Showing Up

Yesterday I showed up to Institute.  I've missed it the past two times, making excuses regarding non-eternal commitments to myself.  Flashback to the day before: Monday, I was not very happy with my performance as a mother.  Flashback even further to Saturday: my two youngest had not fulfilled the expectation to clean their bedroom on Saturday -- I was literally gone the entire day at a seminary teacher in-service followed by the stake temple day.  When we'd returned in the late evening -- I sent Carlos and the boys to a restaurant so I could attack the kitchen and family room and recover some basic living standards.  I was too tired to want to even know what their bedrooms looked like.  Their big sister had spent the day with friends, and I am grateful that big brother Weston kept the two littles alive, but the house...the house.  Ah, well, there was always Monday.  So after school Monday no friends were allowed over at all -- we were going to do what should have been done two days before. The problem was, we were all sort of already worn down, and it wasn't long before my entreaties morphed into a monster-mom mini-tirade.  I was sharing my fear that they would wind up jobless.  I was composing a lecture on the principle of conditioning yourself to work, versus intellectually knowing how to perform a task...I was wasting my breath.  Still, they were putting legos away by adding them to former creations and throwing clean clothes in the hamper...I gave myself a timeout when I could feel tensions rise.  When I realized that I wasn't showing them the respect I wanted shown to me, I was a little ashamed.  I was acting in a very unenlightened way: not the respecting agency, while calmly setting up consequences way.  I just let it all blow over, and by the time the legos were mostly under control, I let them have a dip in the hot tub and freezing cold pool.  They wanted to and it certainly cured them of all grumpiness.  Still, as I recalled the day, I felt I had let them and myself down.  I hadn't been my best self, and I knew I could have done more to build my patience reserves.  I had taught seminary, but I had neglected my Book of Mormon personal study, for example.  I had wasted time on-line, and frankly my own room was pretty untidy, which was probably wearing on my subconscious.  Then,Tuesday morning shone.  I drove the boys to school and said, "Look at that sky! The Monday of Mondays is over.  It is a new day."   Miles sardonically quipped, "You can't judge everything by how it looks."  But I think he was hopeful too.  The morning slipped away and I hadn't fit in my planned-out 5 mile run.  That's a good thing to do, right?  but Institute was starting in about 5 minutes.  Which was the better choice?  I decided to go to Insititute.  I was a little late and slid onto the back row.  I didn't even have time to grab by paper scriptures, but I had my phone.  We were studying the Isaiah chapters.  Maybe I have been making excuses because of that -- I already took the course on Isaiah from the same teacher -- what more could I learn?  What I needed to learn was the lesson I was trying to teach my boys about work -- it isn't just about knowing something -- it's about conditioning yourself.  I was spiritually dehydrated and didn't know it, but I had showed up.  Then we read,

"For the Lord shall comfort Zion, he will comfort all her waste places; and he will make her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord.  Joy and gladness shall be found therein, thanksgiving and the voice of melody...I am he; yea, I am he that comforteth you..."

I showed up to Institute yesterday, and guess who was there? -- the Lord.  I didn't see Him, but His spirit filled me with comfort and strength as these words were read aloud.  He spoke to me and I heard, on a day when I was feeling especially undeserving...
All through the simple grace of showing up.