Time for everything

I'm sitting in my doctors waiting room, ready for my last check-up before welcoming this new baby to our family next week. Baby number 5! Unbelievable. Literally.

It's been a busy month and a half getting everyone settled in new schools and schedules. Ryn started for two weeks at Sunrise Elementary in the SALTA program, which she adored. Everything was ultra structured and well organized (Ryn to a T). I set up a carpool with another mom so I only needed to pick up at the end of each day. Then a spot opened up at Oak Hollow Elementary in the French immersion program. After many more prayers and time at the temple, we decided to move her there. Not quite as structured as the other place, she is still loving all she is learning. It does mean that I have no one to carpool with, but so far it has worked out.

Elle is in kindergarten at Draper Elementary because its only half-day and she can ride the bus :). She is also loving the learning process. Reading is a whole new wonderful world to her.

With 4 other moms in our ward, I'm doing a joy school for Eden and her friends on Monday and Wednesday mornings. Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, she goes to a different preschool with sweet, amazing Mrs. King where Elle went last year.

So it's been a lesson in juggling. All the different pick up and drop off times, different homework and piano practicing, reading time, friends wanting to play, making dinner in time for them to get to bed early enough so they don't get sick from being so worn out...how my mother had 9, I will never know.  Except for maybe what the Spirit taught me on Sunday (and has been teaching me for a while now). 

We were talking about 3 Nephi 17 when the Savior is with the Nephites and tells them he has to leave to go visit his other sheep.  The people obviously don't want him to go and he is moved with compassion for them and stays longer to heal them and bless them and their children, one by one.  We talked about how we need to have this same compassion and serve the one as He does/did.  And I was thinking about how every night my girls want me to stay and sing a few more songs or other times when they need me or someone else needs me and my to-do list flashes through my mind.  "I really need to be doing this and this and this....I don't have time right now...." 

In Sunday School someone made the comment that time isn't the same for the Lord, so he probably wasn't "late" getting to his other sheep, even though he took that extra time for the Nephites.  For me, though, time does limit what I can do, how I can help.  "There is never enough time to do all that we would wish to do," says the wise Ghost of Christmas Present in Scrooge.  And so sometimes when that list flashes and I think time is too short, I hesitate in my path to showing compassion.  But what the Spirit taught me and reminded me of on Sunday was the miracle that happens every time I choose to follow His example:  somehow, in some way, there is always enough time for what matters most.  When I take the time to show compassion, somehow everything that HAS to be done, gets done.  I don't think my minutes and hours are lengthened.  Maybe the miracle is that showing compassion alligns my priorities with His, and so I cut out the things that are not truly important.  I have a feeling I'm going to need to remember this lesson even more in the coming months as a new sweet spirit will need so much of my time and all the love I have to give.