Armor

"God gave us the armor, it is up to us to put it on."

That was on a church sign this week and when I read it, it got me thinking.  Our faith teaches us about putting on the whole armor of God, but what does that really mean to me?  What is the armor God gave to us?  The world these days is a scary place and much of the time I feel like our children are going into a world that is at war against values.  My husband is in the military and the amount of body armor they have to wear when in the field is amazing.  So what am I doing to make sure my family and I are protected with the armor of God?  

Of course it is the general Sunday School answers, but I wonder how good of a job I am doing at helping my children do those things EVERY day.  I find that it is hard for me to do more than just the family scripture study and prayers, but my kids need their own time especially as they get older.  Each of them need to learn to say their morning and night prayers by themselves (which translated right now means that Mom has to help them morning and night).  That hasn't even really crossed my mind.  Princess is reading now - shouldn't I be encouraging her to read the scriptures on her own each day?  I think to myself that it is really difficult to accomplish all that I need to, but I think I'm skimping on the more important things.  Having a clean house is important, but it's more important that my children feel loved and are taught the important things that will allow them to put on the armor that God gave us.

On another note, I'm struggling with keeping my emotions in check the last couple of days and it is making me be a not-so-good mom.  It's a difficult balance and I'm afraid I'm losing.  I feel sad and stressed about Zane leaving us and it is seriously depressing.  I just don't want to do anything and that translates into me not wanting to be involved with the kids.  I'm here, but not really.  It's pointless to be sad and depressed right now - it just wastes all our time and energy.  SO I'm trying really hard to get on top of it.  But it's hard.  Really hard.  I feel like I can no longer avoid thinking about it, but I need to in order to get through the next couple of weeks.  I just need to get myself in check so I can be sad, but not debilitatingly sad.  It will all be fine I know, but it's been a rough couple of days.  Good thing kids are pretty resilient and so far haven't minded me letting them watch movies.  They don't have school tomorrow, so I figure we'll do something super fun to knock me out of this funk.