Daily Danger

I'm coming to a realization about myself: I am in constant peril.

Each day, I watch my daughter, ever more adept, navigate her way about the house.  Constantly, I am steering her away from power outlets, thorns on the rug, heavy things that could fall on her, glass things that could cut her, and a dozen other dangers.  She is never truly aware of any of them, never realizes how often and in how many ways she might have hurt herself.  In an eternal sense, I think I'm very much the same way.

I believe in a straight and narrow path which we are meant to follow.  I believe that I have unfathomable potential, which I, by myself, cannot hope to harness.  I believe that my Heavenly Father has a plan for my life.  It is attainable only via that straight and narrow path, and is the only way to access and enjoy the divine potential that is within me.  But when it comes to following that path, I'm something of a spiritual infant.  Maybe a toddler, on my better days.  I wander often into danger.

Sometimes, I only recognize my detour when my feet are safely back on the right road.  More often, I realize that I'm not headed in quite the right direction while I'm turned away, and somehow, I always end up back where I should be, even if for so short a time that I've really only crossed over the path again.  But I seldom seem to recognize my little errors for what they are - seeds of danger, potent and ever ready to germinate.

During this past month, which was a difficult one for me, I recognized rather apathetically that my course had deviated by a degree or two, and that I was beginning to shoot off at a tangent from where I knew I should be.  It was a deeper rut than I tend to find myself in on a regular basis.  I don't want to be overly personal, and I don't want this post to sound like a confession.  It isn't.  It is, in a sense, what has been going on in my life for the past few weeks, and it's a new angle at a reality I've long known.  Furthermore, I don't doubt that, in some degree or another, it's something that we all experience - the stumbling, re-righting, and stumbling rhythm of life.

I've turned from some deviations, in the past, by seeing an example and gaining strength from someone I admire.  Other times, I've seen or recalled people whom I don't wish to emulate, and recognized that I may be following the same crooked course.  I've been teased, goaded, enticed and loved out of danger.  But this time?  This time, I was called back by a sense of duty.  Some days (or weeks or months) are difficult, but this, I realized, is only the beginning of the decades-long, even lifelong adventure that is motherhood.  Addie and the siblings that follow her, will be watching me.  I cannot be less than my best self for them.

Furthermore, there is the path itself, the potential and happiness it promises, the God who calls me back to it, and the Savior who facilitates my return, through terrain that I cannot navigate.  I have a purpose to fulfill.  I have made promises that I will not break.  I have so very, very much to gain, and I have been fighting for it since before the beginning of the world.

So once again, I feel like I'm headed gradually away from danger, and once again, I'm only just beginning to sense how far from happiness I might have landed, if left long on that course.  But the relief has been quick in coming and the words are back.  The words that I tried and failed, so many times in the past weeks to write, are so much more ready in my mind this afternoon.  The words, which, when formed under my fingers, cast a glow of contentment over my day, are once again making this house a home, in my eyes.  The words are a gift from God.