spring emergence

   last night I spoke at my ward's annual relief society birthday celebration. It was our first official Relief Society face to face gathering since the lockdown 1 year ago.  I had intended to speak on the origin and importance of the Relief Society, but on Tuesday morning when I got up for the gym, the ideas for this talk flowed into outline form on the notes apps of my phone. It's fun when the Spirit intervenes and says, "let's just do it the easy way this time instead of belaboring everything like you normally do." Later I was able to follow my notes and I wrote this short talk about renewal:

This past year we experienced an overwhelm of all things. We had an incredibly divisive presidential election, murder hornets, uncontrollable wildfires, heartbreaking civil unrest among our fellow Americans due to increasing racial tensions, and a worldwide pandemic which brought about fear, death, loneliness, food shortages, job loss and high levels of uncertainty. Also, few of our personal, private trials took the year off. Despite our different walks of life, there was one thing to unite us and that was our grief. 

As spring is here and Easter is approaching, I want to focus on renewal. Our dormant plants are coming back to life, and our dormant country is reopening and our dormant social lives are re-emerging. Easter is the celebration of renewal, that Jesus Christ lived again and so can we. Our world has new rules, new language and sadly new divisions. But the Lord’s commandments are the same. Despite and because of our differences, love one another.

 While the world was dormant, what were the things you discovered were essential? Did you learn the importance of food storage? Did you realize how much you enjoyed personal scripture study? Did your spirituality drop off because of the inability to congregate for church at a chapel? Did you learn how much more you needed and how much more you can live without? Did the prophecies from the prophet Russell M Nelson strengthen your testimony? Did you witness miracles? Did the Spirit prompt you to change your life? This time a year ago, I had a completely different life. I lived far away in a big city with everything that I thought I needed in my life. I had prayed for many years for the blessings that I very much enjoyed at that time. Then my husband got terribly sick with Covid 19 and we made a sharp re-evaulation of our life.  How much of our lifestyle was keeping us from progressing to the type of familial relationships we were missing out on? I had a very powerful spiritual experience that led us to take a leap of faith and pack up our house, move a month later and walk into the unknown. Are we ready to walk into the unknown of this new and re-emerging world?

The poet Dino Christianopolis wrote, “what didn’t you do to bury me, but you forgot I was a seed”

In the past year we have been buried and rained upon and left alone in what feels like impenetrable darkness. How did we respond to it? Did we choose to enjoy the nutrients in the soil that we thought so confining? Will we allow the rain to cleanse our impurities and strengthen our testimonies? Will embrace the smelly fertilizer of adversity to make us into the strong, fruitful bloom that we know that we are? Will we push through the dense soil and bask in the light of the Son of God?

In 4^th Nephi, we read that the Nephites and Lamanites, bitter sworn enemies are all converted unto the Lord. In verse 2, “all people were converted unto the Lord…and there were no contentions and disputations among them, and every man did deal justly one with another.” Verse 15 states that “there was no contention in the land, because of the love of God which did dwell in the hearts of the people.” Verse 17, “nor any manner of Ites; but they were in one, the culture of Christ, and heirs to the kingdom of God.”

In our most recent General Conference, we heard from Elder William K Jackson of the Seventy. “Many of our world’s problems are a direct result of clashes between those of differing ideas and customs arising from their culture. But virtually all conflict and chaos would quickly fade if the world would only accept its original culture, the one we all possessed not so very long ago. This culture dates back to our premortal existence. It was the culture of Adam and Enoch. It was the culture founded on the Savior’s teachings in the meridian of time, and it is available to all women and men once again in our day. It is unique. It is the greatest of all cultures and comes from the great plan of happiness, authored by God and championed by Christ. It unites rather than divides. It heals rather than harms.”

 

          Now that we emerging from the past year, what is your maintenance plan for the important lessons that have been thrust upon us? Will you call your ministering sisters and just check on them? It doesn’t have to be a hard-hitting gospel question and answer session. What questions would you ask a friend? Will you reach out to family members who are difficult to love? Will you look at your friendship circle and enlarge it into a shape you don’t recognize so that all sorts and kinds fit in it? Will you be kinder to yourself as you are still blooming and growing? Will you stop criticizing the type and shape and size and color of flower that you are and stop the cycle of negative self-talk for the next generation of flowers that are watching you?

          Sisters, I’m grateful for spring, for the opportunity for daily renewal through repentance, for the beauty of new growth, for an all knowing Gardner that keeps being patient and continually tends to me. 

broken things to mend

  I spoke in our church congregation a couple of months ago and I wanted to share my talk here for my kids to read down the road. My topic was the healing power of Christ's atonement. Listed at the top are the General Conference talks I referenced.  

The Healing Power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ Christine Franco

Broken Things to Mend Jeffery R Holland

Strengthened by the Atonement Dallin H Oaks

 

I love speaking in church and not just because I enjoy speaking into a microphone, I enjoy speaking because it is an opportunity to share the culmination of numerous seemingly minor spiritual thoughts and promptings. Many of the thoughts I’m sharing today are things I have been pondering for as long as 25 years and as recent as this week. The joy in writing and talk is seeing how the Lord is truly guiding us at all times, if we are simply listening.

Things I’m going to talk about today include:

The difference between the Atonement healing us from our sins and healing us from our infirmities and weaknesses and struggles

Kintsugi or making broken things gold

The definition of the word succor

My college boyfriend

 

 

When we think of using the Atonement of Jesus Christ in our lives, we almost always consider how we need to repent from our sins. The blood of the atonement washes away our sins. That is a predominant use of it because we cannot enter back in the presence of the Father with sins. We should be using the Atonement of Jesus Christ to repent every day to repair damage from our frailties and weaknesses. What do we feel when we hear the word repentance?  Personally, I’ve had times in my life when I’ve thought of repenting and it has sounded like this REPENTANCE! Complete with tarnation and damnation and pulpit pounding. However, when we understand the nature of Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father, we realize that we should be referencing repentance like this Repentance! Complete with angels and harp trills and birds singing. Sadly, too many of us have been conditioned to think that repentance is solely a painful and arduous task. Certainly there are times when our souls require a reckoning and coming to terms with the work to be done can be embarrassing and a struggle, but it is Satan, not Jesus Christ who want you to believe it is an impossible task.

Sometimes when I am hungry or not feeling well, Thomas, being a very brave man, will tell me I need to eat something or take medicine so that I’ll feel better but I’m always resistant to it. I’m FINE, I insist. Everyone else is the problem! Not me! But eventually when I do remedy the situation through a healthy solution, I FEEL BETTER. So much better that I wish I had done something about it sooner. Repentance is a joyful medicine and nourishment to our souls. Often, we just need to get the ball rolling to start feeling better.

 

 We often use the Atonement to repair the same sins over and over again. But we know that the power of the atonement fixes all things and Hebrews 8:12, “For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more”. Truly. We know this. However, because of the nature of mortality, there are things in this life that will not be fully repaired until the resurrection. These things can feel broken because of our choices or the way God created us. Some things have consequences that are with us even after we’ve fully repented. The healing power of healing of Jesus Christ isn’t a magic wand or a time machine. A key aspect of repentance is the beauty of healing.

One of my favorite things is collecting artwork and I’m especially partial to Asian artwork. One of my favorite types of art is pottery. I collect plates and I display them on the walls of my home. As is the nature of happy families, sometimes my plates fall off the wall and get broken. Normally, because I favor decorative plates from goodwill and secondhand stores, I toss the broken plate. However, I have a few plates that I’m holding onto in case I ever get a kintsugi repair kit.  Kintsugi is the Japanese art of putting broken pieces back together with gold, built upon the idea that in embracing flaws and imperfections, you can create an even stronger more beautiful piece of art. The value of the item then goes up because of the gold kintsugi repair. Go ahead and google it. It’s beautiful and I feel a very apt representation of our lives. We are mortals and we will be broken, but because of our divine heritage and the price paid by our Savior Jesus Christ, we can be put back together with gold. I’ve never bought a kintsugi kit because it is very expensive, however, the healing of the Atonement has already been paid for and it is a priceless experience.

So my question to you, how do I my repair my challenges with the Savior and make them gold? How can we look at past sin and struggle and heartbreak and recognize that they can become some of our most beautiful parts?

 

“The first words Jesus spoke in His majestic Sermon on the Mount were to the troubled, the discouraged and downhearted. “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” He said, “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” JRH

He later declares, ““Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

“Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.”²

 

For example, the Apostle Paul declared that because the Savior “hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted” (Hebrews 2:18). Similarly, President James E. Faust taught, “Since the Savior has suffered anything and everything that we could ever feel or experience, He can help the weak to become stronger.” DHO

There are several definitions for the word succor, including to give relief or to give aid but my favorite translation for the word succor is “to run to”. It is very powerful to envision the Savior Jesus Christ running to you when you cry out to him, But that is exactly how it works.

As the Psalmist declared, “Many are the afflictions of the righteous: but the Lord delivereth him out of them all” (Psalm 34:19).

Other things that we may need to heal from include things in our lives that don’t feel broken because they are exactly how God made us, but may not be in harmony with God’s plan. Other things may be exactly how God made us but are still really hard. Many of us have actually been blessed with this type of trial, though it may not always feel like a blessing.

 

When I was 15 years old, I felt very strongly that there was something wrong with me that could only be fixed by achieving the world’s view of “perfect body”  and by trying to be very thin. I was always thinking about ways to be thin. Comments from society and even family members gave me incredible anxiety and a preoccupation with food and I continued to greatly struggled with disordered eating for the next 25 years. However, at age 15 I also recall feeling a morsel of light in my struggle that I feasted on when I was hurting. I was studying my scriptures and the thought crossed my mind that Jesus Christ didn’t know how it felt to be a 15 year old girl like me. Then I had a prompting that was quite the opposite. The Spirit confirmed to me that I was wrong. Alma 7:11 reads, “And he shall go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind; and this that the word might be fulfilled which saith he will take upon him the pains and the sicknesses of his people” I was in pain and He understood completely and loved me infinitely. How is the gold to me? The experience of making this realization is gold to me.

 

The healing power of the Atonement applies to big things and little things. All things that matter to us matter to the Lord.

 

When I was 21 I had a boyfriend in college who I thought was THE ONE. . Y’all, he had a south African accent. That’s number 3 on the scale of world’s best accents with midwestern being number 1 and closely followed by southern in 2^nd place. One night he unexpectedly broke up with ME and I was devasted. At church that weekend I was still obnoxiously inconsolable and I was crying my face off during relief society. The poor girl next to me was awkwardly patting my back while probably praying for someone to pull a fire alarm so that she could get away. In my grief, I had prayed to simply feel some peace. My grief was probably rather inconsequential to some of the real problems people were experiencing in the world but what happened next was a clear message to me that the Lord cared and that he was able to help me feel better. The closing song was “Where can I turn for peace?” I knew that was the Lord’s message to me to feel peace and also pull myself together. Heartbreak is often preparation for us to make room for the Lord to do His work and provide us with something better. Kynan breaking up with me was exactly what I needed to happen to I could meet the true love of my life and eternity, Thomas. He’s the best thing to happen to me since elasticized denim. No one wants to be told in the moment of a truly trying experience that this is for the better. That’s probably the quickest way to get a punch in face. 0-60 in one comment. Heartbreak is a tool that can prepare us for something better, even if it takes a long time or the next life. But if we live in a way where we let the Atonement comfort and heal us, we will be blessed until we are able to fully realize our blessings.

 

As I’ve grown older, my understanding of this concept has only multiplied.

As I’ve tried to raise children, including two with special needs, the only way to figure that out is to turn to the Lord. I’ve messed up a ton as a parent and there is SO MUCH crying involved. Sometimes even by the kids. For a good part of my parenting career I felt like every aspect of it was in the L column. Hardly any Ws. There was a really long time that I prayed that this perceived trial would be taken away from me, as if the most desirable solution was to avoid pain and growth. The Lord had other plans. As I slowly repaired my broken perspective, I have been able to see more clearly, what is truly gold in my life. While it has been a rather slow and frustrating process of self discovery, some of the cracks started to become fused with gratitude. I have a greater knowledge of the love of our Heavenly Father. I’ve been able to be more patient in ways I could never be without this perceived trial. I have learned what it means to give something to the Lord. Sometimes I’ll even take my hands and wrap up a package in the air and toss is heavenward and say, “here you go. I’ll do this if you show up too”. If I give it Him, it doesn’t mean it’s a success by a worldly standard, more often than not it simply means I’ll survive the experience and be undaunted to try again even if it’s messy. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying, “Lord, give me another trial and this time put some stank on it!” But, the atonement of Jesus Christ has healed me of some unrighteous desires and healed me from my lack of faith.

I’ll close with some of the lyrics to Reagan’s favorite hymn, How firm a foundation

. When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie,

My grace, all sufficient, shall be thy supply.

The flame shall not hurt thee; I only design

Thy dross to consume, thy dross to consume,

Thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine

 

the most reluctant convert

  On October 31, Athena Blythe became the newest member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 

A few years ago when I was in our stake's Relief Society presidency, we did training with each unit on how to meet the needs of the individual sisters. Time was at a premium but I found an experience on a church social media account that I felt led by the Spirit to share in each ward. The quote was by a woman who was sharing her experience of not feeling like her family fit in to the regular church cookie cutter. She outlined her situation and pleaded that what she needed was for people to not be afraid or put off by their situation but to move in closer and as a sign of support. In her experience, the sister mentions that one situation in which we should move in closer is when a family has a child that does not want to be baptized. At the time I thought it was a strange and surely rare phenomenon to have a child not want to get baptized. Most kids just want to get baptized! As per usual, this spiritual message was more for me than for the sisters. In this case, my quote was a spiritual foreshadowing of Athena Blythe's baptism. Athena Blythe was not interested in getting baptized and nothing could persuade her. She was vocal and adamantly against the idea for well over a year before she turned 8! We tried everything; extra baptism lessons, attending as many baptisms as we could, NOT talking about it and seeing if the desire would happen anyway. Various (un)helpful people took it upon themselves(even after we repeatedly asked them not to) to try and convince her by mentioning all the pomp and circumstance aspects of a baptism ceremony, but to my actual relief she rebuffed these people too. I certainly didn't want Athena Blythe to want to get baptized because there was going to be a party for her. Parties and cake have their place but the message of the baptism can easily get lost in the cultural pageantry surrounding baptisms. Athena Blythe will not do anything that is not 100% her idea, which thrills me that she will not easily cave to peer pressure but her obstinate and persistent nature makes her nearly impossible to live with when she is perseverating on a concept. When she finally decided to get baptized 6 months after her 8th birthday, I knew it was because she was ready and had a bit of an understanding of what she was doing.

my sister in law, shayla, is an incredibly gifted gift giver. she just knows how to make things thoughtful and lovely. she sent athena blythe these delightful cookies. 

we did plan for a post-baptism outdoor gathering with friends here in town. FYI, october is a great time for visiting. it's still summer but not sweltering summer. grandma sandy flew in and we had pizza, chik fil a and a cake. Athena Blythe drew a blueprint for the cake and you can see her inspecting the final product in this photo.

"Why isn't the frosting RED!" exclaimed the always grateful daughter.

She was also not pleased that I added the ghosts for an attempt at a humorous holy ghost halloween baptism joke. When I picked up the cake she had originally written in frosting, "Happy Baptist", which makes no sense(especially since Athena Blythe is anything but) but the decorator was able to fix it before I brought it home.

our pre-ordinance family photos:

one of my favorite photos of 2020.

I pride myself on a swift baptism service and this one clocked in at a sweet 27 minutes. Musical numbers were not allowed due to covid restrictions(and my relief). You will never seen a baptism guest of honor video montage set to music at one of my baptisms. If that's your jam, I salute you. I choose less and so that I am actively choosing my own sanity. Both Grandmas were able to speak on baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost and we given strict instructions to keep it at 3-5 minutes. One was compliant, the other was oblivious.

Because we live under the ever present specter of sensory overload, we took extra steps to ensure sensory compliance:

Athena Blythe insisted on dressing as Cinderella instead of purchasing a white dress so I ordered a long sleeved skin-toned leotard to wear under the itchy, lacy bodice of the dress. Athena Blythe was able to tolerate the headband for the duration of the second half of the baptism but it is now lost to that same mysterious dimension that all discarded hair accoutrements occupy. It is somewhere, but certainly not here. The black choker ribbon lasted about as long  as the headband but was quickly requisitioned for use as a stuffed animal leash. The dress didn't make it through the post baptism party and I wish I had gotten a photo of her jumping on the trampoline in her skin-colored leotard. This was a celebration of baptism not soon to be forgotten or duplicated.

Later that night, after a rather torrential downpour, we attempted pandemic-style trick or treating. We all dressed up as bad guys, since that is always who Reagan wants to prevail in movies.

Wreck It Ralph, the Joker, Johnny Lawrence, Bane, Queen Chrysalis from My Little Pony, and a T-rex. 

 I looked so good in this wig that a few weeks later I colored my hair nearly this shade of blonde and I started picking fights with local new kids.

the end