Monday Night Madness

This week's Family Home Evening was a real catastrophe. Emma started off the night by reading aloud her 10 page story she'd written at school. Nathan found a pink balloon and thought it was more interesting to hit it to Noah than to listen. We allowed him to play until the balloon hit the baby in the head twice, my head thrice, and Noah began to encourage dialogue as the balloon was beaten into our heads. Emma, wanting our full attention would pause for each interruption so the story took over 30 minutes to read. Meanwhile, Rilla, didn't seem to appreciate Nathan's balloon play and she started to fuss. Ray and I were so tired that everything seemed to be happening too slowly and when Elizabeth started asking questions about the story we both quickly suggested she could read it to herself again later if she missed parts of it. I thought, "Please don't let Emma get upset that her older siblings didn't understand the story and that is why they're asking questions...I can't take an Emma tantrum right now." Luckily, she at least didn't seem phased, so we got out our scriptures to read a chapter in Mosiah.

Abinadi is exhorting King Noah to repent of all his sins. Everyone was happy to take turns reading and we were having a nice discussion even through Nathan's new distraction. I had taken the balloon away and he found a toy gun to play with instead. So, as we're reading about the sins and evilness of King Noah, Nate insists on killing us all off one by one. Through our protests and pleads for him to not shoot at people, he took his gun, pointed it at Rilla and shot her. The knotted string thrust out hitting Rilla in the forehead. Ray yelled at him as I jumped up and took the gun away. The older children just kept on reading and asking questions like: "What are concubines?" "What is a harlot?" "What is a wine-bibber?" "Why would a girl choose to be a harlot or a concubine?" At each inquiry, Nate is trying harder to gain some attention, and yet the others are so absorbed in the scripture reading. Ray is choking on how to answer their questions and I am wondering what spiritually uplifting message are we missing? And, also, I thought that one can find all answers to ones questions in the scriptures...So, when Nathan, tackles Emma and Tessa and they start to scream I suggest we stop reading and sing Nathan's favorite primary song, "Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam." The older kids have taught him to jump up on the high notes of the song and he loves it. Unfortunately, he was too wound up already and in the middle of the song, instead of jumping up, he jumped into Noah's groin and bit his private. Noah's painful yell chases away all hopes of ending on a spiritual note, so we concluded quickly with Nathan being sent to bed by a mad dad, and me telling everyone else to get jammies on quickly! After everyone had gone to bed and I was finally able to tend to baby Rilla's needs, I pondered on how Family Home Evening is a time to teach the scriptures and to foster love for one another. I can see how some might give up after a night like this one, but I'm thinking if we can survive this, then tackling other scripture stories, like Abraham's father trying to kill him, or why it was ok for Abraham to have concubines, will be a piece of cake.