Lately I've been thinking...

about Nephi. You know..Well the other day (okay...the other week) I was reading in 1st Nephi (that's always where I'm reading since I keep starting over). Anyway, I get to that part where the Lord wants Nephi to build the boat. First of all, He (God) had Nephi climb a mountain just to get the commandment to build a boat.
Think about that.
Climb a mountain, people! Then he gets there and finds out he'll be building a boat. Up to now I casually accepted that information and moved on with the rest of the story (those naughty brothers). But this time I got to thinking what this really meant for Nephi.

First of all, he had to climb back down the mountain. Then he:

went to find the ore for the tools
remove the ore from the earth. Sounds like hard work to me (you know, digging and hauling)
went hunting to kill the beasts and skin them to use their skins to make the bellows (sewing?) to start blowing on a fire (which he built) inside a structure (which he also built) to start heating up the ore.
actually make tools (hammer, hammer, hammer) to get started on the
chopping down trees(chop, chop, chop....haul, haul, haul) in order to have the wood to
make boards to finally start building this boat

all the while dealing with grouchy and uncooperative older brothers.

I was reading this while I was sitting in the van in the very long line to pick up my kids after school. I was feeling alot stressed and pitying myself because I feel so busy that I am now leaving my scriptures in the car so that I can read before I pick up a couple occasionally grouchy and uncooperative kids. Oh wo is me! As I open my automatic van door and drive off with four happy kids watching 'Mary Poppins' on the dvd player. Nephi never had it so bad, huh?

But honestly. Life is alot of hard work. To say, "I have 4 kids" does not express all the hours of just plain work and planning and work and more work it takes to BE a mother. But as I thought about Nephi and how we say, "Then Nephi built a boat", I realized that that's just the way it is for everyone. There's alot that goes into living. God knew that Nephi was going to have to do all those things before he could even get started on the actual boat. Just like he knows that I'm going to need to put away that darn laundry and start a new load if my kids are going to be clean and cared for. It's part of motherhood. Up to now, with each load of dishes or laundry that I did, my subconscious felt guilty because I wasn't at the temple or perusing the latest conference issue.But I guess I learned that God knows that the laundry needs to be done...even if it sits in nice piles on the living room floor for a few days.

Thanks Nephi. I feel better now.