Home Evenings With Linda Paulson Adams' Family--Part I

Linda Paulson Adams is the author of two LDS novels set in the Last Days, which lead up to the building of the New Jerusalem. Read the first five chapters of Prodigal Journey and Refining Fire on her website at www.alyssastory.com, where you may also order autographed copies of her books. She is hard at work on the third and final book in the trilogy, and plans to complete it this year. Linda also works as a freelance editor, public speaker, singer, and songwriter.

According to Linda, Family Home Evenings in her home range from the well-planned (rare), coordinated and organized to the more frequent "What are we doing tonight? Eeek, it's 7:30 already!" variety. She says, “The thing we feel is most critical is to HOLD THE MEETING: ready or not, here it comes!”

She continues, “Don't just not have it because you forgot to plan anything. Don't skip it because you're tired, the kids are whiny, nobody seems to be listening, someone's missing, or the game's on. HOLD THE MEETING. Period.”

The Adams family has six children. The oldest is preparing for college soon and the youngest is in kindergarten. As Linda says, “We have a variety of ages to keep interested, which is a challenge. And as lifetime LDS parents, we're well-schooled in the ideal FHE routine, which means opening and closing songs which are perfectly matched up to well-thought out lessons, with excellently prepared and interesting visual aids, during which all the children are perfectly reverent and participating in a lovely Gospel discussion . . .

Meaning (ahem), no one is running amok with underwear on their head, calling out inappropriate answers relating to some anatomical body part or function, poking their sibling with some pointy object, or asking those unanswerable ‘But where did Heavenly Father come from?’ sorts of questions, none of which has anything whatsoever to do with the lesson at hand.”

“Yeah,” she continues, “Let's get back to reality. Life is messy. And - news flash - mortal life wasn't meant to be perfect. Perfect comes later. A lot later. As in, in heaven. (In fact, if you do a careful study of the scriptures, even Christ didn't label himself perfect until after He was resurrected.) So let's just give that up right now and focus on trying. All you Star Wars fans out there, I'm going to offend you right now, so close your eyes and skip this paragraph: Yoda was wrong. Let me repeat: That cute, fuzzy Muppet with an uncanny resemblance to President Kimball was not actually any sort of prophet, and he was wrong.

“Yoda told Luke Skywalker, "Do or do not - there is no try." Wrong! False doctrine. There is too try. And in my universe anyway, trying counts!

“Sure. Once in a while we hit pay dirt and actually have one of those cool, ideal, and structured evenings. We do strive for it. That's the ideal. But I have real children - a lot of them - and try as I might, they don't all behave. And they don't all, always, get along with each other or want to be there. (Example phrase: "I'd like it better if [insert name of random sibling] didn't have to be here.")

“And any of you with a teenager most likely knows the sound I call The Grunt. It's an answer, a shrug, a pledge of annoyance all at once. Hearing The Grunt during Family Home Evening most likely elicits from one or both parents' mouths the rapidly-fired innuendo that someone in the family is behaving, ahem, ahem, like unto Laman and Lemuel. Which accusation most likely elicits yet another Grunt. Pretty soon, the living room sounds like we're raising livestock instead of children.

“Most of the time we try really hard to get some doctrinal discussion in there, spend five to ten minutes going over the family calendar, and call it good. Our most successful discussions lately have centered around Preach My Gospel and current Conference talks.”

To be Continued! Tune in next week for Part II.