Sometimes I just stand in awe…

Because life is just so good. Yes, there is always something to fix in the house (lots of things actually), something to clean (gobs of things all the time), meals to prepare (over and over again), bills to pay (unendingly), disputes to moderate (inevitably), whining to abate, and diapers to change. There are late nights and early mornings, aches and pains from third trimester of pregnancy, and constantly juggling whose needs (and wants) or what priority to address next, one after another. All. Day. Long. Day. After. Day.

Sometimes I wonder how I keep up with it all and stay so happy. In fact, as my daughter Marja and I worked together yesterday on several home maintenance projects, she kept repeating, “Mom, we’re such a happy family.” And I couldn’t agree more. Her remarks, combined with the general atmosphere of happiness that filled our home yesterday as all six kids, ages 3 to almost 15, and I energetically pursued our interests, caused me to reflect, what is the key to all of this peace and joy?

I found the answer during my scripture study this morning while reading a conference talk by Elder Robert M. Dianes entitled “Sir, We Would Like to See Jesus.” Elder Daines likens a medical condition called “face blindness,” wherein damage to the brain renders people incapable of recognizing even the faces of their closest friends and family members, to our own spiritual tendency to not recognize God’s love in our lives. Bingo! The key to our family’s daily happiness is the River of God’s love flowing through our daily routine.

I absolutely love how Elder Daines used a River as a metaphor for God’s love. Living on the banks of the South Fork of the Snake River, we know rivers! Once we steer out into the current of the river with our boat or floats, the river carries us along almost without effort from one beautiful vista to another. We can be busy goofing off, snacking, chatting, or enjoying the view and not even realize how swiftly the river is sweeping us along until we look at the riverbank and comprehend how quickly the foliage is tumbling by.

God’s love is just like that. When we launch our family boats into his river of love, he sweeps us along past boulders, whirlpools and rapids to enjoy the most beautiful scenery along the way. His living waters are literally what carry us through each day, day after day. It’s His Love that permeates the air and walls of our home and fills us all with his peace and joy. His love is what makes all of the hard, frustrating, or repetitive parts of our day just fine, and what causes us to emphasize and cherish instead the beauty of each blessed little moment with each other, learning and living together.

And the amazing thing is…his love is there, sweeping us along, and I was “face blind” to it until now.

What does it look like in every day life to be blind to God’s love? It looks like praying for His help with the children, our marriage, our homestead, and our homeschool, but not really believing that God is in the details. It feels like trying to “figure it all out” on our own. It feels like floundering around, trying to find answers to how to parent and homeschool without asking God about it and trusting that the answer we get from him is actually enough. It looks like being anxious about what we are or are not doing in our homeschool day; regretting constantly that we somehow haven’t done “enough.” It looks like not trusting that God actually cares, and is actually guiding our day.

See, we read in the scriptures how Christ cares so much for Lazarus, Mary and Martha. How he taught Peter and his disciples along the road through Galilee. How he shared bread with them. How he tenderly washed his disciples feet, healed the woman with the issue of blood, and offered peace and hope to the woman at the well. All of those people Jesus loved and served. But do we believe he actually loves and serves us?

We have every reason to believe it! “I will not leave you comfortless; I will come to you,” (John 14:18) is his perfectly honest promise. He would not be perfect if he didn’t fulfill it. Do we believe him? He fulfills the promise whether we acknowledge his efforts or not.

Believe it. Believe that he is guiding our day. Trust that he is with us.

What keeps us from trusting in his love? Well, we tend to believe most in what we see. And what a homeschooling mother often sees is…chaos. We see schedules unfollowed, messy rooms, a home maintenance list a mile long, kids arguing, a full calendar, unfinished curriculum, everybody else’s kids seemingly “further along” than our own, and uncertain futures.

And we get overwhelmed.

We doubt that we can successfully prepare our children for “real life” under such circumstances and wonder whether homeschooling is really the best idea after all.

With our broken schedules and seemingly broken dreams filling our view, aren’t we just like Peter, who jumped out of the boat to walk across water to the Lord, but upon seeing the waves boisterous, sunk?

We need not sink. We just need to refocus on Christ’s love. We need a reality check.

Reality check #1: Are we praying daily and earnestly, “with real intent,” for God’s help with parenting and homeschooling? Do we ask specific questions, record His answers, and act faithfully on His counsel, even if it goes contrary to what we, with our limited vision, think we know or feel?

Reality check #2: Are we taking time to connect with the Holy Spirit and learn about God’s love every day in our own scripture study?

Reality check #3: Do we build our family’s day on a foundation of God’s love by studying the scriptures and praying together every day?

If we are doing these things, or even just trying to do them, then we can rest assured that God is with us, our children, and our homeschool. More accurately, we can know that we are with Him, because it is not His attentiveness that we need doubt, but our own.

When we center our personal and family routines on Jesus Christ, we can look up from the boisterous waves of daily living and see Him, his hand extended, inviting us to walk beside him among the crashing surf that is family life. Walking beside him doesn’t mean the waves will cease. Our schedules will probably remain broken…or else we’ll realize they aren’t as important as we think. The house will still explode with messes…until we utilize Christ’s grace to patiently shepherd our children into lifelong habits of respect and cleanliness. The arguments will never go away, but as we mentor our kids in self-government skills and lead them to Christ through our own examples, they will begin to internalize his Love personally and begin to change their own selfish behavior in order to follow Him.

Yes, a view into our homeschooling houses may still look physically like chaos. But when we center our lives and families on Christ and trust that He loves us and is directing all of our efforts, just like He promised he would, we will see a river of His love permeating everything. The chaos will no longer overwhelm us, at minimum, and can actually energize us because all of that mess, and activity, and effort is real learning, in a real environment. When we trust in God, we don’t need to worry about whether we’re adequately preparing our homeschooled children for “real life” because every day they are already living the best “real life” possible: the joyful one that God sends to us day after day, one glorious moment at a time.

Reference: Daines, Robert M., “Sir, We Would Like to See Jesus.” General Conference, October 2023. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2023/10/13daines?lang=eng