No TV week . . .

I had the opportunity to teach the Young Women this last Sunday.

And as lessons will do, it pricked my conscience.

For some time now, I've let my standards for media in my life get soft.

I guess it was a combination of things but mainly 

that I just got lazy and was tired of fighting everyone on the subject.

So I stopped.

Well, not completely.  My standards aren't completely in the trash, but just taken a dip.

As my kids (at home) read this, they are probably moaning to themselves about what

comes next . . . stricter rules.

Good guess.

It seems that we let so many strangers in our house through books, music, TV, etc and let them say whatever they want to say and do what every they want to do right in front of us all in the name of entertainment.  None of us allow it over night, but here a little, there a little, until we are completely saturated and don't even know it. Then, we start  adopting their way of thinking, dressing, and behaving.  It makes it especially hard to live the gospel when we listen to opposing voices several hours in the day and only read our scriptures for a half an hour.  

But what struck me the most is not just that we start to live what we see, but that what we see or hear or read drives away the Spirit.  We put ourselves in an unsafe position of not being protected or led by the Spirit.  So we are left to our own devices, thus we follow the wrong lead.

So, here's a heads-up kids.  Since it's part of my responsibility to create

a nurturing atmosphere in our home so the Spirit can be there strong, I'm gonna work on weeding out the bad influences .  . . again.

It would be great if you could help.

I've already changed the password on the Netflix and Hulu accounts (Abby even knows them).

And will be changing the other passwords on the TV.

That way they need to ask permission to watch and I can censor (that's legal in a household)

what they watch, or at least that's the plan.

In the past we've even had "no TV week" and sometimes month.

It's amazing what gets done in that time period!

But . . .we probably won't do that right now (collective sigh of relief). 

We'll just keep it on the back burner.

Part of the process will be being more vigilant about books and music too.

Anyway, below is the handout I made for the girls I teach.

You are welcome to download it or use the quotes yourself.

Just right/click and save.

To start things off, I bought a new book today  that is not only fascinating but inspiring.

Heaven is Here by Stephanie Nielson

Her blog is one of my favorites that I read daily.