Out of the mouth of babes...

Tonight we got home from a friend's house late and did a quick family home evening. Honestly, our family home evening is hit or miss. I wish it was better and I'm really trying to make it a priority, but I usually just end up winging it on Sunday nights a couple of times a month. Usually we are out visiting friends and people until late, then I'm beat by the time we get home, and I work Monday nights, so we chose to do it Sunday night instead. So tonight, as usual, we sat down, someone chose a song and said the opening prayer, then I was going to talk about the scriptures and why they are important, but Lillie wanted to tell us the story that she learned in primary about the prodigal son. And I thought, "you know, practical application of a primary lesson is probably pretty good," so we went with that. So at the end Lillie was summing up the story, and she said "and he wanted to be rich and have lots of money, and he wanted it NOW, he didn't want to be patient and work hard with his father." And immediately it hit me, "oh wow, that's my story." I mean I love my job, it's amazing, I'm very blessed, but I'm constantly stressing about money, about the late hours that I work taking time away from my kids, the quality of care that my kids are getting while I'm gone. I'm ALWAYS worrying about it, and constantly praying for something different, different shift, different nanny, child support, etc. And Lillie said it clearly, "he wants it NOW, he doesn't want to wait" well I want it NOW, I don't want to be patient and wait. We watched the Living Scriptures "The Prodigal Son" movie, and in the first scene, the father tells his soon-to-be wayward son "the Lord will provide." And that's my lesson from family home evening, the Lord will provide, I just need to relax and be grateful. I need to do my best, obey the commandments, and follow the promptings that I get. I'm always waiting for life to get great, but my life can be great NOW, and the Lord wants it to be great now, I have lessons that I need to learn from my present state in life, so instead of focusing on what I need to change, I need to focus on what the Lord wants me to learn. So grateful for my kids and their simple but profound messages.