This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Sunday Afternoon Session of the April 2003 Conference.
First of all. In this session I learned that what I have always thought/feared about Elder Scott is true! Elder Spencer V. Jones recounts:
While attending a youth fireside with Elder Richard G. Scott, I noticed five youths scattered among the congregation whose countenances or body language almost screamed that something was spiritually amiss in their lives. After the meeting, when I mentioned the five youths to Elder Scott, he simply replied, “There were eight.”
Elder Scott could see into our souls! I knew it! He always seemed like he could, and now we know he could.
Next: there were two talks I loved in this session. One was Elder Packer's "The Golden Years," and I don't know why I liked it so much. I don't think I am in my "golden years"…yet. I didn't even highlight any specific quotes from the talk. But the talk just gave me this sense of excitement and purpose (potential purpose?). It made me wish I had more life experience and wisdom (even though I know that gaining such experience and wisdom is usually…hard) and it made me grateful for the things (even hard things) I've come to know so far. It made me want to get to know the older people in my family and ward better, and to learn from them more. It gave me a shift in perspective about my own upcoming "golden years"—realizing that they can be beneficial and important not only for my own growth, but also for those I can serve and mentor—and it reminded me that all stages of life are part of God's plan!
The other talk was Elder Holland's talk "A Prayer for the Children," which I feel like I've quoted here several times, because I think about it a lot. (The part I always remember is: "From a grandfather who is cynical to a son who is agnostic to a grandson who is now looking desperately for what God had already once given his family!" Oh, it's so sad!)
But there are other parts I'd forgotten. I liked this:
Even then we know that some children will make choices that break their parents’ hearts. Moms and dads can do everything right and yet have children who stray. Moral agency still obtains. But even in such painful hours it will be comforting for you to know that your children knew of your abiding faith in Christ, in His true Church, in the keys of the priesthood and in those who hold them. It will be comforting then for you to know that if your children choose to leave the straight and narrow way, they leave it very conscious that their parents were firmly in it.
For some reason it doesn't always feel comforting to me when people say things like, "As long as you did your best with your kids, you don't have to worry." Because I very rarely feel like I am "doing my best," and I always think I should be doing a better best! But this was comforting—to think, instead of "doing my best"—do I have faith in Christ and in his true church and in the keys of the priesthood? YES! I do! No question about it. Do I, and have I, let my children know about that faith? Again—yes! Certainly I haven't lived it perfectly. But I don't think there would be any question in their minds whether or not I really believed.
He elaborates even further:
Do our children know that we love the scriptures? Do they see us reading them and marking them and clinging to them in daily life? Have our children ever unexpectedly opened a closed door and found us on our knees in prayer? Have they heard us not only pray with them but also pray for them out of nothing more than sheer parental love? Do our children know we believe in fasting as something more than an obligatory first-Sunday-of-the-month hardship? Do they know that we have fasted for them and for their future on days about which they knew nothing? Do they know we love being in the temple, not least because it provides a bond to them that neither death nor the legions of hell can break? Do they know we love and sustain local and general leaders, imperfect as they are, for their willingness to accept callings they did not seek in order to preserve a standard of righteousness they did not create? Do those children know that we love God with all our heart and that we long to see the face—and fall at the feet—of His Only Begotten Son? I pray that they know this.
I pray that they know it too. Again—I don't do these things perfectly. And I'm constantly working on making them more apparent, more sincere, more obvious to my children. I often worry that my example isn't good enough or my faith isn't strong and clear enough, but if the question is simply "Do you really love God?" then yes. I can answer yes. And I think this is such a beautiful image for those of us (all of us?) who worry so much over our children—
Brothers and sisters, our children take their flight into the future with our thrust and with our aim. And even as we anxiously watch that arrow in flight and know all the evils that can deflect its course after it has left our hand, nevertheless we take courage in remembering that the most important mortal factor in determining that arrow’s destination will be the stability, strength, and unwavering certainty of the holder of the bow.
Unwavering certainty. Do I have that? About most things—no. But about the fact that God loves me, and I love Him? Yes! I know it, and I hope my children know I know it.
Other posts in this series:
Follow the Instructions—by Rozy
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