Search Results for: blog life lessons

What Lessons Did I Teach

What has divorce taught our children about love? I worry about what my divorce has taught Hailey about love and marriage. Unfortunately, most of the people she knows have been divorced, at least once. What does this teach our kids? When I was growing up all of my friends parents were married, my grandparents, aunts and uncles, were all married, to their original spouses. The only divorced person I knew was my mother. It’s the opposite for Hailey, she knows hardly anyone with an intact family. There are a few here and there but it seems they are the exception … Continue reading →

Getting too Used to the Good Life

We have been without our main car for a week now, and we still have another two weeks to go before we get it back. Meanwhile, we are driving our oldest vehicle, a 1998 SUV, and driving it only when we have to. It has been an adventure. With one car seat and two booster seats in the back, the car is cramped, and someone always seems to wind up with an elbow in the eye or a foot in the back. The air conditioner is loud and noisy and only cools the car if the temperature is below 80 … Continue reading →

Life Lessons through Dateline

When my daughter turned 13 we started watching stories on “Dateline” together. Although the subject matter was sensitive, I have always believed there to be valuable teaching lessons in them. Things like…don’t ever leave an establishment with a man you don’t know. Don’t walk alone. Jealousy from the opposite sex isn’t cute…in fact, it can be deadly. While I can tell my daughter these things (and I do), there is something about seeing for yourself the dangers in real life. You hear stories about women whose vulnerabilities got them in trouble, who didn’t trust their gut instincts and who took … Continue reading →

Learning the Real Rules of Life

I recently finished reading “The Real Rules of Life: Balancing Life’s Terms with Your Own” by Ken Druck, sent to me in exchange for a review. This is probably one of the most life-impacting books I have ever read. In fact, I plan on reading it again but taking more time with it. There was so much to take in and the opportunity to really apply what you read. I greatly appreciate not only the effort that went into this book but the heart as well. “The Real Rules of Life” was written after the author’s loss of his 21-year-old … Continue reading →

Lessons Learned

My ex husband and I met in high school. I had dated a lot, but being so young, I wasn’t particularly concerned about whether or not they were marriage material; I was too young to get married anyway. I had been warned to make good dating choices, but I was young and inexperienced, so like most teenagers, I didn’t realize the importance of those decisions quite yet. About a year after graduation we decided to get married. Neither of us really knew what we wanted in a spouse, it just seemed like the right thing so we got married and … Continue reading →

We Teach Children, Not Lessons

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Last night, we had our stake primary leadership training meeting. We had a great meeting and I left feeling inspired to be a better primary president for the year ahead. I wanted to share a few things that I learned from that meeting. First, they asked us what was the ONE thing we wanted our kids to learn this year. People gave answers such as that Heavenly Father loves them, or to Choose the Right and recognize when they make right choices, etc. They told us to keep whatever that one thing is in mind throughout the year as we … Continue reading →

Life Is Short, So Appreciate It

Fellow blogger, Michele Cheplic, just wrote about the tragic loss of seven lives in the Bronx. It was a tragedy that has probably struck a chord in every heart. And as Michele pointed out, the realization that when it comes to our time, we do not know the day nor the hour. I want to play off that a bit with another passage from the Bible that you may be familiar with, “Teach us to realize the brevity of life…” (Psalm 90:12, NIV) Life is filled with uncertainties and while I cannot relate to the impact of a tragedy such … Continue reading →

Lessons Learned the Hard Way

I think one of the most difficult things to do as a parent of a teen is watch your child have to learn things the hard way. But honestly, sometimes it is the only way for life lessons to be taught. In fact, some of the greatest lessons and opportunities for growth come through challenging times. Yet they are very painful, as I recently expressed in my blog, “What I Learned from my Child’s Pain.” It isn’t easy to convey what is in my heart without completely divulging my daughter’s personal business, so I will definitely have to tow the … Continue reading →

Lessons from Haiti

My 17-year-old son spent a week in Haiti, on a construction project. I knew going into this that he would come back changed…I just wasn’t sure how. Thanks to technology, I was able to keep in contact with him almost every day. The house he stayed in had WiFi so he was able to text me from a program he downloaded on his iPod. The biggest struggle he had was working in the sweltering heat. He was doing real labor, bricklaying and using a sledge hammer to take down walls. The temperatures were in the 100’s. He battled headaches each … Continue reading →

The “Aha” Moments in Life

In my last parenting blog I wrote about a potential near tragedy that occurred in my home while I was out of town last weekend. My 17-year-old son’s friend had taken his BB rifle and was messing around with it when it discharged. It struck his friend in the throat, with the pellet now lodged in his tongue. Just one inch over and it would have been fatal. Since then the BB gun has been removed from my son’s bedroom and we aren’t sure about when (if ever) we are going to give it back. It has certainly been a … Continue reading →