Life Lessons Preschool: We Love You No Matter What

--Life Lessons Preschool--  

Everything I want my children to know before they start school

Lesson 1

"We love you, no matter what."

It's amazing how much my attitude about things shapes my children's attitudes.
On Sunday, I pulled out the preschool paperwork and started reading it to Guy.  As I read each part with more enthusiasm, he got more interested.  (I actually was starting to get pretty jazzed myself...)  Then I read that we'd need to bring a snack for the entire class twice a month.  Well, then Guy was totally on board, and he started excitedly rattling off a list of snacks he wanted to bring for his class.   The first thing on his list?  Ice sculptures.  Then came robot cupcakes, sandwiches cut into shapes, and fruit kabobs.


Then came a list of parties he wanted his class to have:  swimming after school every day, ice cream party every Saturday, and fireworks.  My son lives to be social.  It comes so naturally for him.  What can I say?  I was totally on board with both lists! :)


I thought it was a good time to pull out the book I bought him.  
We read The Berenstain Bear's "Go To School" book together...twice.  
He loved it.

I had read it the night before just to check it out and realized that it was the same book that I had as a child.  The illustrations made me emotional for some reason.  They were so familiar.  


I had one image of Guy stuck in my head that night...an image of him on the first night that he came into the world.  I recalled the feeling of holding him and loving him so intensely.  That pure joy was like a glue that bonded us together.
Nothing could ever take away the love that I feel for him after that experience.


And that is the message that I shared with him during this first chat:  
We have loved you since the first moment we saw you.
We love you no matter what happens in this life.
You are ours and we are yours...forever.


Love is the reason why God intends families to be forever. 
Love is his primary motivation for everything that he does, including providing us with the doctrine that Families should be Forever, and providing a way that they can be forever.


Some ideas that we have in the gospel are just textbook knowledge until we experience them ourselves.  Like Love, for instance.  It's just a word until you feel it so deeply that it becomes a living part of you.  And for Mothers, that living part of you, becomes a part of you that lives and breathes and walks around, and talks, and does amazing, unexpected things!


This experience is teaching me that if I hurt so much at the prospect of being separated from my son-three times a week for two hours- as he attends preschool, how much more painful was it for our Heavenly Father to send us off into this world, knowing everything that waited for us here?  How much more painful was it for him to send his Only Begotten Son into the world to suffer, to experience all of the pains of this world, and then to die for us and take all of our sins upon him?  That is intense love.


That is love that I do not have the words to adequately describe.
But now, I have felt a teeny, tiny, minuscule bit of what that love feels like.
...and how it changes a person.
And I am thankful for that insight.





Will you check out that clay?
I used to love looking at that clay...imagining what I might make out of it!


I am excited to see what Guy makes out of himself and out of all of his wonderful gifts and talents as he embarks on this new adventure of life outside of our home.