Images of God

Since I was old enough to understand more about the relationship between a child and it's parents I've believed that we are meant to become parents in order to learn more about our own relationship with Heavenly Father. There are so many things that strike me as significant when I'm not looking for any corrilation. There are many instances in which my understanding of Heavenly Father's love for His children is deepened.
Allow me to illustrate:
Recently Michael and I have been reading "Believing Christ" by Stephen E. Robinson. You can read an excerpt here if you're interested. It's a series of talks given by a professor of religion for the purpose of understanding the atonement better as Latter-Day Saints. I have learned and relearned a lot that my soul understood about the atonement, but my mind did not. In the book he talks about our covenant with God. That we never exit the covenant by sinning. We only turn from Him and make ourselves unworthy of the blessings when we reject him. (I'm not explaining this well. Just read the book . . .) So each day as I go through the process of caring for and loving my children there are obviously times when I am frustrated with them. There are times when they do things they know they shouldn't do. There are times that I want to pull my hair out because they are driving my nutty. But I still love them. I still melt when they smile at me or give me little sticky kisses. I still love the sound of their laughter and feel joy when they learn a new skill or principle. I'm sure that our Heavenly Father has similar feelings about us. My children run around doing what suits their fancy (within general limits that have been set by me). But there are moments when one of them comes to sit by me simply (as far as I can tell) because they want to be near me. They want to feel of my warmth and love for them as children. They want to learn from me and be like me. 'Course, then they'll go and fight over a toy or not eat their lunch and throw their food on the floor, or whine because I won't pick them up, etc. But I think our Heavenly Father deals with very similar scenarios. We come to sit at his feet to learn from Him because we want to be like Him. Then we whine and grip due to a lack of things we think we need. But the point is that He loves us still. We have given Him loyalty, therefore we are still worthy of His love, grace and mercy. We are still eligible for the miracles of the atonement. We are still His children. That is a great comfort and blessing.