They gave me a calling in the young women's organization at church. Have I mentioned that before? Which is great. I love the girls to pieces. They are absolutely fabulous young women with great ambition and strong testimonies.
I have never been the kind that thinks later after a conversation, "Ooop, should have said that." But for some reason, the pressure to saying something enlightening to these young women tends to bring me up short each and every time and I tend to have repeat conversations in my head and come up with brilliant examples and lessons in my own life that I could share. It's happened twice too many times now and I have decided that until I can remember to always pray to have the spirit with me, to remind me of enlightening things to say, I had better practice by writing my should-have-been answers.
This Sunday we were talking about becoming wives and mothers. The qualties needed and how the girls could be working on those qualities right now. The two that I was asked specifically to talk about were organizational skills and cleanliness while the other was forgiveness.
Question 1 "What was your room like, growing up?"
It was almost always clean. If everything has a home it's a lot easier to put it away quickly instead of always having to look for a place to put it. I think it's also important to own your abilities. I don't like folding laundry. When Steve and I were first married I was the dutiful wife and did the laundry and the folding, but soon I began just stuffing clothes into drawers and that created a problem because the drawers wouldn't always close and it always looked messy. I realized the problem and thought up the solution of purchasing a big bin. Seriously. It's the size of an extra large suitcase and now, instead of folding clothes, I toss his clothes into the bin and our room looks much more organized without clothes peaking out of the dresser. I have more room in the dresser and can stuff my clothes in it without folding them. Problems are solved because I knew my weakness of not wanting to fold and owned it, creating a solution that works for everyone. If you know you will have a pile of clean clothes on your floor mid-week from trying on three different outfits each day, create a space for them to not be on the floor so that it is easier to tell them from the dirties.
We live in an apartment complex where people are in transitions in life and they have a hard time keeping things nice and taking responsibility for messes. One of the little girls that runs around outside likes to come to our house, often asking after Alaska and if she can come out and play. She came in to use the bathroom and came out saying, "Your bathroom is so clean!" She sat on the couch to wait for Alaska to get her shoes on and says, "It feels good in here." I loved that. When a house is clean, it is much easier to concentrate on how it feels in the house. Instead of spending an morning cleaning before someone comes over, I can spend 30 minutes and wash up the breakfast dishes and then spend the other little bit of time reading the scriptures and playing EFY music to invite the spirit. A house not only needs to be clean, but to feel clean, in order for the spirit to work its magic.
Question 2 "Have you and your husband had an experience you would like to share with forgiveness?"
Of course. Yes. So many. But mostly. (And I bawled at this time. It's been so stressful and I didn't even know it) Mostly ever since we've moved, I've been so stressed. It's hard having two families so close. I was always getting upset. Over the smallest things I would yell and scream and it wasn't effective because a person out of control like that is hard to listen to. Steven would tune me out and whatever the problem was never got fixed. So we came up with this scale of 1 to 10. If something is bothering me, I take his hand and say, Steven, I have something hard to tell you. This is always down calmly so that he can prepare his mind for it and then he knows it's important without me having to raise the volume of my voice. I rate it for him and sometimes, if it's a low number, I can tell him right then. If it's a higher number sometimes I need to wait a hour before telling him. We've had to say a lot of, "I'm sorries" and a lot of "I knows" but I think the most important part of forgiveness is the changing part that comes with it. The changes that we make to create a happier life for each other and Alaska.
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