For my dad

I talked with my dad for only a couple minutes yesterday (because one of his other many children was calling on the other phone), but I thought about him a lot. At church, after the kids sang "I'm so glad when Daddy comes home," the bishop spoke about the role fathers have in guiding and directing their children for good. How could I not think about my own father, who was constantly herding (and we are a herd) us to righteous things?

From a 2003 talk "Prayer for the children" by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland:

Live the gospel as conspicuously as you can. Keep the covenants your children know you have made. Give priesthood blessings. And bear your testimony! Don’t just assume your children will somehow get the drift of your beliefs on their own. The prophet Nephi said near the end of his life that they had written their record of Christ and preserved their convictions regarding His gospel in order “to persuade our children … that our children may know … [and believe] the right way.”

Nephi-like, might we ask ourselves what our children know? From us? Personally? Do our children know that we love the scriptures? Do they see us reading them and marking them and clinging to them in daily life? Have our children ever unexpectedly opened a closed door and found us on our knees in prayer? Have they heard us not only pray with them but also pray for them out of nothing more than sheer parental love? Do our children know we believe in fasting as something more than an obligatory first-Sunday-of-the-month hardship? Do they know that we have fasted for them and for their future on days about which they knew nothing? Do they know we love being in the temple, not least because it provides a bond to them that neither death nor the legions of hell can break? Do they know we love and sustain local and general leaders, imperfect as they are, for their willingness to accept callings they did not seek in order to preserve a standard of righteousness they did not create? Do those children know that we love God with all our heart and that we long to see the face—and fall at the feet—of His Only Begotten Son? I pray that they know this.

How grateful I am that my own dad can answer 'yes' to all the above questions...this child of his does know what he believes, why he does what he does, and what is important to him. Thanks, Dad, for all the greatness you've passed on to me and my siblings!