Day 5: From a Humble Apartment

From Mon­ica, in Oregon:

There’s one split-second clip in the video, right near the end, that shows a [fam­ily] pray­ing. I can’t tell you how much that lit­tle part meant to me when I saw it. I had just been watch­ing scenes of other great ser­vice that peo­ple ren­der for those in need, and I felt a bit ashamed that I’m not cur­rently doing any of those things. With a hus­band in law school and an active lit­tle two-year-old son, I’m happy to keep afloat most days, let alone find time for orga­nized acts of service.

But when I saw that clip of that sweet mother pray­ing with her chil­dren, I thought, “but I am doing that.” I felt such a pow­er­ful wit­ness of how moth­er­ing pro­vides some of the great­est oppor­tu­ni­ties for mak­ing room for the Sav­ior. I don’t always feel like I’m mak­ing a huge dif­fer­ence in the world right now — my world is dia­per changes, mac­a­roni and cheese, sippy cups and nap­ti­mes. But that lit­tle por­tion of the video reminded me that I can make room for the Sav­ior in my home and in my child’s heart through the lit­tle things — the hugs, the prayers, the scrip­ture sto­ries, the Pri­mary songs sung as lullabies.

Tonight as I rocked my lit­tle one before bed and sang “I’m Try­ing to Be Like Jesus,” I heard your song in the back of my mind and felt that tonight, in a hum­ble lit­tle apart­ment, there was room for the Savior.

Thanks, Mon­ica, and all those dia­pers and mac and cheese and sippy cups are part of the great­est ser­vice you will ever do.