Giving Christ My Son

I ran across this poem today and it expresses my feelings this year so well. This originally looked like it would be the worst Christmas ever as I will have hugged and sent 3 kids off to new lands since August and they will not be home for Christmas. One got married and moved and isn't coming home for Christmas. Another is moving with her family to the opposite coast for several years for her hubs to finish grad school the week before Christmas and my baby is serving a  2 year mission for our church, so the only contact I have with him is through a weekly email on Monday and I get a phone call from him on Christmas and Mother's day. It's already hard enough that we also have a child that lives in Texas with 4 grandbabies that we hardly ever get to see. Thank heavens one child is still here so I can get hugs and a grandma fix now and then from him!!!  I thought my heart would break at the thoughts of the emptiness in our home for Christmas and the fact that our traditions would not be able to happen because of all this,  but instead, somehow my heart has been filled to overflowing with joy this year.  I have found different ways to still do some of the traditions, maybe not on the exact day we usually do them and maybe not in the same way, but by reaching out and involving others, some of the traditions will continue. Others will be put on hold temporarily until the sweet day when we are all together again! Maybe this joy I feel is because I had nothing else to do but serve others and maybe it's the blessing of giving Christ my son for two years. Either way, as lonely as it seemed, this has been a most amazing Christmas season so far!

A MISSIONARY CHRISTMAS
I skipped the sales after Thanksgiving. The thrill just wasn’t there.
No pictures taken with Santa Claus. My decorating has no flair.
His presents are shoes, shirts, and ties, two suits and socks… no fun.
I’ve bought him all white clothes because this year I’m giving Christ my son.

I’ve spent more time in the temple, my testimony stirred.
I’ve re-read November’s Ensign, felt strength come from His words.
Our family prays more frequently. My tears are quick to run.
Abraham seems closer because this year I’m giving Christ my son.

I wonder how those Lamanite mothers gave their sons to war?
Or how the pioneers chose Zion—their sacrifice was so much more.
My loss will be his presence. I’ll miss his smile a ton.
For two years we will pray for him. I’m giving Christ my son.

I stare at his face when he’s not looking. I memorize his eyes, their shine.
He’s always hungered for the part of him, that makes his soul divine.
The stories and lessons he always heard. His choice and mine are one.
I’ll put my faith in God’s hand. This year, I’m giving Him my son.

Past gifts have lost their glitter. I think I finally understand
Christ’s birth should be celebrated by giving Him a hand.
It’s because I know Christ lives and reigns that all his packing’s done.
My gift has taken years to make. This year I’m giving Christ my son.

I know there’s One who understands the sacrifice I’m making.
Who knows the gift I willingly give, the toll it will be taking.
For He has done it all before. Greater love — there could be none.
For years ago God gave to me His only begotten son.

The hands I washed, the hands I held, the hands I taught to pray—
Now knock on doors to find the ones who will listen to what he’ll say.
Because I know Christ needs him until all the gathering’s done.
My gift has taken years to make. This year I’m giving Christ my son.
— Author Unknown

Seminary Diaries ~ Are We Not All Beggars?

I recently had a humbling experience while preparing for a seminary lesson. I was teaching a lesson on helping the poor and needy and I used a talk by Jeffrey R Holland, entitled, Are We Not All Beggars . In this talk he references the Savior and how he was essentially homeless for most of his adult life. I totally get why that was. He had to live in humble circumstances for the whole plan and atonement and everything to have worked the way it did… I totally get that. That is not a new idea for me.

But what struck me about that concept was the contrast in that situation and how very blessed I am in my life. My husband and I ahave been kind of looking around for a home to buy and I have recognized that we have turned down several really nice homes because they don’t meet our requirements. They don’t have a large kitchen with lots of cabinets to store all my “stuff”. Or they don’t have a 5 piece master bath. Or the master bedroom isn’t big enough for a king size bed and a living room set (insert exaggerated expression here). We have been looking for certain characteristics in a home because we felt that we have sacrificed over the years and that we have “earned” the right to have certain comforts in our next home. Then I watch a video where someone is pointing out that the Son of Man had no place to lay his head. WOW!!! I feel sufficiently humbled.

It makes me take a step back and recognize that we are so truly blessed. Abundantly blessed with so many temporal blessings that I can’t even begin to count them all. Blessed that we have an income and a roof over our head and food to eat and warm clothing and a soft place to rest my weary body at the end of the day. Those are 5 basic things that the Savior did not have on a regular basis. Who am I to complain about the things that I have not been blessed with. It doesn’t matter how many bathtubs are in my home or how many cabinets are in my kitchen. What matters most is if I am willing to share what is in my home with anyone who is in need.

We also watched a video that was a social experiment by a couple of guys. One dressed in a suit and looked like a successful business man and took a set of crutches and hit the streets and purposely stumbled and every time, people stopped to help him. The other dressed like a homeless man and also took a set of crutches and did the exact same things, but time after time, people just kept walking and going about their business. Finally someone went to his aid… and get this… it was another homeless man! It was so hard to watch the homeless man be so invisible to those around him and the moment was very tender when one of his own stood to give him aid. I recognized my own weakness in being somewhat selective in who I offer service to. I feel sufficiently humbled by this “ah-hah” moment as well. If you want to view this social experiment you can see it here. The Little Things

I have realized that we are ALL beggars in some way. We are all in need of something. At the very least we will one day find ourselves begging for mercy at the feet of the Savior as we ask him to make up for our shortcomings and what we have failed to do in this life.  I am more committed now to look around me and recognize “the least of these” and withhold judgment rather than compassion when someone around me is in need.  I am refocusing my priorities and instead of looking for the things that I lack in my life, I am now focusing on the things that I have been given and “because I have been give much, I too must give!”

My Journey Out of the Fibro Fog

Sadly, beause the FDA doesn't want you to know that there may be healthy alternatives to the poisons they peddle, I am no longer allowed to share my story out of the fibro fog in a public setting such as a blog on the internet.
Somehow that feels like a violation of my free speech, but I have complied.
It's a sad place that this country has arrived at! :(

Why I Hate Father's Day

Confession time!

I hate Father’s Day. For the past 20 years, every single Father’s Day, since my dad died, I have put on a smile and gone through the motions and pretended that it was a happy occasion, but deep inside, taking a day to celebrate fatherhood has made me feel like an orphan. I see people sharing photos of themselves with their dads and talking about fun things they do with their dads and giving their dads the honor that they so rightfully deserve and it makes me sad that I can’t even remember the sound of my dad’s voice anymore. (This sounds terribly depressing, but keep reading!!)

Every year on Father’s Day, at church, we sing the beautiful hymn, Oh My Father, and it takes me back to one of the last memories I have of my dad… singing that hymn at his funeral. Every word of that hymn is sacred to me for that reason and I can’t even read the words without experiencing a rush of emotion that takes me back to that day 21 years ago, when we said our final goodbyes. So I sit in church and blubber my way through it and people look at me like I’m weird because of my reaction.

For the past 20 years, I have tried to take this time to pay tribute to the man that my dad became and to focus on the men I have in my life… a wonderful husband and father to my children, who is an honorable man, 5 brothers and a brother in law, two sons, two sons-in-law, a step dad who is so good to my mother and great grandfather to my children, the father and fathers in law and step father to my married children, and all those other men in my life who in their own way define fatherhood. But all of that still hasn’t been able to fill the void, that gaping hole in my heart that causes me to yearn to have my daddy wrap me in his arms and whisper in my ear how proud he is of me and how much he loves me….

But this year… well, this year has been different. This year, I didn’t dread the arrival of Father’s day with every day that passed since Mother’s Day, like I did in years past. I didn’t find myself focusing on my own jealousies and feelings of insecurity as I let anger seep into my heart because I didn’t have a dad to wrap my mortal arms around and hug with all the love in my heart. I didn’t have a meltdown in the card aisle because I don’t have a way to send my dad a Father’s day card and how unfair it is that he was taken from us at such a young age. Whatever the reason, there was no pity party. I was somehow distracted enough to be spared the days of dread leading up to this celebration of the amazing men in my life. I guess you could say that it snuck up on me this year. I knew it was coming, I prepared for it yesterday and so when I was sitting in church and they announced the hymn, itkind of took me by surprise and I thought, “oh yeah… here we go again”. But to my surprise, I didn’t get transported back to the sadness that I bore sitting in the front pew of the chapel 21 years ago. This year, I felt a warmth fill my soul as I was barely able to mouth the words of the hymn. I was so overcome with a feeling of love that I didn’t even notice the people sitting next to me asking me a question in the middle of the song. This year, for the first time in the 20 Father’s Days that have come and gone since my dad left this earth, I didn’t feel like an orphan. The talks today were so beautiful and the lessons were exactly what I needed to help me to be able to feel the closeness of my earthly father as well as my Heavenly Father, as I felt their spirits convey to me the love that I have felt cheated out of every year for the past 20 years. This year is a turning point. While I no longer remember what my dad’s embrace feels like and I no longer remember the sound of his voice, I was able to be touched by his spirit and my soul felt his love in a whole new way.

Today, I no longer feel the need to be a hater. I feel liberated of the burden of dreading this holiday and I feel more able to focus with true sincerity on the amazing father figures in my life who have carried me all these years and in their own small ways, helped to fill the void that has been present in my life, not just on a designated day in June, but every single day that has passed since June 28^th, 1993. I know with everything in me that it is because of the Atonement of Jesus Christ that we are able to heal from hurts and losses and the injustices of this life. It is through the Atonement that that I will be able to spend time with my dad again after I have completed my purpose on this earth. Today, I am truly grateful for that knowledge and for the peace and comfort and hope that it brings to my life and I feel like part of the wound of losing my dad has finally healed. Sometimes it takes years for that healing to come, but I trust that everything happens on God’s timetable and today, I am truly happy for not only my earthly father, but for a Heavenly Father that continues to have patience with me when it sometimes takes me a REALLY long time to understand things.

With all sincerity, Happy Father's Day!!!

Thank you Mom!

I recently read a blog post from someone who made a list of things he wanted to thank his mom for. I was inspired to make my own list of things that I have never thanked my mom for.

Here are a few of the highlights:

Thank you for letting me speak my mind even though you thought the teachers would hold my opinions against my brothers when they got to high school.

Thank you for allowing me to make mistakes.

Thank you for teaching me to stand up for what is right. 

Thank you for NOT allowing me to date a 25 year old when I was 16 (that could have ended badly!)

Thank you for not buying me a car. Learning to pay for my own things has taught me to appreciate all my junk.

Thank you for not letting me dress immodest.

Thank you for encouraging me to go to church even when no one else was going.

Thank you for making me have a curfew.

Thank you for all the times when you have held my hand while I was sick or scared.

Thank you for teaching me how to forgive.

Thank you for teaching me that family is the most important institution.

Thank you for loving Wayne even though you thought I was rushing into that. And thank you for making me promise that we would get sealed in the temple.

Thank you for your example on how to serve others.

Thank you for teaching me about grace.

Thank you for making me do chores.

Thank you for being the glue that has held our family together.

Thank you for the time you gave me Baby Alive for Christmas (when I already had kids of my own).

Thank you for making me baby sit my siblings growing up. And for letting me watch the Donny and Marie show in your bedroom on Friday nights as payment for babysitting.

Thank you for loving my dad.

Thank you for German Chocolate cake (even though it never was my favorite, you thought it was and went out of your way to do that on my birthday because you wanted it to be special)

Thank you for making me the coolest Barbie house ever!

Thank you for letting me leave home and pretend I was all grown up. (As I have put kids in a car and waved goodbye to them, I realize how hard that must have been for you!)

Thank you making me in your image… I can’t imagine anyone more beautiful that I would rather look just like.

Thank you for the Halloween costumes you have put together over the years (especially “The Bum”).

Thank you for a million other things that I have never thanked you for, but most importantly thank you for being YOU!

I love you!

W

Jigsaw Puzzles and Eternity

Recently I bought a jigsaw puzzle and sat down with my two teenagers to put it together. It looked like a fun puzzle when I bought it but it turned out to be a lot harder than I had originally anticipated.

The design repeated itself a bit in the puzzle which made it difficult to figure out which part of the puzzle we were working on….

The pieces were very irregularly shaped. ..More so than normal jigsaw puzzles.  Some of the interior pieces had straight edges, which totally messed with my OCD, since I am admittedly one of THOSE people who insist on doing the border of the puzzle first then the interior. There must be order to the chaos of a puzzle.

So we worked on this for a couple of days. When we were almost finished, my son made a comment He said, “This would be impossible to put together if you didn't have a picture to look at.”

That got me thinking about the parallels between our purpose here on earth and the jigsaw puzzle.

1.      Things aren’t always as we expect them to be. Sometimes the pieces we have to put together in our life don’t come in the shapes we expect them to. Sometimes we find the right piece for the trial we are trying to solve in the most unexpected places.

2.      There are patterns that repeat themselves. Sometimes we don’t learn the lesson the first time, so we have to try again. We might have a little more information the second time around, which may help us find the right fit, but sometimes it just takes several attempts of trial and error to figure stuff out. Sometimes all we have to go by is the shape of the pattern to find the right piece.

3.      There are always smaller pictures within the big picture. If we only focus on the big picture, it can be overwhelming and we want to give up because we think it’s just too hard. But if we focus on the smaller pictures within the puzzle and put those together first, then it helps us to better understand how the big picture will come together.

4.      It’s important to understand where the boundaries are, so you can focus on working within the boundaries. Otherwise you might be spending all your time and effort in the wrong places.

5.    The big picture is our guide on how to navigate the little pictures and to know where the smaller pictures fit within our lives and how all the smaller pictures connect to accomplish the larger goal. The big picture can also serve as a measure of progress for us to know how we are doing on the little things and can help us to understand what the ultimate purpose of the “puzzle” is. As the little pictures come together, it gives us a sense of accomplishment and joy to be able to look back and see how far we have come and to see the beauty of how all of our given pieces have fit together to create the portrait of our lives.

6.     The picture isn’t complete without each and every piece… each trial, each success, each person who has touched our lives, each moment along the way. The puzzle is not ever complete if any one piece is missing. So each moment of our lives is important in our own puzzle.

Without the ‘big picture’ in life (the gospel), it would be nearly impossible to put together all the things we have to deal with and accomplish during our earthly journey. It would be like trying to put a puzzle together upside down without looking at the print. It would be difficult to navigate and would be a lot more trial and error, a lot more frustration, require a lot more time and we would miss out on the beauty of the finished picture.

I can’t imagine trying to go through life without being able to look at the big picture and let that help me figure out how everything fits together.

Top Ten List for 2013

As 2013 is kicked to the curb and 2014 is ushered in, I have been pondering about the things I have learned last year and how I might expand on that knowledge and continue to grow from those lessons in the coming year.

There were many highs and lows and lots of contrasting emotions throughout the year.

There has been joy with the birth of a new grandbaby and grief at that passing of my grandfather just a few weeks later.

Nana graduated from high school and we celebrated a 16th birthday, an 18th birthday, a 21st birthday all within a few weeks of each other and Braden got his Eagle Scout award.

Emma announced that we will have another grand daughter this coming summer!

I checked “write a book” off my bucket list. Well, I didn’t really publish a book, but I wrote down 15 or 16 chapters of organized thoughts about lessons I learned from my amazing dad to commemorate his passing 20 years ago…. So I am going to call that my “book”. (see the Project Elephant blog posts if you are interested in reading my “book”)

We started a new business and exceeded our goals and expectations for how we wanted our first year to go.

I learned much about myself and God and spiritual things as I pondered and studied for a weekly lesson on Sundays.

So much to reflect on, but I decided to narrow down my lessons learned to a top 10 list!

1.       It’s ok to wear colored socks. The world is more beautiful if it is a little less black and white.

2.       It’s ok to love myself…. Unconditionally. It’s really the first step in being able to extend that kind of love to others.

3.       It costs nothing to forgive, and you have so much to gain.

4.       Sometimes the friendship you crave is waiting where you least expect it.

5.       Some days there is just not enough chocolate!

6.       Recognizing the hand of God in my life every day is a beautifully comfortable place to exist.

7.       It’s better to share…. The more we share, the more God blesses us with.

8.       Trust… my instincts, my family, my spirituality, God…. It’s liberating to learn to take that leap of faith, knowing that things will work out and that I don’t have to have all the answers before I embark on a quest.

9.       Tolerance.  Which is not the same as patience!

10.   Dirty Diet Coke and Wittches Brew… How ever did I get through life without these things?

Thank you all for sharing in my journey. I am so glad you have been along for the ride. I look forward to the new adventures that 2014 will bring.