Free to Choose by Miriam Crawford

This is a story that Sis. Crawford sent that goes well with the Scripture Mastery verse we've focused on this week, 2 Nephi 2:27. She said it was a true story - most of it, anyway:

We should have named him Houdini. Never has there been an animal more bent on escape. Good at it too. You’d think that a hamster with the run of two cages loaded with wheels, tunnels, state-of-the-art truants, food, water and all the cedar shavings he could want would be happy. But noooooooo, not Houdini. Every waking moment was spent on pursuing any possible means of escape. Those solid, fool-proof screw-on air holes were a challenge; and the hamster was up to it. Somehow, who could figure, he escaped time and again. We were able to find him a few times and return him to safety and food. But safety and food were not what Houdini wanted. He wanted freedom! The last time he escaped we would catch a glimpse now and again as he would tease and mock our inability to lay hands on him. My husband even said he saw the hamster run in front of the TV late one night, pause, then stand up on his two hind legs, wearing a tiny miners helmet with a teeny light shining bright and a pick in one paw. The hamster laughed and laughed at him, then exited left behind the sofa. It was a though Houdini had it all figured out. “If I can just get out of here, he thought, “I can choose anything I want. I can go where I like, eat what I choose, pick my own friends and nobody will be my boss. I’ll be free.”

When we finally found Houdini he had made a whopper of a bedding bachelor pad under the back corner of the kitchen stove. He had surrounded himself with every desirable thing he could find. There was some stuffing from a pillow, a little yarn, some shredded newspaper, bits and pieces of noodles, wheat, sweet potato, and one more thing….rat poison. Those little blue pellets of rat poison. They looked appealing, they probably smelled and tasted good. It only took one glance for us to know what the hamster’s fate had been.

I couldn’t help but think…if only he had asked. I could have told him: don’t touch that. It will destroy you. But in his desperate search for freedom he wanted no one helping him make decisions. Then I wondered about each of us. As we use our own freedom to choose what we will surround ourselves with, what does Heavenly Father see? Does he watch as we gather those things that will destroy us? Satan is very clever at disguising his bait. He makes so many seemingly harmless temptations. They look good, they smell enticing, they taste great, and they please all the senses. What danger could there possibly be? Ask Houdini.