I Needed This.

I was doing the laundry tonight, thinking about a conversation that I had with my father nearly 20 years ago. I was a pre-teen struggling with body image, and my father sat me down and told me to just trust God with my body. I know it doesn't seem profound, but to me, right then, it was perfect. The idea of someone up there, who had control of things, that I could trust in brought me great comfort. I wish I could say that was the end of my body issues, but in fact, it took another decade or so before I saw the end of that torment. 

Still, that one conversation that I had with my father has stuck with me all these years. It has taught me how powerful it is to be taught the basic truths about our father in heaven from our own parents.

As I thought of this, I finished folding a pair of jeans and looked over at my six-year-old son, Avery, who was sitting on the couch nearby. I have been worried lately that he hasn't been listening as we sit down to read our scriptures as a family and that he hasn't begun to build his own personal relationship with God and His son. As much as I hate stopping a chore once I start it, I stepped away from my oversized pile of laundry and went to Avery's side.

"Hey, Avery, I want to talk to you about God," I told him, not expecting much. He's a hard nut to crack sometimes, especially when it comes to spiritual things.

Without much response on his part, I continued. "Did you know that you have two fathers?" I asked him. His eyes lit up at that.

"I do?" he asked perplexed.

"Who are your fathers?" I asked him.

"Daddy," he replied.

"And you have a father in heaven," I explained. "You have a father in heaven who loves you very very much."

Avery looked at me, giving me his full attention.

"He loves you even more than Daddy and me. Don't get me wrong, Daddy and Mommy love you so so much, but we have little hearts, and heavenly father's heart is so big that he can love you even more than we can."

Avery let out a laugh as he put his hand to his face. "Why am I crying?" he asked in his little, six-year-old voice. He laughed again, saying, "Oh, I know -- happy tears!" (We've had to explain this a lot since we go to a church with plenty of 'happy tear' cryers. haha!)

"Avery," I continued. "Who are heavenly father's children?"

He started naming person after person that he knew, starting with cousins. "Yes!" I said, "all of those are heavenly father's children. Everyone in the whole wide world is a child of God. And he loves them so much with his big, huge heart. And because he loves them, he wants us to love them too. But satan is real, and he doesn't want you to love people. He wants you to be bad, and follow him."

Avery asserted that he would not follow satan, but would tell satan that he follows God and loves people and is nice.  

Then, to bring home a much-needed point, I said, "Satan wants you to be mean to your brothers. But God wants you to love them."

And here's where things got even more amazing. My older son came in the room, and got in on the conversation. And out of my mouth came a simple truth that I had never even considered. At least not in such simple, pure terms. 

"So God loves everyone," I said, catching my older son up. They nodded in assertion.

"Is God here on earth?" I asked them. They replied that he wasn't on earth. "So who does he need to love people for him?" After a little bit of thought, my older son said, "Us!"

"Yes, that's right," I told him. 

"And satan hates people, but does he have a body to move around and do his work on earth?" I asked them. 

"No!" they shouted. 

"So who does he need to hate people for him?"

"Us!" my older son shouted. 

"That's right. Satan wants us to hate people for him -- God needs us to do His work of loving people. And satan needs us to do his work of hating people. It's our choice whose work we do."

And you all, I kid you not, as soon as I finished teaching this, I turned around and realized my 16-month-old had thrown all of my previously folded laundry on the floor. It is nine o'clock. I've been working all day. I'm tired. And I wanted to shout at him, and get angry. But I had just taught this lesson, and "Who does satan need to do his work?" ran through my mind. And while Aaron still went to "baby time-out" as we call it for his crime, I refrained from shouting at him or letting myself get too worked up. I was already at the end of my rope before this happened, so I know I usually wouldn't have stayed as collected as I did. Turns out, the lessons we teach our children come back to teach us. I sure needed this one. Hope someone else could use it as well. I'm a sharer for that reason. 

Now let's go out there and love people (appropriately, no awkward, unwanted hugging and such lol)!