When You Remember Me, I Will Strengthen You

Our goal as a family this New Year is to focus on trying to feel the Spirit of the Lord more often in our home. As parents, we are also trying hard to make some changes in the way we discipline. We are trying to be more consistent, have more logical consequences, not allow misbehavior, and do all of that while speaking respectfully to our children. I can't believe how amazingly difficult it is to speak respectfully to our children. We are trying to be firm, but loving at the same time, and not allow anger to show through. Unfortunately, we are all too often angry as we discipline and our poor daughter picks up more on a feeling of disapproval of her than of the behavior.

So, to help with this, we have made feeling the Spirit a higher priority. Of course, whenever we set this as a goal, Satan kicks it up a notch, too. So, we've been facing illness and a demanding, fussy baby for a while now, as well as other stresses. Not as huge as the trials many others face, and I am grateful our trials are “so small.” But, they are just enough to push us over the edge of anger and shortness with our children on a daily basis. So, in the midst of all this, I've found myself having to pray for strength to keep trying and not give up.

I am noticing a pattern in my life. Whenever I am having a problem that I am struggling with and trying to overcome, I always realize that in order to fix that problem, I need to have the Spirit of the Lord with me. To have the Spirit of the Lord with me, I have to do things that will invite Him to be with me, such as obey the commandments, pray, and study the scriptures and ponder them.

In our church, every Sunday during Sacrament Meeting, the congregation partakes of the bread and water. These are emblems of the body and blood of the Savior Jesus Christ. When the priest kneels to bless the bread and water, included in his sacred prayer is a promise. When I partake of the bread and water, I am promising God that I will “always remember Him.” All promise and partake “that they may have His Spirit to be with them.”

So I've been praying, “Help me, help me.” Tonight, I needed to do the dishes, but my back was aching like crazy (the baby is a twenty-something pound chunk!). But I had faith that if I could just make myself stand in front of the sink, I would be able to go through the motions and at least get the dishwasher loaded. As I was doing so, I felt like I should sing a hymn. So I began singing, “I Know That My Redeemer Lives,” which I have a laminated copy of in the kitchen so that I can learn the words. By the end of the first verse, it was as though I had completely forgotten about the pain in my back. When I realized this, a comforting feeling came over me that was unmistakably the Spirit of the Lord and a thought came to my mind: When you remember me, then I will strengthen you.

With gratitude for the lesson, I realized that this sacred promise I make each Sunday is the key to receiving all the help I need. It's as though my act of remembering Him is an act of faith and it opens the door for Him to bless and strengthen me, much more so than He will if I am forgetting Him throughout the days and weeks. How often do I focus on what I could be doing better, what the children are doing wrong, what I am doing wrong, what my husband is doing wrong and how miserably we are failing? If I would just change my focus and remember Who it is I am trying to emulate through all this, then perhaps I will be strengthened and changed so that I can do what is right. I'm grateful that inviting the Spirit is as simple as singing a sacred song.