If You Seek with All Your Heart

My mom was searching around the room for something. She said the doll keychain my older sister had brought back from Peru two years ago was missing. To be honest, I had always thought the doll looked a bit tacky, so after receiving it from my sister, I must have put it somewhere and forgotten all about it. My mom, on the other hand, always attached the keychain to her bag and moved it whenever she switched bags.

A few days later, my mom sat on the sofa, deep in thought. She said she might have accidentally thrown it away in a clothing donation bin, still attached to an old, worn-out bag. She looked quite disappointed. Without giving it much thought, I casually said, “If it’s gone, there’s nothing we can do. Why worry about it?”

Not long after, we were having dinner when my mom mentioned the keychain again. She said that whenever she thought about it, her heart felt heavy. Only then did it dawn on me—it must have meant a lot to her. It was then that I finally began to understand how she felt.

The disappointed look on my mom’s face lingered in my mind, so I went down to the apartment garbage area on the off chance that it might still be there. I looked through the trash bags and rummaged through the large sacks filled with old clothes, but my mom’s worn-out bag was nowhere to be found. There were five or six more sacks nearby, but they had already been tied shut, so I couldn’t open them.

With no other choice, I returned home and began searching for the keychain, thinking it might still be somewhere in my room. I opened every drawer, checked baskets of miscellaneous items, and looked through various boxes. After searching for quite some time, I found a doll keychain—identical to the one my mom had lost—in a drawer where we kept batteries and emergency medicine. I quickly took it to my mom and showed it to her.

“Mom, is this it?”

“That’s the one! Where did you find it?”

My mom was overjoyed. She immediately attached the keychain to her bag and said as if making a promise, “This time, I’m never going to lose it!”

I wondered if it was really something to be so determined about, so I asked,

“Mom, why do you like it so much?”

“Because it looks like you!”

I was about to protest, asking if I really looked that ugly, when my mom continued,

“It looks just like you—so cute. And your sister brought it all the way from Peru. Even if I wanted to buy another one now, I couldn’t.”

Hearing such an unexpected answer, I found myself quietly staring at the keychain. A rush of emotions came over me, and before I knew it, I was getting choked up. To me, it had only been a tacky little doll keychain. But to my mom, it was something far more special—a gift from her eldest daughter that reminded her of her youngest.

Once I fully understood why my mom had been so upset for days, the doll began to look different to me. It truly seemed cute. I wanted to give her more keychains like it. I searched online to see if I could buy one and asked my sister if she had any left, but she said the ones she had given us were all she had. Then I vaguely remembered that we might have received a few more at the time. With renewed determination, I went back to my room and searched through everything again. After combing through every corner, I finally found another keychain of the same kind—a doll holding a baby in its arms. Finding it made me feel as if I had uncovered a hidden treasure.

When I brought it to my mom, she was once again overjoyed and asked where I had found it. I had once given her a fairly expensive birthday gift, but her happiness now was beyond comparison. Seeing her so pleased filled me with a deep sense of joy. Holding both dolls tightly in her hands, she examined them this way and that, laughing like a child. “Which one should I put on my bag? Oh my, they’re so cute!”

Seeing how happy my mom was reminded me of Heavenly Mother. The keychain I had dismissed so casually turned out to be something priceless to her. In the same way, we must be precious children to our Heavenly Father and Mother, each one carrying a story and memories that make us irreplaceable to Them. To our Heavenly Parents, every soul must be equally precious and dearly loved. Only now do I understand why Mother said that one soul is more precious than the whole world. It made me reflect on whether I had ever treated Zion members carelessly without realizing it. From now on, I resolve to remember that each brother and sister is someone so precious to Mother and to treat them with that same care.

Just as I searched everywhere to find the doll my mom loved and was finally able to bring her joy, perhaps the day will come when we can offer Heavenly Mother the greatest gift of all—by devoting our hearts and efforts to finding our heavenly family, imagining the joy She will feel when Her children return.