When I was a little Girl

                                When I was a little girl...I dreamed.

As all little girls do, I dreamed of the day that I would be married and have children.  They used to ask us in school "What do you want to be when you grow up?"  Almost all the little girls would say a nurse.  There were a few who would be

teachers and usually one who would say something bizarre like a fire fighter.  That made all the little girl eyes open wide with shock and a look of "You're a girl! Girls aren't firefighters!"  But most the girls would say "A nurse, a nurse, a nurse."  I even said a nurse, although I didn't really know what I wanted to be but I did know I wanted to me a mom.  I believed most the girls that said a nurse, felt the same as I did.  It never occurred to any of us to say I don't know or admit that we just wanted to be a mom.  After all, it didn't really matter.  That was SOOO far in the future, it would never Really happen.  Today was going to last forever...when I was a little girl.

 

Time passed.  That day in the future was now today. I was 20 and kneeling at the alter in the temple, being sealed to my very best friend.  It was a most joyful time.  We went home to our own little apartment.  I felt like I was playing house with my best friend and that I would go home to Mom and Dad when day was done.  

Two years later our first child was born.  As I held her

in my arms I was filled with such awe.  I couldn't believe she was really ours.  I felt like she should be my Mom's baby, after all my little brother was only 4 years old.  Time had passed so quickly.  We were so young and I knew that someday we would have more children and grow old.  But that was SOOO far in the future, it would never Really happen.  Today was going to go on forever, and yet, a surge of shocking realization swept over me with that thought, as I now understood that forever came much sooner than I had ever imagined.

Time passed.  Now 20 years later, our first child is 18 and there are 5 younger children behind her.  So much has happened, so many experiences.  We are feeling the effects of being "ever so much more than 20" as granny Wendy would say in Peter Pan.  It seems time sweeps by right before our eyes now.  We don't have to wait for it to pass to realize how fast it went.

When I was a little girl, I remember riding in a car with my primary teacher.  I don't remember where we were going or anything we did, but I do remember a simple conversation we had that day in her car.  We were talking about God and

the Celestial Kingdom.  I said to her, how I wished I could go to the Celestial Kingdom but there was NOOO way I could ever get there.  You had to be perfect to get there.  I was smart enough to know that I could never be perfect.  I had tried so very hard on that day that my sins were washed away at baptism.  I felt so clean, so fresh, so perfect.  I never wanted to feel any other way and I was going to be perfect from that moment on.  But I slipped from perfection ever so much faster than I had planned.  I will always remember that day when my Primary teacher looked at me with surprise and concern at my expressions.  She lovingly said "Don't ever think like that.  Of course you can make it to the Celestial Kingdom.  Heavenly Father wants you to.  As long as that's what you really want and you are trying your very best, you will make it."  I will always remember that day in her car as I sat and contemplated her comment "Of course you can".  She really believed I could make it. And she said "Heavenly Father wants you to."  I had never really thought of that before.  If He really wanted me to and my teacher really believed I could make it then I really had hope of making it after all.  

I now spent much time thinking of that day in the future when Jesus would return to usher in the Millennium of peace and of the day when we can enter the Celestial Kingdom clean & sinless because of the atoning sacrifice of our Savior who also wants us to make it back.  I longed for that beautiful day, but when I was a little girl, that was Oh so far into the future, it would never really come.  Today would go on forever.

Now I know better of that future which causes "today" to be only a memory and that the words of the prophets "The day of the Lord is at hand" is true.  We do not have "forever" to plan for tomorrow.  We only have today, which goes away so quickly, it turns into tomorrow and forever right before our eyes.