What if I Had Gotten In the Car?

It is so to me amazing how I can look back and see the many roads traveled that make up the map that is my life. When I lay it all out and look at choices I've made, and the possible outcomes and consequences web out before my eyes, it is astonishing to see how closely the Savior has traveled, silent and unseen. But sometimes He isn't silent.

When I was thirteen, we were still pretty poor and there was never much money for anything. Sometimes after school, I would stand looking in the shop windows downtown and daydream about going in and buying those things one day.
I was walking home from school one day when a car pulled up by the curb. The driver - an older man - rolled the passenger side window down and waved me over. I was still about a mile away from home, and wary of strangers, I kept walking, but the man continued to slowly roll along side me. This part of town wasn't the worst, but it wasn't the best either and the main road I walked down carried many shady characters to the government housing project where I lived. When I reached the corner, the man pulled up in front of me, slipped a hundred dollar bill on the seat and said it was mine if I got in. This did not shock me at all because it was something that happened frequently in my neck of the woods, but this was the first time it had ever happened to me, and I was suddenly nervous. A voice inside my head prompted me to walk away quickly and get to an area with more people. I did and he finally quit following me.

Had I gotten in that car, I might not have ever made it home. Many girls didn't. Had I gotten in that car and did make it back, I would most likely have been even more emotionally scarred than I already was. Had I taken that ride with a stranger for cash, I may have slipped head-first down the road to a hellish world that many don't return from. Fortunately, the voice in my head had been stronger than my desire for filthy money. I would like to think that deep down, I could never have done something like that. I'm grateful that I listened and heeded the prompting to quickly walk away. But what if I hadn't?

We have no idea how many times in our lives Heavenly Father has prompted a choice in us that has steered us from one path to another.Yes, we still make mistakes and we always will because we are human, and believe me, I've made some major ones, but I am slowly learning to recognize that voice when I hear it, and I am freshly amazed every time I pull out that map that is my life and study the roads webbing the page - roads that stretched from barren wastelands, through rocky ridges, melding into rich, green countrysides with flowing streams and ripening trees. Every road on my map was, and is, necessary to complete it, and hopefully I still have many roads left to build.

In Search of the Lost Faith of a Child

Some things are hard to think about, some memories too painful visualize again. I file these memories away in a tall metal cabinet and put the key away, out of sight until I need it. This is one of those times.

There have been many times in my life that I have wished I could capture the innocence of another time. No, I would definitely never want to live my childhood over again, and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy (if I had one, that is) because my childhood was far from innocent, but within those tender years was once a faith and an innocence that was priceless. To experience even a moment of that pure faith now would be . . . well, let me try to share what I mean.

Because of abuse - witnessing my step-father brutally beating my mother during the day, and then enduring his sickening presence in my room at night as he molested me - I prayed a lot as a child. We rarely went to church, except when I stayed with my grandparents for the summer. My mother and step-father were alcoholics, so there was always liquor in the house, and I was always afraid.
When I was nine, I came home from school one day and heard my mother's screams before I even opened the door. I walked down the hallway, looked in their bedroom and found my step-father holding my mother against the wall with his hands around her neck, choking her. I started crying and he yelled at me and told me to go to my room, threatening to hurt me if I didn't, and I knew he would. Fortunately, my younger brothers were not home.

I ran to my room and closed the door. Moving to the window, I began to talk to my invisible friend. I had done this many times because it helped me to cope, only this time it wasn't working, because my mother's screams and the yells had only grown louder. Getting on my bed, I wrapped the pillow around my head and rocked back and forth, asking God to please make it go away, to please let it be over.
I woke later to the sun going down, and it was over.
This pattern soon became habit- a talk with my invisible friend, then rocking to sleep. I don't know how I knew it would always work, I just did.

It wasn't until years later that I came to understand that those times when I thought I was alone talking to an invisible friend, I wasn't alone. When I thought I was rocking myself to sleep, it wasn't me, it was my Savior rocking me, taking away the pain, soothing me and making everything all right.
For many years, the faith of that child was lost because that child soon became a lost teen and then a lost adult. It took a long time, but I was finally found, and the faith began to grow once again, and though it's strong now, to have the lost faith of that child would make my faith concrete and sure in so many ways.

So this is what I work for, to have the kind of pure, unshakable faith in my Lord and Savior that nothing can touch. He was there for me in the darkest times of my life, and though I left Him for a time, He never left me. And I know He never will.

Christ is always there with His arms stretched open, just waiting for us to step into them. I pray that we can all gain unshakable faith in Him and never lose it, because we are definitely going to need it to see us through the days, weeks, months, and years to come.

A Tool In the Hands of God

God truly does love each and every one of us. We are all literally His sons and daughters, but I think His daughters hold their own special place in His heart. We have no idea just how important and influential we are - influential enough to impact the world, but He does.

I have a daughter who had some major, life-altering, life-or-death struggles when she was younger, but with God's help and through the atonement of the Savior, she was able to get her life back on track. She was a severe cutter and those scars will always be there as a result of the choices she made in the past, as well as a reminder of how far she has come since then. She used to be ashamed of those scars, then one day the shame began to fade.
She was at work stocking shelves when she turned around and noticed a young girl standing a short distance away, staring at her. She looked to be maybe twelve or so. This unnerved my daughter a bit, but because of her appearance, she was used to it, so she continued her work. A few moments later she turned again to find the girl still watching her. By now there was a woman with her. The girl whispered something to the woman - my daughter assumed this was her mother - the woman nodded, and the girl timidly approached my daughter.
"Can I ask you something?" the girl finally said.
My daughter sighed. "Yeah."
The girl hesitated, then asked, "How did you stop?"
Her soft question broke my daughter's heart because she instantly realized the girl was a cutter and this was her quest for additional help and support. My daughter immediately stopped what she was doing, grabbed a stool and sat down with the girl, and they talked. The girl cried and opened up about her emotional struggles, and my daughter shared some of her own experiences and offered what advice she could. Then she shared the gospel with her.
The scars that once caused my daughter shame were used as a tool by God to do His work and bring hope to a soul that was lost.

I consider my oldest daughter a super woman. She is blessed to be a stay-at-home mom to five little ones, all of them six and under, including a set of twins! In a world where big families are mostly frowned upon and children are delayed for material possessions, she and her husband are faithfully fulfilling the measure of their creation. She gets the occasional looks when she takes all her children out in public and is subjected to the playfully snide comments every now and then, but she is also strong enough to let them roll right off her back, because she knows who she is, Whose daughter she is, and why she is here. Motherhood is important to her and apart from the gospel, her family is everything. She's very talented and participates in plays and does what she can to help others.
To the world, she may not have accomplished much, but her life is a tool in the hand of God to bring some of His choicest spirits into the world. She is raising them to be great men and women, and God will use them to soldier on through the coming times and be influences for good.

My youngest daughter recently went through the temple for herself and I had the privilege of being her escort. She had already been going to the temple weekly with her younger brother to do baptisms and she spent the last year preparing for this big day, and we were excited for her.
A week after making her temple covenants, she began to get the usual questions.
"Are you going to serve a mission?"
"No."
"Are you getting married?"
"No."
"Why did you decide to go?"
She decided to go for her. She had prepared and she was ready. In making such an important decision to make such sacred covenants, God used her as a tool to help other young women know the importance of  holding fast to the values they were taught, and the importance being prepared and worthy to enter His holy house for no other purpose but to worship and please Him.

Ladies, we are all tools in the hand of God, and with each passing day, I am more and more amazed at the

opportunities He places before us to do so much good in this world. Through us, He can do any and all things if we will only allow Him to. I frequently think back on my life and skim through the dark days, amazed that I am still here after the many destructive choices I made. But I'm also awed to see how much He had for me to do. He took that old lump of shapeless metal that was me and created a tool He could use. Sometimes this tool gets a little rusty and needs to be cleaned, but His Son takes care of that and puts me to use again, and hopefully, with the Savior's help, I will never wear out.
I pray that we can all be tools in the hand of the Master Craftsman and help Him in creating His marvelous work on this earth.