Each year, when graduation time rolls around, I think back to my graduation night at a high school in Florida. It was customary for many of the graduates to take off to the beach after the ceremony, and spend the entire night doing whatever the young, immature high school graduates wanted to do. Of course, it was not a chaperoned event. Thankfully, I had parents who made the tough decisions that were not always popular with me, or with my friends. They refused to allow me to participate in this unsupervised party. Instead, I spent my graduation evening at a local restaurant, eating ice cream sundaes with my parents and a few other friends.

What picture does the word “widow” bring to mind? Is it an image of someone pathetic, sad, drab—garbed in black and forever mourning?

When 15-year-old Phoebe Prince hanged herself, ending her life by suicide, the Massachusetts teenager touched off a national discussion about bullying. Ultimately, six of her classmates were prosecuted for crimes related to her suicide, leading to six guilty pleas in May 2011. Phoebe was one of many young adults involved in self-inflicted deaths prompted by bullying. Such tragic occurrences, when individuals lose hope and feel they cannot turn to anyone for help, often show people how little they know about each other. But these horrible events do not need to occur.

In a quest for beauty at all costs, “Women across the U.S. are risking their lives for black market procedures to make their buttocks bigger, often involving home-improvement materials such as silicone injected by people with no medical training…Whatever the reason, they are seeking cheaper alternatives to plastic surgery—sometimes with deadly or disfiguring results” (Huffington Post, August 5, 2013). Many women “toss caution aside when black market procedures are the only ones they can afford” (ibid.).

The world is a very hectic place. There are work schedules, school schedules, long commutes, after school activities, and play dates besides the routine activities of running a home. If we are not careful, we can “crash and burn” into the Sabbath and not get the full benefit that God intended. As the ladies of the house, we as wives and mothers can do a lot to help our families enjoy the Sabbath the way God intended.