Can You Hear Me NOW?!

Being a parent is hard. I am really bad at it. Trust me on that. It’s hard to imagine that I knew what I was facing before I came to earth, eager to bear children and raise them. I wonder whether I knew it would be so hard and that I would face so much failure.

One of my favorite stories is the dramatic “rescue” of Alma and the sons of Mosiah. They were young men with honorable parents who would have been great teachers. These young men would have known about God and the Plan of Salvation. They would have had Primary or whatever the equivalent in their time to expand on the things their parents taught them. And still they rebelled. Just like Laman and Lemuel, who had the very same honorable parents that raised Nephi and Sam. Believe me, I do not place myself in the same category as Alma the Elder and his wife or Mosiah and his wife or Lehi and Sariah. I wish!

I have had the pleasure of teaching two Sunday School classes a few years apart where the subject was the Book of Mormon. Add to that the seminary class I took years ago as well as a couple of BYU religion classes all about the Book of Mormon. It is one of my favorite subjects! The people are fascinating and leap from the pages. Their lives were hard, and they lived passionately, some for good and others for not so good.

Back to Alma the Younger. I’d always assumed that because God knew that Alma and the sons of Mosiah would be great missionaries, he pulled them off their path of destruction and redirected them, and they delivered! They probably started out as wild young men who liked to party. Oftentimes getting involved in stuff like that so fully draws the Spirit from you that you lose the light you might have once had. I think Elder Maxwell called it “Spiritual Anesthesia.” Then they went further and even started drawing people away from the church. The Book of Mormon described their behavior as “rebelling against God.” Scary, heady stuff!

That is when the Angel of the Lord came and spoke to these five young men “with a voice of thunder, which caused the earth to shake upon which they stood.” Not everyone listens, believe it or not, when an angel appears, but this one sure got these guys’ attention!

The little part that had earlier escaped my notice really became clear to me this time. The angel, after berating the young men for their behavior, matter-of-factly told them “Alma, who is they father; for he has prayed with much faith concerning thee that thou mightest be brought to the knowledge of the truth; therefore, for this purpose have I come to convince thee of the power and authority of God, that the prayers of his servants might be answered according to their faith,” italics my own.

Wait, what? So first, not everyone who behaves as these guys did gets heavenly intervention; second, God sent the angel not to save them but because of the faith and prayers of parents and loved ones. Oh, and He only does things like that when they further His work. And anyone who has studied the missionary efforts of these young men will agree that they were very instrumental in furthering His work. Why was it again that we don’t do a better job of listening to the Lord?

Being a parent is hard. I am really bad at it. And I’m not so great at prayer, but I happen to have been working on that very thing these past few months. That, I can do. And I will. Because I do have faith that the Lord will bless my children and will help strengthen them in the areas where I was weak in my parenting. That brings me great comfort. Who wants their children to suffer because they are bad parents?

Mind Your Language!

Oh, boy, it’s been a busy month! I never realized how much fitting college into my life would impact my time. Another thing I didn’t realize is that having all my time filled with the activities of life as well as the activities of study, especially things of a gospel nature, has expanded my thinking about life.

In one of my classes this week we discussed the principle of work. I had to look back on a time in my life where I was blessed by doing hard work. That was an easy one: The time I took to go to court reporting school and begin my career. It was very hard work, very time consuming, and the best thing I have ever done.

There is a principle most of us know: If we work and put ourselves into achieving something, whether it’s a goal or educational pursuits, we will actually gain more from the experience than if we were handed the accomplishment on a silver platter, no effort on our own part. There is a sense of satisfaction that only comes with doing the work.

In my other class we discussed the importance of knowing and understanding our written language. I know this is hard for some, and I’ll just say math is my nemesis. All of my friends who are court reporters or teachers and others of that nature fuss with the minute details of spelling, punctuation, and grammar. Yes, those things are important. But what I am really referring to here is having a written language so we can teach our children to understand and write it as well. Anyone ever play the telephone game? The more people you have in that game, the less likely the last person will state the same thing the first person stated. It’s fun but also very revealing about how carefully we listen and verbally share the things we hear. Thank goodness for court reporters who listen and then WRITE IT DOWN.

My husband will sit in a Sunday school class, back row, staring at his iPad. No, he’s not checking Facebook. He likes to use that time to study Greek. When he was a middle schooler, he did poorly in a Spanish class and decided he had no aptitude for learning new languages. When he was filling out mission papers, he requested an English-speaking mission because he knew he would never be able to learn a different language. He was sent to Fukuoka, Japan. After nearly 18 months in Japan, he was speaking with near-native fluency. That was a lesson and a testimony building experience for him as he learned that if God needs him to learn a new language, he can do it. The experience also changed the self-talk he had been speaking for half a dozen years. He now knew that he does have an aptitude for learning new languages.

Speaking of writing things down, this summer I finished reading the Book of Mormon again. I love it more every time I read. I can’t wait to sit at the feet of those who sacrificed to preserve these records for us. Now I am studying the Book of Mormon again in college. I so appreciate the time and talents and inspiration of those who put together the Institute manual we use alongside our reading because the manual offers great insights and better understanding as I read.

How lucky are we to have the scriptures anywhere and everywhere with the press of a finger on a touch screen? One of my personal goals is to make that a wonderful thing in my life rather than a “Oh, I have to read the scriptures” kind of thing. Elder Neal A. Maxwell talked years ago about our handy little "quads" we use that contains all of our scriptures. He warned that since we know there will be more to come one day, we might be carrying around "little red wagons" of scripture. How wonderful that we have this technology that enables us to have them fit in the palms of our hands.

Happy Thanksgiving, my friends!

Boy, do I have a house for you!

This week in my studies, I came across a quote by Elder Neal A. Maxwell, who was always a favorite. He said:  “Faith also includes trust in God’s timing, for He has said, ‘All things must come to pass in their time.’ Ironically, some who acknowledge God are tried by His timing, globally and personally!” Elder Maxwell also stated, “Faith in the timing of God [is] to be able to say Thy timing be done, even when we do not fully understand it.”

What a great lesson. I have a perfect example in my own life. Having not yet received an answer, I am striving to remain patient and not plague the Lord with repeated demands (requests?) to help us with this problem soon, please! We are a nomadic family, largely because we have never owned a home together (which is another story altogether!) We have had two moves in the last three years that have been handled in a somewhat panicky fashion because the landlords had lost their homes (one without warning). When we moved to our current home, we signed a two-year lease. Believe it or not, that lease ends in just two months. Once again we are scouring Craigslist for available rentals that are appropriate for us. We have only looked at two or three. Two of them we loved, but so did everyone else, and they were rented before we could put in an application. There was another that was just a little too far away with a home that we all would have disliked living in.

Going back to when we found this home, it had been available for rent most of the time we had been looking, but we just simply didn’t want to look into this area of town. We finally signed our lease on the day before our lease in our other home expired. We have been fine living here. Interestingly enough, while in the ward we now attend, I was asked to serve as a counselor in the Primary presidency. I had never expected a leadership role of any kind in my life, so this was a surprise to me. And guess what? It has been the best calling I have ever had! I love it and the people I work with. The president of the Primary is the best person under whom I could have trained to do this, and I discovered that I indeed have the ability. She is literally the age of some of my children. I guess I had to wait for her to grow up so she could teach me :D

I have been learning a great deal about how to pray. My goal had been to pray regularly at least twice a day and to have prayers of substance. Now, instead of praying, “Please help us find a house soon,” I have been praying, “Please help us, as we do the work to find an available home, to be patient in our search.” We may end up signing a new lease the day before this one expires. And it will all turn out. We need to focus on the Lord’s timing, trusting in Him, believing He knows our best interests far better than we do.

Another thing we discussed this week was the counterfeit “teachings” of Satan, who wants us to know:

                It’s not fair!

                No one will rent us a house!

                Other people are better than we are!

                We are lesser-than!

                We deserve to be in this predicament again!

Everyone knows that his sole job is to mislead us, using whatever methods work with us as individuals. My prayer is that we can crowd out the “teachings” of Satan by reading and studying the teachings of Heavenly Father and his son, Jesus Christ. The Lord wants us to know:

                Life isn’t supposed to be fair. It is supposed to refine you as My child!

                You will find the homeowner who trusts you and likes you and will be the best landlord!

                All people are My children! None is better than any other!

                You are important to Me!

                I am here to teach you and guide you, if you but ask!

I like those words far better. I know that Satan is the father of lies; Heavenly Father, on the other hand, is MY father and YOUR father. He loves us and wants us to know Him and follow Him. He is waiting patiently for us, and we should do the same.