A joyful hello to you!
Parenting taught me a lesson this
week on the price of growth and the nature of love.
It happened when my little James
woke up with a fever in the thick of the night. Marc and I scrambled about in
the dark for medicine and then I sat James on my knees, fighting the urge to
hug his hot little body. Shivering, he cried "I hold you! I hold
you!" He felt freezing, but I knew that what he wanted was not what he
needed to get better. As Marc rubbed a cold wet wash cloth across his burning
back, and James arched away crying for warmth, I thought about how I act in the
face of healing or growth of any kind. Do I resist the medicine of the
soul? Do I beg for convenience when outreach and service are the real answers
to my aches and pains?
Sometimes I feel like motherhood is
too demanding. I'm all dry and drained. In that moment of trying to care for a
sick child at night, God reminded me that this is His work and that His love
can sometimes ask us to feel a whole range of emotions that call out the best
in us and tutor us to become noble and wise and selfless. I've wondered why,
when I'm cold, God would give me a cold wash cloth instead of a warm blanket.
The answer is that he loves His children and knows a bigger, fuller story for
our futures than we do. He wants to give us something better than what we can
imagine for ourselves, and sometimes the price of learning is discomfort, even
pain.
I'll leave you with his wisdom
regarding given by the Lord to Joseph Smith about the purpose of adversity:
"And if thou shouldst be
cast into the pit, or into the hands of murderers, and the sentence of death
passed upon thee; if thou be cast into the deep; if the billowing surge
conspire against thee; if fierce winds become thine enemy; if the heavens
gather blackness, and all the elements combine to hedge up the way; and above
all, if the very jaws of hell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know
thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be
for thy good." ~ D&C 122:7
YaY, another great post. I just said to my 6 year old, my job is not to give you what you want. My job is to give you what you need. Too bad I forget that lesson when the Lord is trying to help me. Great reminder.
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