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.
Monday, March 20, 2017
Monday, March 6, 2017
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.
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.
Wednesday, March 1, 2017
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.
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.
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