BYU Women's Conference is something that I have looked forward to and attended for about 15 years now. I started going to it with the Turner women and then I got my mom to come with me for several years. However, for the past couple of years our numbers in our little group have dwindled through various reasons (kids, jobs, missions, distance). Like last year I couldn't go because Corbin was so young and needed to be nursed regularly.
Well I was so excited that I would be able to go this year until I realized that Ross's trip with his mom and siblings would be at the same time as Women's Conference. That meant that neither him nor his mom would be around to help with the kids. And it just wasn't going to work for my mom to take them either. Normally this wouldn't have bothered me as much, except that this year Lesley would be coming out and I didn't want to miss out on spending time with her. So with a lot of encouraging from Ross, I asked some women in my ward for some help so that I could at least attend Friday's sessions. Several of them volunteered! The women in my ward are angels. I love them.
We have a tradition to go out for dinner at Los Hermanos the night before women's conference starts. And since I didn't want to miss out on spending time with some of my favorite women, I packed up the kids and braved taking them to the restaurant with me. Bear in mind that my kids do not have a great track record of being good at restaurants. However, this night they did incredibly well despite the fact that we stayed extra long to visit. This was a tender mercy.
Here they are playing by the window. It was great to be in a spot where they could get down and play without bothering the other customers. The second picture below is of Corbin eating some rice. I think he was only getting a couple grains in his mouth at a time, but he was working so hard on feeding himself, that it kept him entertained for a very long time.
I love to go to Women's Conference for the girl time, but I've come to love the sessions just as much. I've found that my spirit needs that time to be fed and buoyed up. It is like a spiritual booster shot. And after I've been, I feel like I have the tools and motivation to be a better wife and mother.
Here are some of the take home messages that I got from the sessions I attended on that Friday:
* I need to stop feeling like I need to do everything on my own. The Lord's grace is there to help give us strength to do anything we need help with. I often find myself slipping into the mindset that I should only call on the Lord's help if I have done something wrong. I was reminded that I should call on the Lord's grace daily for help being a better wife, mother, friend and neighbor.
* I cannot control the kind of children that I have, but I can control the kind of mother I am. I often find myself getting uptight about the way my children are behaving. Overall, they are actually pretty good children, but I think I often expect more from them than I should. This impression that I got was a good reminder that I need to work more on my own behavior than on my children's.
* "What's in control here?...I will be a slave to nothing!" (quote from John Taylor when he realized that he had an addiction to his chewing tobacco). This quote was shared in a session that talked about putting relationships before our hand-held devices and other technological distractions. This quote has certainly stuck with me. I have found that I can easily get sucked into fun things you can do with computers and hand-held devices. Buy I don't ever want to feel like I am a slave to something like a phone, tablet or computer. These things, as good as they can be, often waste valuable time. My family and other relationships should come first.
*Social media skews our perception of reality. People post small moments of perfection and we tend make judgments based only on what we see online. We cannot assess the needs of another person by talking through a screen. This was a reminder of the importance of face-to-face interactions, especially for visiting teaching.
There was so much more that I learned in the five sessions I attended, but these were the messages that I felt like I needed the most and have stuck with me the strongest.
And of course the best part was being able to spend the whole day with my best friend, Lesley. She and I have been through so much together. I hate that she lives so far away now. But I love that we still chat on a regular basis and that when we are back together, we can pick things up like we were never apart.
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