A Perfect Childhood

I just read the most amazing idea over on Segullah and I just have to share. A woman wrote:

I wring my hands over the consequences of my parenting (and make no mistake–there are formidable consequences!) and wonder how this could ever be okay, and then I remember God set it up this way. And I remember my kids already had a perfect childhood in the spirit world, and that they didn’t come here to have another one. Quite the contrary, in fact.

I needed to read this today. And I needed to read it last week, and ten years ago, and I'll need to read it ten years FROM now. Parenting is daunting and hard, and I mess up pretty much every single day.

But it's true: Heavenly Father doesn't expect us to parent perfectly any more than He expects us to live perfectly. He asks us to do our best, and ask for and expect His help all along the way. Christ's atonement makes up for our failings in EVERY SINGLE AREA of our lives. It's the infinite atonement, after all.

Book of Mormon, I Love You

Once again, I'm at Moroni 10.

I used to get there more often. I think over the years I have averaged a re-read every nine or ten months.

Looking back, though, I am forced to admit that it's been nearly 18 months, because this is proof. Either it's been 18 months or I've finished it twice since then and just don't remember.

This is all too possible.

So Moroni 10 is familiar territory to me. I actually really like Moroni, and I feel for him, for being left alone, for witnessing the destruction of his people, and even finally losing his father to the Lamanites, which may have even been the most terrible loss of all.

But despite the chapter's familiarity, as I got to Moroni's promise in verse 4,

And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.

I stopped and pondered. I thought about the promise as if I hadn't read it countless times before.

And I accepted anew the truth of it, the truth that the study of the Book of Mormon has made me a better person, that God's words and instructions to me have changed me and have taught me, and that Christ's atonement has resonance for me in a way that it wouldn't without the Book of Mormon. Heavenly Father HAS manifested the truth of it to me over and over, in little and in big revelations.

I wish I could say that the study of God's word has made me a perfect person. Just so you know, that's not the case (like you didn't know that already...). I wish the truths in the scriptures were written deep enough in the fleshy tablets of my heart that I wouldn't doubt, that I wouldn't fight, that I wouldn't be stubborn.

I DO hope that repetition will score the truths deeper into my heart every time I return to the word of God, and that one day my walk in this world will measure up a little more to what I know is true and what I know is right, to the truths that I've been taught in all of the scriptures, but especially in the Book of Mormon.