Hmmm....

Hmmmmm...

That is what I am thinking right now when I am trying to decide what I want to talk about or babble about right now. There are so many meaningful things and then again so many meaningless things that I could go on about. So hmmmm...

Right now I am sitting in my home, Brian is taking his Sunday nap, Sadie and Hunter are downstairs coloring, and McKadie is sleeping. Hunter just came upstairs to ask if he could use the pencil sharpener, I tell him yes and then he leans in and kisses my forehead. So maybe that is what I will write about first. Being a mom in Zion.

What does it mean to be a mom in Zion? Yikes, have I lived up to those expectations in the last 8 years? Will He be pleased with what I have done? My heart says that I have done the best with what I was allowed, but it also tells me that I have slacked in many areas.
I don't know about any of you reading this but I am probably not alone when I say, there are so many other women doing it better than me.
I read these blogs and see all the wonderful things these Women in Zion are doing with their kids and my heart is sad. Are my kids ok? Do they know that I love them more than anything? What can I do to be better? This is where I am hopeful. This hysterectomy has left me feeling better than I have been in years. Once I am over the restrictions of an abdominal surgery, I feel a huge piece of hope that I will be able to finally start being that mom and wife that I hope to be.
Do we have FHE? I try to make sure we do have it weekly but we aren't perfect, there have been weeks that have gone by without it but we do try. Do we have daily family scriptures? This one is hard because there have been periods of time where we have it daily for months, and then there are months when we don't have it. Do we have daily family prayer? We try. It is more frequent than scriptures and I am a huge believer in the power of prayer, so I have it in the foremost of my mind to make sure we have it, but again we are far from perfect. Do I yell at my kids? Sadly yes, more than I would like to admit. Do I tell them that I love them? Daily if not hourly. Do they know that their Heavenly Father loves them? I hope so, we talk about it every morning before school. Do they know they are children of God? I am grateful to say yes.
There is so much more room for improvement...and I will try. It's never too late.
So then I think about these wonderful women in Zion who do the above and beyond with their kids. My sister Katrina is one of them. She makes time and opens opportunities for her kids to do wonderful things. For example, there is a couple in Mesa, AZ that was recently in a plane crash http://nieniedialogues.blogspot.com/. Katrina was telling me about it yesterday and was talking about all of the donations and things people are doing for this couple and their 4 children. She said she was going to get some things together to help her kids make cards for this couple and send it to them as a service project. What a great example she is to me and to her children. A shining example of a Daughter in Zion as well as a wonderful mother.
Another wonderful woman in Zion is my mom. Geesh, I get choked up thinking about all she has endured and has yet to endure. Life has not always thrown her the easy slice of pie. Just a quick run down, I was born before mom and dad's 1st annivesary and just before my 1st birthday we moved to Holland. Mom has expressed how difficult it was for her to be away from her family and friends and then to be with all of these foreign speaking people and not knowing how to communicate with them and so on. We were there for 4 almost 5 years. Then just being the wife of a military man is difficult. I have mentioned it before but just before I turned 15 my dad went to prison. I have a few siblings that have had some really hard bumps in the road of life and even some massive potholes, and my mom has been there for each of them thru and thru. Some examples of that, I have a sister who got pregnant at the age of 16, mom was right there to help her with it. Then the weddings that she dealt with on her own, without dad. I have a brother who had some problems with the law in his mid teenage years and she was with him through it all, going to court, visiting him in jail regularly. Not to mention that she made sure that we were able to visit dad regularly. Recently she has been there for a sister whose husband was nearly killed on November 1st of 2006, and then my dad suffered a stroke 10 days later. 2 months prior to that we found out that one of my sisters was fighting a drug addiction to Heroin. Life has dealt her quite the hand and yet her faith never faulters. She is valiant to the Lord and is always there to make sure that the gospel principles are being followed and lived. What a woman in ZION. I can only hope to be half that woman she is.
So with this entry in hand and having done a self evaluation of who I am and who I want to be, I can only hope that I am blessed with the patience and knowledge to better myself as a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister, an aunt and a Woman in Zion.
Please know that we are all loved by our Father in Heaven. We are all choice Daughters and Sons of a Heavenly Father who will always be there for us, even when we don't feel we are worthy of his presence. Don't let go, hold on to Him, pray to Him, tell Him of your struggles, your joys, your pains. He knows your name, He knows your pain. On this blogs playlist please listen to 2 songs on it. The first one is Every Breath by Jenny Phillips and then the other one is Maker's Touch by Jenny Phillips. Listen to the lyrics and know without a doubt that you are a Daughter in Zion or Son:)