The Joy Journal...in the beginning

I have thought a lot about resolutions and starting a new year off...


I decided that this year I don't want to write that long list of overzealous ambitions that will probably not ever be checked off.


Instead, I just picked one thing...

JOY in the journey of motherhood.

It isn't that I feel like I am a terrible mother or am dissatisfied with my role. But let's face it...there are "days" (you are a mom like me if you know what THOSE kind of days are without explanation) that the one thing I look forward to is putting the kids in bed. :) I get frustrated and impatient...and I lack that joy I want to feel.

Over Christmas break we watched the movie The Nativity story. There is a point in the movie where Mary and Joseph are talking about what it will be like when Christ is born...and if they will be able to teach Him anything.


I asked Brandon, "How would it feel to raise the Son of God?!"


Immediately a thought came to my mind. I may not be raising THE son of God...but I am raising A son of God...2 of them...and a sweet daughter of God. And my calling to do that is a really special thing.


That thought has lead me to reading and prayer...to seeing where I need to change and what I need to do...


And I have come to the conclusion that what we sing in church, what I tell my children, and what I want them to believe about them being a child of God is the very thing I tend to forget when life is hectic or they are misbehaving...and even on days when things are going okay...


The truth is, I have 3 beautiful children entrusted to me from Heavenly Father. And I don't always feel like I have given them my best. I don't always feel like I have remembered what a special calling I have and why it is so sacred.


As I think about Brandon leaving in the next few months for externships, I have felt the anxiety of being a single parent and not having him to lean on for a break or backup. And it is during those times that I WANT to remember the very thought I had while watching Mary and Joseph discuss their grand role as the parents of Jesus Christ...That I have been entrusted with these special spirits, Children of God...

Because knowing that, and REMEMBERING that makes me feel more joy...more fulfillment in cleaning up messes and wiping runny noses and repeating myself 20 times when they aren't listening to me. :) I want to see and speak to my children like they are a blessing, not a burden. But most of all, I want them to know me as a mother who loves them...

And so my resolution with this is to have a joy journal...that I plan on dedicating just for this purpose. The purpose of writing down at least ONE joy I found each day in being a mother...and documenting it with pictures or funny things the kids say, or simply writing why I love one of them...or all of them! :) I hope this will help me see more clearly, and more often, what an important challenge I have taken on....and how rewarding it can truly be...especially on the really hard days.

Now, all this is not to say a mother does not need breaks...or time away...or lots of chocolate sometimes...because I most certainly do! And this is not to say I think things will be perfectly smooth now or that I will dedicate my every waking moment to them, because that is just impossible. But I know and feel that FOR MYSELF, I can give more...and do more...

And these sweet kids, they deserve that. They deserve my time and love and attention. And I don't want to have another week or month or year that I look back and feel like I should have done things different.

I read this quote a few weeks ago and really loved the message:

"As a new year begins and we try to benefit from a proper view of what has gone before, I plead with you not to dwell on days now gone nor to yearn vainly for yesterdays, however good those yesterdays may have been. The past is to be learned from but not lived in. We look back to claim the embers from glowing experiences but not the ashes. And when we have learned what we need to learn and have brought with us the best that we have experienced, then we look ahead and remember that faith is always pointed toward the future. Faith always has to do with blessings and truths and events that will yet be efficacious in our lives."
Jeffrey R. Holland, “The Best Is Yet to Be,” Ensign, Jan 2010, 22–27

And so I take on this challenge...this resolution...with hope and with faith that as I do, somehow the Lord will provide these glimpses I am searching for so that He can help mold me into the mother HE wants me to be for myself, as a partner to my husband, and for my children.