Gospel helps keep family grounded
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As the world continues to get busier and more hectic, Janeen Kiene Wright said she relies most on the gospel to keep her family grounded.
"I don't know how I would do it without the gospel, and that's the truth," she said.
Sister Wright, Young Mother of the Year for Arizona, said she feels in the current world climate it is the mothers who take the role of soldiers, fighting in the trenches to protect their families. She said one of the best ways to protect her children is to teach them by example, as she has learned from her mother and mother-in-law. Sister Wright said she tries to be an example of living the gospel every day.
Sister Wright said she tries to do everything with her children and tries to be there for late-night chats and whatever else her children might need. It's quality time she uses to try to stay close to Rockwell, 20; Jake, 17; Emmaline, 15; Claire, 10; and John, 8. As Rockwell was preparing to serve a mission, they trained for and ran a marathon together, and she said those long hours provided a good chance for connection. In her letters to her son now, on his mission in Brazil, she uses metaphors from their marathon experience to help him when he might be struggling.
She uses that metaphor in her own life, too, especially since recently suffering from a stress fracture in her left femur while training. It takes strength training, as well as endurance, to keep from getting stress fractures in life, she said.
Mothers are also cheerleaders, she said, continually cheering on their children and each other. Women and mothers get in trouble when they compete, compare and categorize, she said, and should try instead to lift each other in the "marathon of life."
"Wouldn't it be great if every day in our own marathon of motherhood we could cheer each other on," she said.
Sister Wright and her husband, Jack, are members of the Grove Ward, Mesa Arizona Mountain View Stake.
