Words to Live and Write by

I am willing to fall Because I have learned how to rise.

I craft Love from heartbreak, Compassion from shame, Grace from disappointment, Courage from failure.

I am among the brave and brokenhearted, and I am rising strong.

(credit to Brene Brown)

Thursday, December 18, 2014

These Are The Days


Another eye-opening experience today, given to me by a wise, older lady:

Lana and I (meaning just I) decided to take advantage of any clearance deals at the local Payless and see if any of the out-of-season-therefore-on-super-clearance shoes in two sizes up were worth buying. I busied myself looking for good deals while Lana busied herself pulling tons of shoes in sizes way too small for her off the shelves, which meant I was hopping between sizes too big for her and sizes too small for her trying to keep things relatively tidy and somewhere in between all that helping her try on shoes in her actual size for her enjoyment. It was hard work. 

Then, after finding the one deal worth the investment (her next pair of church shoes), we waited at the counter for the single employee in the store to notice we were ready to leave, which meant I did a lot of picking up after Lana who'd taken great interest in all the sparkly jewelry and stuffed animal purses. 

That's when wise old lady friend approached me and said, "I wished I could have gotten a video of you two back there." (The toddler shoes are at the back of the store for a reason, I think.) She smiled really big, "Just the way you two were talking to each other and interacting. I remember that." 


I smiled back at her, taking a moment to see the chaos through her eyes. "Yeah," I finally said, "These are the days." And felt warm and fuzzy inside for a moment. 


But, because I was stressed and still grabbing things out of my child's kleptomaniac hands, I couldn't help adding, "The days that go by too quickly but also last forever."


Leave your thoughts and comments please!

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Christmas and Christ's Invitation to Become as a Little Child

Christmas and Christ's Invitation to Become as a Little Child

Scott E. Ferrin was a professor in the BYU Department of Educational and Leadership Foundations when this devotional address was given on 10 December 2013.


In conclusion, brothers and sisters—the Plausible Evasion Research Institute, an institute I made up, has found that “in conclusion” is the most welcome phrase for most audiences, after “there will be refreshments after this meeting.” So, in conclusion, I love Christmas and I love BYU devotionals. I am grateful to be with you, and my older siblings, graduates of BYU, are here, having traveled from Arizona and Idaho. They must have thought I was graduating today. I’m not saying my older siblings are old, but there were no history classes on campus when they attended, just current events. The deodorant Old Spice was then known as New Spice, and the Dead Sea was just mildly sick.
Since my academic focus is education law, and since much of that discipline and practice is focused on protecting the rights and persons of children, I’d like to discuss what it means in the perfect economy of the Lord’s kingdom to become as a little child. I believe Christmas and the birth of the Christ child help us explore this concept.
Becoming as a Little Child
When our Heavenly Father wanted to save the world, He didn’t take over a country or develop a militia. He sent a helpless child to a choice and worthy woman and a humble and believing man living in insecure circumstances in a conquered land occupied by a hostile force. The harsh geopolitical and military circumstances of Christ’s birth should remind us that Heavenly Father can bless us even if the external circumstances of our lives aren’t necessarily easy or peaceful.
Herod the Great ruled over that land, under Rome’s ultimate control. He was mighty and built magnificent monuments—at least one of which overshadowed the land when Christ was born, being visible in all directions for miles. We can’t help but contrast Herod’s mighty palace with the stable. If we knew for sure where the stable was, wouldn’t we wish to visit the site of that sacred birth? But who cares as much about anything Herod built, besides perhaps one or two of our learned faculty members? Most of us with a normal threshold for boredom ignore Herod.
Christ is infinitely more important. We seek Christ’s words and probably have many of His words memorized. Well, not everyone does apparently, because I’m always surprised on Jeopardy when those brainiacs often seem to know nothing about the scriptures. We Mormons, in turn, are continually lost on the “Potent Potables” category. We celebrate and rejoice in the words and the happenings of Christ’s birth. Does anyone, even the most bookishly versant among us, celebrate the words or circumstances of Herod and his birth?
The New Testament shows us something of the Christ child we celebrate at Christmas in the perfect young adult He has become. He hasn’t become full of Himself and self-important, careworn, and brusque. Although Isaiah described Him as “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3), Christ doesn’t constantly groan under the weight of His office. Rather, we read in Luke:
And they brought unto him also infants, that he would touch them: but when his disciples saw it, they rebuked them.
But Jesus called them unto him, and said, Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God. [Luke 18:15–16; emphasis added]
When Christ says that “of such is the kingdom of God,” it is possible that He is also giving us a great insight into His nature and the nature of God and godliness. Christ continued and taught, “Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein” (Luke 18:17).
We must “receive” the supernal Christmas gift of the kingdom of God as a little child. If you and I in our weakness follow the plan of happiness our Heavenly Father has established—made possible by the gift of His Son—we will receive the greatest gift possible: eternal life with our Heavenly Father. How are we to receive and value such a gift? Perhaps we receive and value it by living abundantly, by repenting and becoming converted, and by becoming as little children. Christ warned:
Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. . . .
And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me.
But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea. [Matthew 18:3, 5–6]
For our purposes I wonder if we shouldn’t each consider ourselves as one who might “offend one of these little ones” when we let the world destroy the believing and loving child within ourselves by being weighed down and frightened by the world and our responsibilities and challenges. Christ seems to call us to put off childish fears and instead be trustingly and courageously childlike.
I have a friend, Mossi White, who as an infant was one of the unwitting heroes of World War II. Mossi’s parents, and I guess Mossi herself, were part of the underground in Norway, and she acted as an unwitting secret courier carrying secret papers hidden in her diapers, where German soldiers were unlikely to look, for obvious reasons. Think of the fears her parents had to overcome. Had they developed what Christ meant when He asked us to develop a childlike nature? Is it possible that, in their childlike nature, Mossi’s parents couldn’t be frightened enough to accept that wrong was right or that there was nothing they could do to stop the evil of the Third Reich? Mossi’s father was later captured by the Gestapo and sent to a concentration camp in Poland, which he ultimately survived. Mossi’s parents saw evil, and they did what a beautiful child would do: they tried to make it all better.
Perhaps because she was raised by such parents Mossi has become a woman of great strength and courage today. She is a cancer survivor who served for years as president of the Provo School Board and as president of the American Association of School Boards, traveling and speaking extensively nationally and internationally, seeking only to bless the lives of children. Does Mossi’s parents’ situation and response remind us of the birth of the Christ child in a land and among a people oppressed by both military might and false tradition, just as Norway and the world were oppressed by the Third Reich?
Developing Childlike Wonder and Belief
Christmas gives us time to make memories in our quest for conversion to the childlike. I always tell my children, and I remind you, that we only get a finite number of Christmases on this earth, so we should enjoy each one and never get too mature to enjoy all the classic Christmas traditions, Christmas movies, and Christmas-themed jokes. (What did the snowman order at the restaurant? A hot chocolate and a mop. What did Santa call the reindeer that couldn’t fly? Venison.) I often invite my children to stop and consciously imprint a memory or a mental snapshot during Christmas, perhaps of a snow-covered mountain on the continental divide in New Mexico while cross-country skiing or of hiking to the top of a 12,000-foot peak in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Or, in the case of my sister Paula’s family, taking mental snapshots of scaring other family members by sending agents (and I have been that secret agent before) to leave a creepy snowman outside the front door of some lucky selected member of their family around the country. They open their front door to find this creepy snowman staring balefully, broodingly, and ominously at them.
I regularly enjoin my children to treasure and keep these mental snapshots from Christmas—and to not fear snowmen, a disorder labeled hominochionophobia. By the way, fear of Santa is the disorder labeled Claustrophobia.
I know Christmas is a mixed blessing for BYU students and professors. Beautiful Christmas lights appear, thanks to the efforts of our grounds crew on campus, but also worries over finals and final papers stalk the campus. Students are making plans to travel home, where they will dramatically collapse into their loved ones’ arms, withered husks of their former selves, blighted and trembling from stress and lack of sleep and appropriate nutrition during finals.
Christmas is really most wondrous for little children and for withered BYU students. I hope it is not shocking to reveal to my own daughters (the youngest is fifteen and the oldest is a BYU senior on a mission in Nicaragua) that on Christmas Eve, after we put out the horse feed in buckets for Santa’s reindeer, I was the one who emptied the buckets after they went to bed. What about childlike wonder and hope do we all try to preserve in ourselves and in our children through Christmas and its gentle deceptions? Is it a sense of wonder, a sense of the possible, as an antidote to fear? I suggest we all need to develop a sense of wonder as we ponder the Atonement and the childlike nature Christ wants each of us to develop.
I remember Christmases from my childhood, and they remind me of the love and preparation that my parents went through to provide great experiences for us at Christmas. To show my age, I remember a Christmas when I dearly wanted what some of my friends already had: J. C. Penney walkie-talkies. We used them to play army. Imagine the dim recesses of time before the cell phones and twittering you now experience. Contact was not constant then. I know there are some here managing text and twitter contacts even as I speak, arranging dates or Christmas travel or taunting a Yankees fan that the Red Sox won the World Series.
On that Christmas long ago in the sixties, I thought walkie-talkies cost so much that I had no hope of getting a set. When I got one, it was a miracle that I still remember with a little frisson of happiness. Almost immediately I went out with my friends on that Christmas day in Arizona to use our walkie-talkies to play army, as was our custom in those days, complete with gun sounds and medics who would attend to you after you had been wounded. Those medics would come up to the wounded and shamanistically wave their hands, muttering the magic words “Fix, fix, fix,” and you were back in the game.
I realize that acting out such a bloody scenario today could be seen as troubling and would violate most schools’ safe-school policies if it occurred during recess. Times have changed. Television in my childhood consisted of a grand total of three to five channels—one from Mexico showing bullfights and one an educational channel. Then prime time included weekly doses of the popular TV show Combat! with Vic Morrow, et al., or Twelve O’Clock High and other such shows based on World War II.
It’s a little different today. Today most of you don’t know that Jimmy Stewart, star of the Christmas classics Mr. Krueger’s Christmas and It’s a Wonderful Life, served through the horrors of World War II as a wing commander flying B-17s with great courage and skill. Most of you were not raised by a decorated World War II combat veteran who saw and inflicted horrific death as a B-17 pilot, flying daylight bombing raids over Germany when he was younger than most of you. And yet after the hell that such parents and society had experienced, such men and women as my parents, and perhaps your grandparents or great-grandparents, through Christmas and throughout our lives, protected us and let us be children untouched by the horrors they had waded through. They even let us play war without scaring us too much about what it actually meant. They knew that Christ hasn’t promised we can avoid the horrors this world is capable of inflicting upon us. They also knew that we are to become as little children by choice, despite the world’s horrors.
Living Life with Childlike Courage
When you were a child, you probably also knew what you wanted for Christmas. Similarly, when you were asked what you wanted to be, you had wonderful plans. How has your career path changed since then? I don’t notice a plethora of cowboys, firemen, or Disney princesses on campus. When you were a child, did you say, “Well, I don’t know if I’m quite up to the preparation and entrance exams necessary to be a doctor or the physical preparation required to be a fireman”? Did you decide you couldn’t live on the low wages paid to cowboys?
To a child, at least to a healthy child who hasn’t been harmed by abuse, the world and Christmas itself are all still fresh and possible. So what happened to you and to me as we grew older, and, most important, what happened to us that Christ wants us to combat in our maturity in order to become as little children? Why do we tend to become stuffy scaredy-cats?
There’s nothing sadder than youth being wasted on the young. As an old guy, I admonish you young BYU students to not waste your youth and to not be big scaredy-cats. We’re supposed to become as little children, and that shouldn’t include a lot of fear about our future.
In heaven’s economy, true maturity is the conversion of becoming childlike. With all the duties and responsibilities that weigh him down, I’d submit that our prophet President Thomas S. Monson is a prototypical example of maturing into this childlike ideal:
I reiterate that, as holders of the priesthood of God, it is our duty to live our lives in such a way that we may be examples of righteousness for others to follow. As I have pondered how we might best provide such examples, I have thought of an experience I had some years ago while attending a stake conference. During the general session, I observed a young boy sitting with his family on the front row of the stake center. I was seated on the stand. As the meeting progressed, I began to notice that if I crossed one leg over the other, the young boy would do the same thing. If I reversed the motion and crossed the other leg, he would follow suit. I would put my hands in my lap, and he would do the same. I rested my chin in my hand, and he also did so. Whatever I did, he would imitate my actions. This continued until the time approached for me to address the congregation. I decided to put him to the test. I looked squarely at him, certain I had his attention, and then I wiggled my ears. He made a vain attempt to do the same, but I had him! He just couldn’t quite get his ears to wiggle. He turned to his father, who was sitting next to him, and whispered something to him. He pointed to his ears and then to me. As his father looked in my direction, obviously to see my ears wiggle, I sat solemnly with my arms folded, not moving a muscle. The father glanced back skeptically at his son, who looked slightly defeated. He finally gave me a sheepish grin and shrugged his shoulders. [“Examples of Righteousness,” Ensign, May 2008, 66]
I know only a little about the many challenges our prophet is faced with regularly, but I do know they are weighty, and yet he does not appear careworn and beaten by maturity into losing the child within. What can we learn about becoming as a little child from our beloved prophet?
I hope it isn’t inappropriate to say that my wife is not that mature. For one thing, she’s about the only person, outside of kindergarteners, who laughs reliably at my jokes. She has been a professor in Boston University’s School of Management and a highly paid consultant in the petroleum industry and in other management settings, including Boeing. Now she teaches kindergarten. One beautiful day she had the courage to say, “Although I like being a management consultant, what I really want to do is to teach kindergarten” (and be poor), so she made a major career change. You should see her in kindergarten. She reminds me of those Disney princesses when she is surrounded by her kindergarten kids. I expect to see singing birds and butterflies around her. Life is great in kindergarten, and you get to wear costumes at Halloween.
I invite us to become like her and like her kindergarteners, with their fresh and courageous approach to careers and the future.
I’d suggest, my young brothers and sisters, that you and I may have lost some hope as we’ve matured. Moroni said in Ether 12:32: “Wherefore man must hope, or he cannot receive an inheritance in the place which thou hast prepared.”
God hasn’t sent us here to fearfully creep through our lives and education. I suggest that even in our hardest classes we could act this out a bit more by worrying less about what the professor thinks is important or what will be on the test and by worrying more about exploring what we find fascinating in the subject matter of our classes—and by taking time to prepare to serve our fellows and our world. One day soon you’ll leave BYU—an extraordinary place. Will you have crept through this experience, preserving a businesslike GPA but not fostering childlike wonder and not making a powerful impact on hearts and individuals’ circumstances? Do you fear and tremble before graduate school entrance requirements? Without hope, you cannot be pleasing to God, and, as a little secret, without hope, curiosity, and wonder, you can’t really be too pleasing to your professors either.
Availing ourselves of hope, curiosity, and wonder, and adding faith to the mix, we should not choose too safe of a plan in our lives. We all know that if at first you don’t succeed, then skydiving is not your sport. I’m not suggesting risking anything that is likely to foreshorten your time in mortality. I am suggesting getting a little more childlike joy out of trying more things, even if they seem beyond us. I’m suggesting not being slavishly concerned about convention, future earnings, or society’s expectations if they run counter to the core of our best and most unique childlike nature individually. We need to be fearless and not fainthearted.
As a BYU student long ago, my brother-in-law was an example of fearlessness and not faintheartedness. Since the statute of limitations has run out, the story can now be told. In the dim recesses of time, when phones were rotary and thumbs were for hitchhiking, not texting, computers were huge and programs and data were entered into them on computer cards.
This gentleman, whom we’ll call Frank, because that’s his name, was an electrical engineering major here at BYU. The by-product of entering data onto computer cards then was that in punching them there were resulting leftover tiny bits of paper or cardstock.
Frank, and some undisclosed accomplices, collected and introduced this computer confetti, or chad, into the ventilating ducts of my sister’s BYU apartment so that later, when they turned on their cooler or heater fan, they would be greeted by a Christmas-like shower of paper snow. Unfortunately, such chad or confetti didn’t all come out at once. In fact, due to static electricity cling and the interactions of metal ducts and energized small bits of paper, there was a shower of confetti from then on every time the fans went on. I daresay that someone in this audience has just learned why the vents in their apartment still occasionally waft stray bits of computer-card chad gently onto their carpet.
Unsurprisingly, this greatly annoyed my sister’s roommates—who were not sufficiently childlike, I guess—but Frank’s pluck and daring warmed the cockles of my sister’s heart. The point is that although Frank may have exercised questionable judgment, it was kind of cool. He dared and he won the fair maid because his own heart was not faint. Now, President Samuelson and members of the campus law-enforcement and student-discipline community, I’m not advocating any types of pranks; it’s more a mind-set and a childlike courage I advocate.
A safer example may be my current colleague here at BYU, Chris Sorenson. When he was the principal of an elementary school here in Utah, a young man with a disability that confined him to a wheelchair appeared at his school with his parents to enroll. Chris wondered what class to assign him to. While the school secretary gave the boy and his parents a tour of the school, Chris privately knelt in his office and prayed about this student. He felt directed to assign him to the largest class, one already much larger than the other two sixth-grade classes. He didn’t know why; nevertheless, he took courage and trusted in the prompting he’d learned to recognize. He ignored the possible displeasure of a teacher with an already large class size. He ignored any other concerns, because he had learned not to fear when had received an answer in prayer.
To his surprise, when Chris walked this student to his new class, as soon as this new student wheeled into the class, he lit up and addressed the teacher by name, with evident relief and joy. Unknown to anyone at the school, the two knew each other well. That particular teacher had been a loved and trusted Scout leader in a previous ward, and the families had lost touch with each other. Taking the courage to seek and obey the Spirit’s prompting resulted in a successful start in a new school for a child who probably needed such a start.
Rising to Life’s Challenges as a Christlike Child
In our lives, perhaps we could in a like way overcome fear more, seek wonder more, follow the promptings of the Spirit more, and develop a bit more childlike tenacity in action and belief. Often we slink away from a challenge before we even rise to that challenge. We should consider aiming a bit higher than we are in our imagination, our love, our lives, and our academic pursuits.
As I think of rising to the challenges life provides us, I’m reminded of one of the authors of the book We Were Not Alone: How an LDS Family Survived World War II Berlin by Patricia Reece Roper and Karola Hilbert Reece. Karola Reece spoke to our youth in our ward some years ago. Her family suffered because they, as pioneer members of the Church in Berlin, didn’t fully join and support the Nazi Party. Her father had difficulty getting work since he was not a member of the Nazi Party. Later her brother was drafted into the military and was put on the Russian front. He made his own private covenant with God that he would not take a life for “Hitler’s war,” as he put it.
When Russian soldiers approached his foxhole from time to time in advances on the Russian front, he would shoot to the right or to the left or into the ground, but he would not shoot at his fellow humans for Hitler. This was his own decision, and I’m not criticizing any others who made different decisions in that war or in other wars. He and his fellow soldiers often would laugh and say, “Hey, what’s wrong with us?” because repeatedly his portion of the lines would be ignored and not attacked. He survived the war without taking a single life in a cause he did not support. This also exemplifies to me the childlike nature we are asked to develop—of courage and of deciding not to collaborate with something the child within us feels is wrong.
As a further example of rising to life’s challenges as a Christlike child, I’m reminded of one of my father’s experiences in World War II. He was the pilot of a B-17, flying daylight bombing raids over Germany and experiencing and inflicting horrific deaths when he was younger than almost everyone here. Thanks, Dad, to you and to other men and women like you. At one point, after completing a bombing run over Germany, his formation was attacked by German fighters and flack, and his plane lost an engine. This meant that the rest of the formation had to leave them behind since they could not keep up. They knew full well that they would probably be killed because they had lost the protection of the interlocking fields of fire and the protection that a formation with its many guns provided. Then they lost a second engine. B-17s weren’t necessarily able to fly with only two engines, but my dad broke the throttle quadrant and could over-rev the engines, buying time for some airspeed and altitude.
The fighters swarmed to this lone plane, ready to finish it off with relative ease away from the protection of the other gunners and planes. Dad began to pray, and he also thought, “Dad, pray for me.”
In the Gila Valley in Arizona, his father—my grandfather—Ether Samuel Ferrin, got his wife and said, “Leven’s in trouble. We need to pray for him.” They knelt in humble prayer for his safety far across the world. These discrete actors’ stories were obviously pieced together later. My Dad recounts that when they were sure they were going to be destroyed, it seemed as if they suddenly became invisible to the fighters, which would just fly past.
They were able to return home to England with that plane, which Dad safely landed. After that the plane was useless in the war effort. The ground crew presented Dad with the placard from that now useless B-17. He has that placard in his home in the Gila Valley today. The key point for me in recounting this story is that as a courageous child, my father not only prayed but cried out for his father to be alerted and pray as well, because he knew and believed in his father’s faith.
Fostering the Child of God Within Us
So what manner of child ought we to become this Christmas season? As King Benjamin counseled, “Submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon [us], even as a child doth submit to his father” (Mosiah 3:19). He didn’t counsel us to be fearful or to settle for a safe but boring job or career instead of a challenging and exciting mission in life. I submit that we should be ready to be cowboys if that is what our hearts and the Spirit dictate—or kindergarten teachers or doctors or molecular biologists—and we should live our lives with courage and submission to the Lord.
This Christmas season I invite each of us to foster and care more for the child of God within us and bend to the exigencies of life and finances less—to take joy in the wonderful and simple journey to be the child that is like those who make up the kingdom of God. Paul reminded us in Romans 8:15, “For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.”
May we trust our Father and develop the childlike attributes Christ and our prophet exemplify. May we cry out “Abba, Father,” lovingly in words and action during this Christmas season, during our academic careers at BYU, and throughout our lives as joint heirs with Christ, I pray, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, amen.
© Brigham Young University. All rights reserved.


Leave your thoughts and comments please!

Monday, November 17, 2014

Bee Still

Here's a radical idea: What if what I'm doing now, as little or simple as it seems, is truly all I'm supposed to be doing right now?

I'm trying to wrap my brain around this. I've been frustrated with God lately because no matter how long or how hard or how often I pray, He's staying tight-lipped, silent. I know I'm not out of touch with His Spirit, because I feel that, confirming truths and moving my soul (just never moving it to action), so I know I'm in a good place. And I know God hears me, but He just isn't answering. 


I finally got myself to the temple last week and had a few moments to myself and told God to just say something. Tell me anything. I felt peace and calm, but received no directions. Later that week, I explained to Anthony, again, how frustrated I am with the situation. And I asked if he thought it would be inappropriate to ask for a blessing with this. I told him, I know God speaks through Priesthood blessings, and if I can't get Him to talk directly to me, maybe I can get Him to talk to someone else for me.


So we did that. And I am so enormously thankful for my husband who knows how to give a blessing of comfort as I need it - he WAITS until he knows what he needs to say, and I love the long pauses because I know he's listening so hard with his own spirit and heart for the right words. 


The overall message God sent to me was, "It's alright. You are doing enough. I'm not going to ask you for any more than what you are doing right now, so just stop fretting and trust me. I'll tell you when you need to get moving again." (It may have come across with a feeling that added a bit more of a "knock it off" flavor to it all.)


In this gospel, where we're so frequently called to be anxiously engaged in good causes, to find service opportunities and missionary opportunities, to be busy, busy, busy like the Deseret bee, being told not to do any more feels a little radical and frankly, too good to be true. But I felt it as truth. And now I'm trying to accept that as my truth right now. 


It's hard to accept what I'm doing as enough. It feels so meager. Physical, mental, and emotional taxation runs high for me, and a lot of my hardest work is resting. Rest and sleep don't look much like hard work, but I am fighting to recover my body and that is part of what it takes.I have a lot of projects, big and small, being pushed aside for later because I don't have the stamina. I'm dragging myself through most days. And yet, somehow, knowing what kind of condition I'm in, I STILL feel like I need to be that Deseret bee.
But the answer is no. Don't be a bee. Still the bees. Be still.




Leave your thoughts and comments please!

Thursday, October 30, 2014

Bruised

I did that thing they kept telling me not to do, called "standing up," and it was totally easy. So I thought I could take it to the next level - literally, by standing up on a chair - because nothing says "I am so over being sick" like Halloween decorations and cobwebs with spiders hanging from the ceiling around your front door, and since I am only 5 feet tall the ceiling is at least an-arm-and-a chair's-length away from me. Inevitably, the thing they kept warning me about standing up happened. I fell.

It wasn't a slip-and-land-on-your-feet fall. While stretched out on my toes, on the edge of the chair, I lost all vision and muscle control, but not awareness and not sensation. One second I was working my hardest to get that pin to stick, and the next I was toppling sideways and knocking the back of my head on the edge of the kitchen counter and landing soundly on the floor on my hip without any brace for impact. I screamed as sight flooded in just behind the pain and saw my dazed husband dash across the room. And then, Pain. There was no blood, but a lot of pain, which is probably how I convinced my husband I didn't need to get medical attention, and now it's some four days later. I'm not sure of all I did in those four days, but I know I talked to several people on the phone, drove my car, and even kept appointments; I have a lot of piece-meal memories that I can't string together linearly. I remember the moments of trauma and ones preceding and following it, but there isn't the usual coherency between them. My souvenirs are a sensitive place on my head that I keep forgetting about and an enormous bruise on my hip.

I think this sort of sums up the life experiences I'm supposed to have learned "the hard way." I think the hard way is about as hard as the floor, maybe harder, and regardless of how hard I knocked myself upside the head those experiences don't stay. I remember them about as well as I remember hitting my head: yeah, it hurt, a lot, but if it weren't for my bruises the memories would be as fleeting anything else. So when I share a story and point to my bruises, you can bet I only retain the lesson for as long as my body is still actually bruised; after that, it's just a story. And this is a really good analogy, but I can't quite clear the cobwebs out of my head enough for it to make sense.


I'm bruised enough to remember not to stand on chairs, and dazed enough to still believe it. In a week, I will tell you I know not to stand on chairs, but I'll do it anyway.

Sunday, October 19, 2014

All dogs (and people) go to heaven

 Recently, I shared this video on Facebook. It is a simple explanation of what we - members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (nicknamed "Mormons") - consider to be sacred and holy clothing. Like symbolic robes or garments worn in many other religions, they serve to remind us of our covenants and commitments to God.



Note: the one thing they didn't include that I wish they had is that when we are in the Temple, we wear the Temple Robes OVER other white clothes - women white skirts or dresses and men white shirts, tie, and pants. We don't wear just the robe.


THEN I was asked this great question from an extended family member, born, raised, and proud of being Catholic. The question was: Hearing that the Mormons think they r the only ones to go to heaven is that true??

I tried to give a simple but full answer. It was later requested that I post my answer to my blog for future reference. So, here is my answer to her question - do Mormons believe only they go to heaven?

Not even close to true. But it is a good question, so here's my best attempt at a simple answer.
 
Our faith actually doesn't believe in hell in the traditional sense. We believe there are three "degrees" of heaven, like the difference between the stars, moon, and sun. Depending on our faithfulness and acceptance of Christ's gospel and atonement (which can also happen after death - everyone gets an equal opportunity to hear and accept or reject Christ's gospel), we will go to one of the three heavens. The highest degree of heaven is where Heavenly Father and Christ live - so that is our ultimate goal. But no matter what we do in this life or the next, we all get to go to a heaven that is better and more beautiful than the world we live in now.

 
It is true that we believe the "keys" we need to enter the highest degree of heaven are given in our temples, and we keep them sacred (not secret - we want everyone to have a chance to receive them, which is why we send out so many missionaries to share our faith). 

 
Because our temples are literally houses of God, we believe we can only enter when we are our best selves (not perfect), doing our best to keep God's commandments, and, yes, active and believing in the LDS faith. There would be no point in entering an LDS temple unless you believed in its purpose
, which is to give us those keys to heaven, and seal the bonds of family - husband, wife, parent, child - together eternally. No 'til death do us part - the promise is forever
 
Finally, because God is perfectly just and perfectly merciful, he allows every single person the opportunity to gain these keys and eternal family. That is why we perform the ordinances like baptism by proxy (in physical place for someone who's passed on) in the temples for ancestors and others who have lived and died before us. They do not have to accept these ordinances, God will never force anyone to do it, but we do our best to ensure everyone gets the chance to make their own choice.
 


Don't ever be afraid to ask me about my faith. I am so happy to answer questions, and I always try to do it respectfully and simply. And I will never put any pressure on you to change your own religious beliefs and practices. I just think it's always best when we know the truths about each other. 



Leave your thoughts and comments please!

Friday, October 17, 2014

Messy IS Beauiful

I still love Glennon's word "brutiful." It describes life and relationships so entirely. Love this little video where she explains brutiful:
 


 "The messiest parts of our lives are also the best parts of our lives, always. The beauty is in the mess."

(I just love Glennon - she is my truth-speaker.)

Leave your thoughts and comments please!

Thursday, October 2, 2014

Eyes to See

 Broke my heart open at Costco today.

I went to pick up an rx and wet wipes and nothing else (the "nothing else" was very important and very hard because the wet wipes are at the verrry back, past all the delicious, easy, pre-made meals). Pushing a cart carrying Lana and a box of wipes that weighs as much or more than her is tough for me right now - but I can do it because I can NOT do no wet wipes - and I was panting by the time we got out the door.

Then, I notice a little old lady get out of her car, pulled up next to the doors, hobbling like one leg was in enormous pain, and she opens her trunk and walks over to her cart piled so high I have no idea how she pushed that around. And my heart ached, and I said out loud to no one, "Oh, Honey!" Because I know what that's like, literally. 

I peek into the car to see if a husband or someone is with her. Nope. And then I watch, panting and slowly pushing my cart away, as person after person, able-bodied man after man, passed RIGHT BY HER. And no one stopped. Some looked and turned their heads, but kept on walking. And my heart just BROKE. Why was no one helping her???
So I turn my cart around and walk up to her and ask if she needs help, and can I help her load her groceries into her car. (My body was insisting that it was impossible for me to do that much work, but my heart was demanding that it was impossible to leave her like that.) She said, "Bless your heart." but wouldn't let me help. "There was supposed to be someone here to help me." I looked around again - no one coming to her, none of the employees paying any attention to her.

So I turn my cart around again, really panting now, and go to the employee at the door and tell her someone needs to help that lady. She radioed for someone. I asked her how long it would take. She shrugged and said it would be several minutes because none of the cart-helpers had radios on them. (What was the point of radioing?) I frowned a little at her, Lana held up our smiley-face-marked receipt showing we'd paid for wet wipes, and finally she called out to another employee close by to ask him to help the tiny old lady load her car. And I waited there until I was sure he was doing it.

And then I panted and pushed my cart towards my car again, nearly in tears wondering how on earth this lady was going to UNload her groceries. But there's only so much I could do, so I said a prayer for her, and prayed some of those people who passed by would learn how to look around and SEE. Maybe that's part of what Jesus meant when he said, "Those who have eyes to see, let them see." I wonder.



 And now I'm at home, breathing better, and letting Lana watch "Go Diego, go!" because he's less annoying than Dora. And I just heard, in the theme song, "Helping out each other is good for everyone." I think maybe they should play that on the radio now and drive us all insane because we can't get the lyrics out of our heads, but at least we'd know that "helping out each other is good for everyone."






Leave your thoughts and comments please!

Sunday, September 28, 2014

He Lets It Rain

"Sometimes He Lets it Rain"






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Saturday, September 13, 2014

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Only Human

Do you ever hear a song and feel that the artist reached into the deepest part of your soul and put it into words and music?
"Human" by Christina Perri


Sunday, July 13, 2014

Give More Than You Can Afford




This is beautiful. And so true, those with less often give more.
You know those guys with cardboard signs by the road? We keep all our extra change in the change drawer in the car so we can give something every time possible. (Sometimes we're two lanes over so it's not possible.)
I don't know what, if any, blessings I get for this; I don't know what that person does with the $1 or so I can give; all I know is it feels RIGHT and GOOD. It feels like I am being a follower of Christ who gave everything to everyone.
My meager offerings of change are tiny, but they are my widow's mite, so to speak. We struggle with finances ourselves so badly, but I can't help thinking how much more that person with the cardboard sign is struggling. I have been given MUCH - not everything, and a lot of days it feels like not enough, but it is much all the same. And I try to live my life by the sweet hymn, "Because I have been given much I too must give." It takes courage and a soft heart - and those are values I want to develop more in myself.
It's not just street corner people, either. It's the lady at Target, looking frantic, who needs help finding something or to take my spot in line. It's making room on the freeway to let in all the cars; I can wait. It's a smile and an actual conversation with the person at the checkout counter. It is love - and it crosses all barriers. It is what I want to be.
P.S. I am so far from perfecting this attribute, but I have to start somewhere.

Sunday, July 6, 2014

Love always wins


When Keshia Thomas was 18 years old in 1996, the KKK held a rally in her home town of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Hundreds of protesters turned out to tell the white supremacist organization that they were not welcome in the progressive college town. At one point during the event, a man with a SS tattoo and wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with a Confederate flag ended up on the protesters' side of the fence and a small group began to chase him. He was quickly knocked to the ground and kicked and hit with placard sticks.

As people began to shout, "Kill the Nazi," the high school student, fearing that mob mentality had taken over, decided to act. Thomas threw herself on top of one of the men she had come to protest, protecting him from the blows. In discussing her motivation after the event, she stated, "Someone had to step out of the pack and say, 'this isn't right'... I knew what it was like to be hurt. The many times that that happened, I wish someone would have stood up for me... violence is violence - nobody deserves to be hurt, especially not for an idea."

Thomas never heard from the man after that day but months later, a young man came up to her to say thanks, telling her that the man she had protected was his father. For Thomas, learning that he had a son brought even greater significance to her heroic act. As she observed, "For the most part, people who hurt... they come from hurt. It is a cycle. Let's say they had killed him or hurt him really bad. How does the son feel? Does he carry on the violence?"

Mark Brunner, the student photographer who took this now famous photograph, added that what was so remarkable was who Thomas saved: "She put herself at physical risk to protect someone who, in my opinion, would not have done the same for her. Who does that in this world?"

And, in response to those who argued that the man deserved a beating or more, Pulitzer Prize-winning commentator Leonard Pitts Jr. offered this short reflection in The Miami Herald: "That some in Ann Arbor have been heard grumbling that she should have left the man to his fate, only speaks of how far they have drifted from their own humanity. And of the crying need to get it back.

Keshia's choice was to affirm what they have lost.
Keshia's choice was human.
Keshia's choice was hope."


To view more pictures of this Mighty Girl's remarkable act of courage and read more about the event, visit the BBC at http://bbc.in/1djDOGY


Leave your thoughts and comments please!

Monday, June 30, 2014

Tell Your Stories

“You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”
- Anne Lamott

Sunday, May 18, 2014

"How Abortion Has Changed the Discussion of Miscarraige"

 Another post that is not my own. But it might as well be. These are my feelings, so strongly, except written a bit better. I am a big fan of this woman's writing. Please visit her blog and get to know her!

"How Abortion Has Changed the Discussion of Miscarriage" from Scissortail SILK



I was finally getting back to a normal routine. My miscarriage a few weeks earlier had taken more than just my baby. It had sapped my emotional reserves as well. I was exhausted, but began to force myself to continue the necessary day-to-day tasks.
I opened the growing pile of mail. A few bills and some unrequested catalogues were quickly set aside. But as I opened a letter from the hospital, I suddenly felt more than I had in days. I could feel my face turn red and my heart began to beat quickly.
The letter read something to the effect of:
“Dear Mrs. Thompson, Blah blah blah, your insurance company will not cover your elective abortion. Blah blah blah.”
Abortion?!?
It took a few times reading over the letter to understand that I needed to contact the hospital billing office. Surely there had been a mistake.
The conversation is still fuzzy in my mind, but basically, the hospital had “miscoded” my ER visit a few weeks before. While I had experienced what they considered a spontaneous abortion (my body had terminated the pregnancy on its own) the hospital had entered it as something similar to an elective abortion. (They said that I had made the decision to terminate the pregnancy.)
I had done everything in my power to keep my baby. Abortion was the word that described just the opposite.
It has taken me nearly 8 years to realize that abortion wasn’t just a word that was mistakenly used in place of my miscarriage; it is the word that has changed the discussion of miscarriage all together.
When I lost my baby, I was surrounded by family and friends who knew that we were expecting and wanted to support us during our time of loss. I was encouraged by those who knew for themselves the heartache we were experiencing…
But life just sort of… went on…
I joined some horrible unspoken club of women who have all had miscarriages yet no one really talks about the loss or acknowledges the baby.
There wasn’t a grave stone or a funeral or meals prepared for us for weeks. I wasn’t featured on the news or connected by the hospital to other mothers who had experienced similar heartache.
I was sent home to continue to live like my baby had never died – like there never was a baby.
But recently, I have realized that this response is an indicator of the state of our society.
After all, it is hard for a society to mourn the loss of WANTED unborn life when it is busy calling it “tissue” and discrediting its personhood.
It is hard for a society to embrace a mourning mother for her loss of tissue when it is busy defending another mother’s right to dispose of it.
But for a woman who prays ceaselessly for life to fill her womb,
For a woman who has tried for years to finally have children of her own.
For an expectant mother who suddenly finds herself frantically calling her OB after finding bright red blood…
The “material” in her tummy is anything but tissue.
It is life.
It is hopes and dreams and answered prayers. It is destiny and a future and a promise of another generation. It is bike riding and little league and ballet lessons and college and grandkids…
It is a baby.
But it can never be both. Society can never acknowledge that we lost a baby and with the same breath declare the rest to be tissue.
That is how abortion has changed the discussion of miscarriage – it has silenced it.
Even though miscarriage affects millions of men and women each year, it won’t be featured on the news.
There will be no memorials for all of the WANTED unborn babies. There will be no moments of silence or Today Show features for women who are organizing support groups.
Despite the huge number of families miscarriage impacts each year – it will not be discussed widely.
Because if they call ours babies…
Then all of the aborted ones… were babies too…
And the silence – more than anything – speaks the loudest.
It’s time to change the discussion of miscarriage – by starting one. It is time to acknowledge the loss of neonatal life as…life… It is time to stop expecting women and men who have experienced miscarriage to stay silent in their own pain.
They have lost a child.
They may not have ever held it in their arms, but they dreamt a lifetime for that baby in their hearts.
From my little corner of the internet, I dare to say that the silence has spread far enough. It is up to us to speak for the babies who have been lost and embrace the mothers and fathers who have endured the heartache of such tragedy.
Abortion has changed the discussion of miscarriage – but we can change it again.
Because though they try to silence the lives of the aborted, they should not be able to silence the lives of the wanted as well.
You can read my story of miscarriage, here.




For those who do not know me, or haven’t read any of the rest of my articles, I would like to clarify a few things.
Am I against abortion? Yes.
Am I against those who have had an abortion? No.
Until my very last breath, I will love others to the best of my ability. I will encourage and talk and pray and walk out life with women who have had an abortion just as I would with those who have not. I am tired of the “us” vs “them.” I’m tired of the lines that divide women from loving and encouraging one another. My heart aches for those who will believe that because I’m pro-life, I am anti-women who have chosen abortion. I think that the women who have had an abortion are just as loveable as those who have not… if they aren’t… then I need to work on who I think is worthy of love. But just as I love women who have had an abortion, I will continue to pray for an end to it. They cannot be both babies and tissue, and I will forever know in my heart that each little life is a child.

May God give us grace as we work to heal wounds and save lives, as we speak for the unborn, and as we champion the cause for the sanctity of life at any stage.

Please consider passing this along.

http://www.scissortailsilk.com/

Leave your thoughts and comments please!

Indisposable Mama's "Why I Blog"

This was Beautiful. Not every reason I blog is the same, but so many are. Read, enjoy, perhaps understand.Visit Amanda's blog and enjoy her wonderful writing!

"Why I Blog" from www.indisposablemama.com.

Blogging is a strange endeavor.
We live in a society that values privacy.  We hoard it.  We hold it sacred.
And we value financial productivity.  We like to have some type of monetary or material reward when we put in vast amounts of time into some endeavor.
And we value the legitimizing force of authority — we like knowing our information was vetted by some content editor or copy writer.
And then there’s the blog.  We typically get very little in terms of monetary reward.  We stand on our own two feet without the weight of a publisher behind us.  And we forgo a certain amount of privacy in the areas we choose to write about.
We give of ourselves through our words.  We share our experiences, our thoughts, and a sometimes substantial part of ourselves.
So why would anyone do it?
I can’t answer for anyone else, but for me, I do it because it’s the only way I know to make sense out of the world.
We live in very fast times.  The vast majority of us have too much to do in too little time.  We can spend days and weeks and years being propelled forward through life by situations and events around us without ever really taking the time to stop and ask ourselves why.  Our lives become about doing rather than about being.
And blogging gives me a little opportunity to remedy that in my own life.  It gives me a space to contemplate.  Having readers holds me accountable.
I guess somewhere deep inside I have this fear that I’ll look back on my life fifty years from now and wonder where it all went, and even worse, wonder why I let it go the way that I did.  Writing allows me time to reflect on the direction it is going and why.
And then there are my girls.
Lord willing, they will have me in their lives for many years.  But no matter how many years we have, they won’t have a whole lot of lasting memories of who I was when they were little.  They might remember feelings and brief memories, but they won’t really know who I was when I was their everything.
And I want them to know me.
When they are sitting in their own living rooms with a screaming infant, I want them to know that I faced similar struggles. When they are cuddled up with their little ones reading books, feeling so much love they feel they are going to explode, I want them, I need them, to know that someone felt the same way about them.
And so I want them to know me, but not really in an effort to be known, but rather so they know that they are not alone and they aren’t the first and only when times get tough.  It’s a lonely world, and this is my feeble attempt to make it less lonely for them as they travel through it.
And I think most mom bloggers describe their blog as a love letter to their children, and so I guess I’ll just be redundant and supremely unoriginal as I say the same.
We give our kids everything we have.  Our time, our money, our attention, our affection.  We give them the best years of our lives.  And this is my way of giving them just a bit more — a piece of my soul.  I want them to be able to look back on these words and know just how special they are in my eyes.
The world is full of people who will line up to tell them what is wrong with them.  Who will hold a mirror up to their faults. Tear them down and refuse to build them back up.  And this is my small place to counter that.  To build them up.  To show them how precious they are in my eyes.  A permanent fixture to all that I believe them to be.
And I don’t need a blog to do all of this.  I’m sure there are other ways.
But a part of me just feels more alive when I’m writing.  It gives me joy.  It invigorates me.  It’s a high.  It gives me something to be excited about and to work towards.  And I guess perhaps there doesn’t really need to be any greater reason than that.
I blog because I like to.


Leave your thoughts and comments please!

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

What if We Share?

Found this beautiful post, "Before The Belly," through Glennon's Messy Beautiful Warrior Project. Read it and find a familiar story. Then she says something incredible::

"It makes me wonder: what if, instead of resisting our truth, we all told everyone we know? That we had a miscarriage, that it was devastating. That we’re struggling to get pregnant and wonder if we’ll ever be a mom. That we did fertility treatment to get our baby and we’re SO happy and proud. What if we took the silence out of struggle and loss? What if we took the shame and fear out of fertility treatment? Who could we help and what kind of community would it create?
"I envision an environment of self-acceptance and self-kindness. I see mothers being symbols of hope for not-yet mothers. I picture women caring for other women, long before the celebrations begin… and long after. Mostly I imagine that our honesty, transparency and openness would change the experience of waiting for motherhood for the better."


You all already know my own honest, transparent blog posts about these issues. But if you know someone who needs an introduction to this community, this environment, please feel free to share:

Infertility and miscarriage: http://wildtofu.blogspot.com/2013/05/to-my-friend-battling-infertility.html

Pregnancy difficulty: http://wildtofu.blogspot.com/2012/09/our-pregnancy-story-yes-i-know-its-late.html

Trying to conceive, again: http://wildtofu.blogspot.com/2013/12/hold-my-hand.html

Do you have something to share? Let me know! I'd love to create a conduit for this oh-so-important connection between women! Need somewhere to share? I'll give you guest space on my blog! (At over 10k views, you'd be sure to reach someone.)
 
Leave your thoughts and comments please!

Friday, May 9, 2014

Happy Mother's Day




 

"Who can probe a mother’s love? Who can comprehend in its entirety the lofty role of a mother? With perfect trust in God, she walks, her hand in his, into the valley of the shadow of death that you and I might come forth unto life...
"May each of us treasure this truth: one cannot forget mother and remember God. One cannot remember mother and forget God. Why? Because these two sacred persons, God and mother, partners in creation, in love, in sacrifice, in service, are as one." - Thomas S. Monson







 Motherhood 

(Taken from http://motherhood.mormon.org/

It’s the highest, holiest service assumed by humankind. It’s the definition of selfless service. It’s both a daunting responsibility and a glorious opportunity. The divine role of motherhood is a gift from God, and key to His plan of happiness for all His children.
Who helped you tie your shoes or learn a new piece on the piano? When you forgot your science project was due the next day, who made a late-night run for poster board and glue? It was Mom.
Every Christmas, even though money was always tight, who consistently pulled off a miracle and made Christmas morning magical and memorable? It was Mom.
Now that you’re a parent, you may scratch your head wondering how she did it all. Each day is filled with toys to put away and noses to wipe, dinners to make and work to squeeze in. You can’t remember when—if ever—she took time for herself. But now you feel what your mom must have felt as you watch your toddler fall asleep and listen to his giggles in the other room.
You now understand better than ever that mothers are gifts from God. In fact, motherhood is the “highest, holiest service . . . given to mankind.”




“MOTHERS ARE ENDOWED WITH A LOVE THAT IS UNLIKE ANY OTHER LOVE ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH.”Marjorie Pay Hinckley
You are a child of God who He entrusted to your mother’s care, her hands substituted for God’s as she bandaged a skinned knee or wiped away your tears. Her words of love and wisdom guided you through rough patches, instilling in you the confidence to succeed. The things she taught you became the lessons you now teach to your own children.
Being a mother is so much more than a biological process. It’s a heavenly job created by God before this life. In heaven, all of us who live now and all who have ever lived on earth lived with God as His spirit sons and daughters. God has a plan that allows all of us to come to earth, acquire physical bodies, and grow through life’s experiences, eventually returning to Him again after we die.



“There is no limit to what a mother can accomplish. Righteous women have changed the course of history and will continue to do so.”Julie B. Beck
God chose mothers to bear the responsibility of providing physical bodies for His children through the miraculous process of pregnancy and birth. Being a mother means participating in the miracle that is God’s greatest work. Thomas S. Monson, a modern-day prophet, said, “One cannot remember mother and forget God. Why? Because these two sacred persons, God and mother, partners in creation, in love, in sacrifice, in service, are as one.”
The divine role of motherhood is exhibited in all women, whether they’ve born children or not. It is important to remember that the call to nurture is not limited to our own flesh and blood. Whether it’s an aunt, a teacher, a friend, or a community leader, we are all deeply indebted to the moral, steadying influence of good women in our lives.
  



JESUS CHRIST SHOWED US THE PERFECT EXAMPLE OF HOW TO TREAT OUR MOTHERS.
Mary had humbly listened to an angel tell her that she, a virgin, would carry and give birth to the long-awaited Messiah. How would she explain to her betrothed, Joseph, what God had asked her to do? Despite her unanswered questions, she had said, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word” (Luke 1:38).
All of the feelings of inadequacy that mothers sometimes feel must have rested on Mary, who knew that Jesus was meant to become something far greater than a mere carpenter. She watched her son confound older men in the temple and, later, turn water to wine. She heard firsthand His transcendental teachings and saw the outcome of His innumerable miracles—the blind seeing, the dead living, and the dumb speaking. She wondered at all of it.
But nothing—not scripture or miracles or prophecy—could have prepared her to watch her son die. Mary’s heart broke as Jesus was sentenced to the cruelest death imaginable. As Jesus hung from the cross, Mary looked up into her son’s tortured face and wept.
Jesus never forgot His mother, even as His crucified body trembled with indescribable pain.
From the cross, He saw His trusted disciple, and said to Mary, “Woman, behold thy son!”
And to the disciple, He said, “Behold thy mother!”
He never forgot, even in His anguish, the woman who cared for Him even before she could hold Him in her arms—the earthly mother who had prepared Him for a divine mission.




“THERE ARE FEW THINGS MORE POWERFUL THAN THE PRAYERS OF A RIGHTEOUS MOTHER.”Boyd K. Packer
Most mothers know that whenever life is overwhelming, they can turn to God. Because motherhood is a divinely appointed calling, mothers are enabled by help from above in times of need. Through sleepless nights, dark days, and seemingly impossible and difficult circumstances, the prayers of righteous mothers have been a source of unparalleled divine power in homes, communities, and entire nations.

“ALL THAT I AM OR EVER HOPE TO BE, I OWE TO MY ANGEL MOTHER.”Abraham Lincoln
So this Mother’s Day, let your mom know she’s important. Write her a card, create a tribute, send some flowers—because when you think about it: who was the champion and cheerleader for nearly everything in life you cling to with all your heart?
It was Mom.


For Those With Empty Arms

I've been here, too, for many, many Mother's Days. This is a day for you, too.

Please read "Celebrate Nurturing" by Rosemary Thackeray, in the April 2014 Ensign, pages 62-65. I'll quote only parts of it here.

"As a single woman in her 40s who has never given birth to or reared children, I do not pretend to understand the experience of motherhood and the joys, pains, sorrows, and many emotions that accompany that calling. At the same time, it is possible that women who have the privilege of motherhood do not understand the heartache that comes from knowing that one of the greatest blessings that life has to offer will have to wait for eternity. Yet as sisters in the gospel, we should strive to be empathetic."

"We should consider speaking more frequently not only of motherhood but also of nurturing and its impact on our lives. We should celebrate nurturing as often as with as much jubilation as we do motherhood."

Sheri L. Dew has said, "While we tend to equate motherhood solely with maternity, in the Lord's language, the word mother has layers of meaning. Of all the words they could have chosen to define her role and her essence, both God the Father and Adam called Eve 'the mother of all living' [Moses 4:26] - and they did so before she ever bore a child. Like Eve, our motherhood began before we were born... Motherhood is more than bearing children, though it is certainly that. It is the essence of who we are as women. It defines our very identity, our divine stature, and nature, and the unique traits our Father gave us." see Ensign, Nov. 2001, 96.



And please, please, whether our arms are empty or overflowing, let us all show love and respect for each other this day and ALWAYS. We need each other. We belong to each other.



Leave your thoughts and comments please!