I have not done in a long, long time. I had been going to practices and the music was so beautiful that I had a hard time not crying while I was singing. It was a joy to sing this past Sunday morning.
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There were many wonderful messages and I would like to elaborate on them all but I will stick to one topic that was covered by President Read in the adult session Saturday night (always THE BEST session!) and that I had actually been thinking about for the past few weeks. A subject I have pondered over many times as a mother. The topic was "Teaching our children to have a Testimony of Jesus Christ".
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I think I had been thinking about this topic because I have read some really interesting things on blogs in the past few months on different things people were allowing their children to do or not do. It is kind of fascinating how we are all different in our parenting, yet we all pretty much want the same result.
We have 2 left at home and I know that our parenting philosophy has centered around having a balance of teaching values, letting the kids choose their course, but guiding with a strong hand, and having definate expectations. Over the past couple of years I have talked about this subject with my three oldest children now that they are grown, and they all have talked about how they feel they are successful because of this, and how this parenting style was helpful to them. One of my daughters said that knowing what our expectations were really helped because she was able to form the goals of what she wanted to do with her life with our expectations in mind and it helped her make good choices.
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We did not have outrageous expectations. Some examples of what we expect of our children are:
-To be honest
-To choose the right/choose good friends
-When they start something they finish it
-Do their best in school - they are capable of A's
-Go to church with the family each Sunday
-Boys must be Eagle Scouts before they get their license
-When the graduate they go to college and/or on missions
-They each give me at least 6 grandchildren (still waiting on this one - wink)
Anyway, you get the idea - these are the kinds of things we started telling them we expected when they were very young and right on up till they moved out

Once I had friend call me and tell me that her teenage son (about 14 at the time) was not feeling like getting up and going to church. So she was letting him have his agency and choose whether or not he wanted to go to church or not on Sunday mornings. To her dismay he was choosing not to go (big surprise) and she was venting a little, not quite sure what to do. I just listened as she told me she was sure she was making the right choice letting him choose because he would "come around".I got off the phone and was thinking about it. This would not be an option at my house - but then everyone was different. Then I thought, what if the boy decided every Friday he didn't want to go to school. Would she give him his agency then? I kind of doubted it. She would make him go to school, and likewise, she should have made him go to church (my opinion).This boy is now grown, has drifted a bit, and is well past mission age and didn't want to go. You have to guide them with a strong hand...at 14 they still NEED that guidance, at 15, 16, 17, 18 and sometimes older too.
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President Read said that, "We've reached that place in the world where good is called evil and evil is called good". We see it everyday.
"With this in mind we have to instill in the hearts and the minds of our youth a testimony of Jesus Christ."
"Youth have agency". Like we all do, they have the agency to choose wrong or right. "They want the blessings of the Gospel yet they often don't behave in a way that will get them these blessings - they often think it is a long way off. Because of this they think that they can choose wrong paths now and repent later, they develop bad habits and addictions and time moves faster than they know and later, it is very hard to get rid of those habits and addictions."
"The youth must become truly converted [in their hearts] to the Gospel of Jesus Christ while they are young".
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I could not agree more. If you teach children while they are young and continue to teach them as they grow they have a better chance of retaining that teaching when the outside world comes knocking on the door.
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It is never too late to start teaching kids to make good choices. I know we are still working on it. Our kids are still out there needing help with choices, we have two at home who still need guidance. All we can do as parents is to do our best, but helping our children gain a firm testimony of Jesus Christ is a great place to start.