Welcome to the Classic Speaches Podcasts presented by BYU Speaches, bringing you treasured talks from 70 years of BYU Devotionals.

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This devotional address entitled, Be Renewed in the Spirit of Your Mind, was given on September

6th of 1988 by Patricia T. Holland, wife of Jeffrey R. Holland, then president of Brigham Young

University.

If some of you left emotional mothers back home,

joyfully hysterical at seeing you leave for school,

please know that there is someone here who welcomes you exactly the same way.

I delight in the assignment of being your mother away from home.

Now that's the joyful part.

And of course I want every single one of you to tell me at what time you'll be in each

night.

And that's the hysterical part.

Please know that we love you and that we're so happy you're back. Because of the very special family

feeling we have here at BYU, this campus can be your alma mater, literally your fostering mother.

There is absolutely an army of people here, anxious to nurture you in faith and knowledge, to help you understand

that Christ-centered learning will give you an inner core of confidence and the strength

to succeed in life's tasks. I want to know that I know something of the anxieties with which you start school this year.

And so my deepest, my most earnest wish for you is that you will approach this year with peace and self-assurance

that you will be more caring for yourself and as kind to yourself as you would

be to a friend in need. You are in need, and you ought to be your own best friend.

Military historians tell us that an army can seldom fight a successful war on two fronts.

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