How do we know when as a family we are too busy? How can we tell when our children are in too many activities? I think each family faces these questions at one time or another. When I think of answering them I think of many other questions to ask: Are my children leaving the home in the morning without a prayer? Are they going to bed without a family prayer? Are we eating dinner in the car five nights a week? I have five children and have a carpool route for each one of them. Our children have three different departure times in the morning, between 5:45 a.m. and 8:30 a.m. Do I wake them all up at 5:30 a.m. to say a family prayer? We are still trying to figure that out.
Some of our children are in activities they love. But when these activities, combined with many children, contribute to us neglecting our family prayer and scripture reading, then we may be too busy. Family time all too often contains memories of someone missing from an activity because another activity was too important. I have mentioned before that Sundays are my favorite days. It’s a time to rest and just talk with my family. Each Sunday our family sits for a period of about 20 minutes before bedtime to say our family prayers, read the scriptures and write in our journals. I keep the journals underneath our family room table and they are easy to pull out and use. I ask my children to write about something spiritual they can think of that happened during the week. The journals, I think, will be cherished treasures.
I think at this time in life (when kids would rather text for hours, go on facebook or be at a friends house), it is so important that we as families have family meetings to set the standard for each day – including scripture study and family prayer time. I think it is important to prepare our children to be stronger then they are now, and to determine what is important to the family as a whole. May we set a time aside each day to show our children what really matters in life, and set an example of being an unconquerable spirit against those activities that take us away from spiritual family moments. As stated in The Family Proclamation, “Happiness in family life is most likely to be achieved when founded upon the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ. Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities.”