A Christmas Gift for Mothers Beyond Measure
By Daryl Hoole
Editor’s note:
Readers — do you need H.E.L.P. (Home Executive Lessons
and Principles)? See Daryl Hoole's
additional new monthly column for answers to Meridian
readers' questions about family living and home management.
Look for it the fourth Monday of each month beginning in
January. We invite you to submit your questions
by contacting Daryl at ask@theartofhomemaking.com.
At the top of most LDS mothers’ Christmas
wish list is the hope and prayer that their children will be faithful
and grow up willing to serve the Lord and keep his commandments.
Many mothers, including me, often insist they want no other gift
for Christmas than for their children to make correct choices.
It can be a blessing to remember
that there is a commandment with a promise that can help to make
this righteous desire happen. Not only are we taught that our
families will be given temporal and spiritual blessings if we
keep the Sabbath, but the Lord also specifically promises us that
by keeping his day holy we will be able to “more fully keep
[ourselves] unspotted from the world” (D&C 59:9-10).
Certainly in a world where our children
are surrounded by evil influences and are confronted by temptations
at every turn, the promise of such divine protection for them
brings hope and reassurance.
Even though a righteous father and
patriarch in the home may declare, “As for me and my house, we
will honor the Sabbath,” it is generally the mother who manages
the home in such a way that this can actually happen.
The mother knows just how true the
catchy maxim is that “in order to keep Sunday holy, she has to
keep Saturday hopping.” In other words, it takes two days to
keep the Sabbath holy. If it can’t be Saturday, then it needs
to be Friday for making Sunday preparations, with the help of
everyone in the family doing such things as grocery shopping,
laundering and ironing clothes, cleaning the house, and preparing
meals as much as practicable so as to require only minimum effort
on Sunday.
Sunday dinner, basically prepared
the day before, could well be one of the best meals of the week.
Such a meal seems to have a positive effect on children as they
associate a delicious dinner and a pleasant family time around
the table with church attendance and keeping the Sabbath.
For example, Sunday dinner could
consist of pot roast, mashed potatoes and gravy, hot rolls, a
vegetable, a green salad, and ice cream for dessert. Each family
member “specializes” in one aspect of the meal: someone makes
the roll dough on Saturday, someone else prepares ahead for a
salad, another is in charge of peeling the potatoes, someone puts the roast in the crock-pot Sunday morning, and
so on, down to setting the table. Then the family works as a
team to quickly clean up afterwards.
It’s the advance planning and preparation
that does the trick. Those who cook, clean, do the laundry, shop,
and iron seven days a week usually find that life is a miserable
grind and may feel themselves wearing down. They can hardly face
Monday morning and “the same old thing all over again.” They
miss the refreshing and needed break Sunday should offer in the
routine of their lives.
Just as the law of tithing is the
Lord’s way of helping us budget our money wisely and have it go
further as a result, so is keeping the Sabbath day the Lord’s
plan for helping us schedule and manage our time more effectively.
And just as with paying tithing, honoring the Lord’s holy day
brings blessings, both temporal and spiritual.
The spirit of the Sabbath can be
further enhanced in a home through a variety of ways. Strains
of inspirational music heard throughout the house can help create
a beautiful Sunday atmosphere. Videos, DVDs, games, projects,
and activities that are appropriate for the day can be set aside
to be enjoyed by family members.
Children can be taught that the Sabbath
is not just a block of meetings, but rather it is an entire day.
Wise parents will help children see appropriate activities as
pleasant and edifying, not as limiting and depriving. Children
need to be carefully and lovingly guided to look forward to Sunday
rather than to dread it.
It is important to manage Church
meetings and assignments in a way so as not to interfere with
important family togetherness. Extra effort in planning and prioritizing
is helpful when responsibilities are especially heavy so the family
feels blessed, rather than neglected. A typical Latter-day Saint
Sunday is not a day of rest in the sense that we become idle,
but that that we rest from our worldly cares so that we can give
special attention and care to the Lord’s work. Doing so in this
spirit can make all the difference.
There is cause for rejoicing for
us mothers in knowing that if we manage our household in a manner
so as to honor the Sabbath, the Lord promises we will be able
to “more fully keep [ourselves] unspotted from the world”
(D&C 59:9-10). Certainly in this world of much filth and
degradation, the promise of such divine protection for our children
is a blessed one indeed. It would be a Christmas gift beyond
measure.
See this column on January 8th
for “Be of Good Cheer.”
