First Time to Church

First off, doesn't she just look adorable in this little dress? I love little girl dresses. This one is still a little big for her but I didn't really care. How fun it is to have a baby girl!

So, this past Sunday was our first Sunday at church as a whole family, and honestly it feels like everything is different. First off, getting ready for church was much harder. Ellie finally finished her morning feeding at 8:30, leaving me with half an hour to get ready...yah right. Needless to say, we were late. And second, your whole mindset changes when you have someone depending on you 100%. I felt slightly out of focus as I tried paying attention to the speakers while keeping in tune to what type of cry Ellie was giving (hungry? wet? more attention?). I can definitely see that the world of parenthood is a whole new world.

With that said, I must also mention how beautiful this new world is. This is the time when all of the virtues we learned so much about growing up come in to bloom. This is when we must put into practice every Christlike characteristic we have ever tried to develop, and then try to develop some more. And this is when it is most rewarding. Watching my little baby sleep, or feeling her tiny fingers wrap around mine while she is eating makes me unbelievably happy. Such small things that create such big feelings. It is wonderful! And I love being a mommy.

I know Eric feels much the same way. Last night in our home evening after singing "I Am a Child of God" he mentioned how he has never before looked at the song from a parent's perspective, but now he does (WE do) and the meaning of the song has taken on added beauty. Let me add one more thought from last night's lesson. This is from a talk by James E. Faust called "The Greatest Challenge in the World - Good Parenting":

Parental teaching moments need not be big or dramatic or powerful. We learn this from the Master Teacher. Charles Henry Parkhurst said:

“The completed beauty of Christ’s life is only the added beauty of little inconspicuous acts of beauty—talking with the woman at the well; showing the young ruler the stealthy ambition laid away in his heart that kept him out of the Kingdom of Heaven; … teaching a little knot of followers how to pray; kindling a fire and broiling fish that his disciples might have a breakfast waiting for them when they came ashore from a night of fishing, cold, tired, and discouraged. All of these things, you see, let us in so easily into the real quality and tone of [Christ’s] interests, so specific, so narrowed down, so enlisted in what is small, so engrossed with what is minute.” (“Kindness and Love,” in Leaves of Gold, Honesdale, Pa.: Coslet Publishing Co., 1938, p. 177.)

And so it is with being parents. The little things are the big things sewn into the family tapestry by a thousand threads of love, faith, discipline, sacrifice, patience, and work.