Primary Power

One day last week, I woke up on the wrong side of the bed.  We'd gotten to bed late, the baby woke up 2 or 3 times in the night, & the kitchen was a mess & heaps of clean laundry were strewn about my room as kids rushed in to find something to wear.  So once everyone scrambled off to school & work I wanted to crawl back into bed.  I started to have a string of negative thoughts like...
Here I am stuck with the mess to clean up again.
If only I was a better mother, I would have trained my kids by now to pick up after themselves by now..
Why does everyone expect me to be their servant and clean up after them?
etc.............
Then Alyssa came up to me with a little book I made her with words & pictures to a primary song.
 "Mom, will you read this to me?"

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                
As I held her on my lap and started singing the words with her, I teared up  after the first 2 lines  hearing her cute off-key voice picking out the words she knew.  It was "A Child's Prayer."

" Heavenly Father, Are you really there?
And do you hear and answer every child's prayer
Some say that heaven is far away
But I feel it close around me every day.

This little experience transformed my perspective that day & I was able to go about my everyday clean up tasks with a new perspective and optimism.  I felt peace and was able to remember that Heavenly Father is truly aware of me.  I reflected on how many days I'm sure I left messes for my mom to pick up as I rushed off to school.

Today I had another "primary moment"  (although it didn't melt my heart quite as much). I caught Alyssa drawing with markers on some of my music.  This isn't the first time & probably won't be the last, since she sees me "drawing" on music all the time with my students & her siblings.  As  I started speaking to her with firmness,  she started singing,
"My am a child of God..."

She still spent some time in time-out, but its hard to stay mad at such a sweet little girl for very long.