I remember the first time I saw it printed on a sign at Swiss Days while shopping for a witch's broom with D. We didn't find the broom. They were sold out by 9:00 a.m....again. (We've tried for 3 years to buy the broom and I finally crawled up a spindly corkscrew willow at Shay's grandma's home, saw in hand, and did what every determined woman does when she needs a new broom. I cut down any branch I could reach, half drug, half threw the crazy, mind-of-their-own, sticks into the back of the Ford and took them home to make the meanest looking witches broom ever.)
...wow, I did it again, I'm so off track...(do you think I need to worry about how I do that, you know start in Kansas and end up in Saigon?)
...anyway...the saying, "You're never too old to have a happy childhood."
...so Lala and I had a wonderful time last night. We did absolutely nothing...except talk, of course, and got in touch with one another's inner selves again.
...and somehow we did the whole Kansas to Saigon thing and after the evening was over I was thinking about something Lala said.
...first let me say this, I was not a perfect mom. I yelled occasionally and sometimes the words I yelled were not, well, let's just say, they were not appropriate.
...I exhibited violence occasionally by slamming cupboard doors and kicking boxes down the hall.
...occasionally I served a meal without vegetables.
...I didn't like whole wheat bread and I didn't make my kids eat it(give me a bag of soft, perfectly white, all nutritional value removed, Wonder bread and I will give you a hug) ...and guess what, my kids still managed to make it to adulthood, so there all you whole wheat, grind-it yourselves hippies!!! However, if it helps, I do like whole wheat bread now and make my own on a regular basis.
...there were Monday nights when we, Matthew and I, managed to have a Family Home Evening lesson, but there were a lot of Monday nights we didn't.
I embarrassed my children on a regular basis by...
...giving them a standing ovation when they performed in a school musical.
...calling out as loudly as possible, "I love you", as they entered the school in the morning.
...giving D. and Lala a Dorothy Hamilton haircut(I really am sorry about that, it did kind of detract from their wedding videos).
But in spite of all that, Lauren paid me a wonderful compliment.
She told me she thinks she had the best childhood ever.
...and it got me to thinking about the saying, "You're never too old to have a happy childhood." I was thinking that one way of reading that is that no matter how old you are, you can be as happy as a child by enjoying life and all it has to offer and having a second happy childhood.
The other way of reading that is you can choose as an adult how happy your childhood was. If you want to remember your childhood as rotten, with a mother that didn't feed you good food and kicked boxes and gave you ridiculous haircuts, you can remember that.
But if you want to remember your childhood as happy...
...remember it as happy.
Is it really that simple? I'm sure the experts would tell you that is denial and unhealthy to not remember and talk about how your mother didn't feed you vegetables at every meal. So I guess the experts would be telling you that thinking about the bad things will make you happy. I don't know about you, but that just doesn't make sense and it certainly is not the Christ-like attitude I want to have. If you are 35 or 53, 28 or 82, your childhood was as happy as you want to remember it.
...and I was just thinking about how I don't want my children to remember their youthful years as sad or bad...and I was thinking the best way to help them with that is for me to remember my mom and know that she did the best she knew how and I should forgive and FORGET the bad...
...and I will do that, because I want my children to give me the same forgiveness.
...maybe we are a little like Lot's wife and how Elder Holland said in a speech one time about her and how she looked back longingly...
...perhaps we are a lot like Lot's wife and want to look like a hero for having survived a horrible childhood when our mother embarrassed us at school by yelling I love you in front of all your friends(I know that's not what Lot's wife was looking longingly at, she was missing her former life and all the fun she had in her sin).
...could it be we feel better if we make our mothers look worse?
...for example, sometimes I feel better about myself by telling people how rotten my mother was when she cut my hair SO short.
...here is an excerpt from one of the best talks ever given about forgiveness of not only others but ourselves as well and about how we shouldn't always be looking back...
....That also happens in marriages and other relationships. I can’t tell you the number of couples I have counseled who, when they are deeply hurt or even just deeply stressed, reach farther and farther into the past to find yet a bigger brick to throw through the window “pain” of their marriage. When something is over and done with, when it has been repented of as fully as it can be repented of, when life has moved on as it should and a lot of other wonderfully good things have happened since then, it is not right to go back and open some ancient wound that the Son of God Himself died to heal.
Let people repent. Let people grow. Believe that people can change and improve. Is that faith? Yes! Is that hope? Yes! Is that charity? Yes! Above all, it is charity, the pure love of Christ. If something is buried in the past, leave it buried. Don’t keep going back with your little sand pail and beach shovel to dig it up, wave it around, and then throw it at someone, saying, “Hey! Do you remember this?” Splat!
Well, guess what? That is probably going to result in some ugly morsel being dug up out of your landfill with the reply, “Yeah, I remember it. Do you remember this?” Splat.
And soon enough everyone comes out of that exchange dirty and muddy and unhappy and hurt, when what our Father in Heaven pleads for is cleanliness and kindness and happiness and healing.
Such dwelling on past lives, including past mistakes, is just not right! It is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. In some ways it is worse than Lot’s wife because at least she destroyed only herself. In cases of marriage and family, wards and branches, apartments and neighborhoods, we can end up destroying so many others.
Perhaps at this beginning of a new year there is no greater requirement for us than to do as the Lord Himself said He does: “He who has repented of his sins, the same is forgiven, and I, the Lord, remember them no more” (D&C 58:42).
...and if you want to read the rest of this talk, go HERE.
It's not easy to forgive others. It's not easy to forgive ourselves.
...but I am beginning to believe it is a lot easier to be happy than not.
I know Lauren's childhood was not always happy...remember, I was there.
...and I think the fact that Lala says, at age 23, that she had a happy childhood...
...says a lot more about what kind of person she is today...
...than what kind of life she had yesterday...
...and that just proves what the sign says is true...
You're never too old to have a happy childhood.
...however, I do feel really bad about those haircuts. Sorry D and Lala
1 comment:
I too did have a happy childhood and I know that because I am trying to give my three children the same childhood I had, take away the haircuts or keep them there because you need something to look back on as an adult to laugh about and I hope that theirs is as magical as mine. And now that I am a mother with a daughter as you say it “just as persistent in life as I was” I forgive you for the time you kicked to box down the hall, and I get why you did it. I GET IT! I get how much you sacrificed for me so I could have such a happy childhood, a loving childhood and a magical childhood.
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