The Dried-Up Cheerio: Finding Peace in Imperfect Discipleship

By Melissa Whitaker

I found a dried-up Cheerio stuck to the bottom of the family scripture case last Sunday. It had been there long enough that it wasn't even sticky anymore. Just a little fossil pressed into the leather from some morning when one of the kids was eating breakfast while we tried to read together before the bus came. I scraped it off with my thumbnail and I almost threw it away. But I held onto it for a second instead and I laughed at myself a little.

Because that Cheerio is basically a symbol of our entire family's spiritual life right now. Not neat and not pretty and not planned. But present. Somehow still happening in the middle of all the crumbs.

I've spent a lot of years feeling like I was failing at discipleship because our family didn't look like the one in the manual. The kids were wiggling during prayer or the scripture study devolved into someone crying about who got the blue cup or I lost my temper before we even got to the closing amen. And I would sit there at the end of the night feeling like we had missed something important.

But I'm starting to wonder if the important thing isn't what I thought it was.

Finding Peace in a Chaotic LDS Home

I used to think that a peaceful home meant a quiet home. A quiet home meant controlled children and synchronized schedules and a family scripture study where everyone sat reverently and absorbed the lesson like little sponges of righteousness.

I taught third grade for five years and I know how to manage a classroom. I know how to get twenty-eight children to sit still and raise their hands and follow a lesson plan. But my own kids? That's a different story. Because a classroom runs on structure and authority and the fact that children eventually have to go home. My home runs on love and exhaustion and the fact that these children are never going anywhere.

The honest version is that our home is loud a lot of the time with the toddler screaming during family prayer because she wants to say it herself and then she doesn't say it, the second-grader always showing us something she drew or built or found on the ground, and the middle-schooler having opinions about everything. The teenager is trying to figure out who she is and none of it fits neatly into a thirty-minute block of spiritual instruction.

I wrote about this same kind of tension in Unplanned Discipleship: The Gospel in Your Daily Family Life. The idea that the gospel is already happening in the moments we don't plan for is one I keep coming back to. The car conversation on the way to practice, the question a kid asks at bedtime when you're half-asleep, and the apology you offer when you've yelled and you know you shouldn't have are all part of it.

LDS Parenting and the Grace of Jesus Christ

I think the hardest thing about being an LDS parent is that we know what the ideal looks like. We have the manuals and the talks and the magazine articles and the Instagram accounts that show families gathered around a fireplace with matching flannel and looks of profound spiritual contemplation. And we look at our own kitchen table where someone is crying about math homework and someone else is hiding a piece of apple in their pocket for later and we feel like we're doing it wrong.

But here's what I've been sitting with this week and the scripture that keeps coming back to me is Alma 37:6 about small and simple things. I used to apply that verse to big church projects. Missions and callings and service. But lately I've been applying it to the small things in our home. A quick hug in the middle of a hard morning, a prayer that takes thirty seconds but means something, and the verse we actually read before someone spills the cereal.

"By small and simple things are great things brought to pass."

That verse has been sitting on my kitchen windowsill for months now on a little card. I look at it when I'm wiping down the table for the fourth time in one day. And I think about how the great thing might not be a perfect family. It might be a family that keeps showing up even when it isn't perfect.

Teaching Gospel Principles to Toddlers and Children

Teaching the gospel to a toddler looks different than teaching it to a teenager. I know this in my head but I forget it in practice. I catch myself trying to do a full scripture study with a two-year-old in the room and wondering why it doesn't work.

I've started paying more attention to the micro-moments that last sixty seconds and then they're gone. When the toddler is eating her snack and I say something about how Heavenly Father made the apples and she looks at the apple like she's never seen one before. When the second-grader asks why Jesus had to die and I give her the real answer instead of the simplified one and she sits with it for a minute and then she asks if she can have a snack.

I don't know if this will make sense yet but I think those tiny moments are actually the curriculum. Not the lesson plan I wrote in my head. The real one that God is writing through the interruptions and the detours and the questions that come at the wrong time.

Coping with Imperfect Family Home Evening

Family home evening in our house has never looked like the picture. I tried so hard in the early years to make it special. I planned activities and printed handouts and prepared treats that matched the theme. And then the toddler would start crying or the teenager would roll her eyes or David would fall asleep on the couch because he'd been up since five and I would feel like I had wasted my effort.

So I stopped trying to make it special and I started trying to make it real. Now some Monday nights we read a scripture and we talk about it for ten minutes and then we eat ice cream. Some Monday nights we play a board game and nobody mentions the gospel at all and I think that's okay too. Because the point isn't the format. The point is that we're together.

The same way I wrote about in Messy Home Evening: Finding Peace in Imperfect Discipleship, the Lord meets us in the middle of our effort. Not after we've perfected everything. Right in the middle of the applesauce and the spilled milk and the prayer that got interrupted by a dog barking.

Dealing with Guilt in LDS Motherhood

The guilt is the part nobody warns you about and it hits harder than you expect. The feeling that you should be doing more and being better and making the gospel feel more magical for your children. I've had nights where I lay awake thinking about the way I snapped at someone or the family home evening that turned into a meltdown or the morning we skipped scripture study entirely because everyone was running late.

I've started apologizing to my kids when I lose my temper. Nothing dramatic, just a simple I'm sorry and I shouldn't have yelled and asking them to forgive me. And something shifts in the room when I say it. The tension releases and my kids look at me like I'm human and they already knew that but they're glad I remembered it too.

That apology is a small thing but I think it teaches them more about the Atonement than any perfect lesson ever could. Because they see that repentance is real and that their mom still makes mistakes and that God's grace covers the gap between who we are and who we're trying to become.

Frequently Asked Questions

What do I do when my family is too chaotic for traditional scripture study?

Shift your focus from the full lesson to the single moment. A verse read while someone finishes their cereal or a question asked during the car ride to school can stick in ways a formal study session never will. The goal isn't coverage. It's connection.

Is it okay to admit to my children that I've made a mistake in my parenting?

Yes and I'd go further because apologizing to your kids is actually one of the best things you can do for them. When you apologize to your children, you're modeling repentance in a way they can see and feel. They learn that the gospel is for real people who mess up and come back and try again.

How can I avoid feeling like I'm failing as an LDS parent when my home isn't perfect?

Stop measuring your home against someone else's curated version of family life. The Lord sees what you're actually doing. He sees the early mornings and the tired evenings and the way you keep showing up even when it doesn't feel like it matters. That effort matters to Him more than I think we understand.

What counts as a successful family scripture study when you have young children?

If a single verse was read and someone understood something new about God, it counts. If you managed to read something without anyone getting hurt and you ended with a prayer, it counts. Even just sitting down together and opening the book before the chaos started counts. Lower your definition of success and watch how much more often you achieve it.

Last night I sat on the couch after the kids were in bed and I pulled that dried-up Cheerio out of my pocket. I had kept it. Which is ridiculous. But I held it in my palm and I thought about how the gospel is happening in our home even when I can't see it. Between the crumbs and the interruptions and the days when everything falls apart.

I put the Cheerio in the kitchen windowsill next to the scripture card and they're both small things I want to keep. But I think they're the ones that matter.

with love, Melissa