Make It Happen

Sorry it has been so long since my last post. Lots of rocking about in the boat on what appears to be the same sea has had  me less than enthused to chronicle it all. But I am back now so....

Family Home Evening. Our church encourages us to spend time together as a family every Monday night. They encourage it so much that no other activities are never allowed on Mondays. It is essential, sacred family time. Family Home Evening was a hit and miss growing up. I can only imagine how hard it was to corral 6 kids and as I was older, our schedules were all over the place. Interestingly enough, I do remember a long stretch of Family Home Evenings around the time I was 12. I don't remember the sibling 'discussions' (fighting) although I am sure there was some. I don't remember the lessons. I do remember learning the words to the hymn "Choose the Right" and every time I hear it or sing it, it takes me back to black vinyl couch, the house on Sherman street, and my family. I do know that I felt the spirit during some of the Family Home Evenings because I remember the feeling.

Family Home Evening has been a bit of a hit or miss with my family as well. Our family dynamic is completely different than the typical. It is just Ryan and I all the time. It has felt silly when I tried to have family night the typical way and we would trade 'jobs' - one give the prayer, the other the song, back to the first for a lesson, etc. Ryan and I talk all the time and I found that many of our FHE lessons felt forced, canned, spiritless especially in contrast to our many other discussions. And sometimes it felt like the activities highlighted the fact that we are only two rather than being fun activities together.

I prayed about it. I started gleaning bits from friends and my testimony of FHE began to deepen. My friend Kim mentioned that their family had been working on it - no matter how short that they spent some time together each Monday night and that they called it Family Home Evening - that is was a distinguished time for her kids. My friend Alisa shared some of her family nights on her blog and I noticed that they did FHE right after dinner, around the table. Another friend, Lindsay, constantly links her discussions to lds.org and the wealth of clips/discussions there. Hmmmm. Ideas began to form. I began to desire it more for my family. My heart started to want this - This was essential to my family.

As I continued to pray and ponder how to make this something special for my family, some inspiration came. First, I moved pizza night from Friday to Monday. Perfect idea because pizza holds an allure I will never understand. It made Monday nights instantly special and helped with accountability - no FHE = no pizza. And I made FHE part of dinner. We rarely (never?) skip meals so if they were tied together... the logic followed we wouldn't skip FHE.

The next thing I have done is to add more 'people' to our family. Ryan loves movies and tv. He is very visual. So I decided to base our lessons on what I could find on lds.org. I have found therre are TONS of video clips. This has made a HUGE difference for us. Now, it feels like we are both learning rather than one teaching (preaching) and the other hearing the lesson (lecture). By 'inviting' others voices has really helped our family nights feel different, special, unique.

So here is how last night looked in our family:

Prayer- over the food and FHE

Lesson - while we ate grilled cheese sandwiches (we are saving $ for vacations so no pizza for a few weeks), we watched a clip on Chastity on lds.org. Then we watched the video on Joseph in Egypt and discussed his story from the scriptures and finally,  we watched a clip of testimonies on chastity from other youth. We talked about it. Since neither of us are dating, we talked about attitude, discussions with friends, choosing friends, and media- issues of where we are now.  We ended the lesson with reading For the Strength of Youth section on Chastity and deciding that next week's lesson will be on Family.

Activity- after the lesson, we drove over to the car wash and vacuumed out the car. It took 10 mins. of vacuuming to get it cleaned out if that tells you anything.

Treat - We came home and had graham cracker/chocolate bar 'cookies'. I had planned to roast marshmallows and have s'mores, but Ryan didn't want to take the time to roast them. Works for me.

Prayer - we ended with our family prayer for the evening.

I share all of this only to share my conviction that Family Home Evening is about your family. Make it work for you. Make it unique to everyone else. Make it a tradition. Make it memorable. Make it yours. Make it happen.

I also share this because being a single parent presents challenges. Being a single parent of an only child  presents challenges. Both are challenges that are not always represented in FHE lessons, manuals, crafts, or examples. Challenges that require thinking outside of the box.

I am a gleaner of ideas, creator of none so I would love to hear from any of you with additional ideas, FHE hits and misses, the good and the bad, what works for you and what doesn't. Most importantly- make it happen.