My Faith: I feel like, as Baby Amazing grows, I'm coming out of a fog and trying to put my life back together. I'm studying my scriptures more diligently and helping my children have personal study time too. I'm trying to devote myself more fully to motherhood and discipleship, strengthening my family and my testimony, and trying to align my life more fully with the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ and his prophets. We're trying to create a home of order, where we work together as a family to get things done. We're trying to have better organized family home evenings that are more of the family teaching and strengthening tool they were meant to be, and our family scripture study time has become so much more enjoyable as we've turned it into more of a learning time and less of an item on our to-do list. I'm trying to figure out how more of our lives can be given in service and less about caring for our endless amount of stuff. Of course, none of this is going perfectly. But I feel like we're moving in a good direction.
I think one of the things that has helped with getting us moving in a better direction is significantly improving our temple attendance. I've seen the Lord bless us and strengthen us as we've served at the temple more often, blessing us with greater strength and a better spirit in our home. I've seen how it's blessed our children. I know that the promises of the prophets that temple attendance will bless us and our families is true. I have seen the blessings in my life.
My family: Some days I love being a mother. I love my babies. I love looking at them, watching how they think and move. I love the things they say. I love watching them grow into good people. Other days it is just plain hard work and lots of it, and all I want is a good workout, a hot-uninterupted shower, and a minute to myself. Some times I feel torn between wishing that I could always be a mother of young children, and wishing that I could just get them all in school and have that chunk of the day to keep the chaos at bay, or at least to spend more time writing, which always makes me a happier mommy. Some days I wish I could have both. Most of the time, I figure I better just be happy with where I'm at and try to be where the Lord wants me to be.
My fiction: I'm writing again! As part of trying to put my life back together, this has been one of my top goals. I've been writing almost every day, and I even sent out a picture book to a couple agents. I got a nice rejection letter from the first and am waiting to hear from the second. I'm thinking about sending it out to a third agent this week. Rejection isn't fun, but I really feel like a writer, and I'm back to working hard and it feels great. I'm really excited about my friend Jamie's new project, One Page A Day. She's starting a group where everyone commits to writing a page a day and you report by email every day, either by emailing your page, or just the fact that you finished. There will even be a weekly contest for the best sentence or paragraph written that week. I believe it's open for people to join at onepageadaygroup.blogspot.com. Yeah for Jamie! I've been looking for a way to feel more accountable for getting my work done, and I think this is a great way to do it.
