Painting my heart

It's conference time! Bless those dear brotheren. I actually love being called to repentence at conference time because my heart is filled with hope and a renewed spirit to be better.

Seth is a lot like conference time. Mothering him fills my heart with hope and a renewed spirit to be better. He fills my heart to bursting with love and laughter daily. He often times leans in to give me a hug and says, "Mom, I'm your best friend." How right he is!

One of our "play" activities is painting. We have used paint brushes and the little gentlemen paint my walls, or my fireplace, or my entertainment center. I love how they change their voices to grown up voices; gruff and lower. Yesterday, with brush in hand, Seth said to me, "Mom, I'm gonna paint for you."

"Hey, thanks." It's sorta like free dusting. Off he ran, only to return moments later. "Uh...mom, you wanna re-paint?"

"Do I want to re-paint?"

"You wanna repent?"

"Do I want to repent?"  Huh?  Did I get that right?

"Yea. You wanna repent?" Wow. He is really picking up the conference spirit. Ha. I just giggled right out loud. That is what I heard.

"Sure." I do want to repent after all. Seth knew I wasn't quite picking up what he was putting down and changed tactics.

"Ok. You want me to paint it red for you?"

So October is my dead dad's birthday month. My papa would have gotten a kick out of Seth. My dad was notorious for bad jokes...that I usually found funny. This one is a Clair classic, only my dad told it better.

One Sunday, the janitor of our church (I always imagined Reed Peterson) noticed that the church needed painting. The next day, he went into town and bought a gallon of white paint and began the job.

He got done with the first side. It was looking great. But he noticed he had already used a half gallon. He didn't want to run back in town nor spend more money, so he added some thinner thinner to his paint.

It worked out great. He finished the remaining three sides with that last half gallon of paint.

That night, it rained and rained. The next morning when he came to admire his work, he saw that the first side was looking great, but that the paint on the other three sides had washed away.

The janitor, in anguish, and cried out, "Oh man.  What should I do?"

A voice came back from the heavens saying, "Repaint, repaint, and thin no more!"


Seth, thanks for the reminder.  I love you forever