We are Children of God!

It was a warm, sunny morning and only my shear excitement could have gotten me up and out of bed at the bright and early hour of seven a.m. However, I was about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime, and I had no time to waste. I made good time loading all of my worldly possessions in my tiny, yellow Ford Festiva. It took me all of 30 minutes. I then went inside to wait for my parents to come home from their morning walk so I could say good-bye. I would then get on the road, finally heading towards the long awaited college scene!

I was inside fiddling on the computer when I heard a ruckus outside. When I got up to see what was going on I saw my father pulling out all of my suitcases and putting them on the sidewalk next to my car.

"What are you doing?" I asked as I rushed forward to stop him.

"I changed my mind. You can’t go," was his reply. I gave an exasperated sigh and started piling the luggage back into the car.

"You knew it was coming and you can’t change your mind," was my callous reply to his heartfelt statement of gloom over his only daughter leaving the roost.

After I got the luggage back in the car, we went into the house to say good-bye and my dad had me sit down while he told me how sad he was for me to go. Yet he also needed me to know how proud of me he was. I was off to new experiences and memories and he was excited for that too.He told me all about how he wished he could be a "mouse in my pocket" and see everything I saw. He wanted me to have a good time and to enjoy the journey, even during the hard times.

I remember thinking about the "mouse in my pocket" the whole six hour drive to School. I often wanted to stop and take a picture of the different places on the road so he could have a mouse’s view. I stopped myself though. I knew he had driven this drive before and that was not what he wanted to see with me. He just didn’t want to let me go yet. He knew I needed experiences to grow and shape me but it didn’t stop him from being a father.

I often think about that day when I am facing different experiences in my life. I think of a loving father who wants to be part of my life but understands that part of that life is rising and falling on my own. I also think about how much I wanted to share my experiences with him because knowing he loves me makes me want to include him the whole way. I also think about my relationship with Heavenly Father and how it might be pretty close to the same thing.

God’s purpose is "to bring to pass the immortality and Eternal life of man" (Moses 1:39). He wants us to be able to grow and to have the kinds of experiences we need in life to become like Him. Just like any father, I imagine that He had a hard time letting us go. But we needed the experience, He knew it was coming, and I know that at some point before our entrance into this world He sat us down and talked to us about the experiences we would have. D&C 138: 56 says: "Even before they were born, they, with many others, received their first lessons in the world of spirits and were prepared to come forth in the due time of the Lord to labor in his vineyard for the salvation of the souls of men."

Like my father, He told us how much He loved us and how our earth life would help us grow. He did this hoping that we would have the faith to believe in His love and in a sense, let Him be a mouse in our pocket through a relationship gained through study and prayer.

I know that this life is fun, it’s hard, it’s long, and it’s a blink of an eye. It is everything good and bad that shapes us. But we are never alone if we remember that we have a loving Heavenly Father who wants us to be the best we can be "prefect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." (Matt 5:48). And even more than that He prepared us for this and we always have the ability and responsibility through our love for him to let him into our lives. What a blessing! We are Children of God!

The Puzzle

Over the years, I have found myself subject to the habit of people watching and this last week I found myself watching two different children, on two different occasions, putting together a puzzle. The first was a little boy. He had a large puzzle of the planets. I watched him work on the puzzle for ten to fifteen minutes. Left to his own, he would pick up one piece and tenaciously hold onto it. He would try for four or five minutes to place it with the few pieces that were already together and when it would not fit with any of them he would sit for a moment, stare at the puzzle, then try all the options again. I giggled a little inside at the way that he held so tightly to that one piece. Eventually he would move that piece to the other hand for safe keeping, and then pick up another piece and try it for a while, before reverting back to the original one. Eventually, his father ended up on the floor with him. The father sorted the pieces and then patiently handed the child a piece that would go to the area where the child was working. Sometimes the boy would still hold onto his piece, determined to place it somewhere, in those instances the father would tell him a gentle "Not yet. Try this one first."

The second observation was with a young girl. She got out a cookie sheet, dumped puzzle pieces in it, brought it to me, and announced that I would be helping her assemble the puzzle. We started putting the puzzle together and I noticed that she, like the little boy would also pick up a piece and with determination, try to find where it went. Unlike that little boy, she did not limit herself to the few corner and edge pieces that I had already put together, but she would sort through all the pieces until she found one that her original piece went with.  Again I laughed inside a little. I, at my wise age of 23, knew that the fastest and easiest way to complete a puzzle was to put the edge pieces together first. Yet here I had seen in the space of two days, two children, who were completely unaware of this concept. They seemed to become attached to a piece, unwilling to set it aside for another piece that would make the work easier.

It was at this point that I thought about it from a gospel point of view. How often am I like a child with a puzzle piece? I grab hold of one idea, one dream, or one desire, and I refuse to let it go, trying instead to force it to fit into my life NOW! In many cases my desires are righteous. I want to be married in the Temple. I want a good job. I want a family. I want to travel the world. I want to go back to school or whatever else it might be. No matter how righteous or good our dreams are though, we often forget that we have a Heavenly Father who sees the whole picture and more than that, he knows where and when our puzzle pieces fall into place. I am certain that in the these cases of righteous desires He, like the boy's father, is whispering, "Not yet. Try this one first." I know that the Lord has a great plan for each of us. I know that he knows about all our wants and our needs. Sometimes he asks us to wait on our "wants" long enough to provide for a "need". I also know that as we lean a little more on His aid and guidance, we will find it so much easier to lay the foundation of eternity, through the assembly of our life's puzzle.