I Can Only Imagine

I was introduced to the song "I Can Only Imagine," written by Bart Millard and sung by Mercy Me at the closing keynote address of a homeschool conference several years ago. I don't remember a whole lot about the rest of the address, but the following video was shown and it had a TREMENDOUS impact on me. I was in tears.

At first it was the story and Dick Hoyt's incredible example that inspired me. Not only did I want to be a better mother, I wanted to be a better person in general. I also felt that if Dick could do what he did, I could do more, too, and get in better physical shape; not just for me but for my family so I could do things with them without physical limitations. I wanted to be strong. I downloaded "I Can Only Imagine" to my iPod for some motivation and it was the first song I ever ran to in its entirety.

As I ran to this song day after day, the lyrics engraved themselves on my heart. I believe in a living Father in Heaven and a living, resurrected Savior, Jesus Christ. What will it be like when I see them again? What will I feel? What will I say? What will I do? 

The Resurrection is going to be glorious and wonderful. Not just for people like Rick Hoyt, who will no longer be handicapped, but for everyone.  Running to this song makes me feel a little lighter, a little stronger, and a lot hopeful for that future day when my scars and pains and limitations are no more and when I'll see the Resurrected Lord. I can only imagine!

I Can Only Imagine

I can only imagine what it will be like

When I walk, by your side

I can only imagine what my eyes will see

When your face is before me

I can only imagine

I can only imagine

Surrounded by your glory

What will my heart feel?

Will I dance for you Jesus

Or in awe of you be still?

Will I stand in your presence

Or to my knees will I fall?

Will I sing hallelujah

Will I be able to speak at all?

I can only imagine

I can only imagine

I can only imagine when that day comes

When I find myself standing in the son

I can only imagine when all I would do is forever

Forever worship you

I can only imagine

I can only imagine

Surrounded by your glory

What will my heart feel

Will I dance for you Jesus

Or in awe of you be still

Will I stand in your presence

Or to my knees will I fall

Will I sing hallelujah

Will I be able to speak at all

I can only imagine

I can only imagine 

Even the Best Decisions Can Be Hard to Live With

It's November. This is the month I've been both pushing to get to, seeing it as a summit, and also the month I've been dreading to come, a little sad about the view from the top once reached. It has been a full and busy fall with lots of plans and goals as well as many unexpected surprises. I've backed way off the blogging in an effort to spend time where it really needed to be spent this autumn. And now November is here. Today we dropped off our newest missionary at the Provo MTC and I'm feeling so many emotions I just can't give words to them all. Let's just say that I left a part of my heart in Provo and I'm really feeling it tonight. Even though this is the best decision my son could possibly have made and I am so proud, pleased and full of hope, faith, and gratitude, it's still a little hard to live with it.

As the calendar days have passed I've been looking forward to listening to my November Playlist. After arriving home from the MTC and feeling the need for some grace in my thoughts, I put on David Tolk's appropriately named album Grace which is my newest November Playlist addition. 

The music was soothing and filling and then finally releasing. "I Need Thee Every Hour" broke the dam and I had a good, hard, mournful, grateful, prayerful cry.

Raising children is something of a paradox. You nurture and nourish, teach and train, love and lead, and give your whole soul to helping these children of God realize and reach their potential only to feel a little bit sad when they actually do. Wait. Success brings sadness? 

It's just that you love these children so much and you love being a mother so much that you'd gladly hit replay and go through everything over and over again so you could hold on to every happy, hard, sweet, trying, silly, bewildering, wonderful moment with these amazing people you've been blessed to bring into the world and hold hands with.

Thank God for motherhood! The privilege! The challenge! The journey! The joy!

Happy November. 

Brigham Young's Family Room

In the heart of downtown Salt Lake City, Utah, a row of Pioneer-era dwellings stand preserved. In addition to being family homes, these were the Official Residence of the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Executive Offices of the Territory of Utah. Several prophets occupied the office and a few the home. 

The house on the left is the Lion House, which was the private home of Brigham Young's family. The house to the far right is the Beehive House, which was the state home to use for guests and dignitaries. Many years later these buildings became boarding homes for young working women in the city to safely dwell in, as well as social gathering centers for college co-eds. The Lion House is so named because Brigham Young had the nickname "Lion of the Lord." The Beehive House is named after the early settling Saints' industry. They first called their colony in Utah Territory Deseret, which means "honeybee" in The Book of Mormon. The beehive was adopted as their official emblem, representing industry, and is still a state symbol.

Standing in this historical oasis in the midst of downtown traffic, sirens, and bustle, I wished to go back in time and visit before the skyscrapers and traffic lights. I did find a photo of when these buildings were fairly new and I still marvel at all that's changed since then.

Still, there was serenity in the gardens...

...and a wise and good example inside.  These photos are of Brigham Young's family room.

I took these photos to remind myself of the lesson I learned on my tour that impressed me very much. 

Brigham Young was a very busy man. Not only did he have a large family, he was a prophet of the Lord, President of the Church, the Governor of Utah, and a businessman among other things. And yet with all that, he never failed to gather his family in the family room each and every night for a hymn, some counsel, prayer, and connection. Even if he was in the middle of a meeting or had guests, at the same time every evening he stopped whatever he was doing, invited any guests to join him, and gathered his family together at the end of each day. And if, perchance, a family member failed to show up, he sent him or her a formal letter "inviting" the missing member to join them. 

I love the faithful sticking to principles and the consistent attention to his role as a husband, father, and head of a family even in the midst of all the other demands on him. What an example! Many times it seems that just missing a day here or there of an established family routine isn't that big of a deal. We think "consistent" means 85% to 90% of the time. We allow all sorts of things to interfere with important family time and/or important gospel time and let our roles as whatever else crowd our roles as spouses and parents. What a mistake! I want to be like Brigham!

Wise Men Still Seek Him

Our Christmas Presence readings continued with Pamela Kennedy's The Other Wise Man, which is a retelling of Henry Van Dyke's The Story of the Other Wise Man. (I didn't realize I was getting a retold version, but it turned out fine, especially since it made for a nice picture book. Still, I can't wait to read the original.) This is a story of a man set to travel with the other magi to find the Christ child, to present his own gifts of jewels, who ends up never actually setting eyes on Him because every time he gets close, he sees someone in desperate need and he cannot turn away. In the course of his journey he sells the jewels meant for the King in order to help the people he sees in need. At the end of his life he is disappointed that he never actually achieved finding the King, but is told that through his acts of love and service, he actually did.

The day after reading The Other Wise Man I read Carol Lynn Pearson's The Lesson to my children. The main lesson in The Lesson is that life's most important lesson is to teach us how to love. There are other things to learn, as well, and this is a good short read.

I then read some excerpts from Thomas S. Monson's "The Search for Jesus", we had a discussion of all these readings, and then we watched the video below. After that, each child made a small poster on the theme, "Wise Men Still Seek Him" for themselves, using old Christmas cards or graphics from the computer.

Christmas Presence

Our focus for this Christmas season has been Christmas Presence. Many years ago I found Chieko Okazaki's talk-turned-booklet "Christmas Presence" in a Christmas clearance bin and found it so inspiringly instructive. Because the holidays are too often focused on Christmas presents, I pulled this out this year to use as the spine for our December devotionals. It begins:

"As an educator, I was always delighted when children would discover some of the wonderful games you can play with language in the creation of puns, and images, and literalisms--such as, 'Have you ever seen a butterfly?' 'No, but I've seen the lettuce leaf.' Or how about the games you can play with homonyms, such as horse and hoarse? I would like to share some thoughts about another pair of homonyms:  Christmas presents and Christmas presence.

"We all know about the first kind. Christmas presents come wrapped in bright paper with beg red bows on them, and we find them under the Christmas tree. The second kind is the awareness that someone else is with us--the Christmas presence of our Savior. The scriptures describe both kinds for us. The first is the present as a gift, and the scriptures refer to us laying our gifts on the altar, kings giving gifts to prophets and other kings, God accepting Abel's  gift, and the wise men presenting unto the Christ child their gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh. In the second case, we find Adam and Eve hiding themselves from the presence of God, Moses coming into the presence of Pharaoh, and the commandment in Psalms to come into the presnece of the Lord with singing. It is this second kind I want to examine--the presence of the Lord, the presence of his love, the presence of his grace." 

Sister Okazaki goes on to discuss the importance of each of us giving the gift of our presence to those we love or even just come in contact with--being fully present in our interactions.

One example she uses in her book is the story of Rob's gift in Pearl S. Buck's Christmas Day in the Morning. She quotes some of it and summarizes and analyzes some of it, but later I read the full story to my children. It's a lovely story.

I gave my kids a writing assignment after reading and discussing these. They were to write about an instance or a person wherein they were given the gift of someone's presence and why it was important to them. I loved reading what they wrote! Each one wrote about someone/something vastly different from the others, but they were so meaningful and insightful.

_________________________________________________________________________________

P.S. It is really hard to find this booklet nowadays. I have found it in person only twice, both times in Christmas clearance for just 50 cents. Keep your eyes open! An internet search brings up really rare, expensive copies for sale. It's good, but I wouldn't pay $25 for it!

King Fruit

I get some of my best thinking done while I work in the garden, so I guess it's a good thing it is gardening season. 

Even though the ratio of weeds to family members is somewhere around six trillion to one around here (and the ratio of time it takes to weed to time we have to weed is even more skewed) most of my allotted garden time has not been able to be spent on weeding. That was my plan; but my vision of certain sections of the yard becoming weed free this week changed when I saw that the sweet cherries were almost ripe and the birds were having a feast on them, one of the apple trees was excessively overburdened and needed the fruit thinned, and a hole in one of our hoses was going to keep us from being able to water everything normally.

The kids could water, but that takes a long time by hand. Still, in this heat it has to be done to save our seedlings and new plants, not to mention to prevent all our previous weeding, tilling, and planting efforts from going to waste. Whatever else I wanted the kids to get done had to take a lower rung on the priority ladder. My first priority had to be protecting the cherries from the birds. This was the first really great crop of sweet cherries this tree has produced after years of caring for it to overcome pest problems. (Last year was the first crop to speak of, but someone stole the cherries in the middle of the night while I waited one more day to pick for extra sweetness.) You can imagine how badly I want to harvest these cherries!

The thinning of the apples is a long, painful process. I suspect I'll be at it for weeks with four apple trees and only an hour or so a day to work on it. I hate it, because it does pain me to cut off any developing fruit and throw it away, even though somewhere in my brain I know it is necessary. I am thankful for the task, however, because it forces me to revisit previous lessons learned.

I've never had to thin apples so extensively before so I watched some video tutorials to make sure I would do it right. I learned that each cluster of apples needs to be thinned down to one apple, usually the "king fruit." This is the painful part of the process because a cluster can contain anywhere from two to six apples, depending on how many blossoms were pollinated (or survived a freeze). The king fruit is the largest of the pollinated apples in a cluster, having grown bigger because it was pollinated first. If you want large apples, this is the one you leave because it will always be the biggest of the bunch as the others cannot catch up to it. I like it when there is very obviously a king fruit and the others just aren't as developed; it makes it a little bit easier to let them go. But more often than I'd like, all the apples are the same size and it becomes a matter of evaluating position to other clusters to balance weight and room to grow, or a matter of finding the one that is the most perfect (no blemishes or bruising from banging in the wind).

New thoughts have emerged as I've thinned fruit this week and they are possibly very insightful. As I have pruned and thinned, I've had images of paper piles and boxes of "stuff" in my house that I keep meaning to thin out and organize but never seem to get to, mostly because of feeling overwhelmed. I've thought of the busy-ness of my schedule and the people and relationships that I sometimes don't spend enough time on because I often approach my time like I would an overstuffed suitcase, cramming and cramming and then just sitting on it and wishing it all to fit. Looking at these clusters of apples still to thin and the buckets of them destined for the compost pile, I've thought that I need to learn from the numbers of my apple tree:  I need to thin the stuff and distractions and demands of my life by 50% to 80%. Those are crazy numbers! It seems improbable, impractical and, of course, impossible. But the visual of just 50% of the clutter being gone...! It's at least a concrete goal I can work toward instead of an ethereal, eternal "not sure." If I stick to the example of king fruits and analyze the juxtaposition of everything on my branches, I should do alright.

I've also thought a lot about all the homeschooling moms I've heard from lately who aren't sure how lists and schedules and plans can coexist with reality. I think my garden experience makes for a perfect analogy to help guide all moms.

My list of things to do each day this week included garden time. I had very specific things that I meant to get done, mostly weeding. But when I got to the garden, I found that I needed to protect the cherry tree, thin the apples, and water by hand. I had to do what needed to be done first. Did I get the whole yard or even the garden weeded as planned? No. But I did do what needed done the most, and I did spend time in garden as I had planned.

What if the time I've set aside for a particular lesson or activity gets robbed by something like two kids fighting with each other? Do I forge ahead with the lesson, pushing, pulling, forcing, perhaps even fighting myself because that is the plan? Or do I stop, set the planned lesson aside for the time being, get to the heart of the kids' problem, and teach perhaps more important lessons relating to love, manners, behavior, responsibility, or whatever the need is? Then, when it is resolved, do we move on to next thing on our schedule, leaving the missed planned lesson undone, or do we stay and finish job? Answers here will vary, even for me depending on day, but the point is that the reality of parenting and homeschooling is that we are dealing with living, growing, changing beings, who think and act and react, not black and white checklists. A gardener must work with and around the weather, growing conditions, equipment failures, pest problems, etc. Moms do, too.

What if tomorrow, when I go back outside, I see that all we did today is ineffective or undone. What if the nets on my cherry tree, after hours of wrapping and stretching and tying today, have come undone? Do I lament and give up the cherries? Or do I do it all over again even though that's one more day I don't get to the weeds? I want those cherries! I want the harvest! 

What if you spend a day or a week teaching a math or science or phonics concept and now your schedule says it is time to move on to the next thing, but you realize that your child just isn't getting it? Do you advance, advance and  hope it will resolve somehow? Are you teaching a lesson, or teaching a child?

As good as it feels to check boxes or cross things off lists, that is not what is important. It's the progress, the becoming, the continued forward motion that matters. My cherries and apples can still be harvested even if I don't have a completely weed-free picture perfect garden, but they cannot be if I don't take care of first things first. Like the garden, in homeschooling it is the fruit that matters.

Lunch today took three times longer than I planned, and we didn't get to everything on my list, but I loved it. Why? The kids were really getting along, having a great, fun conversation, enjoying being together standing around griddle while I cooked crepes. I had doubled the recipe so I would have some for another day, but they all got eaten. It doesn't matter. The relationships being strengthened at that moment were more necessary--and fruitful--than anything else on my list (or having to make crepes again the next time).

On a school day I may set aside 15 minutes for recess, but when I see two kids who normally fight with each other getting along beautifully, I don't interrupt! The math isn't going anywhere and can be done at another point in the day. It will still get done. The most needful thing at that moment is already happening. 

All of this is to say, most of us need to thin some things out of our lives, whether it's stuff, list items, or unrealistic expectations of ourselves and our kids. Don't give up having a plan or a frameworked schedule, but don't be so checklist oriented that you can't see what's working and enjoy the moment. I fervently believe that God put things like gardens in our paths to teach us important lessons. Find the king fruit in your life, which I would suggest is marriage, children, and your values, and put first things first so you can look forward to the harvest.

Mommy's Gonna Fly!

If you cannot relate to this Family Circus you either a) don't have children or b) have your priorities mixed up. 

A mother with a house full of children, who is seeing to their needs and who has many things to do in a day, cannot keep an immaculate house at all times--unless she cares more about a clean house than happy children, or housecleaning is the only hobby she has. I have always like the following quote:

"A clean house is a sign of a misspent life."

That doesn't mean there aren't days I'm not mortified at the state of the house when someone drops in. Once upon a time, in a different house, someone came to the front door and before leaving said, "Well, you can tell this is a homeschooling house." WHAT DID THAT MEAN?  I'll tell you what that meant:  it meant that I made sure that the next house I bought had a very different floor plan, with little to be seen from the front door! 

Messy House Rule #1:  No one ever drops in when the house is clean. I know there is a man in Washington who doesn't believe I ever clean house, because he always stopped by on the worst days. I would sigh and say, "You should have come by yesterday." 

Messy House Rule #2:  Household appliances break down only when the house is already in a state of disaster. A washer/dryer will only break when you are already swamped with laundry because you had a really busy week and you were about to catch up when...kerplunk. The dishwasher only dies when you have cooked up a storm and have no clean dishes left and they're all over the counter. 

One winter we got socked in with a snowstorm over a weekend and we'd just enjoyed playing games and watching movies and snacking, etc. We'd enjoyed being a little lazy and planned to restore order on Monday morning. It snowed and snowed Sunday evening and the house felt colder and colder and we realized that something was wrong with our boiler and we had no heat. We all slept downstairs by the wood stove that night and called our plumber the next morning. As I was outside to shovel two feet of snow out of the driveway with my husband and kids, the plumber showed up and went to work. I pushed another shovel full of snow and then shrieked, remembering the pantyhose sitting next to my laptop that I'd taken off after church when I checked my email. The plumber would walk by that, among many other things out and about from our lazy weekend, and I was horrified. I sheepishly said something to him when he was finished, apologizing for the mess. He laughed and told me that in his line of work he's seen some real messy houses and that mine has never been the worst he's seen. He further reassured me, saying, "I have kids, too, and you just can't live your life and have a clean house all the time." Whew!

I remember arriving at a Relief Society presidency meeting at the secretary's home and asking her young son where their bathroom was because my little guy needed to go. This probably five-year-old little boy said, very seriously, "Oh, you need to use my mom's bathroom. She wants the other one to stay clean for five minutes." I still laugh about that because I know exactly what went down in that house before we all began to arrive:  Mom cleaned the bathroom because the ladies were coming over and then she instructed her children to only use her personal bathroom because (she said in exasperation and exaggeration) she wanted the other one "to stay clean for five minutes" as any use by her children would undue what she'd just done.

I love how literal kids are. It makes life interesting--and it should make parents think before speaking.

Happy Mother's Day to all you moms who just can't seem to get it all done. It's okay! Let me close by sharing poem I memorized as a teenager, the message of which I believe with my whole heart.

Excuse This House

Some houses try to hide the fact

That children shelter there.

Ours boasts of it quite openly,

The signs are every where.

For smears are on the windows,

Little smudges on the doors;

I should apologize I guess

For toys strewn on the floor.

But I sat down with the children

And we played and laughed and read,

And if the doorbell doesn't shine,

Their eyes will shine instead.

For when at times I'm forced to

Choose the one job or the other,

I want to be a housewife . . .

But first I'll be a mother.

What Shall We Give?

I have a long way to go to becoming who I want to be. It's so frustrating sometimes! I've been touched the past couple of days by the following two things, though, and I'm giving them a lot of thought and energy, adding them to the recipe of the future me.

From "The Gifts of Christmas" by Howard W. Hunter:

Give to your enemy forgiveness,

To your opponent tolerance,

To your friend your heart,

To all men charity, for the hands that help

are holier than lips that pray,

To every child a good example,

and to yourself—respect.

Awesome Autumn, Adieu

I love all four seasons and I would never want to live in a place that didn't have four distinct seasons. I welcome the changes and traditions of each season and always want to make the most of each.  That said, autumn is my favorite.  Every year I just cannot get enough time outside to soak it all up. It seems it's over as soon as it starts and I regret not having spent more time outside. 

This year I was determined to spend as much time out in the autumn awesomeness as responsibly possible. I'm still not sure it was enough, but I'm so glad I made a conscious effort to not let the season pass me by. So, tonight, as the snow softly falls outside my window at the close of Thanksgiving weekend and the beginning of the Christmas season, I bid a fond farewell to a beautiful autumn and challenge myself (and you) to seize the day(s) during the coming winter season and not let it pass you by without enjoying it--whatever that means to you.

"Teaching children about the natural world 

should be seen as one of the most important events of their lives."

-Thomas Berry, The Dream of the Earth-

"Along with milk and vegetables, kids need a steady diet of rocks and worms."

Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.

Nature's peace will flow into you as as sunshine flows into trees.

The winds will blow their own freshness into you...

While cares will drop off like autumn leaves.

-John Muir-

"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see." 

-Henry David Thoreau-

"Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower."

 -Albert Camus-

"I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers."

 -L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables-

"No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace as I have seen in one autumnal face."

 -John Donne-

Choose thy Love, Love thy Choice

When I was newly married I frequently saw the following quote hanging in the home of someone I worked for:

Choose thy love, love thy choice.

I thought it a wise proverb, vowed to remember it, but at the same time wondered that anyone would need to be reminded to love his or her spouse, a choice of the heart that surely continued forever.

Now, 21 years later, I see the wisdom in having such a motto ever in sight. Life is full and busy and demanding and however good our intentions we humans often neglect the things--and people--that matter most. Between children and careers and all that goes with them it is often our beloved husbands or wives who get the least and worst of us even though at one point in our lives we vowed never to let that happen.

Promises to keep...

In The Family:  A Proclamation to the World, it says: 

"Husband and wife have a solemn responsibility to love and care for each other..."

I believe that the words in the Proclamation were chosen with extreme care. Obviously, we're supposed to take our relationships with our spouses pretty seriously. More than that, we are supposed to act. Love and care are verbs! Further, the words solemn responsibility beg contemplation and understanding. In this instance responsibility is referring to a duty we took upon ourselves with an oath and something we are accountable for. But the beauty of the phrase comes in the synonyms for solemn:  sincere, earnest, honest, genuine, firm, heartfelt, wholehearted, sworn. Think about the one you pledged your love to and think about those words in your actions!

I'd like to offer 6 suggestions for helping us all love and care for our spouses more.

1.  Establish and keep your own traditions as a couple. Whole family traditions are important, to be sure, but I'm talking about some custom practice(s) that belongs to just the two of you. It can be simple or silly, or something profound. My husband and I have been taking "selfie" photos of the two of us on our travels since our honeymoon--long before it was a cultural fad. We have a collection of these pictures of us in the same pose but in different places as we grow old together. I still giggle when we take them. 

 Celebrating our 13th anniversary hiking above Cascade, Idaho

2.  Listen. Fully engage in conversations, with eye contact and an earnest desire to know what's important to your spouse. Then honor the needs and wishes expressed and actively work to make life better for your spouse.

3.  Kiss.  And kiss again.  Hold hands.  Be the attentive, affectionate person your spouse needs and fell in love with.

Celebrating our 20th anniversary hiking in Colorado

4.  Be present. Spend time together without distractions.  Some of the best time my husband and I have spent together has been playing board games and eating ice cream after the kids are in bed. 

5.  Do something old, try something new.  If there are activities you both really enjoy, do them together as much as is responsibly possible.  Hiking, fishing, tennis, golf... strengthen commonalities and make memories. But every now and then, try something new together, too.

Climbing a glacier in Alaska

6.  Count the little things.  A happy marriage is an accumulation of a lot of little things. From baking his favorite cookies to wearing those earrings he gave you to not complaining about a meeting he must attend, from wearing her favorite cologne to doing the after dinner cleanup to giving her the best seat, do the little things for your spouse and notice the little things your spouse does for you.  And for goodness' sake, say "thank you!"

Somewhere in my lifetime of reading I came across an interesting insight from a Jewish Rabbi who was talking with someone about arranged Jewish marriages versus the typical American marriage. He said, "You take something that is hot and you quickly let it go cold. We take something that is cool and we slowly warm it up."

Really, it's about conscious effort.  I know that Jesus Christ, our Savior, is conscious of each of us and our spouses and He knows us well. I know He stands ready to aid us in strengthening our families.  Every family begins with a marriage.  Keep yours warm!

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This first appeared as a guest post at We Talk of Christ for Celebrate the Family Proclamation hosted by two lovely and inspiring sisters in the gospel,  Montserrat and Jocelyn.  Tomorrow begins the second week of posts on strengthening families--don't miss a single one!

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

I collect teacups and teapots. I just love them!  For some reason, they say, "Home" to me. So my dining room and kitchen are decorated with tea cups, teapots, and lots of Mary Engelbreit, a favorite artist of mine. (She has such cheery, homey art!)

While looking for a quote to send my missionary son, I came across one of my favorite quotes incorporated into art that was perfect for my kitchen.  Here it is!

On Children, Rivers, and Time

Our life as a dream, 

our time as a stream

Glide swiftly away, 

And the fugitive moment refuses to stay;

For the arrow is flown

and the moments are gone.

So goes the second verse of the hymn "Come Let Us Anew." As I sang this with the congregation at the close of the Sacrament Meeting where my 18-year-old son gave his farewell talk prior to leaving on his mission, I had to smile and thank the Lord. Whomever chose this as the closing hymn was inspired.

I was still pondering my son's message, part of which included one of my favorite quotes. P1 was speaking on "Hastening the Work of Salvation" and near the end of his talk shared how our family loves Lord of the Rings and that there is a quote that has stuck out to him:

Frodo:  "I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this would have happened."

Gandalf:  "So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide.  All you have to do is decide what to do with the time that is given you."

P1's thoughts on the quote: "I think of these quotes in terms of what's sometimes going on today. Frodo wishes that he didn't have to deal with the ring anymore. In some ways, we as Latter-day Saints can sometimes get lazy or scared; we just don't want to deal with things anymore. Sometimes we don't want to go out of our comfort zone, or we don't want to go that extra mile. But this can slow down God's work.

"We only have so much time on the earth to do the things that Heavenly Father asks of us.  And they really aren't very hard things.  As Gandalf says, all we have to do is decide what we are going to do with the time we're given.  Are we going to use that time to do the little things that the Lord asks of us and actively hasten the work?  Will we step out of our comfort zone?  Or go that extra mile?  Or will we just ignore Him and slow it down?"

Interestingly, the speaker following P1 spoke on the family. P1 had spent some time exploring ways to "hasten the work" in our own families, so amazingly it went together.  As we sang that closing hymn, "... our time as a stream..." brought to my mind past experiences and an article I'd written on them that brought everything full circle in a comforting way with a powerful, personal witness.

IT KEEPS ON ROLLIN’

January 23, 2012

It’s stuck in my head:  “Ol’ man river, ‘Dat ol’ man river… He jes’ keeps rollin’, He keeps on rollin’ along.” My dad used to sing this old Show Boat tune and I’ve been thinking of it a lot the past few weeks with the coming of a new year.  Like the ever onward flow of the Mississippi, time keeps rolling along, too, whether I’m ready to move on or not. 

Each New Year’s celebration brings mixed feelings.  Looking ahead with faith, hope, and excitement; grateful for the blessings of the past; I still savor, and mourn, what is over and only kept in memory--each fleeting year of my children’s childhood. I’ve loved every second of their lives and sometimes panic when I do the math and realize how much time has passed and how little time is left before they move on.

As sometimes happens, these emotions got the better of me one day. It wasn’t just any day.  It was the last day of a family vacation, and the last day I could say that my son had never been to public school; he was to begin his freshman year the following morning by taking a couple of electives at the junior high school. It had been a fabulously fun and luxuriously leisurely camping trip and I didn’t want to go home.  Even though the decision for him to take some public school classes had been made with much prayer and I knew it was right for him, I still didn’t want to let him go.  He, on the other hand, was eager and looking forward to the new adventure.  Our opposing emotions collided at the end of a morning hike; he was upset that I wasn’t happy for him and I was upset that he was so excited.  Then I said, much too loudly, “Well excuse me for loving you so much that I want to spend every possible second with you that I can.”  I burst into tears and ran to the dock on the lake. 

I sat sobbing on the dock and it didn’t take long for him to follow me there.  We sat there on the lake, mother and son, both in apologetic silence.  A quiet, confiding conversation emerged and we found a new understanding of one another.  Aware that the ticking of the clock of life would crescendo once we went home, I tried to breathe in those last few moments of summer, and essentially, the last few moments of my son’s innocent childhood, and store them forever in my heart.

You might think all was well from that moment, but it wasn’t.  And I don’t even wish I could say that it was, for as I continued to struggle with missing my son and the way life was before, I turned to prayer and pondering and was blessed with an epiphany. 

There is a place I like to go on my runs that is out in the fields in the country, where the only sounds are red-winged blackbirds, an occasional vole foraging in the brush, the wind in the grass, maybe a red-tailed hawk looking for the vole, and the running water of a canal.  I went there a lot the first few weeks of school that year, to pour out my heart, to cry, to listen.  One of those days, I sat quietly staring at the moving water, watching leaves come and go in the current.  Most leaves came into view on my right, passed in front of me, and traveled to my left out of sight.  A few of the leaves, on the fringes of the current, got stopped up by rocks or canal debris, their progress halted.  One of the leaves got stuck in a small whirlpool, only to circle and circle and circle the same 6-inch area over and over and over.  Suddenly, and yet with a slowly spreading radiance emanating from the deepest places of my soul, I knew that this was Heavenly Father showing me, plainly, unmistakably, beautifully, and lovingly the course of mortality.

The poet Austin Dobson said it this way:  

Time goes, you say? Ah no!

Alas, Time stays, we go.

The leaves in the water were showing me that the intended path of life is one that “keeps on rollin’.” Birth, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, parenthood—growing up is traveling the current of mortality.  It’s right in this life for each person to enter and exit, to move through and on.  Just as those leaves passed through that section of canal, never to return to that particular place in their journey, their journey went on, and it was good for it to do so.  Those leaves that didn’t travel on were the ones at a loss; their progress was halted and they were left in stagnant waters, or they floated in futility in fruitless, pointless circles.  Neither of these latter scenarios could be what Heavenly Father intends for His children.  It was from this moment that I accepted the change.

I remember once telling my mother that I wished my kids would stop growing up, that they’d just stay little forever.  She smiled at me sadly and said, “I used to think that way, too, until it happened.”  You see, my brother died when he was 7 (I was 13). His was a moving on, just in a different current.

Robert Frost once said, “In three words I can sum up what I’ve learned about life:  It goes on.”  Thank God that it does.  I still have days that I’d love to have my kids little again.  Some days I look at photos from years ago and don’t know whether to laugh or cry.  But I love the people they’re growing up to be.  As much as I miss the delights of the past, I relish in the new enchantments of today.  And always, I’m grateful for every extra minute homeschooling has given me to spend with these amazing individuals.

Mothers also get to decide what to do with the time that is given them with their children.  With an 18-year-old departing missionary (tomorrow!) I am keenly aware that we are given a great gift in that time, but that it moves along pretty swiftly.

Parable of the Peach Trees

When we bought our current house, the first thing we did was to plant a half-acre orchard with apple, plum, cherry, apricot, pear, and peach trees. We planned, plotted, and planted, dreaming of fresh juicy goodness at our fingertips and shelves stocked with endless bottles of fruit. In our inexperienced naivety, we thought only of the blessings of the harvest, not anticipating the trials of pests and problematic weather. We didn’t foresee the years of despair over a late or early freeze and the subsequent loss of a year’s worth of fruit, or the years of overwhelm from a bumper crop with its sticky floors, fruit flies, lack of sufficient jars, and fruit rotting faster than I could get it preserved. We also didn’t foresee the valuable lessons in work and family and responsibility that would come from our small field, and I certainly didn’t plan on the object lesson of a lifetime that would finally teach me something I desperately needed to learn.

I have three peach trees. This past summer these trees produced profusely and I was downright drooling in anticipation. I watched them and worried them, willing the weather to be kind and helpful. As the blossoms turned to small green balls, I was protective, and greedy. Now, I grew up around fruit trees and I know that I should thin the fruit. This means removing unripe fruit from crowded clusters, allowing remaining fruit room to grow. But I wanted every single peach hanging on those trees and just could not bring myself to pull a single one.

As summer progressed, each tree somehow had a different destiny. One tree, through freezing or the wind, naturally thinned itself. It offered fruit, but only single peaches well spaced on the tree. These peaches grew to be perfectly sized and flavored. The other 2 trees bore burdens of copious crop; one poor tree succumbed to the weight of the load and the branches broke cruelly, nearly destroying the tree. Devastated at the damage my greed had caused, I then tried to thin the peaches on the third tree. It helped lighten the heaviness and thus preserved branches, but at that point it was too late to affect the fruit much and what we harvested were very small peaches with little fleshy goodness.

As I compared the trees and their produce, I was struck by obvious parallels between the contributions of my peach trees and the contributions of my life: If the fruit I offer is to be the best, I must not try to produce more than I can shoulder and nourish. I must thin out those things that place demands upon me, even sometimes when their blossoms are beautiful and I want that particular fruit.

This personal parable reminded me of some profound expounding Brent L. Top did on the story of Mary and Martha in his book Living Waters. Of the many wonderful things he wrote on the subject, this particular paragraph hit home: “The Savior told Martha, ‘Thou art careful and troubled about many things.’ He was acknowledging her conscientiousness but also reminding her that her conscientiousness in some ways had become a weakness. The phrase ‘troubled about many things’ could also be interpreted as, ‘You are distracted. Your attention and efforts are divided, and as a result, all that you do is less effective.’ In our day, the Lord has commanded us to be ‘anxiously engaged in a good cause’ (D&C 58:27), but that doesn’t mean we have to be anxiously engaged in every good cause. Trying to do all things or be all things to all people all the time results in Martha-like frustration. I believe we must learn, like Martha, that being cumbered with over-involvement in too many good causes can actually divert us away from the things that matter most. Martha wasn’t sinning or being evil in any way. All of her efforts and attentions were drawn to doing good for someone else (in this particular case, the Savior). But instead of finding fulfillment and peace and joy in her labors, she was more frustrated and worn out than ever. She thinks the problem is Mary—for not helping out with all of the preparations—but the real problem is Martha herself—for being over-involved and distracted from that which mattered most.”

While it’s hard to thin peaches, it’s harder to thin out the many things in our lives asking for attention and energy. In fact, it can be positively painful. But it’s not as painful as cracking under too much weight. It’s not as painful as realizing that as “by their fruits ye shall know them” (Matthew 7:16-20,) not only what type of fruit you produce, but the fruit’s value is revealed as well. President Gordon B. Hinckley said, “I have been quoted as saying, ‘Do the best that you can.’ I do wish to say that it be the very best.” Doing your very best doesn’t necessarily mean doing the most. Best alludes to quality, not quantity. The best peaches weren’t the loads of small ones with little flesh around the core, but the ones with lots of room to grow and develop.

In the thinning process, it’s not always easy to look at a cluster of peaches and know which ones should be sacrificed for the good of the tree and the fruit that will ripen. Likewise, it’s hard to know what to trim from our lives. Top continues, “Just as Martha was, we need to be stopped dead in our tracks once in a while and examine what we are doing and why we are doing it. Eternal priorities absolutely must guide our lives and actions and choices…” He asks, “How many things in your life—good, desirable, honorable, righteous things—are actually getting in the way of the ‘good part,’ an intimate relationship with God? As C.S. Lewis wrote, ‘God wants to give us something, but cannot, because our hands are full—there’s nowhere for Him to put it.’”

Finally, we cannot discuss fruit without mentioning the most precious produce—our children. How horrifying would it be at harvest to find the fruit of our loins as under-nourished and under-developed due to either greed for personal yield or distraction and overwhelm. Neither is acceptable. Elder William R. Bradford of the Seventy counseled Saints in general conference to unclutter their lives of diversionary encumbrances. “We need to examine all the ways we use our time, our work, our ambitions, our affiliations, and the habits that drive our actions. . . . A mother should never allow herself to become so involved with extras that she finds herself neglecting her divine role.” (“Unclutter Your Life,” Ensign, May 1992, 28.)

As this New Year begins, I hope we’ll all have the courage and conviction to perform the necessary thinning in our lives that we may cultivate the most excellent fruit possible.

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Originally published in The Sentinel January 22, 2013, I've been revisiting this lesson in my head the past few weeks as I've looked at and thinned my heavy laden peach tree again this summer.  Sigh.  I'm trying to be VERY careful with what I take on and expect of myself and my children this school year.  I am feeling much like my droopy peach tree with undersized fruit lately and it doesn't feel good. It's time for the semi-annual task of re-evaluating everything.

Being Present - Look Up

The spoken word film "Look Up" by Gary Turk is quite possibly one of the most brilliant thing written--especially for the present generation.  Published for the world only three weeks ago, this video has had nearly 40 million views already and been shared many, many times.  It's interesting that it's delivery and fame comes through the very technology it warns of, but how else to get the message to those who need it?  I hope everyone is really letting it sink in and making concerted effort at reform.

You may be asking what this has to do with homeschooling and why on earth I'd share it here.  For one, I have resisted social media and refused to blog for the very reasons this video so poignantly displays.  I'm also really tired of telling my older teens to stop texting and pay attention to where they are and what they're doing.  (We only have the most basic phones--archaic, according to most--but they still have texting... barely.)  I showed this to my family today in hopes that it would mean a little more than my broken record griping.

I am sad and anxious for my children's generation.  Fewer and fewer of them actually know how to behave in general and/or interact in real, live relationships.  This is both a result of living in an over-teched world and a result of having parents who are less and less present themselves.  Those adults who want to connect with teens use their technology and methods of communication to do so.  It's necessary, I suppose, but as we found that baseball coaches will only communicate via text, it forced us to get phones for kids before we wanted to and it contributed to the feeling that the Borg from Star Trek is taking over and "resistance is futile."  I'd just like to see less of screens and more of living things and for people to remember they're people--living things--not robots.

So for all the time spent in education on cool and cold technology, I hope we'll be wise enough to spend just as much time, if not more, learning how to be real, alive, feeling, present, and warm human beings.  And if we could express ourselves as astutely and poetically as Gary, that would help too.