Good judgement comes from experience and a lot of that comes from bad judgement.

I was remembering an experience one of my children had in high school.  He was new to the cross country team, and they had a practice route that included a modern style house with a roof that was rather irresistible   By "included" I don't mean running by the house.  They ran over the house.  I don't know if it was all of them, or if it was every time, but Brandon chose to take the challenge and became one of the over-the-top runners. He jumped onto the low ran over the high and then off of the other low.The great part about the story is that when he returned with his team to the school, the coach and principal were there waiting for them.  The owner had called.  He happened to be home that day and wanted the little tradition put to a stop.  So for the first time in the history of running the roof, they got in trouble. And Brandon was lucky enough to be 1 for 1...one taking the chance-one getting caught.  We talked a lot about accountability and choices, and how the story was rather amusing because Brandon was a pretty obedient person and didn't typically step out of line, and how merciful are the powers that be to help hasten the learning curve.  The incident became one of those hard-to-forget lessons, and came to mind when I read the quote on Lorin Price's facebook page, "Good judgement comes from experience and a lot of that comes from bad judgement."

I guess learning and becoming is what life's all about.  There are lots of people around us that offer free knowledge that they may well have paid dearly for.  It's rather puzzling when instead of taking the knowledge for free, we want to pay for it too.

When I was very young, my mother always told me to not put the clothes hangers in my mouth.  I'm not sure what price my mother paid for this wisdom, possibly not much, but it wasn't enough.  I wanted to pay my own price for it.  My parents put me to bed, and I was pretty sure I could put the hanger in my mouth and show everyone how safe it was and how wrong they were.  Well, it got stuck on the inside of my cheek.  I started to cry, loudly.  Dad ran in and saved my day by unhooking the hanger from my mouth.  Lesson learned, right?  Au Contraire.  Not too many nights passed before I wanted to try one more time to put the hanger in my mouth safely.  Darned if it didn't get stuck again and I cried and my parents ran in and saved me, again.  The price was finally high enough and I gained wisdom and can advise with absolute surety, "Don't put hangers in your mouth."

When I was 19, I went to school for a semester in Hawaii.  My friend and I met some vacationers on the beach from Canada, males in their early twenties.  They invited us to join them in seeing Honolulu the next evening.  We were flattered and  felt very adventurous when we said, "Yes."  The afternoon before we were to go with them I had a very foreboding feeling.  I was learning to recognize inspiration, and I knew I should not go, but this was before cell phones and there was no way to cancel.  I convinced myself that it would be rude to just stand them up so we went.  Now this was dangerous in so many ways, I don't even like telling the story, but it's free knowledge for others that was expensive for me.  The evening started out fun, but ended with me rejecting many unwanted physical advances. Boyd K. Packer said, "We will never make a serious mistake without receiving a warning first."  I believe this to be true, and wish I had heeded that warning.

Another example of bad judgement came when I was doing what I thought was a good thing.  When we moved to Kansas in 1996 I had the opportunity to be a presenter at EFY.  It was a great experience, and I felt blessed to be a part of it.  So when the time came for me to apply for the next year, I was looking forward to it, but it was a big commitment, and I did have 7 children with one on the way, so I decided to pray about it.  You know what?  I felt that I shouldn't do it.  I almost didn't, but I really wanted to, so I ignored the impression and justified that it was a good cause and applied.  That turned out to be a hard year.  Especially For Youth changed their program, so instead of each speaker addressing 2 topics we were to address 4.  Preparing 4 supposedly great talks and meeting the needs of my family turned out to be very overwhelming.  God knew that this would be too much for me and it was.  I did it and lived.  But overall I would say that during that time period, I wasn't a great mother and my presentations weren't great either.  So for the price of 6 stressful months and 4 mediocre talks given 2 times each I have learned, once again, that I am not smarter than God.

The list of lessons learned the expensive way is long and not necessarily illustrious, but here is a little more free knowledge that I'd like to share but won't reveal how it came to be mine: Always stir the jello until the granules dissolve, for real, unless you like a layer of jello rubber on the bottom of your dish, Do not use a wooden spoon to stir a mixture that seizes when exposed to water ie toffee, in the same vein, if your vanilla chips are frozen you cannot melt them until they are thawed and dry or an ugly chemical reaction will occur; If your dress ties in the back, make sure the tie doesn't dip into the toilet when you go to the bathroom on the first day of class at BYU;  Check that your zipper is zipped before talking to the cute guy in Psychology; Don't carve your pumpkins too many days before Halloween, and bring them inside if it's going to freeze;  If you're wearing a maxi dress, Lift your skirt sufficiently high at the stairs so as not to walk on it and trip in front of the thousand people who just watched you lead the music;  Don't leave a 9X13 pyrex dish on the top of your car and then drive away; when you are making copies of a test for the biology teacher don't put the extras in the scratch paper pile for him to hand out beforehand.  Just sayin'