"If Ye Are Prepared Ye Need Not Fear"

My son Joey is in 1^st grade, and they have been talking in school recently about fires, disasters, and what to do in case of an emergency. He came home last week and said, “My homework is to talk about what to do if we have fire in our house. I need to know three ways to escape.” We talked about it with him and our other two children. We came up with different escape routes, and how to exit the house in case of fires located in different places in our home. I thought the conversation went very well.

Maybe I was wrong though, because a couple of nights ago, Joey came into us long after we had put them to all to bed, and said, “I just can’t sleep. I’ve been in my bed worrying about everything that can happen to us. What if our house collapses on me while we are asleep? What if there is an earthquake. What if there is a fire in front of the door.”

We listened to all of his concerns, and gave him reasonable solutions for each of his disaster scenarios. But inevitably he would come up with more frightening situations.

Finally, I gave him a big hug, and we explained to him that most likely none of those things would happen, but if one of them did, we were his parents and we would take care of him and he’d make it through just fine because we would make sure of it because we love him so much.

Surprisingly enough, he went to bed after that, and slept peacefully through the night.

I think maybe that is what all of us need to know. We know there are going to be challenges ahead of us—some of them seem scary. But when we know that we have a Heavenly Father that loves us and is determined to see us through them, send an abundance of love, and help us through whatever we may face, the challenges ahead seem okay.