Sunday Thoughts

I know I talk about Visiting Teaching a lot on my blog, but I can't help myself, it is part of who I am. So when Melanie asked me about it in her comment the other day it got me thinking. She said, "Your visiting teaching is so inspiring. Has it always been this way for you? Easier once your kids weren't little and in tow?"

The answer to this is "Definitely Not!" Visiting teaching has not always been a strength of mine and no it wasn't always easy when the kids were younger.


When I first got married, a woman from our Newlywed/Nearly Dead (that's what we called it) ward came over (she was probably a visiting teaching coordinator) to ask me questions about myself and to get to know me a little bit. At that time she epitomized everything I did NOT want to be...she was young, yet frumpy to a level that horrified me. She was wearing a pink t-shirt that had a koala on it (I'm not kidding) that said "Mama Bear" on it over her pregnant belly. Thinking about it now makes me wonder if I gasped aloud when I saw her!

She sat and asked me questions, but wasn't personable or very interested in me. She was going through the motions of her calling and was didn't engage me at all. (Thinking about it now I can see that she was probably totally exhausted, sore and sick of having to interview so many women since our ward had a high move in/move out rate.)


I ended up being assigned to be a visiting teacher and went for several months, but pretty much hated every second of it (I was not in a good place spiritually and was NOT adjusting to married life very well). It felt like these women only talked to each other about their kids, and that repelled me greatly since I was determined not to lose my identity in motherhood (though I was nowhere near becoming a mother). I judged these women with my naive, clueless, immature 22 year-old suitcase of emotions and experience and determined this was not for me. So I stopped going visiting teaching and I tried to avoid my own visiting teachers (gasp!). True story. It pains me to think of this now.

This went on for a long time and even resulted in me getting chewed out on the phone by my caustic, elderly visiting teaching supervisor when she found out I hadn't been visiting the Relief Society president! (Not my finest hour.)


Things turned around for me a couple years thanks to the persistence of an inspired visiting teacher (who was the Bishop's wife and a friend of ours). She came alone because I was adamant about not wanting actual visiting teachers. I even begged her not to come, but she had a way of making me feel like she liked me so much that she just wanted to come see me (I think she really did like me, though I don't know why). Somehow her visits softened me and I eventually got called to be YW Camp Director (I had been pretty much inactive at that point) and then later got put in the YW Presidency (we only had 5 Young Women in our ward). I basically dusted off my testimony, which I had hidden away for a couple years in a fit of immaturity and stubbornness.

What a relief it was to have the light of Christ in my life again. What a fool I was to knowingly choose to turn my back on it as if I was proving some point or making a stand (against what? koala t-shirts and pregnancy?!)


With the return of my shiny testimony came a new love for visiting teaching and a new perspective for the importance of it. It was a complete 180 from where I had been. I became a zealot (and still am)! Embarrassingly, I was still assigned to the Relief Society President, but am happy to report that my companion and I visited her faithfully for a long time after that.

Landon was born almost 5 years into our marriage and introduced a new brand of Visiting Teaching....the juggling, bag of tricks, don't stay too long kind. I don't remember ever having a big problem taking kids with me. They definitely complicated things, but I did what I could. Also, we lived with my parents for 3.5 years while the kids were tiny, so I could usually leave them home with my mom.


I have been assigned all kinds of women to teach and some of them have been very challenging, but overall I always come to love them (even one woman I thought I hated for awhile there). I am convinced that Visiting Teaching is inspired and necessary. That we benefit not only the women we teach, but ourselves as well. There have been so many times where I have been touched by something said at one of our appointments, and I feel so grateful to have gone.


Lately I've been thinking how much women need other women (even when we think we don't) and that Visiting Teaching helps fill that need. There are so many big things happening these days in our lives, and no one is exempt (think about it). We have so many spiritual insights, words of comfort, and prayers to offer each other and to make our loads lighter that we're depriving ourselves by not fulfilling this duty. It no longer feels like a duty to me, it feels like breathing.

**Thoughts??*

Comment Window Tidbit: Our Primary Program starts in an hour and a half and I am not even a teensy bit nervous. I feel like it is what it is and there are so many variables that there's not point in fighting them. I'm just going to laugh if something goes horribly wrong.

2nd Comment Window Tidbit: The program went well, but I am totally spent. Thank heaven for a fabulous "Boo" drop off dessert (chocolate with raspberries and whipped cream) and time with the family watching AFV and The Amazing Race.