Thanks Livie, for your "Random" questions!

I want to hurry and get this down before I forget. I want my girls to remember this. Tim has been out of town, McKenna has been sick, I've been trying to catch up and figure out my new calling and we have 50 people coming to our house for an EQ social on Saturday night. Needless to say, I almost skipped out on reading scriptures with the girls. I was busy getting some work done and was about to tell Livie to brush her teeth and go to bed when out of my mouth came, "go get the scriptures and why don't you guys read to me while I am finishing this up?" So that's what we did. I finished my task and then sat down with them to finish reading. We were reading in Doctine and Covenants. The girls had read about three verses and I have to admit I wasn't paying close attention. When I sat down I tried to hurry and read through what was read to "catch up" with them in case they had any questions. During the short pause Livie started asking me a question. Now, if you know Livie, her questions could be about anything. And usually not what we are talking about. I listened impatiently ready to push the question aside. She asked, "Do you HAVE to go to Achievement days?" Here we go, I thought. Let's just get on with this so you can go to bed and I can get back to work. But instead I said, "Why do you ask?" (It's amazing how the spirit can guide me to be a kinder, gentler mother when the impatient one is right inside.) She proceeded to tell me how her friend that will be turning 8 was asking and saying that she didn't really want to go. I told her, "No, she doesn't HAVE to. We don't HAVE to do anything. We DO those things because we have a testimony of them and we love our Heavenly Father so we DESIRE to do the things that are asked of us. We don't HAVE to go to church, but we do because we love the Lord and we want to choose the right." Alexa pipes in, "So we don't HAVE to go to school if we don't want to?" DING DING DING!!! All of a sudden everything became clear. All the things that we had been trying to explain about the election and trying to undo what they had been told at school about the election, all related to the Atonement of Jesus Christ. Since socialism as been such a big topic in this election we were using so many examples and trying to teach all of this to the kids. So as we sat there, We discussed what Satan's plan was to make everyone be righteous, no choices at all. Then we talked about the Saviors plan that he would suffer for our sins so that we could make our own choices and make mistakes and then Livie pipes in, "and then we can repent." (They do listen.) I told them that the Government makes laws and we HAVE to follow them. We HAVE to pay taxes, we HAVE to stop at the stop lights, etc. I told them that is how socialism is, the Government makes all the decisions for us and we don't get a choice. I explained that when we have faith and we have a testimony of the Savior and the Atonement, we WANT to do the right thing and we WANT to go to church. We WANT to go to Achievement days. After a few minutes of this we started reading again. And as we read I realized the chapter we were reading was all about AGENCY. Every verse we read led us right back to what we had been talking about. So not only did we have a great discussion but as we sat there, we had the scriptures to testify to us all that we were talking about. Thanks to Livie and her "random" question and the Spirit keeping me from being impatient it was one of the best teaching moments a parent could have. They seemed to really get it. And yes, they got to bed 1/2 hour late and I am again behind on my chores.