Sacred Messiness: Finding Discipleship in Parenting Chaos
The toddler found the bag of flour under the sink while I was folding laundry in the bedroom. I heard the thump first, then the soft powdery sound of flour hitting the kitchen floor. By the time I got there she was sitting in the middle of a white cloud, patting the floor with both hands and leaving perfect little handprints on her pajamas. She looked up at me like she had discovered something wonderful.
I had planned a nice home evening lesson for that night with a coloring page printed and a scripture picked out and everything. I swept flour for twenty minutes instead.
Here is what I have been sitting with this week. I think maybe the flour was the lesson.
How to Teach the Gospel to Children in a Busy Home
When I was a third-grade teacher I could control almost everything. I controlled the schedule and the curriculum and the seating chart and the volume of the room. The home is different. The home is a place where things spill and schedules fall apart and the lesson you planned gets replaced by a flour cloud on the kitchen floor.
I used to fight this because I thought I was failing every time a planned gospel moment went sideways. I would try to steer us back to the printed lesson instead of paying attention to what was actually happening in the room. But here is what I have learned. The gospel is already happening in the mess and the question is whether I am paying attention.
The gospel is already happening in the mess and I have to pay attention. One example: a toddler covered in flour exploring gravity and texture while I stand there wondering if I should stop her. Another: a second-grader distracted by a half-finished drawing, her backpack abandoned in the hallway. Then a teenager slammed a door and said I just don't understand as she learned how to be herself. None of these look like a lesson from the manual, but they're all opportunities to teach patience and forgiveness and the kind of grace that makes sense when you have to clean flour off the floor at four in the afternoon.
Finding Spiritual Moments in Motherhood Chaos
The honest version is that I spent years believing the Spirit only showed up in quiet places. In the chapel during the sacrament, in the living room during family prayer, in my bedroom during scripture study. But motherhood has taught me otherwise.
The Spirit shows up in the car on the way to soccer practice when a child asks a question about death and you have fifteen minutes to answer before you pull into the parking lot. He shows up at the kitchen table when you are scrubbing a dried-on spot and your daughter asks why you have to forgive someone who hurt her. He shows up in the hallway outside the bathroom door when your teenager is crying and you're sitting on the tile floor waiting for her to let you in.
I wrote about this in Sacredness of Unplanned Moments: Gospel Teaching in a Busy Home but I keep coming back to the same truth. The Spirit isn't limited by our schedules. He is already in the room, in the car, in the hallway. The question is whether we have the eyes to see it.
I think the Lord knows that the best teaching happens in real time. He knows that a child absorbs more from a two-minute conversation about honesty in the middle of a tense moment than from a thirty-minute lesson on a Tuesday night when everyone's tired and distracted. He knows because He designed us to learn this way in the moment, in the mess, in the middle of real life.
LDS Parenting Advice for Overwhelmed Moms
If you're reading this and feeling like you're failing at the formal gospel teaching because your home evening never goes as planned or your scripture study is interrupted every thirty seconds, I want to tell you something that took me a long time to believe. You aren't failing. The Proclamation on the Family calls parenting a sacred duty.
Raising children in love and righteousness is the sacred duty and it doesn't require a perfect presentation. Love looks like a formal lesson sometimes and it looks like sitting on the kitchen floor with a toddler who spilled flour other times. Helping her pat handprints onto the tile because she's learning about texture and gravity and delight. Love also looks like apologizing to your child when you lose control and showing them what repentance looks like in real time.
I think about the scripture in Deuteronomy that says we should teach our children diligently, talking about the commandments when we sit in our house and when we walk by the way and when we lie down and when we rise up. This verse has always felt overwhelming to me until I realized something important. It was describing a life. The walking and the sitting and the lying down and the rising up formed a daily rhythm of being together. The teaching happens in the living, not in the lesson plan.
And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up (Deuteronomy 6:7).
Integrating Faith Into Daily Parenting Routines
I have started paying attention to the unplanned moments more intentionally. I keep a short list in my head of the places where my kids tend to open up. The car is one and the kitchen table during snack time is another. The edge of the bathtub at night when the lights are low. I used to think I needed to create formal teaching opportunities. Now I think I just need to show up for the ones that are already there.
Last week my middle-schooler asked me during a commercial break if I thought God was disappointed in him. We had four minutes before the show came back on. I said no, I don't think God is disappointed in you. I think God is proud of you for asking the question. He was quiet for a minute and then he said okay and turned back to the show. But I know that moment mattered because he brought it up again two days later at breakfast.
These ordinary moments read as small and unimpressive but they carry something important. They look like commercials, car rides, and after-school snacks. And I am starting to believe that ordinary time is where most of the real gospel work happens. Our children learn what we actually believe from how we live, not from what we formally teach them.
I wrote about this idea in The Sacred Ordinary: Finding God in Early Childhood Chaos and I have been thinking about it even more lately. The ordinary isn't a distraction from the spiritual. The ordinary is where the spiritual lives.
Feeling Guilty About Not Doing Home Evening
Let me be direct about this. You can skip home evening sometimes or have one that looks nothing like the manual. Gather the family for ten minutes, read one verse, let the toddler color on the lesson plan, and call it done. The Lord isn't grading you on format.
The purpose of home evening is to bring the family together in love and gospel learning. If the format gets in the way of the purpose, drop the format. Read a scripture at dinner or sing a hymn in the car. Talk about a General Conference talk while you're folding laundry together. The gospel isn't a program. It's a way of living.
When I stopped obsessing over executing the perfect home evening, something changed. I started seeing the gospel everywhere. I see the gospel in the way my husband said a prayer over a burnt dinner. In the way my daughter shared her treat with her brother without being asked. In the way my teenager rolled her eyes at me and came back ten minutes later to apologize.
Frequently Asked Questions
What if my children are too restless for formal scripture study?
Try meeting them where they are. Read a verse while they're eating breakfast or listen to scripture stories in the car on the way to school. The posture doesn't matter to the Lord. What matters is that the words are entering their hearts, even in small doses.
How can I feel like I'm succeeding as a spiritual parent when my house is always messy?
A messy house isn't a sign of spiritual failure. It's a sign that real life is happening there. Love and patience and forgiveness matter more to the Lord than a clean kitchen. Focus on the relationships and let the dishes wait.
Is it okay if my home evenings don't go according to plan?
Yes, and the interruptions are often where the real teaching happens. When a child asks a random question or a sibling conflict erupts, you have a real-time opportunity to teach gospel principles in a way that a scripted lesson never could.
How do I find time for gospel teaching when I'm exhausted?
Start smaller than you think you need to. A thirty-second hug with a whispered I love you in the morning or a two-minute prayer before bed. A simple verse read at dinner is a great start. The Lord uses small offerings. He doesn't need a full lesson or an elaborate Bible marking kit. He needs a willing heart.
What if I feel like I'm not doing enough?
You are doing more than you realize, even if it doesn't feel that way. The gospel is woven into the way you comfort a crying child, the way you apologize when you lose your temper, and the way you keep showing up when you're exhausted. Here is the teaching, the discipleship, and the enough all at once.
I still have weeks where I think I should be doing more. Weeks where the home evening gets skipped and the scripture study is rushed and I end the day feeling like I gave my children the leftovers of my energy instead of the best parts. But I am learning to measure differently.
I am learning to measure by the flour on the floor, by the questions asked during commercial breaks, by the apology offered in the hallway. I am learning that the Lord is in all of it and He isn't waiting for me to get the lesson right.
And most days now, that feels like enough.
with love, Melissa