Write To Do lists in pencil.
Schedule Relief Society activities in pen.
Buy fresh flowers.
Find opportunities to use pink plates.
Go on long evening walks.
Take pictures of sunsets, even though the true colors are elusive to cameras.
Write To Do lists in pencil.
Schedule Relief Society activities in pen.
Buy fresh flowers.
Find opportunities to use pink plates.
Go on long evening walks.
Take pictures of sunsets, even though the true colors are elusive to cameras.
In the shadow of sandstone formations, I watched the boys scale almost every surface they could. In the silence of the land, I walked a little with God and told him things I really want to do and felt his blessing. In the light of the temple, I saw more clearly who my sons are, and who they are becoming.
A neighbor observed that the views we seek most often are valleys, not mountains. I think we love the view of a valley because it reminds us how far we have come. We are ascending, after all.
The Finnish side of our family has been a mystery for so long that I just settled into the idea that Ida Maria was not going to have a maiden name. Today, with a few acts of faith and courage to ask someone to help me access a different website, I found my great-great grandmother’s maiden name, and traced her family back to 1760. She was one of ten siblings. I had access to all their names, the names of mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters in minutes. The Stake Family History consultant who helped me cried with me at the sight. This was a big breakthrough!
Ida Maria has been on my mind for 11 years, but more frequently in the past few months. I think she wanted to be found because I am no expert. I just showed up at a family history center and asked the questions that came to my mind. Many of us have put in effort to find her, but I got to be the one today, and that feels like one of the biggest honors of my life. I cannot sleep for the joy of it.
This weekend we hosted some gatherings, one for neighbors and then for the youth before they went to the temple. I don’t know how successful these gatherings were, but I think the house looked really good after two days of effort.
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!
https://youtu.be/yoX88L5Ig7Y
This clip won’t mean much if you have not seen the movie Coco. I didn’t like the movie the first time I saw it, but I now love it. The look on Hector’s face as he steps on the bridge of flowers makes me cry every time. Because he is remembered.
Our family has a “Hector,” and his name is Jose Sabas Antonio Sanchez. My parents found his grave this year in Merced.
I put up the Christmas decorations and realized I needed a new touch this year:
My Great-aunt Susan’s doll sitting on my Great-great-great grandmother Emma Louisa Boyden Ostler’s chair. (1846-1897).