Fire Escape Plan

Well, unfortunately for those of you in attendance this week...I had the lesson. For the first time in my life I couldn't think of what to say! I couldn't think of what to center my lesson on and I was literally grasping at straws and organizing my thoughts during sacrament meeting and even during my lesson. I thought, why not a patriotic lesson since it's the 4th of July, but I just couldn't get it to meld properly. So then I thought, why not do a "treasures of the scriptures" lesson? Couldn't work that out either. Then I read my patriarchal blessing and it talked a lot about kindness and charity so I thought maybe that was my answer...but nope it wasn't. Friday night I had my FHE lesson that I gave awhile ago about a "Spiritual Fire Escape Plan" to give to my children about the dangers of Satan's temptations. The flood gates were opened when I prayed about it and I thought, ok this is my lesson. Then I started thinking about the Conference talks and how most of them were centered around teaching our children in the home and I thought that it went nicely with my fire escape plan. So I combined them.
I'd like to go through the different aspects of a fire escape plan. Keep in mind that I am comparing this to a physical and spiritual plan. About a month ago I was teaching piano and when my student finished playing her song she said, "I smell smoke." I didn't smell it and so I turned my head to look at my children in the front room and happened to pan my large window. Outside were large flames! My neighbor's tree was on fire!! I didn't even smell it and even then when I knew that there was a fire I still couldn't smell it. It wasn't until I went outside and got closer that I could smell the smoke. I panicked a little in mind. What do I do? I have a house full of kids. I see my neighbor from across the street running over with a little fire extinguisher trying to put it out. It doesn't work. I see her run back home for something else. I ask myself, "should I call the fire dept.? Is this serious enough for that?" I decided that YES it was. If the wind blew it could come over to my house, or it could move to the next tree or spit out and catch something else on fire. So I made the call. I noticed my neighbour across the street on her phone as well. Soon the fire dept. came and the crisis was handled and all was well. After my piano lessons were over my children started asking me all kinds of questions and I decided to use this as a teaching moment for them. "Mom, how did this happen?" "Well someone made a wrong choice and we didn't smell the smoke fast enough to take care of it. So we called the firefighters and they helped us." Shortly after the fire was out my neighbour who had lost his tree was outside with a shovel. "Mom, what's he doing?" "He's cleaning up the hot ashes and taking care of them so that they don't start another fire." Finally, all that was left was a very black, very charred tree trunk with little stubs of charred branches sticking out. A reminder of what that one wrong choice had done and the damage that happened as a result of not noticing it in time. A few days later my children noticed that the dead tree was gone. "Mom, where did the tree go?" "Well, it's dead and so he probably threw it away." "What's going to happen now? What's he going to do there?" "Oh, he might put in another new tree or plant something else there. It will take a while for it to grow but now he can start over with something fresh and new." This was the basis of my FHE lesson to my children that following Monday night.
First, let's talk about the smoke. In our spiritual plan this is Satan's temptations. It is the first warning sign of danger. Sometimes we may not even smell the smoke and we may not notice it, but if we don't attend to it soon it becomes an even larger problem. It starts to consume us and suffocate us before it suddenly bursts into flames and becomes to much for us to handle and put out. Things like, skipping your scripture study for a day or two, or procrastination, or poor time management. What about not attending your church meetings two weeks in a row or putting off paying your tithing until next pay check? All of these are those subtle little things that can fester and grow if we don't take care of them right away. Now of course there are the obvious things like smoking, drinking, drugs, ########### and the like that are obvious to some...but not all...and they can still start small and grow bigger. These, however, tend to grow faster than others.
Ok, so what do we do if we let it get out of hand and there's a fire? Well, first we try to put it out ourselves, right the wrong, do better, make better choices. Repent. But as I said before it can get to big for us to handle. When we know that we can't put it out ourselves we try to get out of the house. Take the best escape route and run! Pray and pray. In a physical fire we go to a central meeting place and call for help. Others may have noticed the danger and trouble you are in and will try to help you. Whether or not you accept that help is up to you and can be a hard thing to do. But even then, you need to call the professionals-the firefighters. In the Spiritual sense, you need to call on your Father in Heaven. He knows what to do to help you put out those big flames and will always come through. The damage is still done and there are still things we need to do. Clean up those ashes before the ignite again! Take the necessary steps to get back on the right path. Read your scriptures, pray, go to church, partake of the sacrament...all of the Sunday School answers but the most important ones! And when you've got it all cleaned up-get rid of the dead and start anew. Start over again nice and fresh and keep working at it. Isn't it interesting that it takes a looonnnggg time to make something good and keep it growing, but only a split second for it to be lost and ruined?
As I searched through the most recent issue of the Conference Ensign I thought, "I'll just select the talks that talk about teaching our children." Well, that turned out to be about half of them! I won't share them all here with you but I will just give you a brief run down. One of the things almost all of them talked about was "going back and rescuing" those who have been lost. Now, in a physical fire escape plan we are taught that we go to the meeting place and we wait. If someone is not there we do not go back in for them. The nice thing about a spiritual plan is that we CAN go back for those who didn't make it out. "We never give up!" the articles say. We must teach our children that it is never to late for them. The Atonement will always help us to get out and heal us when we get burned. But we have to ask for His help.
Now, in our homes we have fire alarms. Do they always work? No! Why not? The batteries have not been replaced is the most common reason. What good is a fire alarm to warn us if the batteries don't work? In our spiritual escape plan we have the Holy Ghost as our alarm. But he can't help us if we don't keep our batteries charged by reading our scriptures, praying, going to the temple, etc. He can warn us all he wants, but if we don't listen to him or "hear" him he eventually stops warning us and then it's too late.
The central meeting place is the Temple or the Celestial Kingdom. How sad would you be if a family member didn't make it out of a burning house? Now, how sad would you be if a family member didn't make it to the Celestial Kingdom? Go to the temple and be sealed to your family and keep those sacred covenants that you make. Make sure that you are worthy to be there with your family and help them understand just how important it is to you that they can be with you as well!
One of the things I have a hard time with is "Save yourself." I have a hard time thinking that in the event of an emergency on a plane I would really put my mask on first and THEN help my children. What if they died because I wasn't fast enough? But on the other hand who will help them if I die? Fortunately it's not such a difficult decision in the gospel. Study and pray and get to know your Savior so that you can teach your children about Him. The ensign says "What do your children see when they look at you?...Do they see the Savior's image in your countenance?" This statement made me reflect upon myself and I found myself disappointed in what I saw. All of the talks in the Ensign tell us to be examples to our children. "Do what is right, let the consequence follow," hopefully that consequence will be your children following in your footsteps on the straight and narrow. One of the articles said that most of us are born into the church already on the straight and narrow. It is our jobs as parents to teach our children the gospel and love them and let them know that they always have a place to come home to, just in case they stray off that path. We don't start out in a burning home and some of us will never experience that terrible tragedy. But hopefully we'll know what to do if it ever comes to that. When I teach my children about fire safety I first tell them what to do and then we physically practice it from beginning to end. I even have them in their beds with lights out. We go through different scenarios and run through each thing. Now when a real fire happens I just hope and pray that they will remember and know what to do. The physical plan we practice every 6 months or so just to keep it fresh in their minds and remind them of what we learned and practiced. The same goes for our spiritual plan. We tell our kids to read their scriptures and then we have family scripture study. Then, when they are old enough to go out into the world and make their own decisions we just hope and pray they remember what they were taught and that they'll know what to do. This plan, however, needs to be practiced every day and not just every few months!
The last article that I referred to in my lesson stated that everything happens in the home. Missionary work, activation, family history, etc. it all happens in the home. So, bear with me and just use your imagination on this, I tried to think of how to best tie this all in and this is what I came up with...FHE=Family Home Evening/FHE= Fire Home Escape plan. There are many different ways to do FHE and you don't have to do it only when you have children. You should do it even if you are single, widowed or empty nesters. There are so many resources out there for lessons and activities. There really is no excuse for not doing it. My husband gave a FHE lesson on the small and simple things. We set a goal for our family that month to have family prayer each night for the entire month. We made our goal! And we made it with the help of my not-quite-two-year-old little boy who reminded us every night that we needed to say prayers. "Girls time for prayers" he would say every night to his sisters. Then he would go into their room and kneel by their bed and fold his arms. He reminds me at breakfast that we need to read the scriptures. Set small goals for your family and when you have accomplished that goal move on to the next. D&C 88:119 talks about having a house of order, a house of prayer, of house of fasting, a house of learning, a house of glory and a house of God (paraphrased I'm sure I missed something). I take one of those things at a time and we work on them together as a family.
I'm sorry this was so long. I remember a lot more of the lesson when I'm the one that has to give it :) and as always this lesson was more as a reminder to me of what I need to learn and work on! I hope that it made sense to you and that you will practice your FHE plan daily!