Not the Lesson I Had Thought to Learn

 This is Rum.

Don't let his angelic face deceive you.

He may be my hardest kid yet, and that's not only a title you don't want to hold, it's also a difficult one to capture, since the competition is stiff.

This is the lesson I learned from Rum today.

I teach the women of my church once a month.  It's about 30 minutes on an assigned group of talks from General Conference (read more about General Conference here).  For many women, this is a very stressful assignment.  For me, I actually enjoy the things I learn from studying and thinking, and I am never shy about standing up and speaking in front of people.  I actually feed on it and love it. I also play the piano in this meeting every week.  Not too difficult.

Today was my Sunday to teach, and I really hadn't put the thought power or time into the lesson that I really should have--so many other things going on this weekend that the lesson had never really come together.  Before Church, I got a few visual aids assembled, printed out a few questions and my thoughts, and off we went.  I had sat down in Sunday School for less than five minutes when I felt a tap on my shoulder and an insistent whisper in my ear: "We need you."

 When I rounded the corner, I saw Hyrum in the hall with his Primary (read about Primary here) teacher, and he was in fine form--full scowl, arms tightly folded across his chest, "obstinate" written on his brow.  I never did get the full story, but the music teacher had moved him from a chair (I don't think he was being naughty, just sitting in the wrong place maybe?) and Hyrum had reacted to that injustice by kicking and hitting her.  It sounds like the teacher was quite angry about it, and Hyrum was in the hall where they were trying to work out a solution.  All I could think as I took in the situation was, "What about my lesson?"

Hyrum is hard to reason with even in the easiest of circumstances.  And this?  This was not one of those circumstances.  I gave him two options:  Either return to his class or come to my class with me (Brad wasn't available.).  Every kid knows that an adult class is extremely boring, so who would choose that, right?  He chose Primary, but then I added a condition:  If he returned to Primary, he needed to apologize for kicking the teacher.

What do you think happened next?
More obstinate, more scowling, this time accompanied by tears, fury, and an insistent, "I will go back in, but I will NOT say sorry."  So I took him by the arm, ushered him into an open classroom, and proceeded to punish him.  I put his nose against the wall, flipped his head (learned that one from my own dad), and waited for a little while as he screamed and carried on.

Suddenly, a solution came to mind:  I had him draw a picture of a smiling boy, sign his name, then he dictated his apology to me as I wrote "I'm sorry I kicked you" across the top.  I handed him the paper, silently congratulating myself for my brilliant solution, and escorted him back to class.  Whereupon he refused to hand the paper to the teacher, scowled and cried some more, until I was forced to remove him to the empty classroom again.

I didn't know what to do.  It was almost time for my class, I had yet to write anything on the board, review my notes, pick songs to sing, or sort through my visual aids.  Now I was mad.  In a huff I marched to the piano, set my music down, and then inspiration hit again.  "Hyrum, do you want to come up here and sing I Am a Child of God with me before we go back to Primary?" He sorrowfully nodded and made his way up to the piano. I Am a Child of God is a song he requests almost every night before bed, and I was hoping it would calm him down enough to get him to class.

As I played and we sang those words together "lead me, guide me, walk beside me, help me find the way.  Teach me all that I must do, to live with Him someday,"  I was overwhelmed by the enormity of the responsibility entrusted to me to teach my children, and suddenly the importance of my lesson disappeared. There was nowhere else on earth I wanted to be than sitting on that bench with my littlest boy beside me--what was most important at that moment was teaching Hyrum to control his actions, learn to apologize, and always know that I loved him no matter what.  That was so much more important that any small words I had prepared to teach those women, and I knew it. If I don't teach Hyrum those lessons, who will?  It's my job, a job I take very seriously.

He calmed down, and we walked hand in hand back to the Primary room.  I opened the door, gave him a little push inside, shut the door and walked back to my classroom--humbled and with my perspective firmly back in place.

It wasn't my best Relief Society lesson ever, but I don't care.  I learned what I really needed to learn.

I'm so grateful I'm a mom.  So blessed.  So lucky. And our Heavenly Father is watching out for His little ones.  We're the adults He has trusted to help them find the way.