Happy, happy goodness. I am so thankful for Paige’s experiences at BYU. She lives near enough that she can come home now and then, she is studying what she loves, and has opportunities to travel and learn, learn, learn.
Paige Lately
The Week at a Glance
This makes me 20 kinds of angry.
Stream of Consciousness
After a blustery night and as I enter a gray-brown day, I see winter-swept scenery through bare branches. I have some projects with fabric once the floors dry and I finish dusting. I need to do some clothing alterations. After that, I hope for easier weather when I have to carry my sewing machine to a friend’s house for quilt work with friends who will probably be dressed in gray sweaters. Sometimes the howl of the wind thinks it will remind me it is winter, but I need no reminders. The steely light permeates every corner of the house, a reminder that the sunlight is there, but has traveled through miles of clouds to reach us. Today, we just get the leftovers of sunshine. The views are bleak, but the snowflakes on my window help.
Even my church assignment (I still do not feel it is a “calling”) is about the dead. Shoulders hunched and eyes focused on computer screens, I study clues from handwriting of those long gone. I sit among people 20-30 years older than I am in research classes and feel young! Woot! I have never felt so isolated, but I anticipate connection with living people will be possible in this work, eventually. I am entering my fifth month away from church assignments involving people who breathe. My temple and family history assignment still is not defined, and I wait. It’s a busy kind of waiting, as I have so much to learn. I am giving many hours a week to a work that feels absolutely invisible, kind of like housework. Ha!
My assigned ministering route was changed and not a single woman wants me in her home. Some have had it with churchy things. Another just needs to get out of the house rather than have a visit. She helped me make the snowflakes on my window as we talked this week. I count it an act of trust when I get a text from one asking me to give her son a ride home from school. Discipleship and ministry are among the indefinable things.
I gift myself one day of study a week. In these books, I lose myself to a degree that I call indulgence. Church prophets have often told women they are needed and important, but now I feel I have been given a task to prove it. I have come to understand that my New Testament knowledge, gleaned over years and years, is needed in my family. I still apologize and feel insecurity when I let myself be seen by my family for who I am: a scripture nerd. I spend time coming up with activities that will allow my sons to come to love the New Testament as I do. It takes all my self-control not to spill out what I have learned and what I feel, and what the Jews did, and what the landscape is like, and what a different translation teaches, and literary techniques of Gospel writers, and, and, and, and…Mary kept these things and pondered them in her heart. In a house full of men who do not enjoy conversation, I do a lot of pondering.
A few weeks ago I realized that Tim and Mark have seen very few plays, so I bought tickets to The Wizard of Oz at Hale Center Theater for later today. This will be a good start to a four-day weekend for them, and we are all ready for it. There was a bomb threat at Tim’s school this week and half the student body stayed home on Wednesday. This week I have learned that I need to get used to my children being in mortal peril. Let’s celebrate by watching Dorothy get swept away by a tornado and flying monkeys!
Witness
Today Daniel’s apartment building caught on fire in Santiago, Chile. He escaped, thanks to living angels who stopped to warn, guide, and unlock doors. Feel free to join me in prayers of gratitude for his protection. He grabbed his scriptures, wallet, keys, camera, and photos which were already prepared for travel. He already had his shoes on when the call came to escape. He and the other elders had to abandon a smoky stairwell with hot handrails for a different route out. When they were trapped on the roof, with only locked doors to stairs going down, someone came up to open a locked door to a safe stairwell. A quote from his message today:
Needless to say, that was an intense experience. Maybe we were never in real danger. But my mindset changed. As a missionary, I already have very few personal belongings, but as I stood there with reminders of my family and my scriptures with all my markings and couldn’t think of anything else I would want to save I realized how easily we can get distracted by things that don’t last. There are a lot of things I left behind that don’t matter, and now that’s especially clear to me.
-Elder Daniel Ross
God really does protect us, guide us, answer prayers, and puts people, thoughts, and when necessary angels in our lives to help us return to live with him again. The Savior truly understands us, and through his infinite sacrifice and atonement we can be cleansed from sin.
I was very unwell all morning before I heard about this. Maybe I knew on some level he was in danger. I also felt complete peace when he announced his call (mission assignment) last April. I don’t need any more assurance that all will be well, whatever things look like at present. I don’t think he has his “cloak,” but he does have his “parchments,” (2 Timothy 4:13), and knows the value of them.
And last of all, here is a link to the journal page for our study of Matthew 2 and Luke 2 at our house for the week of January 14-20.
A Quote and a Good Book
We infinitely wrong ourselves by laziness and confinement. All creatures in all nations, and tongues, and people praise God infinitely…You are never what you ought till you go out of yourself and walk among them.
Thomas Traherne, Centuries of Meditations
I recommend the book, Refugee by Alan Gratz. Mark had the option to read it and I was drawn to its subject matter. I read it in a few hours and loved it. I encouraged Mark to read it and talk about it with me. It follows the stories of three refugee kids, age 12, from three eras: Nazi Germany, 1990s Cuba, and 2015 Syria.
As I See It
In 2018, I learned it was God holding up my children. Not me.
I learned that I do not like philosophical email exchanges. I prefer less theory and more practical planning.
My skin is failing me.
My children have all surpassed me in musical ability.
I learned that I am good at knowing what people need.
I learned that the things I wished for when I was young are still what I wish for now: a simple house, quiet evenings, and books. Oh, and dolls.
I appreciate cheerful, fun-loving sidekicks.
I learned to not define myself by what I do. I am more than all of that.
I learned that my patriarchal blessing has a whole paragraph devoted to what I am going through right now. I always wondered why that paragraph was there. Now I know.
I have caused hurt.
I am full of power to act.
It is easy for me to find something to be grateful for each day.
I learned a little more that Christ is always the answer.
In 2019 I want to know what to say. I want to go ice skating. I want to conquer some fear. I want to be better at diverting a couple of people from negativity. I want to savor every day with my children while they still live with me. I want to be clear with others of what I know. I need God’s grace to make me meek, open, and unencumbered. 2019, we have our work cut out for us.
Four choices of study for Matthew 1 and Luke 1
Last Monday I posted the worksheet that I made for our family for the Come Follow Me curriculum week one. The important thing is that our family followed our plan during the week, and we had a good discussion on Sunday. They won’t be making any training videos for family discussions using our family, but it was good.
For this week, we have four family members at home, so I split the readings in Matthew 1 and Luke 1 into four stories: Mary, Joseph, Elizabeth/Zacharias (counts as one), and Gabriel. Each of us will choose one person (or couple) to study this week.
If you care to see the study guide I made for Matthew 1 and Luke 1, this is a link to the document . Some of the questions come from the Church study guide, and some are my own. I feel silly posting this. But there it is.
Correction: on worksheet, the last reference for Gabriel should be Luke 1:26-37, not Matthew.
Books I Read in 2018
My top four books are in bold. The winners are a memoir, an economics book, a book about depression and anxiety, and a book of essays. It seems I liked books that challenged my way of thinking this year.
- The Girl With Seven Names: Escape From North Korea by Hyeonseo Lee (This was good, and eye opening)
- Emma by Jane Austen (I read this every few years.)
- No Life for a Lady by Agnes Morley Cleaveland (Memoir of ranch life in New Mexico 1870s-1930s)(Engaging, interesting, and made me want to go to New Mexico again.)
- You are Boring, but You are Uniquely Boring: 25 Models for Writing Your Memoir by Louise Plummer and Ann Cannon (a good, easy guide)
- The Book of Mormon
- The Zookeeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman (pretty good)
- Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson by Gordon S. Wood (I liked the beginning and ending but the middle had a little too much political theory for me.)
- The Book of Mormon (This was our family reading that took us about two years this time, maybe longer.)
- The Book of Mormon (I focused on pulling out concise doctrines and phrases for a new project.)
- The Girl Who Wrote in Silk (Not recommended.)
- Queen Victoria: From Her Birth to the Death of the Prince Consort by Cecil Woodham-Smith (Minus the chapters about the Crimea and India, I liked it.)
- Unified: How Our Unlikely Friendship Gives Us Hope for a Divided Countryby Senator Tim Scott and Congressman Trey Gowdy (Not about politics, this book about friendship made me want to be a better neighbor.)
- Still Alice by Lisa Genova (I loved it.)
- Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi (A lot of the content made me uncomfortable, but it is quite a story.)
- Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness by Rebecca Solnit (I loved the variety of essays in this book. The essay on Thoreau and his sisters was my favorite. I loved the concept that sister is a verb…)
- The Gospel Comes With a House Key by Rosaria Butterfield (This is about the power of Christian hospitality. Unfortunately, I did not feel hospitality in her choice of language. It felt like she was writing to an exclusive group, with its own vernacular, which was somewhat unclear to me. I still loved her and I still felt inspired to open my home and my life to others to help bring people to Christ.)
- Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner? A Story of Women and Economics by Katherine Marcal (She introduced ideas that were completely new to me. I am still thinking about it. I didn’t agree with everything she said, but this is an important book.)
- The Book of Mormon (focus: ministering)
- My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead (The most comforting, familiar book I could think to read after Daniel left home.)
- America’s First Daughter by Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie (I couldn’t put it down.)
- Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression and Anxiety and the Unexpected Solutions by Johann Hari (This challenges everything I thought I understood about depression and anxiety. I didn’t agree with all of his proposed solutions, but so much of this made sense to me. Highly recommended.)
- Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days, Volume 1. The Standard of Truth, 1815-1846. (Really good.)
- Present Over Perfect by Shauna Niequist (Some good truths here.)
- The Book of Mormon (focus: references which include Christ)
- Mama’s Bank Account by Kathryn Forbes (I absolutely loved it.)
- The Persian Pickle Club by Sandra Dallas
- The Gift if the Magi by O Henry
- A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickins
Just Write.
I mailed off my thank you notes for Christmas this morning and felt some relief after facing it. I question my wording, my tardiness, my choice of card. I wonder if I will seem overly flowery in my words or give the impression I am underwhelmed by a gift. I worry that it is another reminder that I am annoying. I am posting a radio segment I listened to today that addresses these concerns.
Julie is my friend from elementary school, middle school, and high school. We were also college roommates. She is the host for BYU Radio’s Top of Mind. Here is her interview about the value of thank you notes.
(it is about six minutes.)
If you are too busy to listen, the summary is that you should write how you feel and not worry about form or being annoying. Research supports that people love to receive thank you notes.
This is how we are doing it this week: Come Follow Me for Individuals and Families Week 1
This week, the goal is for each person to study a few verses on their own each day and write about it. We wanted the kids to start a journal of their scripture study, so each week I plan to make a page on which they can write. This week I typed it. Some weeks it may be photocopies of post-it notes. And yes, we will be sweetening the deal as we come together to share on Sunday morning. We will keep reading the Book of Mormon as a family in the evenings. Every scripture and question is listed in the study guide, so there’s nothing original here, just the way we are going to use it.
Post edit addition: we are changing the cinnamon roll time because it’s the first Sunday of the month. 😉