My Children = My Purpose

Tonight I was looking for Christmas activities to do with the kids. I'm always looking for something new, but today I realized that none of the activities centered around the spirit of Christmas. Everything I had planned was around decorations a.k.a keeping the kids busy, so that they wouldn't fight with each other as much. This isn't a bad thing, but I felt strongly tonight that I wasn't fully embracing the Christmas season with them. 

This time of year is the best time of year to teach about our savior, our values, service, love, and to feel the spirit in our homes. I feel as though around Christmas more hearts are open to the spirit and there is more kindness in the world. The layaway angels that popped up this year around the country have truly impressed me. I can't imagine being unable to provide Christmas presents for my children and am grateful that there are people out there who have taken that burden off of those parents, so they could enjoy the holidays with their kids. 

In deciding that we needed more activities with a moral, a value, a lesson, etc. I turned to lds.org. There I searched for Christmas activities for children and read a few articles before Teach the Children spoke to me, but not in the way I expected it to. Today I was looking for jobs for Jason on the Utah jobs website, going county by county to see all the new job openings for today, just to be sure I didn't miss one by typing in a wrong key word and came across one that I almost applied for, for me. I opened my email copied the lady's email address and went to attach my resume when something stopped me, a thought. Hello, I'm a stay at home mom with 2.5 children...why on earth would I want to leave this blessing? So many women would do almost anything to be able to stay at home with their kids and here I am applying for a job to go to 40+ hours per week....I must be nuts! I truly love working and love what I did, but I have a much more important job here at home. This quote from the article by President David O. McKay sums it up:
 “No other success can compensate for failure in the home.”
It is so true. No matter how much I may love working and how successful I may feel when working in my career field, I am unable to successfully raise my children the way I want them raised. 
I feel so blessed that I was lead again to an article that pulled me back down to earth and made me realize where I'm supposed to be in life and what my true calling is. Since I was about 5 I have always known that I wanted to be a mom, I tossed around being a kindergarten teacher for a while, but I have always wanted to be a mom, not a doctor or lawyer, a mom. Being a mom is my purpose and I am going to do my best to raise my children in the gospel, to have a relationship with their Heavenly Father, to know right from wrong and act accordingly, to serve others, and to become successful adults.