Who Knows Your Child Best?

   "Experiences of accumulating knowledge through flashes of intelligence are similes of my own spiritual life—and probably of yours. My testimony—the “reason of the hope that is in me"—is a composite panorama of countless bursts of light through an otherwise impenetrable earthly veil. I speak here of such flashes in hopes that they may bring to your mind similar glimpses that have informed your testimony, so that in those questioning moments you might “remember, remember” them. While these anecdotes do not amount to proof beyond a reasonable doubt, they do combine to remind me of a tangible reality of “that which is” that is not always before my eyes.

                                                                                           Stephen Lund, BYU Speeches September 2022

     I am almost halfway through the month of writing everyday. My intent was to recall the flashes of light I've received throughout my life, especially those that  reverberated into future years. I have written about light given to me as a child, a young adult, and now as a wife and mother. I hope I have written clearly enough that you can see the learning from the incident beyond the details of story.

   When my second child was five I took him to the first day of Kindergarten. He held on to me tenaciously, pleading eyes, begging me to stay. I stayed even when the teacher reassured me that he would be fine. The second, third, fourth and fifth day I had to pick him up when he cried continuously throughout the morning. I received a light filled message, "Not yet, not this boy."

  I was squeezed between what society expected and what I knew to be true.

This tight spot was very uncomfortable and required me to do some research, study and prayer.

My husband and I agreed that Heavenly Father knew our children and he was entrusting us to do what we knew to be right. I kept him home and he started first grade with more confidence a year later. I didn't know then that the tight spot between the expectations of the world and my own convictions would be tested again and again. Because I am more a pleaser by nature and shy away from confrontation, I have often felt an inner vertigo from these experiences. It hasn't become easier, just more familiar.

"The list of blessings flying from that still, small spark of inspiration goes on and on. None of these things are coincidences. They are consequences of a string of unpredictable heavenly interventions that have burst through the veil as flashes of light through what has at times felt like a drab, never-ending gray wall."

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