Category: Spiritual Thoughts

These posts are more focused on religious experiences, thoughts and tips.

Remembering Kayson – One Year Later

I walked a mile with Pleasure;
She chatted all the way;
But left me none the wiser
For all she had to say.

I walked a mile with Sorrow,
And ne’er a word said she;
But, oh! The things I learned from her,
When sorrow walked with me.

-Robert Browning Hamilton

I saw this poem today on my friend’s Facebook wall and felt compelled to share some thoughts I had. Yesterday marks one year since sweet Kayson Shelton left this life. In that time I feel like I have grown and changed so much and I wanted to share some of that experience here.

On June 6, 2014 I was at home with my family and we were getting ready to eat dinner. My sister was over with her son and my brother was over too, we were just about ready to head up to the local swimming pool for a fun evening before a trip to California the next day. Just as we were about to pray over the food Eric pulled me aside. He told me he’d just received a text that the Shelton’s son had just passed away in an accident. My first reaction was just “oh, how sad” without much feeling behind it – like this was something that had happened to someone far away that I didn’t know very well. I gathered the family for a blessing on the food and prepared to go on with our evening. For whatever reason it takes me a little while to fully react to things like this. As I stood there a minute longer while we were praying it really started to hit me what had happened, Kayson – the little boy who I’d seen just a week before, my son’s friend, my friend’s son – was gone. Suddenly I started to cry, hopeless, helpless tears of sorrow. I was imagining what Toni was going through, what she was explaining to her children. I could see myself in her shoes trying to grapple with such a loss. It was so overwhelming.

I went down the street to talk to my visiting teaching companion (Toni was one of the sisters we were assigned to watch over) and met a neighbor at the door. I cried with our neighbor, and then cried some more with my companion. I went home, took Maeli upstairs with me and just cried and cried some more. I walked into my closet and cried, I nursed Maeli and cried. I sent Toni a text feeling so inadequate but needing to do *something*, and I cried some more. I tried to think through what I could do but since the Sheltons were in another state I felt at a total loss. So I put on my swim suit and cried. I called my mom to tell her what had happened, and cried. We drove up to the swimming pool and luckily Maeli had fallen asleep so I just sat with her on my chest, on a beach chair with my sunglasses on and cried. We came back home and I started trying to pack for our own trip to California and cried some more.

A couple hours later, as the news had spread through the neighborhood and we’d gotten our boys to bed, I saw a gathering of neighbors at the Shelton’s house. I didn’t know what they were doing or what I could do, but I had to be with them. So I walked down the street and hugged my friends, and cried. We saw Toni’s facebook post with her last picture of Kayson telling us that his last words in this life were “I love you” and we cried some more. We sprang into action to find things that we could do for the Sheltons, but since it was late at night most of those plans would have to wait until morning. We said goodnight to our friends and walked home. I sat on our couch and put together a memorial website for Kayson and my head was throbbing from crying so much and there were no more tears left in me, but still I cried as I put pictures and memories of him together to share with the world.

The next day we packed to go to California. I hated to be leaving during a time of crisis , but I knew there wasn’t much I could do there. I did what I could to be part of the service projects before we left – I made a freezer meal, helped with care packages, fielded website inquiries, and cried some more – then we packed up the car and left. I cried periodically the whole way to California. Then we got there and I cried some more with my mom. On Sunday I attended church in my parents ward and just sobbed violently for most of the meetings. I received hugs and support from people who had known me since I was a young woman, and the families in my parents ward cried with me.

The next week was filled with media inquiries as the news caught wind of Kayson’s story. I cried as I responded to emails. I had put together an online fundraiser and was touched as I watched donations roll in from all over the world. My phone was beeping incessantly and my mom commented on it. I told her that I received an email every time someone made a donation. I was so grateful for all those beeps and dings. So much of my faith in humanity was built as I watched how people rallied around this family. And I cried some more. We came back for the funeral and cried and cried and cried.

The next several months consisted of frequent periods of crying. I would watch any Mormon Message and cry. I would see my kids playing and think of Toni and cry. I would be doing dishes and start crying. Little kids are not supposed to die, that’s just not the way I felt this world is supposed to work. Obviously I knew that little kids could die, but that happened on the news, to people far away from me. Not to my neighbor. Not to my friend. Suddenly my own children were much more mortal than I could handle. I found myself checking multiple times during the night that they were still breathing and not wanting to go to sleep lest I wake up and find one of them gone. All I wanted to do was to snuggle up close with my family and never ever let them go.

Going through this experience I felt like there was a part of me that was broken that could never be fixed again. It was too much, the pain was too big. However, as the time went by I cried hourly for days, daily for several weeks, several times a week for a few months and then several times a month. Slowly I found myself able to look at my children without a feeling of terror that they would slip away at any moment. I still cry sometimes, but that soul wrenching pain that I felt has passed somewhat. My overwhelming grief was able to be replaced by a tenderness in my soul that won’t go away, but it’s not broken anymore. The tenderness is a good thing, it’s a new part of who I am, I’ve been re-made into a more kinder, more loving, more compassionate person.

I just felt the need to share this experience and reiterate my testimony of the atonement. It is so very very real. It can take the things that you think can never be fixed, never be made clean, never be healed, and somehow – it heals them. Our Father in Heaven loves us, dearly. He is there for us when we have reasons to cry, and he cries with us. He sends others to help us in those times of despair, and we can be made whole again. I truly am grateful for this opportunity that I’ve had to walk a mile with sorrow. I have learned and grown in ways that I couldn’t have any other way. It might not be an experience I would wish for, but it’s certainly one I will cherish. I just want to say thank you to Toni and Scott for letting me be a small part of this experience, it has touched my life and changed me for the better, and I know it’s done the same for many others as well.

7 June 2015
Temple Symbols
Last June my mom shared with me a booklet she was putting together for their stake youth conference. I thought it was awesome and asked if I could share it on my blog. She sent me the files and it has sat in my inbox for nearly a year waiting for me to post it. I decided it was finally time for me to get around to posting it.

The booklet was for the youth to be given to conduct a self-guided tour of the temple grounds. The booklet points out some of the different symbols they would encounter. My mom was asked to be careful not to give specific meanings for the symbols as symbols can have many layers of interpretation. If you give someone a concrete “this is what this symbol means” it takes away their opportunity to discover the meaning for themselves and also might remove some of the incentive to try to work out other possible meanings. So the booklet contains quotes, scriptures and questions which might help people find some interpretations for the symbols. For me it was really helpful just to have some symbols pointed out as symbols. For instance, I’d never thought of the fence as being anything more than a fence to even consider that it might have symbolic significance.

This booklet was made specifically for the Los Angeles Temple, but if you go to any temple you will find many of these symbols in other temples. We tried to go through and make sure there were pictures and information so that if you are unable to go to the Los Angeles temple you can still learn from reading it. I think anyone who is trying to get more out of the symbolism of the temple can gain some insight from reading this.

Most of the quotes are from General Authorities and can be found at LDS.org, but one article that is referenced a few times is Symbols in Sacred Architecture and Iconongraphy by Camilian Demetrescu from The Institute for Sacred Achitecture. There are also a couple references from Studies in Biblical and Semitic Symbolism by Maurice H. Farbridge as well as Temples to Dot the Earth by Richard O. Cowan. These are all excellent resources if you’re looking to deepen your understanding of the symbols found in the temple.

You are welcome to redistribute this provided you leave the credit on the back cover in tact. I’m providing several different files to make distribution easy. First I have the printable files. The booklet was made to be half pages front and back. We’ve worked out the pages in order so that you can print the file with the front sides and then the file with the back sides and have it be pretty straightforward. I’ve also included a pdf with all of the pages in order so that you can easily read it on your computer (or print it whatever other fancy way you’d like).
We would love any feedback on the booklet. Let us know what symbols you’d missed before or any insights that you’ve gained. We hope this helps you draw closer to the Savior in your temple worship.
24 May 2015
Happy Mother’s Day – to Women Without Children

Today, as we celebrate Mother’s Day, I feel keenly aware of the women within my circle of friends for whom this day is a reminder of the imperfect situations they might find themselves in. Whether they are unmarried, struggling with infertility, single parents, feeling overwhelmed with many children, have wayward children, children they gave up for adoption, children who have passed on before them, have lost their own mothers, or don’t have the relationship with their mother that they desire. Mother’s Day can be a difficult day for many people.

,About a year ago one of my friends who had struggled with infertility for a long time, posted that she would go to Relief Society on Mother’s Day and go home with the Mother’s Day treat and cry. She felt like she’d been given something that she didn’t deserve. Rather than feeling included (which I’m sure was the intention), the gesture exacerbated her feelings of inadequacy. This broke my heart to read how a wonderful day for so many is a bitter reminder for others of a blessing which they have been denied.

Particularly for those who are struggling with not having yearned for children I wanted to share this thought from my favorite blog, Women in the Scriptures. One of the first posts of hers that I read was this one about infertility. I want to share one particular quote used in that post from Sheri Dew –

” …While we tend to equate motherhood solely with maternity, in the Lord’s language, the word mother has layers of meaning. Of all the words they could have chosen to define her role and her essence, both God the Father and Adam called Eve “the mother of all living”—and they did so before she ever bore a child. Like Eve, our motherhood began before we were born. Just as worthy men were foreordained to hold the priesthood in mortality, righteous women were endowed premortally with the privilege of motherhood. Motherhood is more than bearing children, though it is certainly that. It is the essence of who we are as women. It defines our very identity, our divine stature and nature, and the unique traits our Father gave us…

…Motherhood is not what was left over after our Father blessed His sons with priesthood ordination. It was the most ennobling endowment He could give His daughters, a sacred trust that gave women an unparalleled role in helping His children keep their second estate. As President J. Reuben Clark Jr. declared, motherhood is “as divinely called, as eternally important in its place as the Priesthood itself.” (Are We Not All Mothers, Ensign. Nov. 2001)

I loved this definition of motherhood. While I’ve never struggled with infertility I did have my own experience with not feeling like I fit the definition of “mother”. When Eric and I were first married we lived in married student housing at BYU. It seemed like a majority of the women in our ward were mothers. Our plan at the time was to wait to have children until Eric was done with school and I was working full time to support us while we got to that goal. I felt excluded from the mom club – the circle of women who passed their days in the middle of the quad at the playground chatting.

I remember the first time my visiting teachers in that ward came to visit me with their toddlers. In the process of getting to know one another I told them that I was working full time. While they didn’t say anything disparaging, I felt judged, as if they were high society women who saw me merely as ‘one of those working girls’. Whether that sentiment was real or imagined (and let’s be honest, it was probably more imagined), it was a difficult moment for me.

At the time I felt like I had a hard time defining myself. I’m the oldest of 5 children and my mom has called me the second mother in our home. I grew up carrying around babies, playing with kids, babysitting, and loving being around children. However in that season of my life I was without children – far away from my siblings and not yet having children of my own. At the same time, I still felt the inherent mother-ness in me.

I had a hard time figuring out how to refer to myself as a married woman without children. I would often try to call myself a single mother – which was ironic since I was completely the opposite . I think I felt similarly displaced to those mothers who find themselves without a father to aid them, which is likely why I would gravitate to that title. The other title I would come up with was “childless mother” which also felt odd since it seems weird to call someone a mother who doesn’t have her own children.

In retrospect I think the title of “childless mother” was actually the right term. Despite not having children, I was a mother. I liked what Sister Dew stated about our motherhood as women beginning before we were born. Motherhood is not dependent on 9 months of pregnancy, it is inherent in our calling as women. Motherhood is the qualities of women that dispose us to teaching, building, and growing not only children but the world around us. You can fulfill that calling as a sister, daughter, aunt, friend, teacher, office worker, CEO, Relief Society president, yoga instructor or whatever role you find yourself in.

Just as a man is no less a priesthood holder for not being a bishop, women are no less mothers for not having children. Motherhood is part of who you are. I know that might not be much consolation to those who would like to discharge that calling in the conventional way, especially when proffered by one who has been given that more conventional mother role. However, I hope you know that whatever your contribution to motherhood is I honor you for what you are building and the love you show for those around you.

So take that cookie offered to you with pride, you are a mother. Happy Mother’s Day to all women, whatever circumstance you find yourself in. You are a daughter of our Heavenly Mother, and I want to celebrate that divinity within you ❤️

10 May 2015
Be Kind

The quote at the beginning of this post is something that’s been on my mind frequently over the past year – “Be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle”. I’ve seen this quote in the past and thought, “sure, some people are fighting really hard battles, but there are people who really just have it easy. Maybe more people than I think are facing something hard, but not literally everyone.” However, over the past year I feel like I have gotten to know more of people’s challenges. Just out of the people I know here are some of the struggles I’ve been privvy to in the last several months – cancer, death of a loved one, infertility, feelings of inadequacy, divorce, depression, loss of faith, separation from children, illness, difficult pregnancies, rebellious children, anxiety, job loss, money problems, unfulfilled dreams, loneliness, moving from home, fear, sleep deprivation, debt, and abuse. That’s a weighty list, and for most of those trials I can name more than one person who has recently faced it. Moreover, if I think carefully through people I know well I can come up with something each one of them is facing that is difficult, and I’m sure there are many more inner struggles that I am completely unaware of.

As I’ve contemplated this the reality of the quote finally registered and I have come to realize how true it is. E.V.E.R.Y.O.N.E. you meet is fighting a hard battle. Yes, that person who cut you off in traffic. Yes, your neighbor who seems to have it all together. Yes, the friend who always has a smile on their face. I don’t care how well you think you know the person or how easy you might think they have it, each person is fighting a hard battle in some aspect of their life, whether you know about it or not. This realization has reminded me of a quote from a recent talk by Dieter F. Uchtdorf –

I want to tell you something that I hope you will take in the right way: God is fully aware that you and I are not perfect.

Let me add: God is also fully aware that the people you think are perfect are not. (emphasis added)

I know there are people that seem to have things so easy, but as you get closer to them you will find there is something they are actively struggling with. Trials are an integral part of our life here on earth. They are the experiences that help us grow, and everyone is growing in one way or another. I wanted to share one of my own experiences that I think illustrates this.

Those of you who follow my husband’s blog may know that he mentioned a bout he had with depression. If you know Eric that revelation was probably something that surprised you. Eric is positive, driven and bright – not exactly a poster child for depression, and before he posted about it almost no one knew what he’d been going through. However, he was feeling undervalued in his position at work. It was demoralizing for him to have to prove and reprove his worth and to fight tooth and nail to keep his projects going every single day. Understandably it got to him, and he started to escape his frustrations by spending a lot of his time playing computer games. Just to have an arena where he could feel more successful. Gradually, he sunk further and further into depression and even when he was home I saw less and less of him. Despite my best attempts to try and help him, he withdrew into himself and I was at a loss for how I could help.

Meanwhile, even I misunderstood what he was dealing with. I underestimated his struggles at work knowing that he loved what he’d been hired to do, and thinking that balanced out his frustrations. However I was keenly aware of the changes in his behavior, though I tried to keep them between us. Not understanding the real cause I attributed his depression to the wrong things. Since what I observed was mostly him withdrawing from me I assumed I must have been the problem – that his life with me wasn’t what he’d hoped it would be and he preferred his computer as an escape from the poor choice he’d made to marry me. I felt hurt, alone, and like I had no control to make things better. I began to sink into a bit of a depression of my own. Just like I misunderstood Eric’s struggles he misunderstood mine and we were both unable to help one another.

Eventually we were both able to work through these challenges and we’re stronger now for having gone through them. But the point of that story is that here we were living in the same house, truly loving one another, and each suffering inwardly. Somehow even with the love we had for one another, we missed what the other person was going through. It amazes me that – even with the time we would spend together, as much as we would talk to one another and as much as we loved each other – we still missed the battles playing out right in front of our eyes. After that experience I’ve come to realize just how easily other people’s challenges can be hidden from view while things seem fine on the surface. Or how easily we can attribute someone’s actions to the wrong things. I’ve learned to not assume I know what another person is experiencing and try to show compassion unconditionally.

Another thing I’ve come to realize is the need for compassion for people who struggle with something that might not seem major to me. I’ve read a lot of blog posts about the things you shouldn’t complain about. You shouldn’t complain about how hard your pregnancy is because there are people struggling with infertility. You shouldn’t complain about infertility because there are people who long for marriage. You shouldn’t complain about not being married because there are people stuck in an abusive relationships. The examples I’ve seen go on and on. To this kind of thinking I want to again quote President Dieter F. Uctdorf –

When it comes to [judging others], please apply the following:

Stop it!

It’s that simple. We simply have to stop judging others and replace judgmental thoughts and feelings with a heart full of love for God and His children. God is our Father. We are His children. We are all brothers and sisters. I don’t know exactly how to articulate this point of not judging others with sufficient eloquence, passion, and persuasion to make it stick. I can quote scripture, I can try to expound doctrine, and I will even quote a bumper sticker I recently saw. It was attached to the back of a car whose driver appeared to be a little rough around the edges, but the words on the sticker taught an insightful lesson. It read, “Don’t judge me because I sin [or experience trials] differently than you.”

It’s easy to look at someone else’s trials and think how much more difficult our own challenges seem to us. Of course, it could almost always be worse and we should always try to be grateful in our circumstances. But putting someone else’s difficulties down because it doesn’t seem as hard as what you’re facing is ridiculous and helps no one. I struggle with children who are not fantastic sleepers – not the biggest problem that anyone’s ever faced, but it’s one of mine. I have heard people say things like, “you should just be grateful that you have children.” They’re not wrong, and the truth is, I am grateful for my children and I don’t begrudge them the many sleepless nights. But that doesn’t negate the fact that I am tired and sometimes I need someone to just give me a hug and tell me that I’m going to make it to bedtime. Belittling my exhaustion because it could be something worse isn’t helpful.

Construing any person’s suffering as illegitimate doesn’t help people with seemingly worse trials, and it certainly doesn’t help the person in front of you. We all need to be careful not to fall into the kind of thinking that says people only deserve our sympathy if their struggles weigh in greater than our own on some cosmic scale. This is nonsense! Do you think our Savior looks down on us and says, “Well, you’re only dealing with the trials of one single person. I took on ALL the suffering of every person who has ever lived, you big baby. Go whine to someone else.”? NO! Christ took upon him all these things so that he could help us even in small things. If He doesn’t put us down for struggling with small things then we certainly have no room to put down one another. One of my favorite quotes comes from a talk given by Marvin J. Ashton back in 1992, he said,

Perhaps the greatest charity comes when we are kind to each other, when we don’t judge or categorize someone else, when we simply give each other the benefit of the doubt or remain quiet. Charity is accepting someone’s differences, weaknesses, and shortcomings; having patience with someone who has let us down; or resisting the impulse to become offended when someone doesn’t handle something the way we might have hoped. Charity is refusing to take advantage of another’s weakness and being willing to forgive someone who has hurt us. Charity is expecting the best of each other.

If we want to become like the Savior then we need to stop trying to judge other people’s actions based on what we think we know of them. We need to give each other the benefit of the doubt that their struggles are real, whether they makes sense to us or not. We need to let them manage their trials as best as they can and be there to support them in any way possible. No matter how trivial their trials might seem to us. Our judgement of their trials doesn’t matter, what matters is how we respond to them in their need.

I recently watched a beautiful example of someone who already does this. As my readers know, my dear friend Toni lost her sweet son Kayson in the middle of last year. Recently, I was sitting with her and another friend as our friend was expressing her frustration with parenting a difficult son. Toni could have snapped back, “You should just be grateful that you still have him here, don’t you know what I would give to be going through those difficulties right now instead of the one I have?” Instead I watched as she sat there and lovingly commiserated about the difficulties of parenting, offering advice and support. Our friend said something about how trivial her trial was and Toni graciously responded that it didn’t matter how big the trial was, it was what she was struggling with and that made it legitimate. Helping a friend didn’t increase her grief or do anything to belittle what she was going through. It merely gave her an opportunity to show love for a friend, and you can’t show love for someone without feeling its glow yourself. When we help lift other people’s burdens our own become lightened, not heavier.

Can we all commit to trying a little harder, to being a little kinder? Recognize that we don’t know – and can’t know – all the things that another person is dealing with. Let us find ways to lift each other up in our trials. Let us stop comparing and trying to “one up” other’s troubles. Let us be kind.

24 February 2015
Walking With the Women in the New Testament

A couple years back a friend of mine posted a link to a blog post about modesty, particularly the author’s experience in the Middle East and wearing a hijab. I was so impressed with the author’s perspective that I decided to poke around the blog a little more. I read another post on spiritual promises and infertility which I immediately had to share with a friend struggling with that particular trial. I read this post about the significance of wearing veils which blew my mind and gave me a lot to think about over my following trips to the temple. I quickly became hooked and Eric got used to coming home to me being totally excited about some new insight that I’d gleaned from her blog.

So, what is this blog? It’s called Women in the Scriptures and the premise is this – how many women would you guess are mentioned in scriptures? Go ahead and take your guess, I’ll wait. My original guess had been maybe as many as 50, if you looked really hard. I’ve long been of the camp that women are not mentioned frequently enough in the scriptures, was that what you’d thought too? Turns out, we were wrong. Heather (the author of Women in the Scriptures) went through her scriptures and marked every time that a woman was mentioned in the scriptures. The real answer? 556. I was amazed when I read that, how did I not know that there were that many women in the scriptures?? I’ve been reading the scriptures my whole life and I’d never noticed many, could there be that many?

It opened my eyes to a whole new perspective on the scriptures. Instead of reading the scriptures with a chip on my shoulder that there weren’t any women in them, I started looking for the women. Suddenly the women were popping out of everywhere. None of the scriptures were written by women, but they factor into the stories more often than you might realize. All at once I saw mothers, sisters, aunts, maids, queens, prophetesses – how had I not seen them before?

A couple weeks ago Heather released a new book called – Walking With the Women in the New Testament, a book which focuses in depth on the stories of each of the women who are mentioned in the New Testament. When she sent out a request for people to participate in a blog tour I jumped at the chance! I knew this would be a book that I would need to share with all of you.

I was so excited when I received my copy in the mail. After reading all the great insights in her blog I knew it was going to be great. But something about the book surprised me. I brought the book with me one Friday afternoon to the church while I waited for Sam to go through his primary program practice. I figured it would be a good time to sit and read through some of the book. As I sat in the foyer with my book, my three-year old son came over and asked me to read it to him. At first I sort of put him off, this wasn’t really a “kids” book, but he insisted. So he plopped down on my lap and I let him point to a name in the table of contents. I figured he would sit with me for a few sentences and then run off to go play in the nursery.

He chose “The Widow Who Gave Two Mites”. We turned to that story and I gave him a simplified version of the story first and then started reading to him what was in the book. I hadn’t wanted the book for the pictures (as you may have gathered from the wordiness of most of my posts – I’m a words person more than a pictures person) but the beautiful artwork convinced Danny that this book was for him too. Instead of a “kids” book that might have given him a very superficial understanding of this story, he sat and listened to some pretty meaty insights about how Jesus brought his message to both men and women, and how we should give up all to serve Him, and that He sees and knows our needs even when we feel insignificant. Wow. I’ve read this story many times before and I’d always thought it was meaningful, but I had never gotten all of that out of it! I sat in the foyer with tears in my eyes from just the experience of that one story. But more importantly, Danny sat there and listened to it, and was eating it all up. I expected that this book would give me some good insights but I hadn’t imagined that at such a young age it would be influencing my young son. This truly isn’t a book about women just for women, it is a message about some of the sometimes overlooked players within the scriptures with a message for everyone.

I haven’t yet read all of the stories, but I have been thoroughly enjoying reading them one at a time and really savoring the deeper messages of stories that I’d never thought much of, or hadn’t even noticed. I used to think that there should be more women in the scriptures so that I could learn from their stories as they would be more relatable to myself as a woman. Now I’m thinking maybe there aren’t more because I haven’t learned what those that are there have to teach me!

So, if you’re getting ready for your Christmas shopping and not sure what to get for your mom, sister, daughter, grandma, aunt, wife, girlfriend… or your dad, brother, son, grandpa, uncle, husband or boyfriend, this would be a great gift for anyone. What better gift at Christmas than the opportunity to delve deeper into the scriptures and learn lessons that will draw you closer to the Savior?

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Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book in exchange for reviewing it, but all opinions are my own.

17 November 2014
What’s Santa bringing you for Christmas?
When I was a little girl I remember every year being excited to sit on Santa’s lap, tell him what a good girl I’d been and ask for something special for Christmas. I loved watching Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman and How the Grinch Stole Christmas. My parents didn’t make a huge deal of Santa but he was still an integral part of our Christmas celebrations. When I was in fourth grade my friends started to tell me that Santa Claus wasn’t real, that it was just my parents who bought the gifts. In all honesty, I think I knew logically by then that was true, but it didn’t bother me too much. I still loved the idea of Santa Claus and chose to keep believing anyways because he was part of the magic of my Christmases and I didn’t want to give it up.

Now, a full two decades later I find myself on the other side of the Santa Claus celebration. Instead of believing in Santa Claus – I am Santa Claus for my three sweet children. I love that part of Christmas where I now have the chance to prepare surprises for Christmas morning for which I will not take credit. I love trying to find something that will make my kids eyes light up on Christmas morning and bring joy into their hearts. Even though I want their Christmas to be Christ-centered, I feel like the tradition of Santa Claus can turn their minds, and mine to the Savior.

However, I have been troubled by the first question that my kids are asked this season by almost every adult they see at this time of the year, “What’s Santa bringing you for Christmas?” Since I’ve already claimed that I really do love the tradition of Santa Claus so much, how can this bother me? It’s an innocent question and it is fun to see the things that kids are excited about for Christmas morning. But I feel like it places too much emphasis on the wrong part of Christmas for young minds.

Earlier this week a friend posted this article by Jen Hatmaker called The Christmas Conundrum. In it she describes her experience as a pre-teenager being totally disillusioned by finding out that the presents she received on Christmas morning weren’t what she expected, and how it ruined her whole Christmas. She goes on to say how sad it is that her Christmas was completely defined by material things with no actual thought of the real meaning of the season – the birth of Christ.

I don’t think we’ll be going to her extreme of cutting out Santa from Christmas entirely, but I do want to help my kids from a young age be more aware of the real meaning of Christmas, rather than the consumerism aspects. While I like knowing what my kids want for Christmas I’ve never had them sit down and make Christmas lists, or badgered them for what they want most. We’ve gone to visit Santa Claus (although with very little success getting our boys to sit on his lap so far) and we’ll talk a little about things they might like, but I really try to focus on other parts of Christmas. I try to find ways to read Christmas stories with them, or sing songs, or serve others, rather than expending too much of their energy on what they want to get from Christmas. In addition to taking the focus away from Christ, I think focusing on what you’re hoping to get sets kids up for disappointment. If you have high hopes of getting the 5 things on your Christmas list and you only get 4 of them then you’ll be sad. But if your focus is on other things than yourself then anything you get is just a sweet surprise. I would like to suggest some alternate questions that we could pose to young children that would help bring the focus back to our Savior and less on Santa Claus.
1. What are you going to give this year for Christmas? I will never forget listening to this inspired talk by President Monson back in 1995 called Christmas Gifts, Christmas Blessings which he gave at the Christmas Devotional that year. He suggested rather than asking what someone got for Christmas we should ask what they gave for Christmas. Quite often we put a lot of thought into what we’re giving different people for Christmas and it’s much more exciting to focus on how we’re hoping to make someone else’s life brighter. I think if we try to ask this question to kids it will help them to want to do things for other people and be a little more selfless rather than selfish.
2. Do you love the Christmas music at this time of year? What song is your favorite? Yes, you might still get answers that are more about presents and snow and jingle bells, but the music at Christmas time is inspiring to the soul. There is a joy in that music that helps bring in the spirit of the season better than almost anything else. You can even take that chance as an opportunity to share your favorite Christmas song too, maybe one that bears a small testimony of the Savior.
3. Who are you spending Christmas with? I’ve heard people say before that the meaning of Christmas isn’t to be with family, but I think that’s baloney. Our Savior died so that we can be with our families forever, so what more fitting way to celebrate His birth than by spending time strengthening those family relationships? Children will get excited at the thought of grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, or even just having a day or two extra at home with their mom or dad off work.
4. What is your favorite part of Christmas? I’m sure many children will respond with an answer of Santa Claus or presents, but it opens the door for you to include your favorite part of Christmas too. Whether that’s serving others, or the love people show at this time of year, or Christmas music. Even if their initial answer isn’t part of the real meaning of Christmas I think it’s a good way to at least suggest to their minds that there’s more to this season than just presents under a tree or in a stocking.
5. Does your family have any Christmas traditions that you love? When I was growing up my family had the tradition that on Christmas Eve we would all get a new pair of Christmas pajamas that we would wear to bed that night and then we’d stay in them all day on Christmas. For whatever reason that always seemed like such a treat to me when I was younger, and that day spent at home, with my family, in our PJs is still one of my favorite memories of Christmas time.
It takes a little creativity, but I think we can find ways to help our kids turn their focus from Santa to Christ. I’ll try to post some more traditions and suggestions to help your family’s Christmas be more Christ-centered this year. But for now I’ll leave you with this one challenge – as you try to engage the kids you see in talks about Christmas, will you try to find ways to bring their focus away from Santa and towards our Savior?

What other questions could we be asking our kids instead of Santa questions? I’d love to hear your suggestions! Leave them in the comments below 🙂
11 November 2014
#HappyBirthdayKayson

Most of you will remember a little over 4 months ago when I posted about the death of our neighbor’s little boy Kayson. Tomorrow (Tuesday, October 14, 2014) would have been his 3rd birthday. In commemoration of his birthday his family is asking that anyone who can do some act of service for someone else. It doesn’t have to be anything big – make a freezer meal for someone, help someone asking for money, go pick up some trash at a park – just something to make the world a brighter place in memory of a child who was full of light.

If you do something I’d love for you to post it on your social media or in the comments below. Post it with the hashtag #HappyBirthdayKayson. At the end of the week I will try to gather all the comments, tweets, Instagrams, and Facebook posts that I can get at and compile them for the Sheltons. Even if you don’t want to post what you did, you could just post “Served for Kayson #HappyBirthdayKayson” If you don’t feel comfortable even doing that, you can also email me and I’d be happy to include what you did anonymously.

Happy Birthday Kayson! Thank you for the two and a half years that you shared with us on this earth. We love and miss you, but you are not forgotten <3

13 October 2014
Following Spiritual Promptings

I know I’ve promised to post about my testimony on Fast Sundays, but this post has been rattling around in my head and my heart for the past couple weeks and I needed to write it first. So while this post will still share a portion of my testimony and explain a little bit of “Why I Believe”, it’s more of a theological pondering than a testimony. If you’re really itching for a testimony post you can read Part 1 and Part 2 of that series at those links. I’ll try to resume those posts with next Fast Sunday… unless I have something else I’m itching to write about 😉

Whenever I watch General Conference the stories that touch me most are always those about the small spiritual promptings that someone received and followed that shows in a small and personal way that Heavenly Father is aware of each of us. One of my favorite recent stories of such a prompting came from President Monson’s talk during the Relief Society General Broadcast this past October. He told the story of a sister who had lost a lot of hope. She had expressed to a friend that the only thing that sounded good to her was homemade bread. The next day, an acquaintance – that barely knew this woman and was completely unaware of her struggles – drove across town with such a loaf of bread and quietly dropped it off without any idea why she was doing so. To me these small personal experiences are the greatest testament of Heavenly Father’s love for each of us individually.

Recently I had just such an experience which I wanted to share. A little over two months ago I was outside on a Sunday evening with my little boy Danny. We were getting ready to go inside and I was trying to gather up all of his bikes and scooters which he had left scattered around the neighborhood. As we were looking around we found that his prized possession – a bike that looks like a dirt bike – had been commandeered by one of his friends.

Danny on his “dirt bike” on another Sunday morning before church. I told him he could ride his bike so long as he was pretending to be a missionary. That makes it a legitimate Sunday activity, right?

I knew Danny would be upset about not having his bike. While it didn’t really bother me that this kid was riding Danny’s bike I also didn’t feel bad at all going to ask for it back. As we reached the end of the driveway though I had a distinct impression to just leave it be. At the time I interpreted the impression as, “They’re only young for so long, see how happy it’s making him? Just let it go and distract Danny with something else.” I decided to go with that feeling and Danny was somehow easily distracted despite his adamance a moment before that we go retrieve this bike. Danny is not usually easily swayed so this was a little bit odd but we went on with our evening. At some point the bike was returned and all was well.

I probably wouldn’t have thought of that experience ever again except for what happened next. The little boy who was riding Danny’s bike, was Kayson Shelton. That evening on Danny’s bike was the last time I saw that sweet kid in this life. The last thing I can remember doing for him personally was an act of kindness. An insignifiant and small one, but in a moment where I was planning to do otherwise. I can only imagine how I would feel now if I had instead gone over and said, “Hey bud, that’s Danny’s bike, would you mind letting him have it back?” rather than just letting him enjoy it for a bit longer. It wouldn’t have been wrong of me, and it wasn’t like I would have been at all mean to him. However, I’m so grateful that the last thing I can remember doing for him was something that made him happy.

In retrospect I don’t think the impression was really that “they’re only young for so long”, but really it was a warning to me that Kayson only had so much time left on this earth. It’s hard to explain how I can reinterpret that impression, but it’s not like it came in printed memo format. It was more than just a feeling but less than a complete coherent thought. Impressions like that require some interpretation by me so I can make sense of them in my conscious stream of thought. At the time, the idea that this little rambunctious, bright two and a half year old would be gone less than a week later was completely unthinkable – it still is. So even though that was the thought I had, I wouldn’t let myself think something so outlandish and interpreted it in terms that made more sense to me at the time.

I can think of another time in my life when I had a similar experience with a spiritual impression. In August 2006 I had just flown into Utah from a trip with my family in Australia. I’d been travelling for over 24 hours, and was tired but decided to go visit some friends. While I was there my friends’ roommate went out of his way to talk to me and really showed an interest in being nice to me, despite my friends being preoccupied with other things. I’d been told in the course of meeting him that he had a girlfriend, but while we were talking I had the distinct impression, “I am going to marry this man.” At the time, that impression made no sense – I barely knew him, he had a girlfriend, I had someone else I was interested in pursuing… it just didn’t compute. So I brushed the feeling off. I reinterpreted that impression and said to myself, “What you mean is you want to marry someone like him. Someone who will go out of their way to make others around them feel comfortable. Seriously Brittny, you need to go home and get some sleep.” Four months later, we were engaged, and six months after that I did in fact marry Eric. Seven years and three kids later – that crazy impression doesn’t seem so crazy after all.

As I’ve thought about these experiences I’ve wondered what would have happened in my life if I were to have listened more closely to the Spirit? When I was in college I found that I would frequently have the impression before leaving for class to grab a couple extra pens. Every single time I had that impression, whether I followed it or not, I would find someone during the day who for one reason or another needed those extra pens. I started to try to be more quick to follow those impressions so I could be prepared to be (a very very small) blessing to someone else during the day.

I think now, what if I had been more true to these larger, more dramatic impressions like I tried to be with those small pen impressions? What if instead of downplaying my thought about Kayson I had taken it at face value. Could I have given his mom a warning? Or maybe just told her to take a lot of pictures or to hug him a little bit closer? I’m not saying that I necessarily should have given such warnings, but if I had been more receptive to the Spirit, could I have done more? In a similar vein, what if I had taken my impression about Eric seriously? What if, I had decided right then to stop wasting any energy on the young man I thought I was interested in and focused that energy on Eric instead?

Obviously, playing the “what if” game for things that happened in the past is useful for no one and things seem to have worked out anyways. I don’t think I did things wrong in the past, but I’m playing the “what if” game with my future. What if I try to live closer to the spirit today, could I be a greater instrument in the hands of the Lord? What if I trust the promptings I receive instead of reinterpreting them, could I gain more insight to help in the lives of my children? I want to strive to be the kind of person who listens to and acts upon the impressions I’m given, rather than letting them pass me by.

3 August 2014
Faithfully Failing

I’m once again stealing my mom’s spirituallectual property (yes, I am copyrighting that phrase), but about a year ago she shared an interpretation of a scripture story that I’d never considered before. Not because it’s a story I’d never read before, in fact it’s probably one of the most frequently read scripture stories in the church. Let’s talk about Nephi going and getting the brass plates. (If you want to quickly review the story this is Nephi Chapters 3-5) So let’s start from the beginning. Lehi has fled into the wilderness from the people of Jerusalem who want to kill him for prophesying uncomfortable truths. Then when he gets there he tells his four sons – Laman, Lemuel, Sam & Nephi – that they need to go back to Jerusalem to retrieve the scriptural records of their people. Laman and Lemuel complain about it, but Nephi shows faith and says,

I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded, for I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them.

–1 Nephi 3:7

Then the rest of the story goes that they all 4 return to Jerusalem, Laman and Lemuel are whiny faithless crybabies, and Nephi gets the brass plates that contain their records all by himself. Right? Wrong! I’ve read this story so many times that when I read it that’s sorta how it goes in my head. Nephi trusts in the Lord, and succeeds because he was obedient to the Lord’s commandments. But I sort of skip through the meat of the story.

What happens is they return to Jerusalem and attempt to get the plates – and fail. Not just fail a little bit, but fail pretty spectacularly. Twice. Let’s go through that part of the story and try to forget that we already know the ending, and walk through the steps.

First they send Laman in to talk to Laban about getting the plates and he is chased away and Laban threatens his life (1 Nephi 3:11-13). Laman tends to get a pretty bad wrap, but my guess is that he knew going into this that Laban wasn’t likely to just hand over the plates willingly. Despite that, and even with his reluctance to go in the first place, he puts his faith in the Lord and goes anyways. Only to be rejected and almost lose his life over the matter. Yeah, Laman doesn’t do all the greatest things in his life, but he shows some pretty strong faith in this matter.

When he comes back, they want to give up. Instead, Nephi comes up with this cockamamie idea that they can go back to their old home and retrieve all the riches their father had accumulated and attempt to purchase the plates, even though Laban has already promised to kill them if they come back. Already Laman and Lemuel could easily say, “Look, we did what the Lord commanded and it didn’t work. We clearly didn’t have His protection and help in getting the plates so maybe this wasn’t what we were supposed to be doing after all.” Please pause and pretend for a second that you don’t know the ending to the story and try to see it from their point of view. If someone were to tell you about a situation they were going through that was similar you would probably feel justified telling them, “Hey, you gave it your best shot and that’s good enough.” But no, they are again faithful and go along with Nephi’s plan in spite of adversity.

So off they go back to their house and gather together all of their precious worldly possessions to trade for these scriptural records. Think for just a second of the trial that would be all by itself. You’ve been driven from your home and now you’re going to go back and take all the valuable things you have and trade them just for a copy of the scriptures. Clearly even Laman and Lemuel had a vision of just how precious those records were. They gather all these things and go back to Laban with a decent proposition – all of our riches for the plates of brass. Laban decides he likes the idea of the riches, but not of giving up the plates, so he sends his guards to kill the brothers so that he can keep their possessions without an exchange. The brothers have to flee the city and barely escape with their lives.

Think for a second how Laman and Lemuel must be feeling at this point. They’ve now given up all of their precious possessions and almost been killed in the attempt to get the brass plates. Their adrenaline must be running at a serious high from that experience. So they get back to being alone as brothers and start taking it out on Nephi. Of course they shouldn’t harm their brother but imagine what they must have been thinking, “We told you this was a bad idea. You risked all of our lives and sacrificed all of our possessions – for nothing. If we hadn’t listened to you we would have been heading back to our father safe and sound with the possibility of getting those possessions back. Now they’re gone forever and we could be dead thanks to you.” If my little brother had talked me and my siblings into something like that and it had failed I’d be ticked to say the least. I’m not one for physical violence (I’m the runt of our family, that would be a poor choice of problem resolving methods for me), but I can understand at least a little why they found a stick and started walloping on their brother who had put them into such a terrible situation.

Then of course the story ends in the way we expected it to from the beginning. An angel comes and tells off Laman and Lemuel for their lack of faith, Nephi goes back and gets the plates by miraculous means and they return to their father victorious. But I want to pause for a second and think more about the middle of the story. Why can’t we skip all of the lives being threatened and the loss of property and just have Nephi go in, chop of Laban’s head and walk out with the plates in the first place? Surely the Lord could have made that work out just fine, so why go through all that rigmarole? I think this is an excellent example of what Moroni teaches us in Ether 12:6,

And now, I, Moroni, would speak somewhat concerning these things; I would show unto the world that faith is things which are hoped for and not seen; wherefore, dispute not because ye see not, for ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith.

I would venture that these crazy trials didn’t come despite their faithfulness in following the commandments but almost because of their faithfulness. They needed to know how valuable these records really were to them, and I’m sure they didn’t really realize just what they were willing to sacrifice for them until they’d actually done it. The Lord doesn’t just provide everything for us, because by working for things we recognize the value of our blessings. It’s something I want to remember more as I face trials. I know I’ve had times when I’ve thought, “I know what I felt like I was supposed to do, but it’s just not working out. I’ve given it my best shot and maybe I should just give up and do something else.” But just because something isn’t working out now, or you haven’t been miraculously been placed exactly where you thought you’d end up – that doesn’t mean things aren’t working out the way they should. Remember what the Lord told the Prophet Joseph in Liberty Jail –

If thou art called to pass through tribulation; if thou art in perils among false brethren; if thou art in perils among robbers; if thou art in perils by land or by sea;

If thou art accused with all manner of false accusations; if thine enemies fall upon thee; if they tear thee from the society of thy father and mother and brethren and sisters; and if with a drawn sword thine enemies tear thee from the bosom of thy wife, and of thine offspring, and thine elder son, although but six years of age, shall cling to thy garments, and shall say, My father, my father, why can’t you stay with us? O, my father, what are the men going to do with you? and if then he shall be thrust from thee by the sword, and thou be dragged to prison, and thine enemies prowl around thee like wolves for the blood of the lamb;

And if thou shouldst be cast into the pit, or into the hands of murderers, and the sentence of death passed upon thee; if thou be cast into the deep; if the billowing surge conspire against thee; if fierce winds become thine enemy; if the heavens gather blackness, and all the elements combine to hedge up the way; and above all, if the very jaws of hell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good.

The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he?

–Doctrine & Covenants 122:5-8 (emphasis added)

Even, and perhaps especially, when things don’t seem to be working out the way we’d expected they would when we are faithful it is not an excuse to give up. At those points the challenge to us is to strive even harder, stretch even further and wait a little longer for the hand of God to be revealed. I’ve heard it said, “it will all be right in the end, so if it isn’t all right, then it’s not the end.” So if you’re going through trials and feel like you’re reaching the end of your rope, take courage. He who knows the end from the beginning is watching over you and is there to aid you and guide you. Righteous living does not ensure an easy course, but it will get you safely to your ultimate destination.

24 July 2014
Family Home Evening Resources

I was asked to give a presentation at a Relief Society meeting about Family Home Evening to give some tips and tricks for making it meaningful and easy with young kids. I thought I would share with you here what I shared with the sisters in my ward in case anyone from my ward didn’t get a chance to come to our activity, or if it would be helpful for other friends. I know that I shared the experience in the first paragraph in this post too, but it was applicable here so I hope you’ll forgive the repeat. The rest of the content should be new 🙂

Before this most recent General Conference I was struggling with feelings of inadequacy as a mother and I wrote down a few questions that I was hoping to have answered during the conference. This is one of the questions I wrote – “How can I best use my time with the many demands placed thereon? Freelance work, housekeeping, motherhood, callings, education, blogging, reading, socializing children etc. How can I keep from being completely overwhelmed and truly accomplish things? Or do I need to simply embrace the chaos?” In the second talk of the conference Sister Linda S. Reeves shared this experience –

Some of you have heard me tell how overwhelmed my husband, Mel, and I felt as the parents of four young children. As we faced the challenges of parenting and keeping up with the demands of life, we were desperate for help. We prayed and pleaded to know what to do. The answer that came was clear: “It is OK if the house is a mess and the children are still in their pajamas and some responsibilities are left undone. The only things that really need to be accomplished in the home are daily scripture study and prayer and weekly family home evening.”

A friend recently cautioned, “When you ask the sisters to read the scriptures and pray more, it stresses them out. They already feel like they have too much to do.”

Brothers and sisters, because I know from my own experiences, and those of my husband, I must testify of the blessings of daily scripture study and prayer and weekly family home evening. These are the very practices that help take away stress, give direction to our lives, and add protection to our homes. Then, if pornography or other challenges do strike our families, we can petition the Lord for help and expect great guidance from the Spirit, knowing that we have done what our Father has asked us to do.

Nothing could have been more applicable to my situation than that was. I felt so much comfort that I only needed to really worry about those three simple things in order to be doing what is most important as a mother. Family prayer, family scripture study and family home evening. Of course, family home evening can sometimes be a bigger struggle than it might sound so I was asked to share some resources with you on how to make it easier. So, first of all –

K.I.S.S.: Keep It Simple Smarty!

Family Home Evening was not instituted to stress you out. The point is to gather your family together and spend time together learning and loving one another. Don’t make it harder than it needs to be! Watch a Mormon Message together on YouTube, play a game, even just sit in the same room and let your kids do homework together. Find what works for your family!

I want to walk you through really quickly a “typical” FHE in the Hansen household –

We gather the kids together. Pull up a hymn on hymns.lds.org and sing along with it. Pray. Quick lesson picked from A Year of FHE. Another song. Prayer. Oreos. Bedtime.

Oreos are the most important part of our family home evening, the boys don’t recognize it’s FHE without Oreos. That’s it. Sometimes I’ll put together my own lesson or we might do something else, but we have short attention spans. The only part of that whole equation that requires much effort (beyond wrangling the kids of course) is picking a lesson from A Year of FHE, but then I usually just print it out and read it.

I think the most important part of doing a lesson is picking something that really applies to your family’s current situation. If you have a child struggling with obedience or tattling or something like that, then FHE is a great time to teach those principles. But my mom warned me, don’t always pick just the things your kids are struggling with, or else they’ll just feel picked on and not want to come. Lessons about the season (i.e. Christmas, Easter, St. Patrick’s Day) are great, or if you can include something that goes along with the month’s theme for primary it’s a good reinforcement.

So here are some of the resources that I really like for putting together a family home evening:

Church Website – The church has put together an awesome page that has links to the gospel art book, the Family Home Evening Resource book, videos, music and teaching helps. It’s a great place to go to get started

Mormon Messages– When you want a super easy lesson I definitely recommend just picking a Mormon Message and playing that for your kids and calling it good. They’ll hold their attention well and have fantastic messages. Easy, peasy. Done.

A Year of FHE – This is my *favorite* FHE resource. This lady put together FHE lessons and posted them to her blog every week for 3 years. They are fantastic. She has lessons on a lot of different topics. Most weeks I will open up her blog and then scroll through the topics on the right side of the screen, pick one, print it and teach that. She also has hymns selected to go with her lessons as well as a scripture. The lessons are so well written out that you can generally just read what she’s written, show some pictures (if you want) and then bear your testimony where she indicates. I can’t say enough about how much I love her website.

Chocolate on My Cranium – If your kids really do well with visuals I highly recommend this website for her flannel board stories. She took all of the flannel board stories from the Friend and colored them in so that you can just print them out, cut out the pieces and tell an interactive story. If you live nearby, my sweet sister-in-law put together a binder with all of these lessons printed out and ironed all of the characters onto felt so that we had easy FHE lessons for a year. It was one of the best Christmas presents anyone has ever given me. We’ve gone through all of those lessons now though so if anyone would like to borrow any of the lessons feel free to come by and borrow them!

Sugardoodle – We all love Sugardoodle. They have so many cute ideas! They’re getting ready to re-do their website in the next month, so I don’t know if this will remain how to get to their FHE lessons, but for now if you go to their home page, click on the “Other” tab there’s an option for “Family Home Evening Index”, and there are a ton of great FHE ideas there.

My FHEs – Of course I have to throw in my shameless plug for my own website. I’ve put together a few different FHEs when I had something that I really wanted to teach my kids but couldn’t find *quite* the right lesson out on the web. I’ve been trying to post them to my website so that other people can use them too. I have lessons about being a missionary, a general conference preparation lesson (we do this one twice a year just before conference), saying sorry, and even an Angry Birds lesson about teaching kids how to control their emotions (that one gets requested often). I’ve tried to follow the “A Year of FHE” format and include an opening and closing hymn that goes with the lesson, an easy to follow lesson outline and a predefined spot to bear your testimony. There aren’t a lot of them, but I love to see people use them!

My one piece of advice if you use the lessons that people post on their blogs is to just leave them a comment to say thank you for their time. I know, at least that the lessons I put together, it usually takes me the better part of a day to complete them and it means a lot to me when someone will comment even a simple, “great lesson, thanks!”

I promise that if you make Family Home Evening a part of your family’s weekly routine you will see the blessings in your family. It will help draw you closer together and strengthen you and your kids against the difficult trials that might come against you.

10 July 2014
Why I Believe: God

Photo credit: Ryan Greenburg via Flickr

So I figured if I was going to do this series on what I believe, I should probably start with the very most basic of my beliefs – God exists. Whenever I’m questioning the reasons for my beliefs, I start back at the very most basic. If God doesn’t exist then the rest of my belief system falls apart pretty quickly, so it’s a pretty important piece of the puzzle to establish. Strangely enough, one of the best explanations of why I believe in God comes from Trey Parker, one of the makers of South Park. While his body of work doesn’t appeal to me, his philosophy on religion does,

Basically … out of all the ridiculous religion stories which are greatly, wonderfully ridiculous—the silliest one I’ve ever heard is, ‘Yeah … there’s this big giant universe and it’s expanding, it’s all gonna collapse on itself and we’re all just here just ’cause … just ’cause’. That, to me, is the most ridiculous explanation ever.

As dumb as that may sound, that’s a big part of my testimony. To be honest, what would make the most sense to me is that nothing ever should have existed. My mortal mind can’t comprehend that stuff has just always existed. At some point there had to have been a beginning, an atom, a… something that started this whole thing. Whenever I try to comprehend the fact that things even exist my mind starts short circuiting. The most rational thing to me was that nothing, not even nothing, not even a vacuum to contain that nothingness, just nothing, should ever have existed in the whole history of ever. There shouldn’t even be an ever for that nothingness to exist in. I’ve heard once a philosophy that this whole earth, and life and stuff doesn’t exist, but it’s merely a dream of another being. But, even in that philosophy, that other being exists. No matter how you slice it or dice it, something somewhere exists and that whole concept to me is completely mind boggling.

So, as there is existence, some great force organized this existence and created it. Whatever else you might want to say about that power, it is an awesome power, and I consider this organizing, creative power to be God. I believe in the power and knowledge that comes through science, but not to the exclusion of God. In nature we observe that most all systems lead towards entropy, but somehow despite this natural order we’re supposed to believe that without an outside organizing force things were organized? That makes no sense to me whatsoever. I believe in God as the great organizing force that put these things in motion and I can’t imagine that any being that put that much care into organizing and putting in motion the things that make up our world and universe doesn’t care for those that he has put there. This to me is the essence of what God is, I believe He is a being with the power to organize and create our world, and the care for the people and creations he has put thereon. I’ll discuss in a later post more of my specific beliefs of who God is, but I think that’s a good starting point for finding common ground.

For anyone who would like some more food for thought on the theory of evolution as taught commonly I’d recommend reading through the LDS Old Testament Student Manual Chapter 2 under Points to Ponder. Although this is of course a theological publication it had a very interesting scientific discussion on evolution that I found quite fascinating.

6 July 2014
The “Relief” of Relief Society

This morning I called home to chat with my mom while I worked on some cleaning. I called her cell phone and (not atypically) she didn’t answer. Whenever she doesn’t answer her cell phone I call the house line, since it’s not uncommon for her cell phone to be on vibrate, in the car, out of battery etc. However, it seems like whenever I call the house she’s in the middle of doing something important and ignoring my call intentionally, but if I don’t call the other line then I’ll talk to her later and she’ll say “Oh darn! If you had called the house I was just doing dishes and I would have loved to have talked to you then!” I’m a big believer in Murphy’s Law, but no really, this is how it works every. single. time. So I now joke with my mom that I call the house just so that she has important things that need to be done.

Anyways, so today I called the house line after failing to reach my mom on her cell phone and had this conversation –

Person on the other end (not my mom): Anderson residence?
Me: Oh, uhm, hi, is Kerry there?
Person on the other end: Oh hi, is this Brittny?
Me (starting to recognize the other person as a sister in my mom’s ward): Yes
Sister Hendrickson: Yeah, your mom is here but they’re having a wedding in their yard right now which is why she didn’t answer. But I’ll let her know to call you back ok?
Me: Oh! Uh, yeah, sure. Thanks, bye!

Now before you go thinking that I’m a total flake for forgetting that there was a wedding at my parents’ house today… I had ZERO idea there was a wedding there today. It was Monday morning. My mom had been out of town all last week. She came home later Friday and spent Saturday helping out at their stake youth conference. No one in my family had a pending engagement. Why on earth would I have thought they’d be having a wedding at their house this morning?? Strangely though, I was only moderately surprised. Like the amount of surprised you might be if someone were to come over and say “Hey, it’s not our friend’s birthday but I thought we’d take them over some cake today anyways.” It was not what I’d expected, but, sure why not? That sounded like something that might be going on at my parents’ house.

So later today I got the full story from my mom. Apparently there is a couple who had been attending my parents’ ward on Sunday who was planning on getting married, but would have to wait for a temple sealing as the woman is getting baptized this coming Saturday. Things had suddenly worked out this weekend that their family could all be in town and they’d decided to go to the courthouse to get married while they had that support. When my mom heard this she leaned over to this woman and mentioned, “You know, my husband (the bishop in my parents’ ward) could marry you.” The sister was gracious and mentioned that they had planned on having a backyard wedding but that things had fallen through. A few minutes later my mom said, “You know, I have a backyard that you could get married in too.” And so, it was arranged that the next morning there would be a wedding in my parents’ backyard.

What happened next was pretty cool. That afternoon my mom sent out on her ward’s Relief Society email that they were having this little impromptu wedding ceremony at their house the next day and wondered if anyone could help make it a little bit special. By the following morning there was a cake made, flowers arranged, seats set up, bows tied around chairs, gardening done, decorations put up, potted flowers volunteered, food for a luncheon prepared and live musicians arranged. All to make a special day for a woman these Relief Society sisters barely even knew.

My mom posted more pictures on her Facebook page.

As I was looking at the pictures of this event and feeling so blessed to have come from a ward that would do such a thing, I realized something. What happened today at my parents home in California was remarkable… because it wasn’t remarkable. Knowing my mom and the sisters in her ward, that’s pretty much what I would have expected would happen. Not that I would expect that occasion, but given the circumstances, I was awed but not surprised at the outcome. As I thought about it, that same thing could have happened in my ward here in Draper, Utah. It could have happened in Eric’s home ward in Indiana. It could have happened in my grandmother’s ward in Brisbane, Australia. It could have happened anywhere where there were Relief Society sisters. I saw just such service happen in my own ward a couple weeks ago as my ward sprang into action to help Kayson Shelton’s family after his passing.

Tonight as I had these events on my mind I thought I’d look at this month’s visiting teaching message. This month’s message just happened to focus on ministering to those around us, and I read another story –

At the October 1856 general conference, President Brigham Young (1801–77) announced that handcart pioneers were still crossing the plains and that everyone was to help gather supplies for them immediately. Lucy Meserve Smith wrote that women “stripped off their petticoats [large underskirts], stockings, and every thing they could spare, right there in the Tabernacle, and piled [them] into the wagons.”

As the rescued pioneers began to arrive in Salt Lake City, Lucy wrote, “I never took more … pleasure in any labor I ever performed in my life, such a unanimity of feeling prevailed. I only had to go into a store and make my wants known; if it was cloth, it was measured off without charge.

It struck me that what was unique about what happened in my parents’ ward today, wasn’t the service given as much as the organization of the Relief Society itself. When the Relief Society was first organized Sister Emma Smith said of it, “We are going to do something extraordinary. … We expect extraordinary occasions and pressing calls.” What’s amazing, is that these seemingly incredible, insurmountable calls for service, are precisely what the Relief Society was created to fill – “extraordinary occasions and pressing calls”. Sister Linda K. Burton said, “With practice, each of us can become more like the Savior as we serve God’s children. … As we do so, we are keeping covenants, and our service, like President Monson’s, will be evidence of our discipleship.” Sometimes I think we slight the Relief Society as just being about baking casseroles and arranging flowers. We must remember that when we are doing those things, we are doing precisely what the Savior has asked us to do, to be”… the Lord’s hands here upon the earth, with the mandate to serve and to lift His children, ” as President Monson encouraged us.

Today as I reflected on some of the service given by various Relief Society sisters I felt overwhelmed with gratitude to be part of such an amazing sisterhood here on the earth. Women have a different way of doing things than men, and I’m grateful that we have a divinely organized society that gives us the opportunity to use our unique talents to bless Heavenly Father’s children all around us.

23 June 2014