Hank Smith:                      00:03                   Welcome to followHIM Favorites. This is where John and I are sharing a single story to go with each week’s lesson. John, we are in sections 94 through 97 this week. I know I’ve done a couple in a row, but I’ve got a great story for you. This is section 95 verse one. Verily thus saith the Lord unto you whom I love and whom I love I also chasten that their sins may be forgiven. John, I don’t know if you’ve ever been chastened by the Lord, a little divine discontent where you know you can do better than this.

John Bytheway:               00:39                   You feel about this big.

Hank Smith:                      00:40                   But it’s never shameful. It’s never, you’re the worst. It’s, hey, you can do better. Here is the story, John, that I have for you. This comes from Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, and I love that he’s pretty vulnerable here about when he was a young father. Okay. Here’s how it goes. He says, early in our married life, my young family and I were laboring through graduate school in New England. Pat, his wife was the Relief Society president, and I was serving in the stake presidency. I was going to school full-time. I was teaching halftime. We had two small children, little money and a lot of pressure. He said, one evening I came home from a long day, long hours at school, I was feeling the weight of the world, he says, on my shoulders. Everything was demanding and discouraging and dark. He walks into his little student apartment and there’s some silence there, so he turns to his wife, Pat, what’s the trouble?

                                           01:44                   Pat says, Matthew has something he wants to tell you. Matt, what do you have to tell me? He was quietly playing with his toys in the corner of the room. Matt, I said, a little louder. Do you have something to tell me? He stopped playing, but for a moment, didn’t look up. Then, two enormous tear filled brown eyes turned towards me, and with the pain only a five-year-old can know. He said, I didn’t listen to mommy tonight, and I spoke back to her. He burst into tears. His entire little body shook with grief. His indiscretion had been noted. He had offered this painful confession. Elder Holland says, a loving reconciliation could have been wonderfully underway. Everything could have been terrific that night, except for me. I am ashamed. This is Elder Holland. I am ashamed beyond expression to tell you how I acted, I lost my temper.

                                           02:52                   It wasn’t that I lost it with Matt. It was a hundred other things on my mind. He didn’t know that, and I wasn’t disciplined enough to admit it. He got everything. He calls it the whole load of bricks. I told him I was disappointed, how much I thought I could expect from him. Then I did something I’d never done in his entire life. I told him he was to go straight to bed and I would not be in to say his prayers with him or tell him a bedtime story. Muffling his sobs he obediently went to his bedside where he knelt alone to say his prayers. Then he stained his little pillow with tears his father should have been wiping away. If you think the silence upon my arrival was heavy, you should have felt it now.

                                           03:41                   Pat did not say a word. She didn’t have to. I felt terrible. Later, as we knelt by our own bed, my feeble prayer, asking for blessings upon my family fell back on my ears with a horrible hollow ring. I wanted to get off my knees right then and go to Matt and ask his forgiveness, but he was long peacefully asleep. My relief was not so soon coming. I finally fell asleep and began to dream, which I seldom do now, John, listen, I dreamed Matt and I were packing two cars for a move. For some reason, his mother and baby sister were not present. As I finished, I turned to him and said, okay, Matt, you drive one car and I’ll drive the other. The five-year-old obediently crawled up into the seat and tried to grab the massive steering wheel. I walked over to the other car and started the motor.

                                           04:34                   I began to pull away. I looked back to see how my son was doing. He was trying. Oh, he was trying. He tried to reach the pedals. He couldn’t. He tried turning knobs and pushing buttons, trying to start the motor. He could scarcely be seen over the dashboard, but there staring out at me again, was those same tear filled, beautiful brown eyes. As I pulled away, he cried out, daddy, don’t leave me. I don’t know how to do it. I’m too little, and I drove away. A short time later in my dream, I realized in one stark, horrifying moment what I had done, I slammed my car to a stop, threw open the door, and started to run as fast as I could. I left the car, the keys, the belongings, and I ran. The pavement was hot. It burned my feet. Tears blinded my effort to see this child somewhere on the high horizon.

                                           05:22                   I kept running, praying, pleading to be forgiven, and to find my boy safe. As I rounded the curve, nearly ready to drop from physical and emotional exhaustion, I saw the unfamiliar car I had left Matt to drive. It was pulled carefully off the side of the road, and he was laughing and playing nearby. Now, John, remember whom I love I also chasten that their sins may be forgiven. An older man was with him playing and responding to his games. Matt saw me and cried out something like, hey, dad, come on over. We’re having fun. Obviously, he had already forgiven and forgotten my terrible transgression against him, but I dreaded the older man’s gaze, which followed me with every move. I tried to say thank you, but his eyes were filled with sorrow and disappointment. I muttered an awkward apology, and the stranger said simply, you should not have left him alone to do this difficult thing.

                                           06:24                   It would not have been asked of you. Ouch. Man. With that, the dream ended. I shot out of bed. My pillow was now soaked with tears. I threw off the covers. I ran to that little metal camp cot that was my son’s bed. Then on my knees and through my tears I cradled him in my arms and I spoke to him while he slept. I told him, every dad makes mistakes, but they don’t mean to. I told him it wasn’t his fault, I’d had a bad day. I told him that when boys are five or 15, dads sometimes forget and think they’re 50. I told him that I wanted him to be a small boy for a long, long time because all too soon he would grow up and be a man and wouldn’t be playing on the floor with his toys. When I came home, I told him that I loved him and his mother and his sister more than anything in the world, and that whatever challenges we had in life, we would face them together. I told him that never again would I withhold my affection or my forgiveness for him, and never, I prayed would he withhold them from me. I told him I was honored to be his father, that I would try with all my heart to be worthy of that great responsibility. Wow! What a story, John.

John Bytheway:               07:41                   Yeah, and like you said Hank, Elder Holland’s willingness to be vulnerable and tell us about a time when he messed up.

Hank Smith:                      07:50                   John, you’ve taught me to repent to my kids. You’ve said that multiple times.

John Bytheway:               07:53                   Sorry, I lost it today. Sorry. That Matt with the big brown eyes is now Elder Matt Holland of the quorum of the 70.

Hank Smith:                      08:03                   Yeah. Yeah.

John Bytheway:               08:04                   How cool is that?

Hank Smith:                      08:07                   Absolutely wonderful. I think the Lord here is saying, yes, this is gonna sting a little bit, but it’s not because I don’t love you. It’s, I love you. I chasten you so your sins can be forgiven. I want to get you out of this. This is what it’s gonna take.

John Bytheway:               08:22                   Became a learning experience.

Hank Smith:                      08:24                   Hmm. Yeah. We hope you’ll join us on our full podcast. It’s called followHIM. You can get it wherever you get your podcasts. We are with Brother Clint Mortensen this week. He’s a long time friend of mine. He goes step by step through these sections. It’s beautiful. The principles he draws out are really practical and life changing things you can use today.

John Bytheway:               08:45                   Today. Mm-hmm.

Hank Smith:                      08:46                   And then come back here next week. We’ll do another followHIM Favorites.