“The Write Choice,” Liahona, March 2018
The Write Choice
The author lives in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.
“And they are free to choose” (2 Nephi 2:27).
Justina sat extra tall in her seat. She placed her new pencils right at the top of her desk. Today was the first day of school. She’d met her classmates and drawn a fun picture.
Then Mrs. Werner said, “Time to work on writing!” Mrs. Werner handed out papers to the class. “You have 30 minutes to work on this. Then we’ll go to recess.”
Justina gulped. “Oh no. Writing already?” she thought.
Last year Justina had a hard time with reading and writing. All of her friends seemed to like it. It wasn’t so hard for them. What if this year was like last year all over again?
Justina picked up her pencil. She looked at her paper. Her stomach sank. All the other students were writing. Except for her.
She wanted to talk to Mrs. Werner. Would she be mad that Justina was having trouble? Even if she was, that still sounded better than writing.
Justina walked to her teacher’s desk. “Mrs. Werner? This is harder than what I did last year. I don’t think I can do it.”
Mrs. Werner didn’t look upset. She smiled at Justina. “Do what you can. You might be surprised at what you can do! You can’t always choose what you’re good at. But you can always choose how hard you try.”
Justina walked back to her desk. She thought about what Mrs. Werner said. “I can choose to try.” That was like what she learned in Primary. Her class read a scripture that said we are “free to choose.” That meant we could make our own choices. Heavenly Father trusts us to make good choices. He promises to help us when we make mistakes.
Could school be different this year? Maybe she could choose to make it different! Justina picked up her pencil. She looked at her paper. Her stomach relaxed. “OK. I’m going to do this,” she thought.
The recess bell rang. Justina wasn’t finished yet. But she was more than halfway done! She raised her hand. “Can I stay and keep working? I’m so close to being done!”
Mrs. Werner smiled and nodded.
Justina finally handed in her paper. Her hand ached a little bit. Even her brain hurt! But she was smiling. She had never worked so hard on writing before.
The next day the class worked on reading. Mrs. Werner asked everyone to read for 20 minutes. Justina tried again. She opened her book and sounded out the words.
Justina started making choices every day. She chose to read. She chose to write. Maybe reading and writing weren’t so bad!
She even chose to go to the library. She checked out books. Last year she would have never done that. Soon she was reading all the time. And it was actually fun! And the more she read, the better she got at writing.
When Justina got older, she was glad she chose to work hard in reading and writing. Because now those were some of her favorite things to do.