What Will Ye That I Should Do?

Yesterday in sacrament meeting a sister told the following story about her brother when he was four years old. They lived on a farm in the country and had a rooster that did not like this little boy. Every time the boy would go outside alone, the rooster would come attack and peck him, even making him bleed. The problem became so bad that the boy was afraid to go outside. One day he said the family prayer and asked God to bless everyone and all the animals except for the rooster. He prayed that the Lord would kill the rooster. But he woke up the next morning to the sound of that rooster and was disappointed that his prayer had not been granted. He discussed it with his father who told him the story of the brother of Jared. He recounted how the brother of Jared had a problem that the Lord didn’t simply solve—getting light for the boats—but waited for this prophet to come up with a solution on his own. He described how the Lord blessed the rocks that the brother of Jared brought to him. After reflection the boy found a big stick and brought it to his father. He asked his father to help him pray over and bless the stick, which his father did. The boy then went outside with the stick and sure enough, the rooster saw him and came towards him. When he got close the boy hit him with all his might and sent the rooster flying. The boy kept the stick with him and whenever the rooster came to attack, he would protect himself with the stick. This was, in fact, the beginning of his baseball career and when he got older, he became a very talented baseball player with a wall decorated with medals for the sport. His father believed that it was indeed because of his stick and the rooster that this boy became so good at the sport.

               This story reminds us as parents that sometimes it is better to let our children try to solve their own problems. We may be depriving them of learning the things they need to learn if we always step in to save the. After church I overhead a couple in our ward discuss this story and relate it to their own eighteen-year-old son who has been biking alone across Europe and Asia for the past six months. Recently they flew to Thailand to meet up with him and finish his 15,000-mile journey with him. They related how when they got to him, he said something like this to them, “I’m not solving any more problems—you solve them!” In other words, he had been solely responsible to figure out where to eat, where to sleep, what road to travel, how to fix his bike, how to survive the elements, and address countless other challenges. And he had to do it all without his parents, and he did it. When they showed up, he was so tired of having to solve problems on his own that he fell back to them to figure things out about the rest of the journey. But because they had not been there with him during those six months, he had surely grown enormously as he faced these challenges on his own. Their point in telling this story was that we should not always try to solve our children’s problems but let them learn to deal with them alone. Just as that young four-year-old surely grew in faith and confidence when he, with the Lord’s help, learned how to deal with this nasty rooster that was attacking him, so too will our children grow in the ways that we want them to as we refrain from always stepping in during their difficulties.

               Here is how the Lord responded to the brother of Jared when he asked the Lord for help in addressing their problem of having to make their journey in the dark: “What will ye that I should do that ye may have light in your vessels? For behold, ye cannot have windows, for they will be dashed in pieces; neither shall ye take fire with you, for ye shall not go by the light of fire. For behold, ye shall be as a whale in the midst of the sea; for the mountain waves shall dash upon you. Nevertheless, I will bring you up again out of the depths of the sea; for the winds have gone forth out of my mouth, and also the rains and the floods have I sent forth. And behold, I prepare you against these things; for ye cannot cross this great deep save I prepare you against the waves of the sea, and the winds which have gone forth, and the floods which shall come. Therefore what will ye that I should prepare for you that ye may have light when ye are swallowed up in the depths of the sea?” (Ether 2:23-25) I see three things that the Lord did here. First, He gave some general advice in telling the brother of Jared that he could not solve his problem with windows or fire. Second, the Lord bore witness that He would help them in their journey, telling him that He was preparing the way for the Jaredites to cross the ocean. Lastly, He asked the brother of Jared what he would have the Lord do to help him. So he neither left the brother of Jared totally alone nor did He completely solve the problem for him. Instead, He helped and encouraged this prophet and then invited him to find a solution on his own. This is a powerful pattern for parents to follow:  we should encourage our children, reason through their struggles with them, promise our help, and then invite them to try to find a solution themselves when appropriate. Then, like this four-year-old boy, we can help them bless their figurative stick and watch them rely on the Lord’s strength to solve their problems.