A splendor of connections to Christ

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Sunday Morning Session of the April 2006 Conference.

I remember this talk by Elder Holland, "Broken Things to Mend." It's wonderful, as all of his talks are. But I didn't remember this part at all, and I love it. It comes after Elder Holland asks the question "How do we come to Christ?" and answers it with this:

…In as many ways as possible, we try to take upon us His identity, and we begin by taking upon us His name. That name is formally bestowed by covenant in the saving ordinances of the gospel. These start with baptism and conclude with temple covenants, with many others, such as partaking of the sacrament, laced throughout our lives as additional blessings and reminders. …

Following these most basic teachings, a splendor of connections to Christ opens up to us in multitudinous ways: prayer and fasting and meditation upon His purposes, savoring the scriptures, giving service to others, “succoring the weak, lifting up the hands which hang down, … strengthening the feeble knees.” Above all else, loving with “the pure love of Christ,” that gift that “never faileth,” that gift that “beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, [and] endureth all things.” Soon, with that kind of love, we realize our days hold scores of thoroughfares leading to the Master and that every time we reach out, however feebly, for Him, we discover He has been anxiously trying to reach us.

My desire today is for all of us—not just those who are “poor in spirit” but all of us—to have more straightforward personal experience with the Savior’s example. Sometimes we seek heaven too obliquely, focusing on programs or history or the experience of others. Those are important but not as important as personal experience, true discipleship, and the strength that comes from experiencing firsthand the majesty of His touch.

So many beautiful truths in those paragraphs, but the one I like most is that our covenants are specifically designed to foster a "splendor of connections to Christ." Our obedience to the laws of the gospel, our efforts to sacrifice the things he asks us to sacrifice, our attempts to consecrate our time and our talents to God—all of these are paths to connection with God. I love the image Elder Holland paints here. I can imagine myself trudging down the "scores of thoroughfares" in my day where I feel a duty or make an effort to be good in any way—helping my children, cleaning the house, attempting a ministering visit, working on a church calling, planning a meal. These attempts aren't fully unselfish and they aren't even as frequent as they should be. But there are indeed many of them every day, and I love the idea that "each time [I] reach out, however feebly, for Him," I will find Him anxiously reaching back to me in all the ways I most need Him!

Jesus Christ is so good. My personal experiences tell me so, and these covenant connections reassure me of His love, helping me experience "the majesty of His touch" every time I make any attempt to be like Him!

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All hands on deck for the youth

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Priesthood Session of the April 2006 Conference.

In this General Conference session, both Elder Uchtdorf and Elder Rasband (who was still a member of the Seventy) talked about the youth. Elder Uchtdorf focused on how the Lord can help the young men "see the end from the beginning" as they look ahead in their lives, and Elder Rasband talked about adults' responsibilities toward the rising generation. Both talks struck me in ways they never could have before I had youth of my own! 

Everything Elder Uchtdorf said to the young men seemed a message for me in my own attempts to influence and guide my young men! Like this:

We don’t always know the details of our future. We do not know what lies ahead. We live in a time of uncertainty. We are surrounded by challenges on all sides. Occasionally discouragement may sneak into our day; frustration may invite itself into our thinking; doubt might enter about the value of our work. In these dark moments Satan whispers in our ears that we will never be able to succeed, that the price isn’t worth the effort, and that our small part will never make a difference. He, the father of all lies, will try to prevent us from seeing the end from the beginning.

It's just so funny to me that the very fear and uncertainty our youth feel, and which I fought through myself as a youth and thought I had mostly overcome by now—comes back now in the context of my uncertainty about them! Now those whispers from Satan sound like, "Your efforts [with your children] will never succeed, the price [of persisting with them] isn't worth the effort, your small part [with them] will never make a difference." It keeps surprising me again and again how everything I learned as a young person I am now re-learning now from the other side. And here's the promise Elder Uchtdorf gives to counteract the lies of Satan he talked about above:

As you [live the gospel], you will see beyond the moment, and you will see your bright and wonderful future with great opportunities and responsibilities. You will be willing to work hard and endure long, and you will have an optimistic outlook on life. …Your priorities in life will change to match the priorities given to us by the Savior. And God will bless you and open the eyes of your understanding so you can see the end from the beginning.

I need to believe this! Both for me and for my children! I also think it's kind of ironic that in my very worry and preoccupation with my own children, I have likely done less than I should have to help the other youth in my circles. I want so desperately to have other adults influencing my children, being examples to them, telling them the things they won't listen to from me. But I haven't thought of myself as someone who could do that for some other parent's youth. I'm more likely to grumpily think to myself how bad kids are these days, or to withdraw self-consciously, thinking "None of these teenagers want to talk to an uncool and boring middle-aged lady anyway." But Elder Rasband's words made me feel remorseful about those attitudes! First he quoted Elder Erying:

Elder Henry B. Eyring of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, however, provides us with a somber warning, speaking of the youth: “Many of them are remarkable in their spiritual maturity and in their faith. But even the best of them are sorely tested. And the testing will become more severe.”

Then Elder Rasband continues:

This warning that “the testing will become more severe” gets my attention. Our rising generation is worthy of our best efforts to support and strengthen them in their journey to adulthood. 

In these perilous times, as our youth are faced with this increased adversity, we can learn from others. In the armed forces, particularly in all the navies throughout the world, every seaman understands one phrase that is a clarion call for immediate help, no matter what he is doing or where he is on the ship. The call is “All hands on deck.” Many a battle at sea has been won or lost by the response to this call.

We—as members of the Church, leaders of youth, anxious fathers, and concerned grandfathers—all need to respond to the call for “all hands on deck” as it pertains to our youth and young single adults. We must all look for opportunities to bless the youth whether or not we are currently closely associated with them. We must continue to teach and fortify fathers and mothers in their divinely declared roles with their children in the home. We must ask ourselves constantly if that extra sporting event, that extra activity or errand outside of the home is more important than families being together at home.

Now is the time, brethren, when in every action we take, in every place we go, with every Latter-day Saint young person we meet, we need to have an increased awareness of the need for strengthening, nurturing, and being an influence for good in their lives.

I am duly chastened by this reminder, and have a new resolve to at least be aware and make an attempt to befriend and talk to to the youth and children I meet in my extended family and beyond! And I also want to be better at believing that as I do this, Heavenly Father will both strengthen and bring other people into the lives of my own children to bless them!

Other posts in this series:

Be Kind—by Nathaniel Givens

Warning—by Rozy

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A dividing line

Malachi pretending he doesn't like this dog (Poppy)

This post could be about "the line that runs between good and evil in every human heart." But it isn't. It's just I've been thinking about times that happen in our lives where there's a certain hard line which seems like "before" and "after." Before you have a baby and after. Before and after a child turns 3, or 8, or 16.  Before and after Christmas. Before school starts and after it ends. Leading up to those lines of division, you think things like, "Next time I change the sheets on this bed, it will be after I've had the baby." Or "Last time I made brownies, we were still getting ready for school to start." In the days and weeks leading up to us leaving for our sabbatical, it seems like my every thought has been along those lines! "This is the last time I'll do this before we go." "Next time I do this it will be in a new place." 

But it's also strange to think about the befores and afters I can't anticipate. Sometimes they're sad to look back on: "I remember doing this same thing last month. That was before [spiritually life-shaking event] happened. I never knew it was coming." Occasionally they are happier: "Last month at this time I still feared I'd never feel better again. Now I do." But either way it's so strange to think that at any given time, we might be living on either side of a dividing line. Of course that would be clear if someone died! But I'm not even talking about drastic events like that. Just small things like holding hands with one of your kids who then decides he's too big to hold hands. Or getting released from a calling and suddenly not doing the things you've been doing for it every week. You may not even notice things have changed until years later when you look back and think, "Oh yeah! We used to go to the park every Tuesday!" or "That's strange, I had forgotten what Daisy looked like with glasses."

Well anyway. I'm back-dating this post and dumping all the pictures before we left on our sabbatical trip. And, now that the dividing line has passed, it already feels weird to look at them again, even though it was just last month! This little group of pictures has another layer of strangeness because we found a box of my old dresses from high school and college, and I had the girls try them on, and they basically ALL fit them! On this particular Sunday, all three girls happened to wear a dress that used to belong to me! It was so familiar and yet so unfamiliar to see them! Daisy looks the most like me, I think, but I kept looking at all of them and thinking, "Is that how I looked in those dresses? Was that really so long ago?"

It was also funny because I sent these pictures to my mom and she wrote back, "Oh, such cute dresses! Did you sew them? I have some fabric almost like that in my cupboard." I was like "Mom!…YOU sewed these dresses. That's why you still have the fabric." As if I could sew any of these! You would think my mom would know better😄

This dress was my favorite! I loved it so much! I wore it for my senior pictures at Provo High, and for graduation too, I think.

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The kids stayed overnight at my mom's for the 4th (or on the 3rd, I guess) of July. They had fun seeing the hot air balloons and going to the parade. We went and joined them for swimming and dinner and fireworks later in the day.

We got out the American Flag dress and stuffed Clementine into it for one more year, because why not? (Last time one of my daughters wears the flag dress??😥)

Fun to see Gus playing with the little lawnmower Abe and Seb and Malachi used to love so much.

A few days later I was driving home from the store or somewhere and passed by these cuties siting out on the lawn. "We're watching the parade!" they told me.

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Even with me telling him several times that it might be too hard to fit it in, and maybe he should wait until next year, Seb insisted that he wanted to take Ziggy and Gus on an airplane flight before we left for Quebec. Finally, only a few days before we were to leave, he found one that worked with everyone's schedule: a quick flight to Las Vegas and then back a few hours later, getting home around 11 pm. Zig and Gus were out of their minds with excitement! They packed up their little backpacks with snacks and a stuffed animal and set off with Seb. They got to ride Trax to the airport, which just added to the joy of it all.

A couple weeks before this, Seb found these stuffed airplanes (!!!) somewhere and bought one for each boy. They are so funny! Zig's is a UPS plane. And Gus's favorite airplanes are Spirit airplanes (because they are bright yellow, which is a "Caw Color" I guess? I don't know why he didn't choose Southwest, which is all of the Caw Colors, but thus it is) and Spirit was, not coincidentally, also the airline they were going to fly on!

They rode the train to Salt Lake with great excitement. It was a good thing they left early, because the train ended up breaking down and they had to change trains, take a bus to another line, and catch another train to get to the airport! All very exciting for the little boys, but more stressful for the adult who is trying to make the flight on time! They got there with time to spare, though.

Here is their plane coming in to the airport! (They weren't on it yet. But Seb texted me from the airport saying "it's flying over the house!")

Gussie wasn't scared a bit (he told me afterwards). Just purely excited. Zig was a little nervous, but "then I ended up loving it! And now I want to go again so bad!"

Seb said everyone on the airplane was SO nice to the little boys. It probably helped that Gus was proudly carrying his little stuffed Spirit airplane in his arms😄. They got to sit in the cockpit, and the flight attendants talked to them and brought them extra snacks. So fun!

Seb said Ziggy read the in-flight safety card over and over again, wanting to talk it over and ask questions about it and be reassured about each little part. He is SO much like Sebby as a little boy! It's fitting, I guess, for Seb to get to be around him and see what it was like for us when he was little! So cute, so earnest, so interested in how everything works! There's another thing I didn't see the end of before it was suddenly past me. When did Seb stop being that eager, slightly apprehensive, smart little boy? He has parts of him still. But he's become someone else as well.

Gus's favorite part was the take-off. "We went like this!" he laughed joyfully, tilting his hand sideways, as he told me about it. 

Such a fun, memorable trip for these little men. They will never forget this fun day with their big brother Sebastian!

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This beautiful sunrise greeted me when I got up one morning. And an even more welcome sight than the sunrise…

…these little worker bees getting an early start on their weeding. (Last time before we left for Quebec!)

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Here we are cleaning. Always cleaning. We were working SO hard those last few weeks!

Clementine put on Malachi's old Birdie costume, got her stuffed chicken, and then proclaimed delightedly, "We match!" They did.

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Came home from our date night one night to find this going on. The girls had turned on music and told the little ones to dance together while the big kids cleaned the kitchen. They were having quite a merry time!

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Gnomes

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Daisy by our neighbors' daisies

And the girls playing with their friend Cora 

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The actual, very last day before we left, Seb said he wanted to do something with all the little kids. I could tell all month that he was feeling very sad about their upcoming departure, which in itself is a little miracle. And then he kept making such valiant efforts to be kind and make happy memories with them even though he was so busy and working night shifts at the airport every night, which was also amazing. We already had the van all packed to bursting, and I was trying to pre-cook meals for the cooler and clean the last things, but at the last minute I decided to go with Seb to take the kids out for ice cream and to the splash pad. Their swimming suits were packed, so I told them "just get your clothes wet! It will be fine!"

I was glad I took the time to go with Seb. It was the first time in weeks I'd just sat still and watched the kids and enjoyed being with them. Seb was feeling nostalgic and so was I! We were both near tears a few times, sitting there thinking about the past and the future while Zig and Gus pretended to be airplanes and Clementine threw Gus's shoe eagerly into the water over and over again to watch it float.

Some friends in the ward, bless them, had invited our whole family over to dinner that night so we wouldn't have to worry about cooking and cleaning up the night before we left. So eventually we packed up the wet kids and headed home for dinner and last-minute tasks and finally a nervous and excited sleep. Seb left for work at midnight, but not before he woke every single sibling up to give them hugs and say goodbye. And so ended a whole host of good things on that side of the dividing line!

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