Trials and Obstacle Courses

Tonight, The Lion was hiking across the house while carrying a pile of clothes.  He would bring them to Doug, then back to me and over and over again.  Every once in a while I would hand him one more thing to see how he managed.  It is quite entertaining to see his wheels working.  Another favorite way to do this, is to hand him milk and a graham cracker when he has a pacifier and see which things he decides to set down or how he tries to balance everything.  With LJ, we would set up obstacle courses.  (Here is the video version.)

Tonight, I started wondering if some of the things we face in life are similar.  You have to admit that life is like a box of an obstacle course.  (I am not saying that Heavenly Father gives us trials and obstacles for his own entertainment.)  I do not do these "experiments" on the boys with the intent to make them frustrated or to feel like they are failures; frequently, I just want to see how the wheels are turning and what they will do.  And, of course, if it becomes necessary, I will help them find a solution.

There are times that I have been asked to carry one more thing and I've had to re-prioritize my prior obligations.  And there are definitely times that I have had something that I wanted metaphorically trapped and I've needed to figure out how to get it out.  However, I think I could definitely be better at remembering to reach out to a loving parent who is always at the ready.  Frequently, I go through the frustrated failure stage before it dawns on me, "Hey...pray about it and see."  Just this week, it dawned on me to pray about something that I have been striving to intellectually and logically trying to figure out for months.  (I still haven't seen the end of this dilemma and have been wasting a lot of time and energy analyzing every single option I can find.)  It was even an "instant answer" prayer with the answer of, "It will all work out.  Hang in there.  I know what is best.  Don't worry about it further."

Maybe I need to continue with our obstacle courses and such so that the boys will have a better understanding of how to work through and how they can rely on me to help them if needed.