Talk, part 1 - growing

I started by saying my name - repeating it, because there is some confusion with four women living in the same house with the same last name - and that I serve in the nursery.

My calling is important as the reason that I mainly only know people with children under the age of four, but it also led to my first example.

Nursery has been a good calling for me because I like kids but without children, nieces, or nephews, I don't get to spend a lot of time with them. When I first started and there was one little girl who liked to sit in my lap and cuddle, that was nice. I soon noticed that she stayed with me for a shorter time each week, and figured the novelty was wearing off for her. That was fine; there was no point in taking it personally. Then one week we had extra children and it was extra loud, and that day she spent a long time with me.

I realized that the time she spent with me was a way of building up her courage and recharging, and then she could be ready to play and interact, and I was touched and honored to find that I could do that for her.

Children's love for their parents may make them sad when they are dropped off, but their trust for their parents is what allows them to dry their tears and explore and play, knowing that they will be safe. Changes in home routines will often have an effect where there is more crying or clinging, but they adjust and recover because ultimately they have a safe place in their homes and in their families' hearts, and that frees them to learn that nursery is safe and fun, and it will eventually allow them to venture to many new places and learn many new things. They need time away from their parents to mature, but their time with their parents makes it possible.

Based on that, it seems that the most important thing I can tell you is that you have a Heavenly Father who is fully invested in your growth and development, and because of that you need to spend time away from Him. To successfully navigate that, there need to be periods of re-connection.

The talk I was assigned was Apostasy and Restoration, given by Dallin H. Oaks at the April 1995 general conference.

I read it every day for the week that I was preparing for the talk, and the first time I read it, it seemed to me that it was more about personal apostasy. The second time I read it, I couldn't figure out why I had thought that, except that there are similarities in how a person and how a people can fall away, and similarities in what we need to do to make our way back.

We will pick up from there next week.