So, this January, when we made our goal to stay up-to-date on the blog, the goal was to do an entry at least weekly.  Obviously, that hasn’t been the case of late.

Here’s why.

Josh has a really tough semester this time around. He basically ALWAYS has at least one thing he should be working on for school. He goes to work at 8:00 or earlier and comes home for dinner at 5:00ish. He has dinner with the family, spends his precious hour and a half with the kids, and then works on school again until bedtime–and bedtime keeps getting later and later. I realize that for many people in this world, this is just the reality. Talking to Mother the other day, she acknowledged that this is indeed a rough time, but she noted “At least for you there is an end in sight.” For her, life like this started 2 months after she got married and stopped…oh wait. It hasn’t stopped. She’s still going strong after 34 years and ELEVEN children!! And I find myself wondering HOW she and Daddy did it/do it. Between homework, church callings, and kids we are essentially always sleep deprived. The house, dishes, laundry, etc are usually more or less in a state of catastrophe (That would be because of me being sleep-deprived). Our idea of a family outing is a walk to take out the trash  (not a joke). So I don’t know how Mother and Daddy did it (especially with little kids). But we are doing it by entering a state I think I will call “safe mode.”

 

You know how when your computer is about to die–always crashing and going really slow–and when you reboot it for the 90th time you finally go the “safe mode” option which basically means your computer will do only the basics? Aesthetics are the first thing to go. Speed is a close second. And you’re so worried about your computer completely self-destroying that you don’t even dare look up that document from 2009. Well, that is our life right now.  Our aesthetics: gone. (For those of you who have ever lived with me, you will be amazed to know that YES I can shower even less often than I used to. And I already told you about the house. yikes.) Speed: not happening with as little sleep as a teething/sick/who-knows baby (who literally woke up crying with pain at the same moment we were laying down to go to bed multiple times last week) gives us. And as for any other stuff. We generally just don’t even attempt.

 

But in safe mode on computers, they still do the REALLY important stuff, right? Like, you can still connect to the internet. You can even use Skype. I know this because my computer was basically dead in so many ways when I was in France while Josh and I were engaged. But I could still Skype him every night!  And guess what! Our safe mode does the same thing. We may not look good (or smell good). We may yawn every third second. But we still connect.

 

A conference talk from April keeps coming to mind. Sister Linda S. Reeves said “Some of you have heard me tell how overwhelmed my husband, Mel, and I felt as the parents of four young children. As we faced the challenges of parenting and keeping up with the demands of life, we were desperate for help. We prayed and pleaded to know what to do. The answer that came was clear: “It is OK if the house is a mess and the children are still in their pajamas and some responsibilities are left undone. The only things that really need to be accomplished in the home are daily scripture study and prayer and weekly family home evening.'”

 

So we do those things. It might be all we do, but we have family scripture study every night, we have family prayer morning and night, we have family home evening every week.

Thinking about all of this has helped me understand the peace of the Atonement a little better. I look at my world–the things I must do, the things I should do, the things I want to do–and I feel like I have completely lost control. But I remember those words from Sister Reeves, and I remember the Savior, and I there is something inside of me that says “You’re going to be okay.” And so far, we have been okay. Not great. But we turn on, and we do the bare essentials. And we are going to keep doing those things until somebody comes and gives us a new OS or hard-drive or just scraps us. (We’re hoping all we need is the new OS. We’ll see. 🙂 )