don't give up

I have a friend who a couple of months ago was diagnosed with leukemia. I’ve been thinking of him today, and praying for him.

This morning I got out a notebook which I had started when I was sixteen. I wanted to show it to my daughter and laugh at all the pictures of when I was a little girl and teen ager. A quote that was stuck in the book fell out. I was visited by my teen-age self! Little did I know then how much I would need this quote in my elder years.

“I am bigger than any thing that can happen to me. All these things, sorrow, misfortune and suffering are outside my door. I am in the house and I have the key.”

                                                                                                --Lumis—

Life has gotten frightening over the last fifty years or so. Many experiences have happened that none of us would have chosen. Having faith that we will be able to control how we feel about these experiences and grow from them is worth developing.

I remember when my daughter was born—At one point I told my husband that I had changed my mind. I didn’t want to go through this anymore. But then when she was placed into my arms, I felt immeasurable joy. How glad I was that I had endured to the end.

Today while preparing for church tomorrow I read;

Romans 8

18 For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

Do I choose to endure?

Or give up?

Do I choose to feel faith?

 Or doom?

Do I choose to flee to the world

Or smile, and stay safe

In loves room.

What do you choose?

Think About it!

Ice crystals

Dotting the sidewalks,

Bells ringing

Brightly on a quiet night,

Calling all

To worship,

To peace.

In the moonlight

Families gather

Dreams of good will

Universal love

Peace on earth.

Are we too late?

anniversary

It is lovely to be

Nearly one skin,

Not knowing

Quite where you leave off

And I begin—

Like a watercolor

That runs the flow

Of sea and sky.

Some mystic brush

Has been at work,

Erasing lines, Embracing spaces,

Bordering us only by bliss.

I want never again

To know where you leave off

And I begin.

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Thankful

November is nearly over and we have much to be grateful for . I hope you had a lovely holiday. Our family has all grown and left so we have a lonelier dinner. We did have my brother and sister-in-law over, and had fun and lots of pies. Everyone seems to like a different kind!

Aren’t we all like that in our lives. We have just gotten through another election where everyone seems to be more invested in their own needs and wants instead of sharing and caring about the greater good.

I think this stress was affecting my life in some way. I have been living in fear. I have awakened each morning for the last few months with a song running through my mind. It was Oh Come Thou King of Kings by Parley P. Pratt who happens to be my great-great Grandfather

 1. Come, O thou King of Kings!

We've waited long for thee,

With healing in thy wings,

To set thy people free.

Come, thou desire of nations, come;

Let Israel now be gathered home.

 2. Come, make an end to sin,

And cleanse the earth by fire,

And righteousness bring in,

That Saints may tune the lyre

With songs of joy, a happier strain,

To welcome in thy peaceful reign.

Was my grandfather sending me a message? I looked up the scripture that accompanied the hymn in our hymnal

Isaiah 35:10

10 And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

And I felt a sense of peace. I could give up worrying about what the world is doing. God has it. Whatever is going to happen to our country, our world, we will be able to trust in God to help us get through it.

Now I wake every morning with a different song running through my mind. We sang in on Thanksgiving in my husband’s church’s service. My favorite line is,

“All is mine for I am His. How can I keep from singing?”

I give thanks to have you in my life, and having the opportunity to put my thoughts on paper.

Children of the Creator

"The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul. No matter our talents, education, backgrounds, or abilities, we each have an inherent wish to create something that did not exist before." - Dieter F. Uchtdorf

What is it that drives us to create? 

The clear answer is because we are children of God, the greatest of creators, and thus we have that divine desire inside of us to “create something that did not exist before.”

So this next week for General Conference I am hoping to inspire you to get creative.

Paint! Write a poem! Play the piano! Anything to satisfy that need that all of us have to create.

I am hoping to gently prod you into finding the joy in creating.

I received this Email from Ryan Kelly, a teacher at BYU who has written a new method of learning to play the piano. Not having taken lessons since I was 8 years old, I thought I’d give it a try, although not very hard yet. I really needed this little encouragement to try to create. But what? But what? But what? I’m temporarily quilted out and still have three half done tops. I yearn to paint but don’t do as well as my friend who is an artist, so I feel intimidated. One of my nesting urges led to organizing six file cabinet drawers. Is that creating? It impressed my husband and I guess I was creating space and order!

When we feel the need, the urge to create what do we need to do to get that little push? It’s almost like baby hunger but that phase has passed long ago.

I have been blessed with an excess and a charge to share. If I learn how to do one thing, one art form, it leads me into wanting to try another.

 Now I have drawers full of “I want to“ projects. I need to learn enduring to the end as well as urge to create. But I will say I’m never bored! I’ve been thinking that it is time to start writing poetry again. I think I’ll choose words from each talk of general conference and see what poems I can come up with from that inspiration. Humm, sounds like a challenge. General conference starts Saturday and Sunday this week. Check it out.  I challenge you to a poem.I encourage you to create something this week. Let me know what you do!

love one another

“Love one another

As I have loved you

Love one another “

This was the theme of my younger son’s mission. He asked his six year- old sister to play this hymn and sing it for his farewell.

This theme can be found in other New Testament scriptures and in the Book of Mormon.

John 13:34  “ A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.”

John 15:12- This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.

Mosiah 4:15 But ye will teach them to walk in the ways of truth and soberness; ye will teach them to love one another, and to serve one another.

We have been encouraged to learn to be better ministers to our families, friends, and others around us this year, and have been learning ways we can do this. I love going out to my front garden when I know my friends are coming over and cut the dead flowers off the rose bushes because, knowing them, they will just start helping. Sunshine, fresh air, good conversation, and the smell of roses; what better way is there to spend a happy hour.

My husband and I just got back from our first real vacation in four years. We went on a river cruise from St Louis Missouri to Nashville Tennessee. The ship, a paddle wheeler, was full of older couples like us. The staff consisted of young adults just out of high school to early twenties.  It was fun to see the interactions between the generations. The young people were learning to care for and about others; and the others, mostly grandparents were enjoying being served and cared for by such happy people. Little things happened like holding doors open; hiding a favorite desert for someone at their table so they wouldn’t run out; learning about families and difficult experiences to give encouragement; helping hands for the unsteady going down the gangplank; pushing a wheelchair for an exhausted traveler; encouraging the youth to hang in there and don’t quit a hard job early though they thought they couldn’t follow through.

On the last day hugs and good byes filled the dining area.

Even the adults were anxious to help each other. Though strangers at the beginning of the trip, there were groups of friends at the end of the week. One woman didn’t know how to send text messages on her new I phone. We took care of that. One man fell in the parking lot. It took twelve people to help him up again, but they accomplished it. One person wanted a picture of a superb quilt but didn’t have a camera. Another took one and emailed it to her. Another found an implement to hold Hor d’oeuvres together that she thought she could use to teach crafts to some the people with dementia that she worked with. Every day, every meal everyone brought theirs to her.

There are hard things you can do like helping towns after a hurricane

There are simple things like when my son-in law makes sandwiches for the homeless in the park he practices in.

There are kind things, like waving to or smiling at neighbors on the street. What can you do today?

Indexing

Last summer, (August ’17) a friend challenged my husband to read the Old Testament straight through, beginning to end. We both took up the challenge, I reading the complete standard works of my church, and he reading the old testament from three different translations. I succeeded in my challenge in August ‘18, but again I was confused by  Malachi 4:6.

“And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse”

I know it has to do with family history; but besides wanting to know more about my family, and wishing I had asked my parents before it was too late, was there something I was missing?

This week our church group of women and girls challenged the men and boys to a contest in Indexing for one month. Indexing is an opportunity to transfer government records to computer files so people will be able to access them to do their genealogy.

With dread, I thought, “Okay I can do this for a month”. Anything for the cause.

I started with beginners. The draft records from World War I, “Ho Hum, way before my time.” But, my mind started drifting as I was typing. My husband’s father was in WW I, I wish I’d known him and heard his stories. He use to walk around down town Richmond, VA, and talk to the Civil war vets that still survived. What stories they had! By the third batch, I was thinking of my uncles in WWII. Three of my father’s younger brothers enlisted. Imagine how their mother felt to have nearly half of her living children off to war at the same time, and against the country of her birth! One of them did not survive. 

Today I started a batch of cemetery records. One family had a child die in infancy, another was a still birth, then the father from the flu. It reminded me of my father’s mother. Her first daughter died at two with a heart ailment, her second at birth. Because of the flue Pandemic, my grandmother was in quarantine at home. The midwife outside the bedroom window yelling instructions. Her third daughter had a heart attack at age twelve. How grateful I am for the advances in medicine.

My heart has indeed turned to my fathers. I will stay with the indexing and try to find out more about our families, and extended families. I’m hooked! But really! What does it mean when a one month, four- day old child dies of a “Summer Complaint” in 1915?

What do you know about your great-grand parents?