who's teaching who here?

in all our summer travels and busyness in the past 6 weeks, i have been humbled and taught by my wonderful and precious children several times.

we had a davis family reunion at the beginning of july in idaho. burton got a pocket knife for his eighth birthday and was really excited to bring his knife camping. the saturday before we left, burton misplaced his knife and couldn't find it anywhere. he was really quite worried that he wouldn't be able to find it and bring before we had to leave. I sent him to bed and told him we would look for it later. well, we didn't find it before we went to church on sunday morning. It was fast sunday and in primary, the kids learned about the importance of fasting and how fasting strengthens our prayers. when we were walking home, burton walked beside me, he'll my hand, and asked me if we could say a prayer that we would find his knife before we ate and stopped fasting. i was touched by his faith in what he was taught and told him i thought that was a great idea. we prayed together before we ate and burton prayed that we would find his knife and i said my own private prayer, asking for our Father in Heaven to bless burton for his simple faith. sure enough, not long after, i felt that i should retrace burton's steps through the garage from the night before and sure enough, i found his knife sitting in the bottom of our recycling bin. needless to say, burton and i were both grateful for the tender mercies of the Lord in hearing a little boys prayer of faith that he would find his knife.

we were at the lake last week with our boat. i was hanging out on the water with jensen and paige, playing on our tube, when i jumped in the water and asked paige if she wanted to come in and swim with me. as she joined me in the water, her favorite purple bracelet that she happened to be wearing slipped off her arm and started sinking. as i watched it sink deeper and deeper i thought it was gone for good and told paige as much. she was understandably distraught until jensen said, "it's ok paige. mom can get the goggles and dive for it. she'll get it." i shot jensen a look, thanking him for giving paige false hope, grudgingly got the goggles and started looking for her bracelet. the lake that we were at has a steeply sloped bottom and i was pretty sure that the bracelet had sunk too deep to find. when I surfaced for the third time, i was about to give up when I thought that I should maybe try one more time. and sure enough, just when I was running out of breath, i saw here little purple bracelet and was able to grab it . later jensen told me that he was sure I would find Paige's bracelet because he said a prayer that I would be able too. again, the simple faith of my son touched my heart and reminded me that our Heavenly Father does hear and answer even our simplest prayers and I was once again grateful that my child's simple faith was rewarded.

burton taught me about selfless service on our trip to the west coast oaf vancouver island. during the week, my mom started looking for sea glass instead of shells, which was a fabulous idea as it gave my boys and I something else to collect besides hundreds of shells as sea glass is much harder to find. it was our third day at the ocean and we were all walking together down the beach, doing some beach combing. my mom, burton, jensen, evan, and I had all found several small pieces of sea glass and were ready to head back to our cabin when my sister, jess, sadly stated that she had yet to find any sea glass. I told her not to worry, that we had several more days of beach combing to look for some and that I was sure she would find a piece some time. not thinking much more of it, I started heading back. I was a bit ahead with jensen and Evan when I heard jess say that she had found a piece. A few minutes later, burton caught up to me and pulled me aside. He quietly told me that he had taken one of his pieces of sea glass and placed it where we had been searching. He then told jess to come look one more time with him. She looked over it a few times and burton made sure that he kept moving it around until jess finally found it. It brought tears to my eyes to see the look of joy on Burton's face as he knew what a good thing he had done for someone else when the rest of us were too busy looking for our own treasures to worry about someone else.

i love my children so very much. i am often reminded of the things that are important by the experiences that I have with my boys and paige. I am so very grateful for the amazing responsibility and opportunity I have to be a mother and raise such special little people. as much as I teach my kids, I know that they are teaching me so much more as they continue to enrich my life with their faith and love.

I am so blessed.