A hurler of lightning bolts? nope, just a mom.

It’s late.

But as I try and go to sleep, I’m reviewing the day, trying to think of the good things…

We were on our way home and thunder storm was just starting to charge the sky.

I love thunder storms. One of my favorite childhood memories actually, is everyone piling into the living room, which had the biggest window in the house. The drapes thrown back like curtains on a stage, settling down into our carpeted seats, ready for nature to put on a show.

Drama. Thunderstorms are all about fantastic drama.

So because McKye is a tad dramatic (huh? Where would he get that?) I thought, Hmmm, McKye would love this.

So I paused Tarzan, (cuz my boys can’s seem to make it a block in the car without wanting a DVD)

Pulled over, and told McKye to look out his window.

I was right. He loved it!

The lightening would flash and he would look at me and giggle.
After each flash he call out, “Again! Again”

Then it dawned on me.
He thought I was somehow making the lightening happen.
That he could say “Peeezzz Mahh-mee” and I’d grant him another flash in the sky.

Which, as I laid in bed tonight thinking about what was a fairly mediocre-at-best day of mothering, I thought, “Wow, I am his whole world!”

Every snack, every show, every sippy cup, every tickle comes from me. Every explanation, every new vocab word, every correction from me to him. I am so much a part of his life, that he would see lightning in the sky and assume somehow I had arranged it for his own personal viewing pleasure. I am the face he sees as he reaches for me to pull him from his bed in the morning, and the last face he sees as those same tired arms lay him back down to his dreams.

That is a lot of power. Maybe not the power to produce lightning bolts.
But the power to shape a whole little life.

Another favorite parenting quote I think speaks to this unbelievable power we have in our children's lives.

"It is my personal approach that creates the climate.
It is my daily mood that makes the weather…
I possess a tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or dehumanized." ---Haim Ginott, Educator

That is a huge trust.

Makes me think of D&C 121

36That the arights of the [motherhood/parenting] are inseparably connected with the powers of heaven, and that the powers of heaven cannot be controlled nor handled only upon the principles of righteousness.

37That they may be conferred upon us, it is true; but when we undertake to acover our sins, or to gratify our pride, our vain ambition, or to exercise control or dominion or compulsion upon the souls of the children of men, in any degree of unrighteousness, behold, the heavens withdraw themselves; the Spirit of the Lord is grieved; and when it is withdrawn, Amen to the [power] or the authority of that [mother].

39We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all [parents], as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion.

40Hence many are called, but few are chosen.

41No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of [our motherhood], only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned;

42By kindness, and pure knowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the soul without hypocrisy, and without guile—

43Reproving betimes with sharpness, when moved upon by the Holy Ghost; and then showing forth afterwards an increase of love toward him whom thou hast reproved, lest he esteem thee to be his enemy;

We have power, but it has rules.