Eternal Increase

 

For family home evening this week my sweet sister let me borrow her bike and bike trailer. This meant that we had bikes for everyone in the family-- so we headed eagerly out for a bike ride to Lake Erie Metro Park. I couldn't beleive Emma made it over three miles on her new little birthday bike. What a big girl she is becoming!

Afterward, we stopped at the mini park and let the kids play while Andrew loaded up. This is a photo of my baby Lilian enjoying the perfect fall evening.I know, I know... she's 18 months old. But, as I love to tell my oldest, Noah... they will ALWAYS be a babies to me. This will be worse, of course, for poor little Lilian because she is the caboose to our earthly train. I catch myself all the time wishing that time would just slow down and let her stay little for a little longer. I love babies-- I really just can't get enough of them. As a little girl I used to dream of the day when I would be a mother. I told my mom that I wanted twenty babies of my own one day-- triplets, twins, and a few on their own. But four is what I've been given... and oh, how my heart is full.

Becoming a mother and learning to nurture these precious, helpess little angels has been undeniably my greatest adventure. I know that the fun has just begun and that there are many, many adventures that are waiting just around the river bend, but sometimes I wish that time would just stop for us more often like it did on this perfect fall evening... while my babies can stay young and innocent.

Through them, I am coming to more fully understand what the Savior meant when having summoned a little child, He set him in the midst of them and said, “Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. “Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:1, 2–4). For we must come unto Him “as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father” (Mosiah 3:19). Thank God for our precious, perfect little children. Thank God for every moment we have with them. And thank God that in Him is life eternal, increase forever, and moments as precious and joy filled as this truly perfect evening together.