He Loved Them Unto the End

Recently we have struggled in getting our nine-year-old daughter to go to bed at night, mostly due to fears of being in her room without us.  After we spent an hour and a half last night doing many things to try to help her stay in her room and go to sleep, we finally gave up and headed for bed ourselves.  Shortly after I laid down and was only half awake I felt someone poke me in the side, and I was sure it was my daughter up yet again.  I impatiently swatted her hand away, mumbled something in frustration, and rolled back over, knowing that she would just lie down on my floor and go to sleep there.  But then I heard the door slam and looked over and saw that she was already on my floor sleeping—it had been my son who had come in to try and wake me.  I got up and went into his room to find him crying in his bed.  I finally got out of him that he just had wanted to come and tell me that he had finished the book he was reading because he was proud that he had read the whole thing that night.  My silent rebuke had scared him and sent him running.  I was ashamed and felt awful that I had “offend[ed] one of these little ones” when he had simply had been looking for some commendation from his father (Matt. 18:6).  I can of course blame my bad temperament on fatigue and being suddenly woken from being half asleep, but that’s not really the cause of my impatience.  As C.S. Lewis put it, “If there are rats in a cellar you are most likely to see them if you go in very suddenly.  But the suddenness does not create the rats:  it only prevents them from hiding. In the same way the suddenness of the provocation does not make me an ill-tempered man:  it only shows me what an ill-tempered man I am.  The rats are always there in the cellar, but if you go in shouting and noisily they will have taken cover before you switch on the light” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 164-165).        

                A few weeks ago I was reminded of a story told by Matthew Holland in general conference.  He was a teenager at the time and spoke in the general priesthood meeting with his father.  He told a story of how his mother was dutifully washing and waxing their kitchen floor while he, as a small boy, was playing outside.  She told him not to come back with muddy feet, but he forgot and came running back in and crossed the perfectly clean floor with his muddy feet.  He recounted, “Not waiting for a reaction and not wanting to leave my sin half finished, I ran across the rest of the floor, into my parents’ room, and slammed the door shut. Not knowing if I should jump out the second-story window or if just hiding under the bed would do, I burst into tears and hurled my small body onto the bed.”  After his mother came in his room he said that he “cried out, ‘Mom, you don’t love me.’ To which she replied, ‘I do love you, and I’ll do anything to prove it.’ She then picked up my filthy, muddy feet and kissed them.”  What a powerful testament of a mother’s love, and the story is a reminder to me that the most important words I can give to my children are those of love.

                I hope one day to be able to have that kind of love that Sister Holland showed and to claim the words of Mormon, who lived amidst a people full of hatred, as my own.  He wrote to his son, “And I am filled with charity, which is everlasting love; wherefore, all children are alike unto me; wherefore, I love little children with a perfect love; and they are all alike and partakers of salvation” (Moroni 8:17).  The Savior of course is our perfect example of love, giving His whole life to others until it could be said of Him: “He loved them unto the end” (John 13:1).  That is our mandate to follow: to love others, especially children, and to love them until the end.