Holiday Lights

One of our family Christmas traditions every year is to see the Holiday Lights display at Thanksgiving point. Large, illuminated steel frames of holiday figures are arranged throughout their back parking lots and lanes, and participants snake slowly through the displays in their cars.

It is our tradition that kids get to sit on Dad's lap and drive. We go through the display twice, once for each child's turn. As far as traditions go, this is something I think the kids are always going to remember doing, and making memories together is what traditions are all about.

One funny from the evening, and then one comment. After Brother had negotiated his first sharp turn successfully, I coached him to start straightening out. He leaned back against my chest. Worried that we might run into something, I repeated the suggestion, "OK brother, you can straighten out now. Hurry!" Brother leaned back even harder against my chest and became extremely stiff. I realized he was straightening out his body. "Not you Brother, the wheel!" We got back on the path and we all had a good laugh.

Coaching the kids driving was fun. The kids would be so attentive for short periods of time - then their focus would change to one of the displays or would join in a conversation. After a while it would become obvious that we were going to run into a cement barrier, or a curb or something, and I would say something like "Steer where you want to go." There attention would come back for a minute, they would fix the situation and then get distracted again.

Brother, more so than Sister this year, was more prone to correct his path with big sweeping corrections, which would send us to the curb on the other side, and thus needed more frequent correcting.

My mind is always searching for gospel analogies and lessons that Heavenly Father might be wanting to teach me. This situation brought me nearly to tears as I imagined a loving father in heaven trying to help me stay on the straight and narrow, and most of the time when I am most intent on taking direction from him, I have been distracted and need more drastic course correction. How much better life would be if I could look further down the road, stay focused, get a bigger picture. It isn't hard for me to imagine sitting on God's lap and having him refocus my attention by saying, "Steer where you want to go."