Family night. It comes every Monday and you’d think that after an entire lifetime of having it, I’d be more organized and plan ahead. But… No. I guess that’s one of the nice things about having a good marriage partnership – Mr. Hot Stuff comes along and takes care of things when I drop the ball.

 Tonight for our Family Home Evening lesson, Mr. Hot Stuff decided we would read a talk together from the April 2013 General Conference of The Church. He chose President Uchtdorf’s talk called “The Hope of God’s Light”. We worked our way through it, each reading a couple of paragraphs at a time. When we got to the end, we each took a turn talking about what parts of the talk made an impression on us.Arctic Boy mentioned on part that helped him remember that sometimes things seem dark, but we have to carry on anyway and do those things that help us to remember God’s light, until after a while, the light sparks back to life and we can see more clearly again. Miss Sassy talked about how the talk reminded her of the scripture in Matthew 5:14-15 “Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.” Mr. Hot Stuff shared a story about how when we are living the way we know is right, then God’s light shines in our faces.

When it came time for me to share something, part of me was wondering what I could add, since it seemed we’d pretty well covered everything. Then I remembered an experience I’d had many years ago. I was meditating when into my mind came a scene. I was in a very dark room, and next to me was a small light. The darkness bothered me very much – like a tangible presence – and I did everything I could to push it away from me. I would push at the darkness and move it a little bit away in one place, but as I did so the darkness somewhere else would shove in closer.  I tried over and over to push the darkness away, with no real success. Finally, I sat down again in frustration  next to the light. Then the idea came to me that, rather than shoving the darkness away, I should try spreading the light. So I picked up the light and  held it high. As I did so, the darkness moved back and I felt less oppressed. As I walked around this small room that had been so dark, I found the the more I tried to spread the light, the less I felt the darkness and the more I became surrounded by brighter light. Then the scene ended and I opened my eyes. This experience has stuck with me ever since and when I see someone trying to shove darkness away, I’m always reminded of how much more effective it was to just try and spread a little light.

Even though we didn’t spend a lot of time on lesson preparation tonight, we each had a meaningful experience and were able to draw a little closer to God and each other. Afterward, we ate some of Miss Sassy’s Leftover Belated Birthday Cheesecake and homemade ice cream –  one more little bit of Heaven tonight.

I hope you had a good family night, too!

winner-winner, veggie dinner 🙂