Undone

I baked the bread.

I chopped the carrots, onions, celery, and thawed out the chicken and threw them in the crockpot for my sick, less-active neighbor.

I yelled at my kids to hurry and get in the car, to brush their hair, get on their shoes for the 10,000th time and to get off the computer because it was time to go to church. Calvin had a talk.

I was so busy making the bread and the soup that I didn't have time to have him practice it with me. Cam was at another Ward Conference.

We had to pick up the neighbors' boys (age 4 and 13) who were just starting to come back to church because their single mom was sick.

We didn't pray. We ran out the door. The kitchen was a disaster. Flour, onion and carrot peelings, and dried up milk from the cereal covered the counters.

We got to church. We were late and had to sit in the lobby during the sacrament and when we went in to the chapel Coleman refused to come. Why didn't we ever get to sit in the cooshy chairs out in the hallway? Why did we have to sit in the back of the chapel on metal chairs? The oldest neighbor boy didn't come in either. I couldn't force him. Cy and the four year old wouldn't be quiet playing with star wars dudes (why did I let him bring them?). Coleman finally came in after hiding in the gym for a few minutes but was mad as heck.

Calvin messed up on his talk. Then the husband of one of the scout leaders stopped me in the hallway and said that he had "heard" that Calvin needed some help with his pinewood derby car. Heard? What did that mean? We had a dad. We didn't need any other man to step in and be MY kids' dad to make him a car! My whole body recoiled. We have it under control, I thought. I know we aren't done with the car, but for heaven sakes the derby isn't until Tuesday! We have 48 hours! Then I got an email when I got home telling me that Calvin wasn't going to be getting any awards at the pack meeting because he hadn't finished his bobcat--something that he should have completed two months ago.

But I haven't helped him because I have been helping Sis. So and So down the street. I've been cleaning her house, making her meals, watching her children, and planning her enrichment nights. I've been talking to inactive neighbors and going to welfare meeting and presidency meeting.

But I have left the essentials undone. But wait, I thought love and service were the essentials! The Savior said in Matthew 23:23--"Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have ommitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone."

Love and service are the essentials, but I was forgetting that my children are MY work. They are MY portion of the kingdom of God that I need to seek "first" and then "all things" would be added unto me. In the Doctrine and Covenants, the Lord said to Sidney Rigdon that there were many things that were "not right" in his house. He had "not kept the commandments concerning his children" and he was to "therfore, FIRST set in order thy house."

I am going to do better at this. I know I did get some important things done, but shouldn't leave my children undone.