As I slip into my ninth month of pregnancy, I’ve noticed my “mindedness” (among other things) slipping. Unfortunately, it often feels these days as if it’s happening right when I’m supposed to be saying something. This is bad.
Let’s take, for example, my performance today in my duties as Primary Chorister for our church:
Amber: The Proclamation on the Family is a revelation from God that helps us to understand what roles each family member should have. Why would it be important for us to understand how to run our families?
Kids: (Chirp chirp)
Voice in Amber’s Mind: Don’t say anything stupid now – you need to address this carefully.
Amber: Well, how many of you have experienced, or know someone whose parents aren’t together anymore?
Voice: Doh. Okay, that wasn’t too bad – please just move on.
(Kids raise hands)
Amber: It’s hard to have broken families, huh? Now, how many of you have experienced a situation where…um, uh…the mother is not able to stay home and raise her kids?
Voice: Shut up, shut up, shut up!!!
I tried to smooth this over. I tried to make it clear that families that had untraditional gender roles weren’t bad, but the more I talked, the worse I got, and the crankier that voice became, and it all ended up in a big mess. Which just made me feel stupid for the rest of the day. My only consolation is that the kids probably weren’t listening anyway.
It’s convenient that I have pregnancy to blame this on right now, but I know there have been, and will yet be instances of idiocy when pregnancy cannot serve as an excuse. I guess I just have to forgive myself and trust that my best efforts, offered to and sanctified by Divinity, can be good enough.
3 comments:
I bet that's the one thing they WERE listening to :) Alex always comes back with weird facts from primary. Although I've heard he says he was born in Chile and things like that. There's a lot of forgiveness going on in primary, on both ends :)
Sigh. I'm sure that's probably true - the one thing kids absorbed from church is that Sister Brown says families where parents are divorced are bad, and it's bad and wrong for moms to go to work.
The thing is, I am in no way a rabid traditionalist, or anti-women-in-the-workplace. I firmly believe that people should raise their own kids (it seems weird and irresponsible to me to give birth to a child, then give it to someone else to raise), but I'm also fully in favor of women being able to accomplish things outside the home. (Frankly, it also seems irresponsible for a woman to be uneducated and incapable of functioning professionally.)
I am anti-divorce, but I recognize that there are some situations where divorce is best for all family members. I am certainly not anti-divorcee.
And, I also don't think that these are the biggest problems facing families today.
Above all, I don't think my (or anyone's) personal opinions should be taught in Primary. I just wish that still, small "Shut up!" would have been a little less still and small, so it could have combated my active, large idiocy.
I love the kids' comments: (Chirp! Chirp!)
I didn't think you said anything to be worried about. It's clear that you give a lot of thought to the words of the songs and the way they should interact in everyone's lives.
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