One Thing I Learned By Driving 6500 Miles in 7 Weeks

Between July 9 and September 1, I needed to drive over 6,500 miles. Honestly, that number could have been higher, but I opted to take a flight for one of the 2,000-mile roundtrip trips. So. Much. Traveling!

On all these trips, as you can imagine, innumerable road signs came into view. Yesterday, on another 800-mile drive, one jumped out at me.

KEEP RIGHT

This sign has many applications, beyond traffic. I can imagine my grandpa telling us it had political applications. (If you'd known my Grandpa Boyd, you'd understand.)

As a mom of five kids in decades where their decisions determine their destiny, I'm fervently praying my kids will KEEP RIGHT.

Life is a risk. Every day we have the chance to make choices. I have seen tiny errors in my life lead to need for massive correction. Attitudes need adjusting, I need humbling, etc. It's kind of hard to Keep Right sometimes, and if I didn't have the constant flow of daily scripture study, and weekly sacrament meetings, as well as the gentle (sometimes pointed) correction of the Holy Ghost, I'd be in even more dire straits.

But how? How can we do it? One way is to always remember our divine identity. I found this quote from Boyd K. Packer, another Boyd with a strong opinion on how we can KEEP RIGHT.

“You are a child of God. He is the father of your spirit. Spiritually you are of noble birth, the offspring of the King of Heaven. Fix that truth in your mind and hold to it. However many generations in your mortal ancestry, no matter what race or people you represent, the pedigree of your spirit can be written on a single line. You are a child of God!”4

If there's any other statement more powerfully effective in helping me KEEP RIGHT, I can't think of it. My identity as His child is the most important knowledge I have and the best incentive to strive, even when it's hard.

Parenting Help From Heaven

I'm in the thick years of parenting. I mean, when the kids were little, I was in the trenches. Every day was a shovel and hardpan soil and the need to dig out a huge ditch just to get through the diapers and getting a kid a drink and making sure they didn't wreck the house. I'm tellin' ya, that was hard times. But they were so cute! And we were happy.

Now they've aged and I've moved onto the "consultant" phase where they seem to need me a lot more mentally/spiritually/emotionally than they used to. It's good, but I'm tellin' ya, it's hard times too. But they're so cute! And I'm really happy. Except when they aren't.

Sometimes I just don't know what to say when they ask me a horribly difficult question. Or I see them experiencing something I never had to go through. I am at a loss. It's scary, too. I mean, I submit that you don't know terror until you are watching a kid walk into what could potentially be a Choice-Making situation and you don't know if they're armed for the moment.

This week, I was studying some talks by President Russell M. Nelson. I've been reading through all of them systematically, and a quote hit me like bricks. It related exactly to my phase of life as a parent. I had to read it several times and kind of unpack it, because it's pretty thick with meaning. I'm going to break it into lines, since it was all in one paragraph.

"Families deserve guidance from heaven. Parents cannot counsel children adequately from personal experience, fear, or sympathy.

"But when parents face children as would the Creator who gave them life, parents will be endowed with wisdom beyond that of their own. 

"Wise mothers and fathers will teach members of their family how to make personal decisions based upon divine law.

"They will teach them that 'this life is the time … to prepare to meet God.'

"They will teach them that decisions of a moral and spiritual character cannot be based on freedom to choose without accountability to God for those choices.

"With that understanding, parents and children will be rewarded with strength of character, peace of mind, joy, and rejoicing in their posterity."

(Here's a link to the rest of the talk.)

This quote really helped me. No, I can't counsel my kids based on my own experience. These are different times, difficult times. I grew up in a place different from where I'm raising my kids. But that's okay, because there is guidance from heaven, and I can access greater wisdom. And so can my kids!

I'm so thankful to God for His care for my family.