The Lord can take our best ‘failed’ efforts at teaching our children and turn them into something sublime
Tim Frodsham, 15 August 2020
It was the Christmas season, and my wife and I decided to sponsor a family. Acquiring from a local charitable organization the name of a family with children similar in age to ours, we began shopping for food for the family and Christmas presents for the children. My good intentions were to involve my children in the shopping, letting them pick out presents, and feel a part of the Christmas giving season. Intentions or not, work was all consuming, problems piled up like cord wood, and I ended up picking out presents in my off moments and stashing them in a closet. Two days before Christmas, I brought out the presents and had my young daughters help me wrap them for our family. My oldest daughter. Chantelle, was unusually quiet that evening, but I did not think much of it at the time. We were celebrating the Christmas season, trying to show our children an example of service, and teaching them of Christ. After it was done and the presents and food delivered, I summed up the attempt as pretty much a failure. All my good intentions of involving my children had failed. I did not find out until years later the lessons actually learned that Christmas season.
It turns out that Chantelle was just about the biggest snoop on the planet. Each Christmas, she would hunt the house from top to bottom to find each and every Christmas present. Before Christmas morning, she knew every present for every member of the family. This Christmas, she found my closet stash, figured she had stumbled on the mother lode, and quit looking. To her extreme sorrow, while wrapping presents for our sponsored family, I handed her a cabbage patch doll to wrap for a young daughter; the cabbage patch doll she had been coveting for days and anticipating under the tree Christmas morning.
We finished wrapping the presents, packed them in the van, and drove to our sponsored family. I handed Chantelle the box of presents containing “her” doll. She was near tears as she carried it into the house, and I, of course, was oblivious. Years later, she described to me that experience. She walked into that home, saw the poverty thrust on that single mother and her children, and it changed her young life. That cabbage patch doll was in the right home and her Christmas no longer mattered. She learned valuable lessons about Christ-like service that Christmas, but not at all the lessons I had envisioned. Christmas morning, she did have a Christmas, and a cabbage patch doll was under the tree.
As is the case for most parents of grown children, we learn how they were actually raised long after they have left the nest. Many, if not most, of the lessons they learn are not of our design, but lessons transformed by our Creator. From frustrating family home evenings to strategic warfare on the church pew, homework, or yardwork, any of the lessons we attempt to teach our children seem to be a struggle. I have talked to so many parents like me who are frustrated with their seemingly unsuccessful efforts at reaching their children. We may be their earthly parents, but we all have heavenly parents. They take our best efforts, as imperfect as they are and exalt them. In raising our families and teaching our children, all that is expected of us is to try.
Some years later, but long before Amazon Prime and package tracking, I was expecting a box which never came. I called the carrier and they assured me the package had been delivered. Several days later, after finding the opened package under my son’s bed, I confronted him and began explaining in rather severe terms about respecting other people’s property. His tiny lip began to quiver, he looked into my eyes and said “Dad, the package was addressed to ‘T. Frodsham’ . . . I’m ‘T. Frodsham’.” I was the one humbled that day. My son was an individual, as unique and as important as I. As “Trevor,” he had just as much right to open a package addressed to “T. Frodsham” as did his father “Tim.” It was my turn that day to learn a life changing lesson.
During these days of social upheaval, lock downs, and unprecedented sensationalism and distortion saturating our electronic media, it is easy to become discouraged—especially in our attempts to strengthen and nurture our children. The Lord takes our fledging efforts, fills in the blanks, and covers the gaps of our inexperience, inattention, selfishness, and negligence in ways we cannot envision. He is the Master Architect of both heaven and earth. Taking our feeble efforts at teaching and raising our families, He turns them into something majestic.
Copyright Tim Frodsham, latterdaysaints.life, 2020
Latter-Day Saints 