Living Full on Life

Hidden Treasures

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I’ve been doing a little de-junking  and found a few little treasures:

This is Anna’s Birthday list for her 5th birthday last year. She dictated her desires to her then 7 year old brother, William who wrote it down. I get a record of two children in one small list! I love the prices too! Requested items are handcuffs, books (1 or 3), phone/headphones, doll, makeup. I wish I knew what she wanted to do with the handcuffs!

IMG_7432The next thing I found while cleaning up is a talk Anna gave in church this summer. The topic of her talk was the scripture in John 13: 14-15, “If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you.” I asked Anna to tell an example of when she followed Jesus’s example. This is the story she told, “While my mom was gone yesterday I knocked on Sister Dowd’s door (our across the street neighbor) and Satan told me to sneak into her house, and the spirit told me to walk home. So I walked home.” She went on to say, “I feel sad when I don’t follow Jesus. I feel happy when I follow Jesus’s example. Usually I am being obedient when I follow Jesus’s example and so my parents and brothers and sister are happy too.”

God Really Knows His Children

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It finally got hot here. After the wettest May in Utah’s recorded history, and cold temperatures to go with it, it is rather nice to have some warm days. This was officially the first year I put my garden in in the rain. Two days ago we turned the air conditioner on in our house and so our basement is now freezing. At bedtime Lizzie went hunting for all her blankets (she has a fuzzy blanket collection- thanks to the influence of my sister Rebecca) and found that Sam had one of them. Sam, in older brother teasing fashion closed and locked his door and refused to let her in to get her blanket. Lizzie was so frustrated! She went in her room and got in bed. She had the following conversation in her head with herself:

“You haven’t read your scriptures yet today.”
“I am so tired, I don’t want to read my scriptures”
“Read them, it will help. In fact, go to 2 Nephi chapter 2 verse 1”
“FINE!” She opens her scriptures, not to where she is reading chronologically, but to a completely different part of the Book of Mormon. And reads the following verse:

“And now, Jacob, I speak unto you: Thou art my firstborn (Lizzie substituted firstborn for second born) in the days of my tribulation in the wilderness.  And behold, in thy childhood thou hast suffered afflictions and much  sorrow, because of the rudeness of thy brethren.” 2 Nephi 2:1

See God really knows His children

 

The Zombie Apocalypse

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Lately, as I’m wont to do every six months or so, I have been reviewing our emergency preparedness supplies. Naturally I find myself on some very interesting preparedness websites and blogs. I have even stumbled across some of the more radical survivalist resources. I was surprised to discover a couple of things. 1) There are people out there who really believe in the possibility of a zombie apocalypse. I’m not kidding! And 2) There are two ways of approaching emergency preparedness. On many of the survivalist sites I found a common thread; prepare yourself and your family, and be prepared to defend yourselves and your stuff because the unprepared might smell you cooking your carefully stored food and come and try to harm you for it. So grab your gun and don’t let him have any!  The other way of approaching emergency preparedness I found in talking to local emergency prep specialists (all of them Christian, specifically Mormon) and on Christian preparedness sites and forums.  This philosophy was that we need to prepare in such a way that we can not only provide for our families but our neighbors as well. I’m not making this up! One lady I talked to said that she has food storage to help out others in the neighborhood and a man at a preparedness store said that when he bought a water filter he paid more so he could get one large enough and fast enough to readily supply clean drinking water to his entire church congregation! It made me proud to be part of a community of people who believe that we are our brothers keepers.

Jesus said in Matthew 25 “For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: “Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. … Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

Chicken Thoughts

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Chicken photography by: Rolf Hagberg Photography

Over Valentine’s Day/Presidents Day weekend we were in St. George visiting Grandma and Grandpa Beckwith. We went to eat at a restaurant called Culver’s which serves high quality burgers. Anna ordered chicken tenders (we called them nuggets). She took a couple of bites and then refused to eat them complaining that, “They tasted too much like chicken and that she liked the ones that didn’t taste like chicken.” (ie: the dinosaur shaped ones)

Monday morning we woke up to a big chicken mess in our yard. As of Sunday we only had two chickens left out of our original flock. We have several predators around here that have a hard time passing up a good chicken meal including hawks, racoons, a fox that lives in a thicket on the other side of our fence and cougars (there are occasional sightings in our neighborhood). The chicken who lost it’s life on Monday was beheaded and disemboweled but left on our lawn. Rosie, the remaining chicken came over to investigate. As she was standing there looking over her companion Lizzie looked out and imagining that Rosie was feeling pretty sad said, “I wish chickens understood the Plan of Salvation.” I’m just glad that our children understand it well enough that they can feel hope even in the face of death.

Some Parental Re-assessment

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Lately, I have noticed that my interactions with the children have been pretty negatively charged. I have felt that I am nagging over all the things that seem important to me and that I feel should be important to them. Those areas are (not in order of importance): Chores, music practicing, and schoolwork.  What is so difficult for me is that I feel that all of these things are so important for our children and for their success and happiness. I want to save them the pain of consequences. In other words, I feel like if I don’t nag them to do their homework, or if I allow them to procrastinate, or not prepare for their tests, then they will not go to a good university, and they will be unemployed for the rest of their lives! Or if I don’t nag them to prepare for their music lessons they will waste their talents, and feel that awful feeling of guilt you get when you show up at yet another lesson unprepared. (I remember that feeling well!) Or they will quit playing their instruments altogether.

I guess it is pretty natural for a parent to want to save their children from pain and failure. But am I doing them any favors? Especially if in trying to shield them from those things I am sacrificing good relationships with my children for relationships of contention and anger. So what did we do? I find that everything gets easier when I enlist Grant’s help. He and I started discussing my frustrations tonight and then Sam and Lizzie joined us and we had an amazing talk where we were all brainstorming about how we can make things better. We listened to the children and they listened to us. We decided that it was time to let them experience natural consequences. I was going to back away from nagging over school work. Thankfully, the children are all good students (some are even GREAT students), but just need a little experience in figuring out how to use their time better. If our children are not prepared then they will get the bad grade, but it will no longer be my responsibility to save them from that. I am firing myself from the job of school nag and homework enforcer! And if they don’t have good enough grades to get into BYU (their dream school and mine) then I will be there to commiserate and console, since I was once there myself! (I ended up having to go to a Jr. college for 1 1/2 years in order to get the grades I needed to be accepted by BYU. It was a very sobering reality check the day I got that rejection letter!)…

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I’m Thankful for my Nose

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I’m going to take a break from adding content (recipes) to my blog and write for a moment about how grateful I am for my nose. I know, this sounds trite,  but after a lot of fun late nights staying up talking with Zach (my brother) and Nikki who were visiting, I finally succumbed to a grand ol’ head cold. I can’t breath out of my nose right now and this has made me think about a few things. I am amazed by how balanced our bodies are and how everything has so many perfect functions. Of course our nose is for smelling danger, or when we need to help our babies by changing a diaper. Our nose also brings us pleasure when we can anticipate a delicious meal. Our nose also helps us breathe. Now that that function of my nose is gone my systems are a bit out of whack. Because I cannot breathe out of my nose, suddenly my lips are dry, rather, PARCHED because of mouth breathing. I wake up feeling like my whole mouth is the Sahara from mouth breathing all night. My throat hurts because it is so dry. My teeth feel different even. And I am so thirsty all of the time.

I think adversity, like having something not work on our body, is really to remind us a couple of things. First, we need to feel grateful everyday for each little thing. It really isn’t until those things are gone, or don’t work that we realize how much our lives are enriched because of them. Secondly, all things really do denote that there is a God. How can this all be an accident? How can such perfect harmony and balance just happen in our bodies and in nature?  One of my favorite verses of scripture comes from the Book of Mormon and says “…The scriptures are laid before thee, yea, and all things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator.” (Alma 30:44)

As much as I appreciate the reminder of things I have to be grateful for, I am rather eager to have my nose back in working order!

Happy Easter

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I love this short movie about our Savior. What a glorious and wonderful Easter Weekend! Easter is by far my most favorite holiday of the year. Spring, renewal, new life, remembering Christ…how could it get any better than that?

Last night we went with our friends the Cooks to see the Tabernacle Choir perform the full “Messiah” by Handel. For 2 1/2 hours we were inspired, awed, dare I say BLOWN AWAY!?! It made me cry. It was so powerful and such a beautiful testament of our Savior, his life and ministry and his sacrifice. I was a little worried about going (we were offered the tickets last minute) because I needed to spend the time preparing for the lesson I was to teach today but really, I can think of no better way to prepare than by feeling the power of the holy spirit that was there in abundance last night.

The lesson was on The Sacrament and Easter. I loved being able to focus on the correlation between the Passover and the Last Supper where Christ instituted the Sacrament. I love how the Sacrament is such an important ordinance that we do it every week. In preparing for the lesson I learned something very beautiful about the Sacrament, that is that the bread represents our physical death and Christ overcoming that physical death through his sacrifice on the cross. And the water represents Christ overcoming spiritual death (the effects of sin) through his atonement in the garden of Gethsemane where he took upon himself our sins. Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles put it this way:

With a crust of bread, always broken, blessed, and offered first, we remember his bruised body and broken heart, his physical suffering on the cross where he cried, “I thirst,” and finally, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (John 19:28; Matt. 27:46.)

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Spring is Coming, Summer Trip Planning, Kid Quotes, and Parent/Teacher Conference

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Today was an unseasonably warm day. Anna in her excitement about the changing of seasons told me very confidentially and with much hand gesturing how spring came about.
She said:
“I know how the green grass comes. While I am sleeping the snow sneaks down into the ground. THEN, the green grass sneaks up. And it is SPRING!”
I have been planning our summer family excursion to the West Coast. One of the places we are going is Yosemite. To get a campsite in Yosemite Valley you have to really work for it! On the 15th of every month at 7am (Pacific) all the campsites five months out become available. Within less than three minutes they are all gone. I’m not kidding!  You have to be logged in and ready to go before the appointed time and then be ready to start grabbing a site. I set up four accounts (Grant, Me, Sam and Lizzie) and had Grant, Rebecca, Sam and me all ready at 7:40 to try our luck. I even had alarms and synchronized clocks. When 8 am hit we were ready! Sam was the lucky one and we have a campsite! I couldn’t sleep for the three hours before, I was so keyed up and nervous about not getting a site. Afterward, I was so excited it was hard to calm down for awhile.  Here is something I read about the process that put me in the mood I was in: The New California Gold Rush.
Now for some quotes that have touched me in the last little while:
I read this last night from Elder Scott: “The Lord sees weaknesses differently than he does rebellion. Whereas the Lord warns that unrepented rebellion will bring punishment, when the Lord speaks of weaknesses, it is always with mercy.”
And from our wonderful Sunday School teacher, Ryan Salter who teaches the 12 step addiction recovery program: “I’m on a journey toward serenity, not a struggle toward perfection”
Next, with two children entering the turbulent waters of adolescence and puberty we have been having some really interesting conversations:

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Strengthening Ourselves for Our Day

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 The following is Grant’s article to the school community. I would recommend that we all take a moment to read it. It is very helpful with some of the questions and concerns we might have with some of the social issues of our day.
In June of 1962, the Supreme Court of the United States decided that New York public school officials could not prescribe a prayer to be offered at the beginning of public school classes.1  This decision came as a shock to religiously oriented people nationwide. 
Public reactions to the Supreme Court’s decision were divided, ranging from quiet elation by supporters to civil disobedience by many school administrators and teachers.2  Six months later, a concerned LDS Church President David O. McKay said: “By making that [New York Regent’s prayer] unconstitutional, the Supreme Court of the United States severs the connecting cord between the public schools of the United States and the source of divine intelligence, the Creator himself….  Now let us remember and emphasize—that restriction applies to the atheist as well as to the believer in God.”3 
 
In the early 1960’s, LDS Church President David O. McKay (left), and University of Chicago Law School Professor Dallin H. Oaks (right), held different perspectives about the Supreme Court’s controversial ruling that banned state sponsored prayer in public schools.  Years later, Elder Oaks wrote in his personal memoirs that his limited perspective at the time was “just a small footnote to history compared with the vision of a prophet who saw and described the pernicious effects of that decision in the years to come.”
At the same time, a bright young lawyer named Dallin Oaks—a devout Mormon and former law clerk for Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren—had just been appointed professor of law at the University of Chicago Law School, one of the nation’s most prestigious law schools.  In his personal memoirs, Life’s Lessons Learned, Elder Oaks reflected openly and candidly about his feelings at the time:  “I reasoned that the [school prayer] case was correctly decided,” because “I interpreted the school prayer decision to forbid only state-authored and state-required prayers, rather than forbidding school prayers altogether.”4 Indeed, what could be the harm? After all, there was no prohibition of private student-led prayer at school. 
A few months later, in the next domino to fall in what would be a series of so-called “separation of church and state”5 rulings, the Supreme Court prohibited school-sponsored bible reading.6  President McKay’s response this time was even more emphatic:  “Recent rulings of the Supreme Court would have all reference to a Creator eliminated from our public schools and public offices…. Evidently the Supreme Court misinterprets the true meaning of the First Amendment, and are now leading a Christian nation down the road to atheism.”7 

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