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.
Saturday, August 26, 2017
Monday, August 21, 2017
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,
Sacrifice?
Trial?
Unfathomable, hardly. Blessing.
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.
Friday, August 18, 2017
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.
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.
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.
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