Lately we have come across a lot documents that have been glued together. When the missionaries came in to help us one day I walked over to where they were working and they had one of those documents stretched out across the room and they were taking a picture with an Elder on each end. On Tuesday I again opened one that was at least 15 feet long and with Scott's help we took a picture and then slid it through and clicked again until the whole document was recorded for posterity. After that I spent quite a while thinking about how annoying glue is!
What often happens when I am working at the camera is that my mind starts thinking about the person that did it. Don't worry I didn't have bad thoughts--just thoughts. I was thinking that they probably thought they were doing such a good thing because all of the documents would remain together and could be folded up and stored in the packet. Little would they know that over 150 years later we would have technology that would make it possible to digitize every word ever written and even more impressive--the ability of people all over the world to see it!
As I continued to ponder, the idea came to me that the clerk with a bottle of glue was a lot like we sometimes are. We begin to think about a dilemma we find ourselves in and then we start thinking about how we can make it easier, or move convenient, or more efficient. And it works--for us. But often down the line it doesn't work for the person who deals with our idea and has to undo the problem we created. I think this is especially true in our role as parents. I guess we can only hope that in the end our children will know what we thought was a good idea was made with love--and forgive us as they try to make it right.
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