Gaol #2

My thoughts on President Monson's talk "Three Goals to Guide You"

Pray Earnestly!
I fall way down on this one! I honestly do not believe I’m reaching heaven. I know I have, but right now I’m not feeling it. And like the old saying goes, “if you feel like God has moved away from you, check where you are standing.” I’ve checked and I think I’ve moved away. I need to rededicate my efforts in my evening prayers and REALLY say my morning prayers.
OH! I just remember something; my husband’s birthday is coming up and I have to do a month of only thankful prayers in the evening! I’m sure to repent now!

President Monson calls us all to repentance in such a gentle way. “Perhaps there has never been a time when we had greater need to pray and to teach our family members to pray.” AMEN!

Prayer is by example and I’m not quite sure the example I’m setting and maybe I just have to wait a bit more to set that one. As a child, I too, caught my mother in prayer when I was coming home from dates and other activities. My children aren’t doing that and by the time I go to bed they are supposed to be in bed so they wouldn’t catch me praying. I do need to make it a point of them catching me in prayer.

Of course my children know how important prayer is for me. I have born my testimony about it over and over and over to them. As a child I depended on prayer to make it through awful and scary stuff. My mom always joke that our cars ran on gas and Doreen’s prayers.

I’m very proud to write the next couple of paragraphs, but it isn’t pride in the ugly sense and I think you will agree.

Last year it was my turn to run a little girls carpool to a music class my daughter was in. The class was about a mile from the grocery store and it only lasted about an hour so I was going to get my grocery shopping done while I waited. I dropped the girls off went to the grocery store and found that I didn’t have my purse or my phone. I had an hour and I could have easily gone to the class and parked in the driveway and slept that hour. With early morning seminary and late soccer practices that sounded WONDERFUL! But I thought better of it and went home. As I drove up to the house there was a white van parked across the street with a man in it. He was looking at my house.

Now you need to understand that there had been a few reported child abductions reported in the news and the guy was in a light colored mini-van, just like the one across the street from my house. But, they were always reported to be in the South Sound and I live in the North Sound. But as I put the van into reverse I didn’t feel right. I looked at him and he quickly turned his head away from me. I backed up and jumped out of the car and pretended to go for the mail. Our mail box was directly across the street from the van. As I quickly got up there the van burnt rubber, spit rocks and was out of there and I go that ugly feeling deep in my soul.

As I surveyed where my boys were, one was down in the sport courts (it is in our front side yard) shooting hoops with the music turned up loud. Three were jumping on the trampoline on the other side yard and the other one was in the house with the door wide open. I gathered my children together and told them that we were leaving because I didn’t like the feeling I had. I explained to them about the van and the man. My basketball playing son, Kray, said that he was there just after I left and had been watching the house. He thought he was a work man waiting for his partner. I said that I thought maybe he was an assessor and was taking our houses picture because we recently bought it and the house down the street was just sold. But it still didn’t matter we were all going to leave.

I sent one kid to make sure all the basement doors were locked and windows closed and another upstairs to do the windows. I personally got the back door locked and the front Kray got. As that child came back from locking the front door he said, “mom, let’s say a prayer.”

“DUH!”

I still didn’t feel right, but I felt better.

On our way to Yellowstone this summer we had a tire blow out. Thankfully the Lord was watching over us and on this small little road we blew out near one of the places that would safely allow us to change our tire without being in the traffic. We pulled over and I ran to get our tire out of the middle of the road. As I returned to the van that very same son, greeted me and said that he had dutifully gotten the children out of the car (I know better than to put my husband under a jacked up car with little children in the car moving around—especially a 15 passenger van loaded for a week’s camping trip. He had them standing by the van and said mom, “While you help dad, I’m going to have us say a prayer.”

“DUH!”

President Monson says, “My dear sisters, do not pray for tasks equal to your abilities, but pray for abilities equal to your tasks. Then the performance of you tasks will be no miracle, but you will be the miracle.”

BTW—take a look at the Bible Dictionary heading under Prayer. It is an eye opener. I love the part that goes from the bottom of the page to the top of the next page and talks about the blessings. I need to call upon a couple for me.