Dear mom,
I read this book recently by Elder Russell M Nelson's wife. It's called What Would a Holy Woman Do? The gist of the story is that she goes on a three day challenge where every day she takes one ordinary tasks and thinks what would a holy woman do and sees how that changes her day. She also challenged several of her friends to do it with her. And the book is all about their experiences and what we can learn. As I read the book I had many thoughts. I have found that unfortunately I am in the habit of yelling at my children. It seems to be my go to when things go wrong. I came to the realization when Betsy was here helping out. I noticed as she would spend time with the children that when they would do something wrong she never yelled at them once but very calmly or even sternly corrected them and counseled them. I remember thinking as things went wrong what my reaction would be and then seeing what Betsy did instead and realizing that her way was better. Yelling does not accomplish the task that I was trying to do. It is not something a holy woman would do. It is something that I am striving to work on.
The other realization I had was how important it is to be with your children. When I spend time with them it is important that I am not just give them half of my attention while I scroll through Facebook or anything else. But when I'm spending time with my children I need to be with them.
When I nurse Emily I almost always open Facebook and start to scroll through that. My problem is when I scroll through Facebook I don't want to get off until I've seen all the new news because I want to make sure I haven't missed anything. Which in reality if it's that big news I'm going to see it because lots of people are going to comment on it and so it's going to be at the top of my newsfeed a lot. However I found that this is a major problem. I will be nursing and the boys will come up and want some of my attention but in my mind nursing time is Facebook time so I ignore them which leads to a lot of problems. The few times I've tried to do story time during nursing like you suggested have gone really really well. I need to stick to that or at least be available to chat with them so that they feel like I'm not just ignoring them multiple times a day. I have also realized that Facebook is a very poor use of my time. If the boys don't want my attention while I am nursing I should use it is time to study my scriptures. I've really been struggling to try and find a time to sit down and have a few minutes of quiet where I can read my scriptures and as I pondered upon this I realized that nursing is a good opportunity to do that. So a holy woman, in my opinion, would spend her time nursing giving her children the attention they need. If they are happy on their own using that time to better herself through scripture study.
A holy woman also cares about her body. Meaning that she exercises and eats healthy she does not ignore it and let it fall by the wayside and gain unnecessary pounds. She would cherish the gift that her Heavenly Father gave her and protect it and keep it healthy and strong.
These are all things I am striving to work on things that I feel are important to change. I am so very glad that I had the opportunity to read this book. And I hope that I can become a more holy woman as I work on these tasks.
SLY
