Mischievous!

Today at church our high councilman, Brother Craig, gave a wonderful talk about the blessings and challenges of children. The first part of the meeting the kids had been pretty good. Liesel looked through my Gospel Principles manual and pointed to all the pictures of Jesus and then was content to run back and forth on the bench. The boys played (mostly quietly) with the lacing cards and then these awesome cards. So Brother Craig started talking about his 2 year old twin grand daughters. One is well-behaved and the other, well, he's trying to teach her the word "mischievous". He and his wife took them to the zoo. The curious one fell into the monkey enclosure.
As I'm listening I am thinking I have a mischievous child too. I look over at Jason and to my horror I see that he has taken the dry erase pen from said great cards and colored on the chapel walls. It was several lines from the base of the wall clear up as high as he could reach. That means it was clearly visible to all the people around us...and Brad up on the stand. We were mortified! I slid over from my post near the aisle (where I can best keep Jason from escaping) and tried my best to scrub it discreetly with a wipe. It was hardly making a difference. Right then Liesel fell off the bench and started screaming. I picked her up and before I could grab Jason he ran up on the stand to sit with Dad. After she calmed down we came back in, but only to the usual not-so-calmness of my wild kids in sacrament meeting. Brad offered to clean it up during Sunday School. He was able to get most of it, but I'll have to go this week with better supplies and finish the job.
Todays trial is quite small in the grand scheme of things (although still rather embarrassing). I just want us all to be able to laugh at it and hopefully I can learn from it. Oh how I love my sweet children! I am so grateful for the trust that Heavenly Father has in me and Brad to raise them. The challenges help me develop patience, compassion, hard work and other Christlike attributes that I may not learn as well otherwise. Of course like most of you, I don't seek out challenges and avoid them when possible. I only pray that I can overcome my trials with faith and grow closer to God.