Sending our children into the world

Photo taken today of my oldest daughter

going to her first day of Junior High. (photo courtesy of my wife)

"And then the Lord said: Let us go down. And they went down at the beginning."

Abraham 4: 1

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Junior High. The Beginning of seventh grade. I have been a worried father for years that I would evidently have to send my daughter to junior high. For many, it is one of the hardest years in our life, but it can be the most exciting. We are no longer in the safe enviroment of the one room class in Elementary school with loving teachers for 7 years (K -6). Instead, we have a whole new school to go to where we don't know anything about or what to expect. Multiple classes, multiple teachers. We walk the halls amongst a sea of other students. We hear and see things that we have never been exposed to before: Profanity, Obsensities, Crudeness, Immodesty. To top it all off, we are experiencing changes to our bodies which makes us somewhat unsure of ourselves.

In thinking all about this, I couldn't help be think of the similiarities of when we left our pre-mortal experience to come into this terestial world. The scripture in Abraham refers to going DOWN.... not UP. We read: they WENT DOWN. It is a lower, base existence. No longer are we in the presence of a loving father and mother in heaven. We come down and see/hear some of the evil and corruption the world. We have multiple choices and experiences to choose from. We exercise our agency to choose between the good and evil. We experienced a change in our bodies.
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Many things in this photo of my daughter is symbolic. She looks happy, but I sense a slight nervousness in her eyes and smile. Possibly the same emotions we had as we left to come down here to earth. She is holding in her hand her class schedule. This could represent our life assignments/our life mission that we need to fulfill. We have been preordained to come down here to accomplish certain tasks. She has a backpack on, symbolic of all the knowledge and information/intelligence that we gained prior to coming to earth. The tools and information will help us have advantage here . (D&C 130: 19)

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In this photo, the sun is being blocked by dark over hanging tree. symbolic of the veil we had to pass through. The sun is still there, but blocked from our veiw. She is innocent... all of us born as children pure, not stained yet. She is looking back over her shoulder, possibly saying goodbye one last time.. of our remembrance of our Heavenly Home. There are others who are walking in front of her that she is following. We choose who we follow. Others will try to mislead us. We have only one we should follow in this life.. our elder brother, Jesus Christ.