The family has been working on a really big apple crop from our tree. We have prepared applesauce, frozen apples, dried apples, and caramel apples. Apples, apples, apples, apples, apples, apples, apples. I have named this weekend Apples.
Apples
Author: Angela
I write so my family will always have letters from home.
Assist and witness
I listened to a class where they introduced the idea of adding your name to the witnesses page of the Book of Mormon. I thought it was a great exercise.
The following verses drew me in this time as I read Doctrine and Covenants 14, directed to one of the 3 witnesses of the Book of Mormon.
Maybe I needed a reminder of how much Jesus drives the work to spread His gospel. Maybe I needed the reminder that He asks people like me and you to assist for our own good. Maybe I needed the reminder that God’s chosen method to make things known is person to person, one by one.
Color
Sometime during the pandemic, Richard and I watched a movie about Vincent Van Gogh. I don’t remember the name of the film, but William Dafoe was the actor who played Van Gogh. I learned in the film that I have mispronounced his last name all my life, that the light in southern France is magical for painting, and that his paintings were not popular until after his death.
It’s a small thing, but as I make these little cross stitch creations, I learn about different artists’ use of color. Van Gogh is fearless with color, and I love recreating his paintings with needle and floss more than any other artist so far.
Monsters in the Margins
Mark had some great moments as a homeschool student. He said funny and clever things all the time. He also drew a lot of good pictures. These monsters and action scenes were drawn about 7 years ago in the margins of his math notebooks, but I am just getting around to displaying them. I cut them out, scanned them, and arranged them into a collage with my computer.
My favorite word lately is “curate,” as I am being mindful of what I keep and display. Now I think it would be cute to create a similar collage of artwork from each child. The art box is one of the last holdouts in my purge of homeschool papers.
Important to me
This week, I took an hour to upload a few photos to the Family Search website and tag the names of my ancestors. One of the pictures I uploaded is shown above. It is small, just 2×3″, and sits in a frame in my kitchen. It is special because it shows my great-grandmother Alli, on the right, seated with the children, smiling. Since discovering this photo in 2013, we have found more photos of Alli smiling, but this was the first. Alli died 3 1/2 years after this photo was taken.
The photo is well-labeled on the back, and the label identifies the two children are who are celebrating birthdays, plus one other name, Ellen. She sits above the party on the right. As I tagged her in the photo, I realized that this is the only photo on Family Search for this woman, who is my great-great aunt. Then I noticed that her temple work has not been done. As I continued tagging, I saw that there are temple ordinances waiting to be done for the birthday children, specifically for the birthday boy, second from the left on the bottom row. He was killed in WWII and left no descendants.
This photo now holds even more importance for me. If I hadn’t decided to share and tag this photo, how would I have known there are handfuls of temple ordinances to be done for these people? There are no coincidences in temple and family history work.
Looking back
There are years that ask questions and there are years that answer.
Zora Neale Hurston
I have thought about this quote a lot this week. At first, I agreed with it, but changed my mind. I don’t think our lives show up as one thing one year and another thing the next. Life is more nuanced than that. Yes, some answers are better seen after the experience, but I want to say that answers are always in the works.
I think it’s our tendency to generalize about time. I might say I had a bad day, when really, the bad stuff lasted a few minutes. We might have a tendency to say the past few years have been uncertain, but when I look at what I have learned during this time of really tough experiences, can I really say I have lived without answers? No! These years of poor health, deaths, and uncertainty have given me extra life experience and many answers in a consolidated time. Looking back, I am able to see more accurately that answers were always descending, helpers were prepared to do their thing, and clarity came, one adjustment at a time.
Morning light
As I read the scriptures, I try to keep a running list of promises the Lord has made to his covenant people. This was my goal as I approached the book of Jeremiah, and my morning study time during the last few weeks has been dominated by His promises in this book. I ran out of dedicated space in my notebook, and the promises poured onto another sheet of paper. I learned that there are so many good things to come!
This kind of study is one reason I can say that God is good. I know for myself what He has said, what He has done, and what He has promised to do.
The book of Jeremiah has brought me a lot of hope that I did not see coming.
“As you study your scriptures… I encourage you to make a list of all that the Lord has promised He will do for covenant Israel. I think you will be astounded! Ponder these promises. Talk about them with your family and friends. Then live and watch for these promises to be fulfilled in your own life.”
Russell M Nelson
General Conference Weekend
Richard arranged for our family to enjoy one last camping trip this year. He reserved a large campsite in Midway with beautiful views of the changing leaves on the mountains and Heber Valley. It was chilly, but we enjoyed generous food portions, a break from phone service, plenty of hot cocoa, and singing around the fire with a guitar. Life felt pretty good. Happy 23rd Birthday to Daniel! And happy Conference weekend.
Letting go
Our kids are well beyond the kindergarten stage, so why have I kept their school papers all these years?
Denial that they are grown and gone
Nostalgia for those sweet days with our kids
Avoiding emotions
These papers are proof that I accomplished something as a home educator.
NO MORE. This week I got rid of nearly all my children’s home school papers, saving just a few things that make my heart flip. I have emptied several shelves this week, yet somehow the bookcases are still full. My random piles of books are finding homes on the empty shelves, and I am gaining momentum in my ability to part with things.
Educating my children was a big part of my life, so this process of parting with papers is emotional. I have learned that most children are not sentimental about their school projects, so there is no need to save much. I know now that whatever I save is mainly for me. Understanding this has made the process much easier. I remind myself that I don’t need every writing sample, but I would like a few pages of each child’s writing and some special projects and art. This script made it possible for me to part with several armloads of paper and workbooks, which I lowered into the garbage can, carefully, as I would into a grave.
It occurs to me that keeping a small, curated collection is a greater tribute to these years than a bunch of binders bursting with paper.
After each session of cleaning, I comfort myself by reading or cross stitching. All these realizations and diversions help me to face the task of letting go.
Harvest
On Sundays, I visit various Primaries, and sometimes I am really aware of my outsider status. I move in a different orbit than my family and most friends. I came home last Sunday depleted and full of insecurities about the way I had interacted with people that day. My reaction to the day was mainly because I was tired and hungry, and I am just fine after some rest and a serendipitous find.
Today, as I removed some old books from a bookcase, I uncovered two albums of notes that were written to me from friends at church. I hadn’t looked at them in years. I read page after page of thank you’s, encouragements, and kind observations, and this restored some of what I have lacked lately: a steady dose of my ward friends. These notes are part of a harvest I have enjoyed from my past church callings.
The harvest from my church service, past and present, continues. I have wonderful friends, my children have learned how to serve, and I can fall back on so many life lessons from my experiences. I also see that our sacrifices have yielded blessings that I can’t name, as they are personal, steady, and continue to catch me by surprise. God is very generous.