Breathe peace to our souls

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Sunday Afternoon Session of the October 1995 Conference.

I just liked this quote from President James E. Faust this week. It was actually from Elder Wirthlin's talk "Windows of Light and Truth" (which was good in its own right) but this quote is great:

“The Spirit of the Holy Ghost is the greatest guarantor of inward peace in our unstable world. … It will calm nerves; it will breathe peace to our souls. … It can enhance our natural senses so that we can see more clearly, hear more keenly, and remember what we should remember. It is a way of maximizing our happiness.”

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Watch with me one hour

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Sunday Morning Session of the October 1995 Conference.

I remember this talk by Elder Holland about the sacrament! I think it was the first time I'd realized that the sacrament was the most important part of sacrament meeting. I guess I'd always assumed the talks were the most important part? But Elder Holland leaves no question about it:

Perhaps we do not always attach that kind of meaning to our weekly sacramental service. How “sacred” and how “holy” is it? Do we see it as our passover, remembrance of our safety and deliverance and redemption?

With so very much at stake, this ordinance commemorating our escape from the angel of darkness should be taken more seriously than it sometimes is. It should be a powerful, reverent, reflective moment. It should encourage spiritual feelings and impressions. As such it should not be rushed. It is not something to “get over” so that the real purpose of a sacrament meeting can be pursued. This is the real purpose of the meeting. And everything that is said or sung or prayed in those services should be consistent with the grandeur of this sacred ordinance.

I also remember Elder Holland's comparison of the sacrament with the time the apostles waited for Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. I've felt a special urgency to stay awake and focused during the sacrament ever since! 

We no longer include a supper with this ordinance, but it is a feast nevertheless. We can be fortified by it for whatever life requires of us, and in so doing we will be more compassionate to others along the way.

One request Christ made of his disciples on that night of deep anguish and grief was that they stand by him, stay with him in his hour of sorrow and pain. “Could ye not watch with me one hour?” he asked longingly. I think he asks that again of us, every Sabbath day when the emblems of his life are broken and blessed and passed. 

I definitely sympathize with Peter, James, and John when they DID fall asleep instead of watching with Him that one hour. There have been plenty of sacrament meetings when I've felt sorry afterwards for doing just that. And there are usually several…ahem…distractions in my row (even on my lap) in church during the sacrament. But I do love the sacrament. I've grown to love it more in the twenty-six years since this talk. And I'm coming to love it even more as I realize year by year how much it means to me personally! 

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Santa Lucia Day (Observed)

We couldn't manage Santa Lucia buns on the day itself, so we celebrated a week later on a day when Sam and the boys would be around. Because I was nursing Clementine off and on, I left more of the baking work to the girls than ever before, and they performed admirably! I got up and made the dough and left it to rise, but they did basically everything else—the shaping and baking, the egg wash and pearl sugar, the cocoa-making, and of course the delivering of the lussekatter to Sam and their brothers!

This was Clementine's first Santa Lucia Day, and of course, the girls dressed her up to match them!

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Random Thoughts

• You will be pleased to hear that I have fixed a typo my brother found in our book… it said "rise about" rather than "rise above." Since the books are printed on demand (I think), that part should be fixed from henceforth. Unless you've already ordered your book, of course. In that case you will have to order a new one. :) On the down side, I can no longer claim that our book is the most correct book of any book on earth. On the upside, I didn't ever claim it.

• Speaking of our book. As we were doing our final round of edits, Rachael and I found, to our horror, that  we had written about Bella during some moment of despair that "she hid her hands in her face." Just think about that for a minute. Luckily we changed it in time, but it gives me the giggles every time I think of it. It made me laugh even more once I saw Clementine actually performing this difficult operation:

• Abe and I did some suit shopping for his mission. We thought it was kind of fun how the salesmen around here all seem to know more about missions than the missionaries themselves. Our salesman corrected Abe on how many shirts he should bring, for example—and when we consulted Abe's list, the salesman was right. We were also a little envious of the other missionary buying suits in the store that day, as his salesman was telling him all KINDS of useful information, like how to fold one's pants correctly over the hanger, and how to pull the inserts out of one's shoes so they could rest and recover for a day in between wears. The man kept saying, "Now, make sure you fold your sweaters like this, because you'll see most missionaries just lump their sweaters into the drawer like this…" and Abe kept looking guiltily over to see what his slovenly fate would be. We both left the store feeling appropriately chastened, I think.

• Sometimes I let the children take "before and after" pictures of their clean room to show me, so they can get the job approved as finished. Some of them have learned to utilize the power of a tight crop:

Yes, excellent, this tiny square of your room is reasonably free of items

I also think it's funny that this particular square of carpet she chose to capture isn't even clean.

• Here's a quote I found recently that I've been thinking about. It's by Victor Frankl:

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

Powerful, eh? A space granted. Reminds me of Alma 12:24.

• Clementine is making cute noises from her bassinet, so that's the end of these thoughts! I'm surprised there were this many, to be honest.

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Touching lives with love, humility, and hope

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Priesthood Session of the October 1995 Conference.

It was easy to choose a talk to write about for this session. I loved every part of Elder Eyring's talk "To Touch a Life With Faith." This was one of Elder Eyring's first talks as an apostle. I'm sure he thought a lot about who it might touch and who might need to hear it. I'm sure he considered the fact that people all over the world might listen to his words. But I wonder if he ever thought it would still be blessing and touching people who read his words twenty-six years later? That seems so cool to me.

On to the talk! You know how Elder Eyring is—always addressing the best version of your hypothetical self ("I am sure you have pondered, as I have…")—and urging you on in that encouraging way of his. Sometimes his assumptions about my best self are a little…uh…optimistic, but in this talk he really did have me figured out:

[This man's] heartache was one most of us have felt over someone we cared about and could not seem to reach. And that heartache will lead you to ponder and pray for the answer to this question: How can I touch a life with faith?

Yes! As a matter of fact I have pondered and prayed over that very question! Tell me more, Elder Eyring (I say to myself). Obligingly, he continues:

You can help with your example. If you love them because you feel God’s love for them, they will feel that. If you are meek and humble because you feel your dependence on God, they will sense that, too.

In addition to your example, you can teach the word of God to them in a way that is more likely to give them a desire to repent and to try to live it. They may think they have heard preaching enough. But they must do more than hear the word of God; they must plant it in their hearts by trying it.

You can make that more likely if you talk with them about it in a way that helps them feel how much God loves them and how much they need God.

I love how specific he gets here, and the way he thinks about the scriptures (all these pieces of advice he gives come from scriptural examples). He seems to have a gift of taking even small scriptural phrases and unfolding them into larger helpful principles. This part rang very true to me:

Life has in it moments of challenge that will bring even the people most hardened to spiritual things to say to themselves, “Isn’t there more than this?” If you have been a constant friend, if you have proved your love by service and so become trusted, they may turn to you with that question. When they do, you can say, knowing that their hearts are prepared, “Yes, there is, and I can tell you where it is and what you can do to find it.”

And then he sets forth some of his perceptive principles:

For all those you serve, wherever they may be in the tests of life, the way you nurture will be much the same. You will love them. You will encourage them as they choose to be humble. You will present the word of God to them in the way most likely to lead to their choosing to exercise enough faith to repent and thus see that there is more that God would have them do. And that will help them endure in faith.

Now, your responsibility to touch lives might seem overwhelming. You can take heart that you were called by the Savior. You have the same promise he gave those he called at the beginning of his earthly ministry. He called first humble men, uneducated, with less schooling and less gospel knowledge than the most recently ordained of you may have. But listen to what he said, and know that it applies to you:

“And Jesus, walking by the sea of Galilee, saw two brethren, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers.

“And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.

“And they straightway left their nets, and followed him.”

He will make you a fisher of men, however inadequate you may feel now. It won’t be done by a mysterious process. It will be the natural result of your choosing to follow him.

Ah! I love this so much! He just makes it sound so simple and straightforward; something anyone can do! I get overwhelmed so easily with the thought of all I need to do and be for those I love, but Elder Eyring says so kindly (while simultaneously giving a sort of Stern Poke of Expectation at any inclination I might have to feel helpless or daunted):

Just think about what you must do to be a fisher of men, to touch lives with faith for him. You will need to love the people you serve. You will need to be humble and full of hope. You will need to have the Holy Ghost as your companion to know when to speak and what to say and how to testify.

But all of that will come naturally, in time, from the covenants you make and keep as you follow him.

He is so certain that it will all turn out okay! I love him for it. And the process he sets forth seemed clear and easy enough (and he repeated it often enough) that after I read this talk, I kept repeating to myself reassuringly during some difficult conversations that came up: "Love, humility, hope." That's how to influence a life with faith, and those are things I can do, or at least try for! Especially if I have Elder Eyring's promise that they will be enough to make a difference.

He ends hopefullly, as he began (and I am not overlooking the fact that he follows his own advice in this talk, addressing his listeners with love, humility, and hope!):

You may not have seen that mighty change in yourself yet. But it will come as you continue to follow him. You can trust that he will qualify you as his servant, to assist him in touching lives with faith to bring to pass the eternal life of man. And you will find satisfaction in that service beyond your fondest dreams.

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Nutcracker Girls

Last year I thought maybe the girls would only take ballet for that one year. But finally we decided to do one more. (And perhaps that will stretch into one more. Who knows. I can't, just can't, plan more than a year ahead!) So that meant they got to perform in the Nutcracker again, which is the loveliest Christmas thing…except for all the extra rehearsals and having to drive them back and forth at night and in the snow and through the constant never-ending construction. And because they all had more than one part this year, those extra rehearsals multiplied even more until I was wondering what on EARTH we were thinking when we settled on this schedule.

But then…they are so happy when they get to try on their costumes. And wear make-up! And sit backstage and play games. And it's so lovely to watch them and hear that familiar music…so I guess maybe it's worth it after all.

Junie told me "It's so hard to smile with lipstick on! It feels so weird and I just can't get my lips to do the right thing around my teeth." I empathized…I hardly ever wear lipstick myself for similar reasons. And their teachers insisted that they all wear the very reddest red we could find. But they looked darling, anyway, funny smiles or not!

Dancing with her doll

Junie was the Soldier Captain and Goldie was a Soldier this year, along with being Party Girls. Junie was quite pleased she got to wear "the fanciest hat" of all the soldier hats. She was worried about being able to look serious enough (poor girl! First not able to smile properly, then worried she wouldn't…NOT smile properly!) but I think she did quite well here, don't you?

They want me to note that in the real performance, they did NOT have their curls down like this, but pulled their hair up into buns, of course!

Daisy had four parts this year…Party Girl, Party Boy (in the other cast), Chinese Dancer, and Snow Sprite. She worked hard to learn all those different dances! I liked the Snow Sprite costume best.

I didn't get to go to the dress rehearsal this time, and they don't want you to take pictures during the performance, so I don't have any pictures of their beautiful dancing, but it really was lovely. I love the Nutcracker! Seb was reluctant about having to go watch it again when he'd wanted to make plans with friends ("We already saw it last year!") but he did very kindly tell the girls afterwards that they had done a great job, so that was nice.

Poor Gus had the most awful fall on the way into the show. Teddy was carrying him piggyback and slipped on the ice, and Gus FLEW into the ground facefirst. (I was already inside and didn't see it, thankfully, but Sam did and it sounded horrible.) Teddy, of course, was even more upset than Gus (espeically after being yelled at by each sibling in turn for carelessness…I hate it when the kids pile on like that) and had to be comforted himself. I went out to the car to help put ointment on Gussie and I could hardly bear to see his chubby little happy face covered with blood! He took it quite well, and was cheerfully watching the ballet a few minutes later, but every time I looked over at him my stomach did flips. I thought for sure he'd be scarred and scabbed for several weeks, but by three days later you could hardly see the scrapes. It was amazing. I wish I could still heal like a two-year-old! At any rate, we were grateful it wasn't worse and we could all still mostly enjoy the performance! 

And we did manage some late-night hamburgers for the ravenous dancers afterwards! Which is sometimes the best part of the whole evening—that re-living and relief and talking-it-all-over time.

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Great and powerful eternal truths

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Saturday Afternoon Session of the October 1995 Conference.

With Abe's mission barreling down on us ever-faster, I've been thinking a lot about how little time we have with our children. For so long it has seemed like I would be teaching them forever. (And it still seems like that sometimes, especially when I think about how far away Clementine is from learning…anything.) But life is so busy, and even if you're consciously trying to have "everyday gospel conversations" with your children—realistically, how often do those take place? A lot less often than I'd like…and a lot less, cumulatively, than I expected, when I was just starting out! In fact, now that I've had a taste of it, I'm starting to feel rather panicked at the thought of how quickly they'll be gone! I'm just realizing how few chances I have to actually have good, deep, heartfelt gospel conversations while they'll still listen to me!

Quotes like this one back up that feeling of urgency. Elder Oaks said: 

There are plenty of other spokesmen for trivial things. Latter-day Saints should be constantly concerned with teaching and emphasizing those great and powerful eternal truths that will help us find our way back to the presence of our Heavenly Father.

Of course there are other ways to influence my children (hopefully) and I can still be an example (hopefully) and give advice when it's asked for (hopefully) and talk to them even when they're adults (hopefully). But I don't have experience with any of that yet, so we'll see! What I do know is that I don't want to waste time anymore. There is no time to waste! I want to fill our days with those "great and powerful eternal truths" that are most important in returning to Heavenly Father.

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