EHHHHHH! What’s going on here! Where am I? What happened? People are so different up here. These kids act like they know stuff. What do they know besides the scriptures and how to make toast! Nothing. Well my goodness gracious let me tell you the news, don’t look at me with that know it all frown smile and act like you know something just because you just spent two years in some town in South America, where your mommy sent you a cookie care package every week and your mission president made you eat yucky stuff! And dude it isn’t a booty call when you call a girl over to your crappy apartment at 9:45 on a week night to come over and sit next to you while you watch a raunchy PG-13 flick! “Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.” Is this wisdom that I see or fools wisdom?” Sometimes I wonder if I am the sheep or if I am the wolves. I’ve always tried to follow my heart. When something felt wrong, it was usually wrong and if something felt right, it’s usually right, when I follow my heart that is. Something is not right here. The spirit is always implied but never declared. I wonder if they have ever even felt the spirit. Have I? These are things that I want to get to the bottom of.


The real question here is it necessary to get bitten to know that bites hurt? How do I teach my children how to not be like this without letting them experience pain? Is it possible for someone to go to boot camp and truly be prepared for the war when you get there or can nothing really prepare you for that? Should you completely shield your child from the battle field if you are certain that they must surely taste the bitterness anyway? Maybe they will need a memory of peace and freeness that is not mingled with pain, maybe it will be the only thing that they will have to hold onto. Like Frodo and the other shirelings. The memory of the peace of the Shire is what drives them to do their task, it is what keeps them alive. I don’t have all of the answers yet. But I am sure that, like always it will come, if I can have eyes to see and ears to hear maybe. And I pray…