So enlisted in what is small

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Saturday Afternoon Session of the October 1990 Conference.

I know I've read this talk before. (But when?) It's so good! I can't resist a good talk on parenting these days. It feels like a long time now that I've been feeling so thirsty for something, anything, that might help me figure out what on earth I'm doing! Was my mom this desperate when she was raising me? She didn't seem to be…must be because I was such an easy child (ha ha).

Anyway. There's a sort of satisfaction in President Faust validating the difficulty of this endeavor:

In my opinion, the teaching, rearing, and training of children requires more intelligence, intuitive understanding, humility, strength, wisdom, spirituality, perseverance, and hard work than any other challenge we might have in life. This is especially so when moral foundations of honor and decency are eroding around us.

…Somehow, some way, we must try harder to make our homes stronger so that they will stand as sanctuaries against the unwholesome, pervasive moral dry rot around us.

 This humility, too, is typical of President Faust as I remember him:

One of the most difficult parental challenges is to appropriately discipline children. Child rearing is so individualistic. Every child is different and unique. What works with one may not work with another. I do not know who is wise enough to say what discipline is too harsh or what is too lenient except the parents of the children themselves, who love them most. It is a matter of prayerful discernment for the parents. Certainly the overarching and undergirding principle is that the discipline of children must be motivated more by love than by punishment.

I always wish, reading these talks, that there would be some pearl of wisdom that solves all my problems. (Less of the "somehow, some way, " please, President Faust!) Oh, of course I know there can't be! The only answers are personal answers—and the broad answers we all know, like being "motivated more by love than by punishment." But I thought this was a comforting reminder:

Children are also beneficiaries of moral agency by which we are all afforded the opportunity to progress, grow, and develop. That agency also permits children to pursue the alternate choice of selfishness, wastefulness, self-indulgence, and self-destruction. Children often express this agency when very young.

Let parents who have been conscientious, loving, and concerned and who have lived the principles of righteousness as best they could be comforted in knowing that they are good parents despite the actions of some of their children. The children themselves have a responsibility to listen, obey, and, having been taught, to learn. Parents cannot always answer for all their children’s misconduct because they cannot ensure the children’s good behavior. Some few children could tax even Solomon’s wisdom and Job’s patience.

"Some few," eh? What are the odds of having several of those in just one family? Asking for a friend…ha ha. And I like his delicate phrasing of "children often express this agency when very young." Next time I find marker scribbles all over the wall I will remind myself that the child is merely expressing his moral agency in an alternate way.

Let's get to my favorite part, though. My friend Montserrat may have quoted this before, or at least it sounds like something she's talked about. President Faust says:

Parental teaching moments need not be big or dramatic or powerful. We learn this from the Master Teacher. Charles Henry Parkhurst said:

“The completed beauty of Christ’s life is only the added beauty of little inconspicuous acts of beauty—talking with the woman at the well; showing the young ruler the stealthy ambition laid away in his heart that kept him out of the Kingdom of Heaven; … teaching a little knot of followers how to pray; kindling a fire and broiling fish that his disciples might have a breakfast waiting for them when they came ashore from a night of fishing, cold, tired, and discouraged. All of these things, you see, let us in so easily into the real quality and tone of [Christ’s] interests, so specific, so narrowed down, so enlisted in what is small, so engrossed with what is minute.” 

And so it is with being parents. The little things are the big things sewn into the family tapestry by a thousand threads of love, faith, discipline, sacrifice, patience, and work.

I kind of feel like I'm doing most things wrong these days. Every night when I'm looking back on my various interactions with my children that day, I can see how my children are learning and growing, and I feel sorry that I wasn't more patient with them. I often feel like the only one NOT making progress is…me! But reading these words makes me feel a little better. I do usually manage to do the equivalent of "kindling a fire and broiling fish" that my family "might have a dinner waiting for them" after a hard and busy day. I am teaching, and have taught, my own "little knot of followers" to pray—whether they do that habitually on their own yet or not. I "talk with the [child] at the well"…or in the car…as we go here and there. I'm trying! And I'm "enlisted in what is small," that's for sure. All these small moments…adding up bit by bit. I hope they'll be enough.