Empty

There are things I know I need to do to keep my tanks filled, to engage in sufficient self-care, to be able to be enough for the tasks at hand and the people that I serve.

I'm not currently doing most of them.

I'm feeling absolutely unseen, unknown and I can't imagine how that is, since I'm better lately at saying exactly what I mean, what I need.

I can't seem to understand how I came to this place of so much need, so much validation expected of me and so little given in return. I feel like the mother bird surrounded by open mouths. And I have no worms.

Teenagers are a vicious lot. They rain down so much biting criticism, so much disapproval, so much exacting scorn. It eats through confidence like acid. I spend most of my waking hours with teens of one shape or another these days.

I try to see people for who they are and, with varying success, give them as charitable a berth as I am able. I try to tell people--at least the ones who purport to be my people--how to treat me, the things I need. And pretty consistently I'm being told that I'm wrong. Wrong about myself. Wrong about what I'm entitled to for treatment. Wrong about hoping for a charitable berth for myself.

Too much chaos is draining. Too many people on too many occasions wears. The holidays are inexplicably draining and wearing. All the people. All the chaos. I'm spinning the plates as quickly as I can and still they break. I am mean and I don't want to be mean. I am impatient and I don't want to be impatient. I am selfish. I find myself operating under the worst case of scarcity. I have nothing to share, nothing to give and I feel too fully the fingers pulling what little I can garner straight from my own hands.

I'm closed for renovation. I can't accept any more orders for now. I can't even.

Pray

Pray the mean girls stop being mean. Pray no one gets left out of the games or the parties. Pray the teachers light fires in all the right places. Pray that they remember to be just as kind and as brave as you know they are. Pray the scary new stuff really will lead to all the wonder you know it can. Pray their wings are dry and ready to fly.

I'm awake when I should be long asleep. Thinking about chairs to set up in seminary in the morning. Thinking about CE's mission call burning a hole under my mattress, away from the pesky fingers and prying eyes of younger brothers till she can come home from BYU to open it this weekend. Thinking about this crazy thing of self reliance. We teach our children to be self reliant, to grow and to want to be independent, to want to serve and love and teach, because they love God and He asks. We teach our children these things and then they have the audacity to actually go and do it.

At each step of this parenting, I have been blessed and forced to entrust some part of my children's care and keeping to others. To teachers and leaders and friends and, increasingly, to strangers. I am so grateful for the lessons and love my children have at the hands of others because they learn things that I could not teach them. I am less grateful for the hard knocks they have at the hands of others, but similarly pray that my children and I aren't responsible for too many hard knocks for anyone else.

I find myself praying and worrying over a whole new group of children I have inherited with seminary. I see their faces in my mind throughout the day. I worry over them and pray over them, fretting about their absences, hoping the tools I bring to them in class will be enough to slay their demons, to lead them to peace.

Seminary is a different type of gospel teaching than I have ever done. It's daunting enough to teach a class. I have taught gospel classes before. Seminary requires that I teach individuals in a much more pointed way than I have ever taught before. 42 students in my class. 42 different sets of needs and hopes and problems and levels of gospel understanding. 42 different sets of parents with their different levels of support and understanding. With all these faces wandering through my mind, I suppose it's a wonder I ever sleep at all.

All the things I pray for my children, I find myself praying for my seminary children. And all the things I have prayed and taught and hoped for CE, she is doing, in increasingly wide and awe-inspiring circles, she is doing.

Pray I've given the right tools, that I've taught the right lessons. Pray her wings are dry and ready to fly.

Marching toward Adulthood

I remember vividly, when I was nearing full term pregnant with each of my children, wanting them OUT, so I could see them, hold them and know they were safe. And then, just as vividly, once they were out, wanting them back in as soon as I realized how many more things there were outside me to harm them. There's the adage that motherhood is learning to live with your heart walking around outside your body. It's safe to say that this motherhood thing is not for the faint of heart and it gets progressively more nerve wracking with each year, each milestone.

Z just got his drivers license and while it is helpful to have another driver in the house, especially since CE is off being collegiate, it is more than a little scary to watch him drive off. When he leaves, I try not to remember the call we got last Christmas break, of CE screaming into the phone that she was sorry, that the road was wet, that she didn't see the car until it was too late. She is fine. Her car was totaled and the hardest part of that accident was the dent it put in my idealism, in my bubble, that deluded me into believing nothing bad will happen to my children.

On Sunday, evil rained down on my adopted hometown. Killing more than 50 (the number keeps growing) and injuring more than 500 at a country music festival. We don't know why. First responders ran into the trouble and saved people and have been tirelessly saving and serving since then. The daughter of a friend was at the concert. She posted on social media the text her daughter sent--saying there was a shooting, to not freak out that she was safe, hiding and that it would be okay. Her daughter didn't make it home for several more hours, walking through an actual horror show of loss and danger before she would be safely home again. I've been thinking on that text, on that maternal fear, on the whole crazy, sad, horror of it all. I can't get my brain around it. I've watched my friends acquaintances and loved ones react with fear and anger, with purpose and service and I want to be in the second group.

I taught more Isaiah in seminary today. Isaiah is hard. He talks in symbols that are often lost to our modern experiences. But he has so much that we need to hear and understand. 2 Ne 14:5-6 talks about the places of protection the Lord offers us in times of storms. I read my friend's post to the class. And we talked about the protection from this storm. I wouldn't have been at the concert because it was a Sunday night: I want to keep the sabbath holy and I have to teach seminary at 6am, so my covenants and my commitments kept me safe. The covenants and commitments of the first responders are why they rushed into danger. Isaiah talks about our homes, our congregations and the temple as places of protection. The kids talked about blessings their fathers had offered to protect and dedicate their homes, of the peace of temple work for those who have fallen, the comfort of loving congregations to help us. We talked about how to take comfort from those sacred spaces and from our covenants in all the storms and how to take those protections with us into our day to offer comfort, peace and light to those around us.

I wish my heart weren't walking around outside my body in so many dangerous places. Bilbo Baggins says:

It's a dangerous business going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.

But I know that there is peace in storms. There is protection and safety in standing in holy places, in creating sacred spaces and sacred times. This is the knowledge that calms me as my children persist in doing scary things, in growing up. It is the only thing that keeps me sane.

Hearts

Some time ago, a friend made an off hand comment in Relief Society. It wasn't intended badly and I didn't take it badly, because she is so deeply kind. I have never known her to be unkind. She stopped a few minutes later and apologized, that she didn't want me to think she meant her comment the unkind way. I assured her that I did not think she had, because I know her heart. That sentence of mine turned in my head for days after. What a wondrous blessing, to have someone know your heart, to know your motives are true, to know you.

This week has been an odd one. I began the week teaching seminary and feeling such a rush, such an urgency, to teach all the things. So many things spilling out of my heart, combined with the lesson manual and its things and my dear DH with his four years' experience adding his things and I found myself teaching probably the worst gospel lesson of my life on Wednesday. There were moments of truth, of Spirit teaching, but only a few moments in a lesson too otherwise bereft of Spirit in favor of hurry, of only me. I hate it when I'm the one teaching the lesson. This gospel teaching thing only works if I bring the Spirit and He teaches. When it's just me, it's just bad. And it was.

And then CE and I packed up the car and drove the long freeway to Provo where we checked her into her temporary dorm quarters for Honors Week and I have subsequently been at loose ends, staying at my sister's, attending some Education Week classes, going to the temple, but really not knowing where I was to be, where I was supposed to be. And all the while worrying a fair bit about this new big thing CE was beginning and my complete utter inability to buffer it in any way for her.

This afternoon I was truly at loose ends as the evening's plans fell apart a bit and I was left waiting and alone and not really knowing myself in my own head. And then I got to spend the evening with a true friend who has known me through all my adulthood, from when we were starting this same journey CE is beginning. We have spent most of the intervening years apart, but she gave me one of those rare and treasured compliments as we parted. "You're still you." I have felt very un me this week, but her ability to see my heart, my same heart in a sea of wiggly bits was a dear blessing. Her friendship is a tender mercy for me. It is a rare and wondrous blessing for someone to see your heart.

Sacrifice

A new acquaintance asked me, repeatedly, last night "HOW do you do it? HOW do you teach seminary every morning?" Others have shaken their heads, saying I'm a 'better woman than they are.'

An old friend lamented this morning on the sacrifice this calling is asking of me.

Another acquaintance expressed condolences for the horrible trial of this calling.

My own mother is *against* it.

How do I explain? Teaching seminary doesn't seem like a burden. It is neither onerous nor noxious. I don't feel better for having accepted it. I feel greedy. I don't feel like I'm sacrificing; I feel distilled upon with blessings to do what will help me learn what I need to learn, study what I need to study, teach my children (and others, that's the bonus) and AND teach the gospel every morning. EVERY morning. So greedy. How can my mother be against that?

How do I do this?

How can I not?

In October 2014, Elder Richard G. Scott said,

Don’t yield to Satan’s lie that you don’t have time to study the scriptures. Choose to take time to study them. Feasting on the word of God each day is more important than sleep, school, work, television shows, video games, or social media. You may need to reorganize your priorities to provide time for the study of the word of God. If so, do it!

That admonition has chastised me over the intervening years. I often know better than I do. I know I desperately need the daily light of scripture study, yet far too often I walk around feeding my spirit from scripture 'food storage' (blessings from past study), instead of regular, daily feasting. This teaching is heaven's blessing to nudge me where I know I should be. I shouldn't need a calling to study the scriptures, but apparently I do and God loves me enough to give me what I need.

Sacrifice?

Trial?

Unfathomable, hardly. Blessing.

Covenants

Mosiah 18 discusses the covenants we make at baptism, that we want to be called God's people, that we are willing to bear one another’s burdens, that they may be light. We promise to be willing to mourn with those that mourn and comfort those that stand in need of comfort.

I was listening to a podcast a while back where an interviewer lamented at how more often we choose to comfort those who mourn instead of mourning with them. I thought back to a story I read a long time ago about visiting teaching. Of a woman who lost her toddler in death suddenly. How her visiting teachers, as good visiting teachers do, arrived to help. She stared blankly. She could not process her reality. She could not tell them what she needed. She just sat there on the stairs. So they set about cleaning and such. Until, suddenly the poor bereaved mother ran from the room, to her bed, sobbing. The visiting teachers followed her, they encircled her there on her bed and held her and cried with her. They could not comfort her. They could fix nothing. They could only mourn. They could love her.

Covenants are powerful things. And we are weak, so we need the power they provide. Hopefully our covenants embolden us to do difficult things, to feel complicated emotions, to learn to hold a space, to find the difference between mourning and comfort. CE is about to embark upon adulthood, BYU and independence. She will have a visiting teaching stewardship. I hope I have taught her that visiting teaching, that this tender act of covenant keeping is only a very small part about record keeping, of rule following, of boxes and a very large part of mourning and comforting and loving people where they are. Loving people where they are is very difficult. A lot of the time we really need them to be somewhere else. A definition of offense I've heard is the failure or unwillingness of someone to do or be what you need them to do or be. If I can love someone where they are, I will be unable to take offense. I will see, if only for a flash, the blinding light the Lord has placed in them. When I am diligent about my stewardships and sincere about my covenant keeping, I ask to see, so that I may love better, so that I may mourn and comfort in appropriate measure and without doing what I think best.

When DH was the bishop, we went for several years with derelict home teachers or without any even assigned. I felt abandoned. Couldn't anyone see how much support we needed while DH was busy supporting everyone else? During those same years I had one shining example of a visiting teacher and many more examples of failure to see the point (even one 'sister' who glibly told me she didn't believe in visiting teaching, while she was my visiting teacher). That one faithful sister taught me so much. She ministered so well. She would call on her way to Costco and ask if she could grab anything to save me a trip. She once took my toddler with her to Costco to give me a break. She brought me treats and messages, the hallmarks of 'appropriate visiting teaching', but she also brought me service, love, friendship and a safe space to be where I was. She taught me, through openness about her own upbringing, how to keep a safe, faithful space for her little family, how to love unsafe, unfaithful and even toxic family members--where they were--without jeopardizing her little flock of husband and children. She is a wonder. Her lessons and love somehow nurtured me through the years of less nurturing visiting teachers and absent home teachers. She loved me where I was and showed me how to love others where they were, however they needed while keeping herself safe.

She is the example of covenant keeping I try to keep before my eyes, to love where others are instead of where I need them to be, to impute the best of motives for even the most hurtful of actions, to remind myself of the limits of my stewardship and unrighteousness of my judgment.

Being true and faithful

An idea that is gaining traction in parenting and educational philosophy is the idea that teens shouldn't start school until later in the morning, that their natural biorhythms change with the onset of puberty making them more inclined to go to sleep late, require more sleep and awake later. I have seen this change in my children, watched my natural early riser, awake-with-the-sun sons turn into seeming vampires who want to talk and play long into the night and sleep the day away. I think the observational science in this philosophy is sound.

BUT

We know differently. We have been counseled in the scriptures to awake early, retire early to our beds and that doing so will bring blessings. We have been counseled to encourage our teens to enroll in early morning seminary when that is what is available in your geographical area.

For most of my adult life I have hungered to be a seminary teacher. For the past four years, DH has had that blessing and it wasn't my season and that was difficult for me to watch from the sidelines. And now, we have that calling together, to teach our boys and 37 other high school students the gospel through the Book of Mormon at 6 o'clock every week day morning.

It takes a lot for a teen to work against biorhythms, to fight against their natural inclinations, their desire to follow social media into the night and sleep into the day. It takes a lot for teens to show up and sit, in any semblance of alertness. But they do, they have, in my class and thousands others throughout the church because they and their parents want to be true and faithful.

It is easy to get huffy when students are tardy. It is easy to take offense if they sleep in class or leave early. Maybe I will feel less charitable at different times during my teaching, but for now, I have hope. I have this great desire to bring the Spirit, to teach whoever is there, however long they are there so that, if at all possible, they can leave the classroom armed with power to wrestle with their demons and the demons of the world, to wrestle with doubt and find faith, to send them forth with as much light as I can muster.

I have witnessed the power of seminary. I have experienced the blessings of early to bed, early to rise. I have felt the special, tangible spirit of revelation found more thickly in the quiet morning hours with study and prayer, reflection and learning. There is power in being true and faithful.

Push Start

There are so many time saving devices in my home, in my life. Because I am blessed to have a washer and dryer in my home, I can throw a load in and go about other tasks, allowing these machines of wonder to lighten my load. Because I have an awesome mixer, I can throw ingredients together and wash dishes while the mixer kneads my bread dough, shortening the time it takes for the wondrous aroma of freshly baked bread to fill my home.

Too many are the times when I have put all the clothes and the soap in the washer and, becoming distracted, fail to press start. So my clothes sit there and my time frame is slowed. This morning, I threw (gently placed) eggs into the pressure cooker so that I could have hard boiled eggs in the fridge for protein snacks and school lunches while I took care of other matters. But like too many times with the washer, I failed to push start, so nothing actually happened. You could say I am suffering from a lack of mindfulness. You could say I am tired, distracted or a lot of other reasonable and true things. Some times saying those things causes me to look at the chain of events and make needed alterations so that cycles are actually completed and my world spins more efficiently. But sometimes saying all those things just causes me to wallow. To sit in my exhaustion and distraction and mindlessness which is no more helpful than a pressure cooker filled with cold raw eggs. I need to push start.

The Start button for me comes in a variety of ways. Sometimes it is something I read or hear that causes me to find a missing puzzle piece that serves as a catalyst for change. Sometimes it is the whisper of the Spirit distilling upon me with answers that make all the difference. But in all cases, I still have to start. Since I want to start; I want the end product of the change I desire, I go about seeking catalysts. I listen to podcasts. I read. I write. I attend church and listen to conference talks. I study my scriptures. I try to attend the temple. I have found I can collect a lot of catalysts without actually using any of them. Silly me, I still have to push start.

Yesterday in sacrament meeting, I found myself so suddenly grateful for the myriad ways in which prayer has blessed my life. And that gratitude has led me to understand what a phenomenal start button prayer can be. If I will ask, if I will listen, I will be blessed. I have seen it. I have lived it. I'm trying a new thing, an actual prayer list, to more fully draw my soul out in prayer, to make me more receptive to promptings, to catalysts, to better push start.

Sensory Memories of Heaven

I have a friend whose son has a service dog. They love their dog and are so grateful for his faithful, tireless service to their son and to the whole family. She tells a story of this dog's life before service, with his first family, where he was loved and trained to become a service dog. Though it has been years since he lived with his first family, his ears and his nose remember that first place of love. My friend tells of walking through a crowded mall and their dog, in service mode, protecting and aiding her son, right up until the moment he heard the voice of his first caretaker and then he was instantly in her arms, loving on her like the puppy he had once been. Another time in a similarly crowded place, all he had to do was smell this same beloved woman's pant leg and he was again transported to life and love as a puppy.

I thought about these joyful reunions and thought of my desire to connect to the same level of sensory memory, not with a dog, but with heaven. I thought of the primary song: I know that my Savior loves me:

A long time ago in a beautiful place, children were gathered round Jesus. he blessed and taught as they felt of His love. Each saw the tears on His face. The love that He felt for His little ones, I know He feels for me. I did not touch Him or sit on His knee, yet Jesus is real to me. Now I am here in a beautiful place, learning the teachings of Jesus. Parents and teachers will help guide the way, lighting my path every day. Wrapped in the arms of my Savior's love I feel His gentle touch. Living each day, I will follow His way, Home to my Father above. I know He lives. I will follow faithfully. My heart I give to Him. I know that my Savior loves me.

I want to be able to feel the real sensory memories of heaven. I don't have the nose or the ears of a dog. My Spirit must become sensitive, which requires me to train it, to quiet the influences that would distract me.

In sacrament meeting last week, a woman spoke of a dark time in her life, when she was so bereft, so dark she didn't even want to seek light. Her talk went on to discuss emerging from that place of darkness and who and what helped her to seek light once again. I have found myself stuck on that thought--too dark to want to seek light. I have known people who have gotten stuck in that place, people who suffer as this faithful woman suffered. I know people like that now, suffering in darkness with no seeming ability to want to seek light again. What makes the difference? What inoculates someone from getting stuck in darkness, from not wanting to seek light any longer? I think it is being blessed with and seeking out these sensory memories of heaven.

One of my favorite people saves thank you notes and uses them as book marks, so that she can remember people who love her and who have been touched by her--little touchstones of love in her day. Choosing to remind herself of people who love her cultivates light, it strengthens and buoys her spirit.

The more I expose my spirit to light, the more carefully I record my spiritual experiences with that light, the more sensory my memories become. They fold into my ears and muscles in ways that are sacred. I suppose we are all that service dog, protecting and loving and aiding those in our care. All while our spirits remember, our spirits know life in heaven. I'm trying to train my spirit to be like a service dog's nose--embracing heaven, embracing light whenever and however it presents itself.

Voices

We played a game today in primary. A child was chosen and turned his/her back to the wall as the Primary President played a clip from a conference talk. Hearing the voice of the prophet or apostle, but not seeing, the child then guessed to whom the voice belonged. I was amazed at how many of the children guessed right. They have experience listening to a prophet's voice. I remembered a different time in my life when my friend was the YW president in an old city ward with a struggling youth program. One day, she mentioned something about one of the General Authorities. There was no name recognition. No face recognition, definitely no voice recognition. These young women had no idea who she was talking about and they were the regularly attending ones! Right then, she made a plan to change this. She knew the power and safety in following the prophet. She knew that her girls needed to know who to listen to, who to watch for, who to believe.

This world has so many voices. So many people willing to tell us a story offered as truth. How can we recognize actual truth unless we become experienced in listening to the prophet's voice?

In our primary class, we talked about the restoration of the Church. We worked on memorizing the sixth Article of Faith and got a bit hung up on some of the words. I threw out most of my lesson and talked, instead, about the basics of the restoration: how the priesthood is permission from Jesus to act in His name. I showed them a permission slip my son needs for a campout later this week. We talked about how Joseph Smith was given this priesthood, this permission, and that the same permission, the same priesthood is held by our leaders to allow us to make covenants, receive ordinances and blessings, to return Home. I want them to know safety. I want them to know which voices are safe to follow. I want them to have the benefit of priesthood power in their lives.

The world is a muddy place. So many voices. But God is a god of order. His message, His voice is always the same. He uses patterns so that we can recognize His message and distinguish it from the other voices seeking to distract us. He sends us people who are good and strong and safe to point the way to those messages, to help us to be in a position to receive light. In times of confusion, in times of darkness, we can return to the place where we last had light, where we last felt His Spirit to reconnect with how truth feels and to re-learn which voices are trustworthy. He is there. He waits with His light, with His love, with those servants who will always speak His truth.

The Benefit of Sacrifice

Last week in Sharing Time, several people came in and talked about how they or their ancestors were blessed for choosing the right. I was struck by 3 women who each talked of how they chose to make and keep covenants even though their parents did not support them. Temple weddings were held without moms and dads. Kids went to church on their own, without family support. Young adults left other churches to be baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Knowing this about each of these women made me love and admire them even more than I already did.

This morning, I was thinking about the power of their words for the children who listened and I was struck with something entirely different. My mom was one of those women. Her parents weren't active for a long time. She pushed and encouraged them to get it together to be sealed as a family, but it didn't really stick. Somehow, it seems the last time they were in the temple was for my parents' sealing. By the time my aunt got married, they were, again, no longer active and they never really were my entire life. My mom wanted more. She searched for more. High on her list of attributes for a spouse was a man who honored the priesthood and came from a strong gospel family. She found those things in my dad and as a result of her trailblazing, my life has been blessed with the opportunity to make sacred covenants and be fully supported in making and keeping them. While I spent my youth in an area with few members of the church and with many opportunities to share the gospel and explain my choices, I never, ever, had to do that at home. At home, I was safe in the knowledge, like the primary song that 'mine is a home where every hour is blessed by the strength of priesthood power.' I have never taken that for granted. I know what a rare blessing the strength of my parents' covenants is for me and mine. But I had never really thought much about the sacrifice end of it for my mother. I always knew how much she valued a strong gospel home and how she had actively gone looking for it. But, that vital search came at a cost of separation from her parents, to a certain extent. Which could not have been easy. Though they never really returned to church, there wasn't animosity, so I hope, now that they're gone, they are grateful, too, for the choices and sacrifices my mom made to ensure their family continued in the tradition of their ancestors instead of in their own lack of gospel commitment.

Each week, I teach really important things to my primary class. They struggle. We struggle and yesterday was no picnic. I stopped and told them that I try every week to make the lesson fun and engaging and even to bring a game. But that we are there to learn the most important tools for their lives--how to make and keep sacred covenants, how to recognize and embrace truth and how to honor the sacrifices of those who made these truths and blessings available for us, so that we can be happy with the people we most love forever. Lessons I need to remember myself.

Tetris and Birthdays

Turning 47 was so uneventful. I've been 47 for a whole week now and nothing really feels different except for the lovely roses DH gave me that are still pretty after a week. He's been out of town almost constantly, but was home for my birthday and it was actually the only day for over a week that we would all be together because Bam left on his super fabulous 5th grade field trip to Catalina Island Marine Institute the night before DH got home last week and came home from Cali the night after DH left again on another business trip. He will be home again Friday and gone again on Sunday. It's wearing on us all. Him, clearly, most of all. But for me, it just means that all the scheduling tetris of parenting and adulting falls entirely to me. And that tetris makes me crazy. I look at my calendar and see all the blocks overlapping and covering each other, noting all the places I really need to be at the same time and I get so very claustrophobic. With that very claustrophobic feeling, we were supposed to go to dinner as a family, after piano, which ends at 6:30. And I just couldn't. The idea of a late dinner, leading to late bedtimes combined with the regular early rising of seminary and school and DH flying out again and I just couldn't. So, I begged to just get Papa Murphy's pizza. DH said I could do what I wanted, it was my birthday. The kids groaned a little but eventually saw reason. I made a cake that I love but none of them like, so they had ice cream and DH and I had slices of cake and we all went to bed. I am old, I suppose, because that truly seemed the best use of my birthday evening.

The best birthday gift of the whole month has been, in retrospect, seeing how my schedule has just worked every day, even and especially when it seemed too tight, too impossible to work. People step in to carpool, activities that crowded things get cancelled, and CE, being that she has had no actual car for herself, has become increasingly magnanimous, willingly picking people up and ferrying them places in her dad's car and just generally making tetris work.

DH bought me an Ikea desk for my birthday and we bought some new bookshelves for the living room (we are ever in need of bookshelves and never able to purge very many of our beloved books. They are everywhere). I like putting together (simple) Ikea furniture. It is an oddly satisfying 3D puzzle, I suppose. My favorite piece is the circular twisty thing that stabilizes and locks bolts into place when you twist it. I suppose that's how life has been this month. Schedule tetris, putting everything together and the crazy making claustrophobia of it all and then the Divine Builder comes in with His master twisty thing and just settles everything, locks it into a workable plan. What a blessing to feel that, as I am honestly trying to do what is needful, He, as always, makes up the difference in very real, very tangible ways.

Mind Blown

Christmas brought us to my parents's house this year and for sacrament meeting the Sunday before Christmas, we were blessed to have a powerful returned missionary and a young Romanian convert speak to us. I've spent the time since then looking at my notes from time to time and wanting to weave them into something cohesive, but all I get is blown away by the power of that meeting. Each thing I wrote down was a sermon on its own. The whole meeting, well, I think I just need to copy out each thing I wrote down.

We understand and know those we are most like. We will know Christ more as we become more like Him.

Intellectual knowledge of the gospel is useless if we don't have a testimony, a spiritual witness.

If you do not understand repentance, you will not teach repentance and if you do not teach it, you will not build the kingdom. The Book of Mormon holds the key to understanding repentance.

Strengthening the patterns of the gospel of Jesus Christ in our lives.

If we do not understand the character of God, we do not understand ourselves. The scriptures teach us the character of God.

Using the Book of Mormon to keep me alive.

So proud, so very very proud

This is my first baby. She is a pioneer for our family as the first child, the first grandchild on my side and now, the first to reach 18. We butt heads a lot, as she sees this looming adulthood as FREEDOM and I (in a more 'been there, done that') see all that she doesn't know yet and seek to teach her that adulthood is so much more about accepting responsibility and so much less about grabbing privilege. But, as our time together wanes, I am trying to do a better job of showing that I see how awe inspiring and praiseworthy she is.

When CE was a wee 3 year old preschool child, she was almost mute in her class. She loved to attend and would chatter to me about all she had learned and done that day, but each day her teacher would say, 'I know she knows her letters and everything else we are talking about, but she won't say it. She won't talk.' She would just sit there with her big, silent blue eyes, taking it all in. Until February, when she turned 4 and then it was as if the flood gates were opened. She finally felt comfortable and her voice was unleashed. The teacher couldn't get her to quiet after that. And that is really how she has approached much of the daunting situations in her life. She watches, she listens, she waits and then she leaps. And oh how she leaps.

She has never seemed to let fear stop her, or one failure to keep her from trying again and again. She tried out for student leadership in sixth grade and didn't get in. So she tried again in seventh grade and flourished, loving her time in middle school leadership so much that she wanted to continue the experience in high school. We are zoned for a high school different than most of the kids who attend our middle school and at the time, the high school and the middle school didn't even seem to speak, so no information was spread about how to get involved in high school activities. CE wouldn't let it lie. She wanted to be involved. We called her YW camp director (a teacher there) who brought CE into the school and introduced her to the advisor and the gathered council preparing for the upcoming school year in the days before school started. CE was willing to work. She attended all the work hours as the only freshman there. In fact, she was known for a while only as 'the freshman.' The advisor complained that she needed to come out of her shell. And then she decided she wanted to run for office. She ran for a class office, but against a girl with the same first name and lost. She ran for Student Body Secretary. An upperclassman who had recently fought cancer decided to run against her. You can't beat cancer and CE lost the race. She ran for a class office and lost by only a few votes. She still was undaunted and ran for regional representative at the state Student Council level. This required her to give a speech in front of many many students and adults from all over Nevada. She did it. But still, she lost. That didn't stop her. She's now the Student Body Secretary for her senior year. She is eminently responsible--the advisor trusts her over other teachers involved in student council and those teachers agree that CE is more orderly and responsible than they are. She picks up the slack when others drop it. She is the go to girl. But more importantly, she is the girl who makes sure the timid freshman knows where her classes are, that people are celebrated and nurtured and loved.

All while carrying a very full academic load and early morning seminary. Her freshman year she decided to make gospel conversation openings for herself. Instead of shoving her scriptures to the bottom of her school bag after seminary, she put her Book of Mormon on the top, so it would fall out, often, and she would be able to casually bring the gospel into conversation. CE defends her faith. She is smart and articulate and she doesn't shrink. She is waiting and planning for her turn to be a full-time missionary. I can hardly imagine the power she will bring with her.

CE is stubborn. She is strong. She is wonderful. I am in awe. And I don't tell her nearly enough. Funny how that snowy day she joined our life has so quickly turned into this desert whirlwind life where we anxiously await an email from BYU telling her she gets to go back to where her life started, this time for her own degrees, to begin her own adventure.

Don't Forget

Isaiah 40: 28-31

Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding. He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

Haven't you heard? Did you forget? God is everlastingly on your side. He doesn't get tired and those that wait on Him will have the strength needed to fly.

Years ago, when we still had TV, I would occasionally see an ad for Christian music. One of the lyrics stuck with me and pops up into my head on days like this:

Our God is an awesome God
He reigns from heaven above
With wisdom, power, and love
Our God is an awesome God

(Rich Mullins songwriter)

I was a teen in the eighties, when awesome became a generic term, much like amazing has become now. My seminary teacher didn't like that such a powerful word had lost its thunder and now, so many years later, I understand his dismay. The dictionary definition of awesome is "inspiring an overwhelming feeling of reverence admiration or fear." We are in such desperate need of this awesome God we have. I am so truly overwhelmed by reverence and admiration. He gives us strength; He holds us up. He wants us to fly.

Hope and Basketball

S is a beautiful young woman in our ward with profound autism. When she turned twelve, her mom and grandmother were worried that the change to YW would be upsetting for S because she loved Primary so much. Her grandma in particular worried that S would be disruptive to YW and that the girls wouldn't respond well. I watched the wonderful, beautiful YW call out to S to greet her. They shared their scriptures with her, they spent time with her. They loved her. When I was released from being the YW president, her grandma bore a testimony of gratitude. She said "Every Sunday S says 'Grandma church! See my friends!' You are her friends because you say hi to her, look her in the eyes and say something nice to her. You made yourselves her friends." I was so proud of 'my' YW that day. Since then, they have begun helping S with her Personal Progress and have continued to love and nurture her.

Our stake has never been very athletically minded, at least not in an organized sense. One year there was a half-hearted attempt to have YW and YM volleyball games. Recently they decided to try basketball. Games are held on weeknights--YW on Thursday nights and YM on Friday nights. A 9pm game on a school night before 6am seminary the next morning can provide a significant obstacle to regular team participation.

Our ward YW have never been terribly enthusiastic about basketball. CE really deeply hates the sport and has only played under significant duress. But S likes basketball. Her tutor plays on the state championship basketball team and taught her to shoot and dribble. So, now our ward YW play basketball.

We arrived at the stake center tonight for the first game of the season. CE saw S. She saw another ward member and then no one else. S's grandma started to get worried that the girls would have to forfeit. S wanted to play so badly. The other game finished. I jokingly said to one of the girls finishing, hey, do you want to stay and play another game? She enthusiastically volunteered to help out. She and two other teammates stayed, so we had a team of 6 to start the game.

Almost every time S got the ball, she made a basket. The refs, once they noticed S's aversion to the whistle, hardly blew their whistles. The scorekeeper barely tapped the buzzer. Everyone tried to make sure S got the ball and then when she did they waited. Both teams stopped, waited for S to dribble slowly to the basket and shoot. Over and over again. No one told the girls on the other team to let S shoot. They just did. They all cheered her on. She's a really good shot! No one forced the girls that stayed to help out our feeble roster; they gladly chipped in. The game was real, it wasn't given away to our ward. We lost by 2 points and everyone got to play and participate. S was a real participant, according to her strengths and abilities. It was the most loving basketball game I have ever seen.

Sometimes I am in absolute awe of the youth I know. S had fun. She played basketball. She was loved both by the girls who know her and already love her, as well as by girls who met her tonight on the court--girls with divine light streaming from their eyes. Sometimes I get discouraged by all the mean spiritedness in the world. The world can be a dark and unkind place. And then sometimes, I go to a basketball game and I am filled with hope for the future.

Divinity

A friend of mine told the story of her younger daughter receiving a small Book of Mormon from her Sunbeam teacher. She loved that book and every day, every single day, she would sit and leaf through the pages while singing "I Am a Child of God" to herself. This infuriated the older sister somehow. "Mom! Make her stop!" That isn't a songbook. It doesn't say that in that book. Make her stop!!" And then, my wise friend realized and articulated for her sweet older daughter that the Book of Mormon, that all the scriptures, say exactly that. The scriptures are where we learn that we are God's. We are children of God. They are written with this single purpose in mind--God so loved YOU that He created worlds without number, sent prophets to guide and protect YOU, sent His Son to save YOU and usher YOU home to Him again. Somehow that sweet pre-reading little girl knew, without being able to read the Book of Mormon, that it really was the most elemental text of "I am a Child of God."

I am a Child of God has always been a song of power, a touchstone of divinity, for me. On my mission, we would sing it at open houses, with investigators, with struggling members. One of the elders asked why I always wanted to sing that song and I told him that the song teaches the most basic and special truth of the Restoration. Everything else comes out of the truth that we belong to God and that He loves us and wants us Home again. The world wants us to forget, to genericize us, to demoralize us.

I spent several hours holding my sobbing baby girl yesterday. A confluence of bad friend interactions over the weekend had left her feeling vulnerable and she didn't have the strength to go to the dance class where she always felt vulnerable. I battle with wanting to 'mother bear' my way into those bad friend interactions--fixing them, righting the wrongs. But that won't help anything and it won't embolden my baby girl either. She has always been shy in peopley situations. If she has one friend, she can do a lot and it took a great deal of desire on her part to even sign up for a dance class with no one she knew. She was so crushed by the bad friend moments of the weekend. She felt alone and there was nothing I could do but hold her. I didn't want it to define her. We talked about how it didn't matter to me whether she went to the dance class, ever. But I knew, and told her, that if she was just afraid, that skipping one class wouldn't make it easier next time, it would make it scarier. And she really loves to dance. Ultimately we went to dance, armed with some chocolate licorice and some fun songs to sing on the way to the class.

Some years ago, the very timid friend of CE had as a motto "I can do hard things." One of the reasons why my children take piano lessons is that it's important to me that they do at least one hard thing every day. I do my children no service if I clear the way of hard things for them; if I fight their battles and create safe places for them. I want them safe, more than anything. But temporary safety that comes in the absence of bad friend moments or in the absence of daunting classes isn't really safety at all. Safety comes in being a safe person, not finding one. Safety comes in feeling to their bones that they are divine, that they have power from on High given them from a loving Heavenly Father who knows their name. This safety doesn't clear all the anxious moments of our timid hearts, but it does provide a touchstone, an anchor from which to weather them.

I am a child of God. And He has sent me here. I am a child of God. And so my needs are great. I am a child of God. Rich blessings are in store. I am a child of God. His promises are sure. Celestial glory shall be mine if I can but endure.

Lead me. Guide me. Walk beside me. Help me find the way. Teach me all that I must do, to live with Him someday.