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.

We Talk of Christ

As I was reading this week, I found this scripture that Nephi wrote. It's found in 2 Ne 25:26.


 26 And we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ, and we write according to our prophecies, that our children may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins.


I have always loved that scripture, but it hit me with force this time. Is this how things are in my home? Am I speaking with enthusiasm and joy about Christ to my children? I know I talk about church, we read scriptures together, we do family home evening lessons on Monday nights, but is Christ often a topic of conversation? Am I rejoicing in Christ so that my children can hear it? I know I will call my mom and dad and tell them about miracles in my life or blessings I know have come from the Savior, but do I tell my children?


If so, is it often enough?


I want all these answers to be a resounding yes.

When the Light Comes On

Last night when I got home from the youth group meeting (after being gone from 3 p.m. to almost 9:00), I was beat. But my 9 year-old said, "Mommy, can you help me with my math?"


Sigh. It has been a long year with the workbook she's using. It just won't click with her cute little mind. So we sat down and ... it was long division.


Do you remember learning long division? Was it the easiest, most fun thing ever? I'll wager my whole plate of blueberry muffins it wasn't.


I had a feeling we had a long night ahead of us.


Step by step I worked the first problem. Then I handed her the pencil and walked her through the second problem. And the third, and the fourth. Then on the fifth, I put her on her own. She started great. And got stuck. She couldn't remember to bring down the digit. So I drew an arrow on all the earlier problems, and then she drew the arrow on her own and brought it down. The visual clue kind of helped.


She worked it, found the answer, and then ... the smile. "Oh, Mommy. I think I get it."


She didn't. On the next three problems she got stuck in the same place after bringing down the digit.
But with a little reminder, telling her to look at the problems she'd done earlier for the steps, she did get it. She did!


Then I wrote down the steps:
1- Goes into
2- Multiply
3- Subtract
4- Bring down
Repeat 1, 2, 3, 4.


Maybe that won't make sense to anyone else, but it was how we were talking it out. I wrote it in the front cover of her workbook.


She worked the rest of the problems--including the story problems, and anyone out there who doesn't give a slight shudder at the term "story problem" ... is pretty much alone.


When we shut the book an hour later, she said, "Mommy! Long division is easy!"


The light had come on. And it shone! Not some dull little 20 watt bulb, either.


She went to bed happy, and so did I.


So this morning, I helped her double check last night's work with multiplication, and she still remembered the formula and still thought it was easy.


Is that success? I submit to you, gentle readers, that it is.


So now I sat here remembering the sweetness of it and thinking, I wonder if this is how the Lord feels when he has given us a challenge, walked us through it a few times, held our hand, given us the chance to work it out ourselves, and then sees us think we learned it, and then sees us rejoice when the light of understanding and growth really comes on.


I truly believe He rejoices with us. And I believe He gives us problems--including stuff akin to long division, and even worse, story problems of life, and the guidance to get through them. Best of all, His Son was there to set the example for how to get through any and all of our struggles. He felt the pain and will bless us through them.


He is the perfect Teacher.


I love Him so dearly.

A Little Mother's Day Consolation Post

Some of you have already been accosted with my previous thoughts on motherhood. The one about the seeds and the dirt? Well, anyway, here's a second consolatory thought for all of us who suspect that we just might stink at motherhood.




A couple of years ago I was asked to speak in church on Mother's Day. I called my dad, asking what to say. He always knows what to say. And this time was no different. Here's his story.


"One Mother's Day in Grandma and Grandpa's ward, your uncle's teenage friend was asked to offer the closing prayer after the Mother's Day Sunday meeting. Lots and lots of laudatory things had been said about the speakers' 'Angel Mothers' and so forth. Your uncle's friend approached the microphone, bowed his head, and said,  'We're thankful for our mothers. Please bless all those mothers here who aren't as good as the ones we've heard about today that they won't feel bad.'"


Amen, brother.


I don't know about you all, but as much as I love Mother's Day for the opportunity to think about and praise my own mother, going the other direction generationally is a bit more anxiety-inducing. It's all about misgivings and worries and wishing-I-could've dones. And yet, ...


There's a scripture I turn to in those times. Isaiah 40:11.


11 He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young.


He shall gently lead mothers. I have to hang my hopes on that gentle leading. And I know it's true. Who among us insecure mothers hasn't felt it many times?


Like that impression you get to go look at the 2 year-old's feet. At 3:00 a.m. And there's a scorpion there that you kill (get your husband to kill) before it strikes.


Or the time when the 3 year-old and her friend pick all the fruit off the experimental trees in the greenhouse and cut holes in your brand new duvet cover (that you waited six years to get) and eat the centers out of all the chocolate pies for Thanksgiving and it's your birthday...and all you can do is laugh and decide to not let that friend come and play again. Ever. And you know the only reason you didn't turn into a shrieking banshee is the Spirit showed you the humor in the situation.


Or when the 7 year-old runs away at an outdoor festival in the desert and you can't find her for 20 minutes and you're about to freak out and need a straight jacket and something (the Spirit, obviously) just tells you to get it together. It's going to be fine, and then after another 20 minutes, it is.


And the six thousand other things that motherhood is about that you couldn't of your own power have dealt with. Because on our own, we're just not good enough. And we feel bad about it. Because we know it so deeply. Which is what makes Mother's Day hard. We know intuitively that very little if any of the good we affect comes of our own goodness.


So, to all of us imperfect mothers, Happy Mother's Day. And thank Heaven for the gentle leading as we go.