Our Box of Crayons

I listened today to a devotional from many years ago by Sister Janet Lee, wife of the late Rex E. Lee who served as president of BYU.  She told a story about her daughter that I found really instructive.  Her daughter was starting kindergarten and went to meet her teacher.  Sister Lee told how she was excited about how much her daughter was going to show her teacher that she already knew.  The teacher asked her daughter to pick her favorite color from a box and write her name, and her daughter just stared nervously with her knees locked and wouldn’t do or say anything.  Finally the teacher moved on and told the young girl that she would learn how to write her name when she went to kindergarten.  Sister Lee continued the story, “On the way home I tried to ask as nonchalantly as possible why she had not written her name. ‘I couldn’t,’ she replied. ‘The teacher said to choose my favorite color, and there wasn’t a pink crayon in the box!’”  Sister Lee then summarized the lesson she learned from this experience this way: “I reflect on this incident often as I watch my children grow and observe life in general. How many times are we, as Heavenly Father’s children, immobilized because the choice we had in mind for ourselves just isn’t available to us, at least not at the time we want it?”  

As I see it, the story teaches us that we have to work with the “crayons” we are given in life, and if we focus only on what we wish we had, we may never fulfill the potential we have.  We have to take what God gives us and build a meaningful life with it; if we dwell on the things we don’t have or the trials we wished we didn’t have to face then we too can become paralyzed and stuck.  God does not judge us on what is in the box of crayons we are handed in life, but He does judge us on what we do with them.  I think this principle is clear from the parable of the talents: the Lord was just as pleased with the man who had five talents and multiplied them as well as the man who had two talents and multiplied them.  The reason He wasn’t pleased with the other servant was because He had done nothing with the one talent He had received.  The fault was not in the number of talents he received for it was the lord who gave the servant the talents in the first place (see Matt. 25:15).  Our challenge in this life is to learn to accept the difficult experiences or situations that are given to us that we can’t change and learn what the Lord intends for us from them.  Job was a powerful example in this regard; when just about everything was taken from him, he still said, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21).  He didn’t lose faith over what he had lost but continued forward accepting what he did have.  Nephi likewise was an example for us in this regard.  When his steel bow broke, they couldn’t find food, and everyone else was murmuring, he did not.  Instead of focusing on the fact that they did not have a steel bow anymore to hunt, Nephi took what he had, made a makeshift bow and arrow, and finally went and found food.

Of course, I think we see examples in the scriptures where sometimes righteous people do lament a missing crayon or too for a brief period of time before accepting their lot and forging ahead.  For example, Jeremiah cried out, “Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!  Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men; that I might leave my people, and go from them!” (Jeremiah 9:1-2)  Nephi from the book of Helaman seemed to have similar feelings about the wicked people among which he lived: “Oh, that I could have had my days in the days when my father Nephi first came out of the land of Jerusalem, that I could have joyed with him in the promised land; then were his people easy to be entreated, firm to keep the commandments of God, and slow to be led to do iniquity” (Helaman 7:7).  While they may have lamented their situation somewhat, both squared their shoulders and accomplished their mission given them despite their difficulties.  Even the Savior briefly once asked if their wasn’t another crayon in His box: “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me” (Luke 22:42).  But of course, He accepted His mission and followed through by completing the atonement, and that’s what counts for us.  We decide what kind of drawing we will make of our life no matter what colors may be missing from the box.