Good Sunday Experience

This week was a better Sunday for us overall.

A) Sacrament Meeting: We sat next to a family that ministers to us, and whose 4 year old is becoming good friends with our 8 year old. The children were respectful, quiet, and kept each other out of the collective parental hair. It was a novel experience. Branch members gave some good testimonies. Members of the branch connected to us before and after church in unexpected ways (like eggs).

Gospel Doctrine: I was able to shut down the “Israelites were absolutely stupid in a black and white fashion” regarding the 10 commandments. I think that to better understand their experience in the wilderness, we need to take into account that they had been slaves to the Egyptians for 450 years (approx… or at least a really long time), and that it would be a rough transition from being governed as slaves to being a nomadic self-governing society…. which is exactly what the account records. Interestingly, the children of Israel went from being slaves, to a period of “follow/pester Moses in everything” to the legalism of the 10 commandments, which got expanded into 614 laws.

C) Relief Society: We shared a lesson/group discussion on “Seek to Understand Before Seeking to be Understood” also “Not Judging”.

NOTE: Kuddos to the teacher for including the elephant story cartoon in her lesson.

It was interesting because my 8 year old refused to go to Sharing Time (crashed the nursery in search of me and riled up the toddler I guess), so she went to R.S. with me. It was my understanding that she was genuinely convinced that church was over because a) she attended Group time (I think that was opening exercises), and b) she attended her class lesson. Since she has spent years in attending Primary in that order, I can see where she could get confused. My husband believes that she might have gotten a little confused, but in reality she just didn’t want to be in Sharing Time. We have designed some coping mechanisms going forward – and a wonderful sister is going to help guide my 8 year old into being where she technically should be. Though, my daughter needed this lesson because she is struggling with theory of mind understanding that others have points of view that matter. I can see where it was good for her to hear what grownups do to interact with others respectfully in seeking to understand situations.

Since this specific topic had been my previous contribution of a characteristic to work on this year as a sisterhood, I was pleased to see it the first principle presented. It is also near and dear to my heart.. so there

Snarkiness aside, I have yet to not benefit from discussions on this principle or related points.

BAD POINT: My toddler was fussy – borderline crying the entire day. The nursery leader presented this fact which horrified me to the point where I said she could have brought the toddler to me during R.S. The nursery leader then backpedaled saying that the toddler was mostly OK, just tired because of not getting a nap. In going over it later, my husband says that the nursery leader just wanted to be validated for a job well done in not easy circumstances (which I missed completely ARG – people really need “I need more positive validation comments” on their foreheads when they have an additional need at that time socially). But in my defense, I sent my husband to peek into the nursery window between 2nd and 3rd hour, and if anything dire had been happening, he would have resolved it.

The nursery leader had other senior primary children invade her domain for some reason, so that was her primary vent. I felt bad that my daughters both contributed in some way (I was able to persuade the nursery leader that the 8 year old incursion was by accident) and that my toddler was cranky. My husband said that I can make extra validation comments next week at church, and that the nursery leader will find them more meaningful in person rather than by email or Facebook IM.