Pray

Pray the mean girls stop being mean. Pray no one gets left out of the games or the parties. Pray the teachers light fires in all the right places. Pray that they remember to be just as kind and as brave as you know they are. Pray the scary new stuff really will lead to all the wonder you know it can. Pray their wings are dry and ready to fly.

I'm awake when I should be long asleep. Thinking about chairs to set up in seminary in the morning. Thinking about CE's mission call burning a hole under my mattress, away from the pesky fingers and prying eyes of younger brothers till she can come home from BYU to open it this weekend. Thinking about this crazy thing of self reliance. We teach our children to be self reliant, to grow and to want to be independent, to want to serve and love and teach, because they love God and He asks. We teach our children these things and then they have the audacity to actually go and do it.

At each step of this parenting, I have been blessed and forced to entrust some part of my children's care and keeping to others. To teachers and leaders and friends and, increasingly, to strangers. I am so grateful for the lessons and love my children have at the hands of others because they learn things that I could not teach them. I am less grateful for the hard knocks they have at the hands of others, but similarly pray that my children and I aren't responsible for too many hard knocks for anyone else.

I find myself praying and worrying over a whole new group of children I have inherited with seminary. I see their faces in my mind throughout the day. I worry over them and pray over them, fretting about their absences, hoping the tools I bring to them in class will be enough to slay their demons, to lead them to peace.

Seminary is a different type of gospel teaching than I have ever done. It's daunting enough to teach a class. I have taught gospel classes before. Seminary requires that I teach individuals in a much more pointed way than I have ever taught before. 42 students in my class. 42 different sets of needs and hopes and problems and levels of gospel understanding. 42 different sets of parents with their different levels of support and understanding. With all these faces wandering through my mind, I suppose it's a wonder I ever sleep at all.

All the things I pray for my children, I find myself praying for my seminary children. And all the things I have prayed and taught and hoped for CE, she is doing, in increasingly wide and awe-inspiring circles, she is doing.

Pray I've given the right tools, that I've taught the right lessons. Pray her wings are dry and ready to fly.

Marching toward Adulthood

I remember vividly, when I was nearing full term pregnant with each of my children, wanting them OUT, so I could see them, hold them and know they were safe. And then, just as vividly, once they were out, wanting them back in as soon as I realized how many more things there were outside me to harm them. There's the adage that motherhood is learning to live with your heart walking around outside your body. It's safe to say that this motherhood thing is not for the faint of heart and it gets progressively more nerve wracking with each year, each milestone.

Z just got his drivers license and while it is helpful to have another driver in the house, especially since CE is off being collegiate, it is more than a little scary to watch him drive off. When he leaves, I try not to remember the call we got last Christmas break, of CE screaming into the phone that she was sorry, that the road was wet, that she didn't see the car until it was too late. She is fine. Her car was totaled and the hardest part of that accident was the dent it put in my idealism, in my bubble, that deluded me into believing nothing bad will happen to my children.

On Sunday, evil rained down on my adopted hometown. Killing more than 50 (the number keeps growing) and injuring more than 500 at a country music festival. We don't know why. First responders ran into the trouble and saved people and have been tirelessly saving and serving since then. The daughter of a friend was at the concert. She posted on social media the text her daughter sent--saying there was a shooting, to not freak out that she was safe, hiding and that it would be okay. Her daughter didn't make it home for several more hours, walking through an actual horror show of loss and danger before she would be safely home again. I've been thinking on that text, on that maternal fear, on the whole crazy, sad, horror of it all. I can't get my brain around it. I've watched my friends acquaintances and loved ones react with fear and anger, with purpose and service and I want to be in the second group.

I taught more Isaiah in seminary today. Isaiah is hard. He talks in symbols that are often lost to our modern experiences. But he has so much that we need to hear and understand. 2 Ne 14:5-6 talks about the places of protection the Lord offers us in times of storms. I read my friend's post to the class. And we talked about the protection from this storm. I wouldn't have been at the concert because it was a Sunday night: I want to keep the sabbath holy and I have to teach seminary at 6am, so my covenants and my commitments kept me safe. The covenants and commitments of the first responders are why they rushed into danger. Isaiah talks about our homes, our congregations and the temple as places of protection. The kids talked about blessings their fathers had offered to protect and dedicate their homes, of the peace of temple work for those who have fallen, the comfort of loving congregations to help us. We talked about how to take comfort from those sacred spaces and from our covenants in all the storms and how to take those protections with us into our day to offer comfort, peace and light to those around us.

I wish my heart weren't walking around outside my body in so many dangerous places. Bilbo Baggins says:

It's a dangerous business going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.

But I know that there is peace in storms. There is protection and safety in standing in holy places, in creating sacred spaces and sacred times. This is the knowledge that calms me as my children persist in doing scary things, in growing up. It is the only thing that keeps me sane.