Scripture Study Chalkboard Drawing

Letter S - the Six Swans Watercolor Painting

Mothers in the Scriptures Chalkboard Drawing

Apostasy and Reformation Chalkboard Drawing

I Hired a Mother's Helper

I don't know why we have this idea that stay-at-home moms should have it all together. I guess because their mothering is their "career" we have impossible expectations of them? I don't know, but working mothers feel the pull too. Keep a perfect house, spend lots of time with your kids, serve in your community, have a hobby, cook only whole/clean/delicious/from-scratch food. Exercise every day and look fantastic.

Is this sounding unattainable to anyone else?

Well, I'm here to bust that image of perfection. You can't do it. Not all of it. But gosh we try, but something always slips. For me it was housework. And I was okay with that because it was clean enough, but I'd always get to a point, usually at the end of the week where I just couldn't stand it anymore and then cue the irritability, stress, and few hours of cleaning while grumbling about the kids messing everything up immediately.

Well, no more. I can't do everything, but I didn't want to give up something. Not my writing, not my work in the community, not homeschooling, not reading my books, or crafting, or playing games, or going on walks, or just sitting down on the couch sometimes and relaxing! I also didn't want to live in a dirty house.

A few months ago my mom came to visit and (lovingly) suggested that I should think about bringing in some help. She saw everything I did during the day and to her everlasting credit never suggested that I quit the stupid writing, or think about putting the kids in public school, or anything like that, even though there have been plenty of times I've worried that's what everyone thinks. But I'm blessed with very supportive family members, which is a wonderful thing to have.

It was a little hard to do at first. It kind of felt like admitting defeat. I'm a stay-at-home mom, I gave up working to be able to do all this. Did it make me a failure? Yeah, no. Forget you, society and your impossible expectations and darn you my passionate heart that loves to dabble and learn and read and play.

So a month ago I spoke with one of the girls at church choir practice about coming in a few times a week to help me and she said...YES!

It's been four weeks now. One of those weeks she was sick and couldn't come. But here's what we set up and why I love it.

She calls me on Sunday to let me know her work schedule and we agree on times she can come. It's usually about three hours a week, spread out over two or three days. I pay $10/hour. It's more than minimum wage and what she makes at her other job. I also throw in an extra five dollars a week to compensate her gas money, she doesn't live too far from us, but still.

Now the part you're probably wondering, what do I have her do?

All the things I just never seem to get to. These have included sanding and painting my kitchen table and chairs (I started it but never got around to finishing), scrubbing out car seats, helping clean out the car, scraping the gunk from off the table and chairs where Tom sits, and sweeping and mopping.

She also is just an extra pair of hands on days when I need them. When Tommy is extra clingy and hanging on my legs, I can sit down and just hold him while she takes care of whatever I'd been trying to do. She watches the kids in the front yard when I'm working on dinner. She's another person to read to.

And then sometimes she babysits for me.

Why I love it and have talked to her about doing it long term:

1. My floors are clean. CLEAN!
2. I don't have to mop!
3. It's allowed me to relax a bit more. I know I can take that extra thirty minutes to enjoy a book because she's coming in the afternoon.
4. It also gets me to work more. When she's here I can't just sit around and do nothing. That's awkward. So usually, it forces me to clean for a whole hour in the afternoons. That makes a big difference.
5. More dates! After months of not going out at all, Rob and I have gone on two dates this month because she came over and we were able to just take off. It was great!
6. I can leave on a date and ask her to clean something while I'm gone and SHE DOES!
7. It's someone to talk to and I think we both have things to offer. She gets paid and experience doing things that while not glamorous are important for living life. I get a cleaner home with less stress, projects finished, and extra time with Rob.

I have other ideas of things I'd like to use her for if I can ever stop needing her to clean my floors. One thing I've considered is leaving her with two of the kids while I take one of them out for some one-on-one time. Teaching her how to make breadsticks so I can count on having that help for dinner and not have to push it back an hour on nights I want bread sticks. Deep cleaning. Those hand prints on the walls? Dirty base boards? Window tracks? All those spring cleaning things;

All in all, the extra $140/month is well worth it. If you can carve out the space in your budget for help even just once a week, I highly recommend it. It's okay to ask for help. You don't have to be perfect. I'd say it's far more important to get in that extra hour of reading or painting or writing or playing.

Petra the Statue: A healing Story about Perfectionism

There once was a beautiful green park. And in this park there was a path that wound through it, past all the tall trees and beautiful flower gardens. And just off that path was a fountain and in the middle of that fountain was a statue. Now this statue was a very large and very beautiful statue of a water nymph. She had beautifully chiseled long hair and graceful arms held out like she was stretching to hug the morning sun. From her mouth came a gentle stream of water falling into a small reflecting pool below. Her name was Petra and a very famous sculptor had lovingly carved her many years before and gave her as a gift to the city.

Everyone loved to gather around this fountain. Grandmothers would sit along the benches and read and relax. Mothers would bring their children to play tag around the circle of the fountain. Young lovers would hold hands and whisper to each other. Every day at least one person would stop and look at Petra and say, “This is the best place in the entire park. What a beautiful fountain.”

The air was always full of laughter and everyone was smiling. Petra loved being the reason they all came. She was proud to hold her arms out always as if to say, “Come here, children. Come and play.”

There was only one problem. Her beautiful, pale gray arms were the perfect landing spots for pigeons. Every day, soon after the sun rose, a pigeon would land on her outstretched hand. And then another and another until her arms were quite filled all the way up with pigeons. And when those were full they began to perch on her head.

One pigeon cooing is not altogether terrible, but ten or fifteen gets to be quite a cacophony. All day Petra heard them cooing and calling back and forth to each other, right by her ears. And she couldn’t cover her ears because her elegant and slender arms were made of stone and could not bend. She couldn’t wave the pigeons away because her stately shoulders were made of stone and would not flex.

Even all that perching and cooing would have been tolerable if it hadn’t been for the mess those birds left behind all over her arms and head. White streaks and spots all over. “Oh, my beautiful gray arms,” wept Petra. “They are all striped and splotchy now. I feel certain the sculptor who made me would be horrified to see me looking this way. I am a work of art and they are ruining me! Oh, soon nobody will want to come spend their day at the park near me. I will just be an awful mess!”

But one day, Petra realized she could fight back against the birds. One morning, a pigeon flew by and its wing brushed her nose and made her sneeze! Well that sneeze shot the trickle of water coming from her mouth straight out! It hit the pigeon square in the beak and it flew off, determined to never return to the cursed fountain again.

Petra had never thought to use her water fountain to shoo away the birds and her heart skipped a beat at the though. “Oh, once again I shall be beautiful and stately, just as the sculptor intended me to be.”

So one by one that day, Petra squirted each pigeon that dared to land on her graceful arms. It was a lot of work, because pigeons are not naturally intelligent creatures and many of them had to be reminded several times what would happen if they came back to their favorite landing place, but Petra was determined to be rid of the birds once and for all.

For a week Petra fought the battle of the pigeons, but by the end of the second week, not a bird dared to touch down anywhere near her. So focused had Petra become on ridding herself of the flying nuisances that she would even squirt them for landing on the edge of her fountain or on the sidewalk nearby.

“Aaahh,” Petra said at the end of her first day with absolute zero pigeons. “This is how I was meant to live. The sculptor would be very proud to see me now.”

But Petra’s happiness was short-lived. Only a few weeks after scaring away all the pigeons Petra looked around at the park benches surrounding her fountain and noticed that none of the old grandmas were sitting there anymore. For you see, the grandmothers had always come to feed the pigeons and once the pigeons left, they found another place to sit and relax and empty their purses of bread crumbs and bird seed.

Petra was a little sad, but she simply sighed and said, “Oh well. At least the children will still come and see me.”

But after a few weeks, the children no longer ran around her fountain laughing and playing and throwing in shiny pennies and wishes. For you see, the mothers and children came to visit the grandmas who would open up their purses full of bread crumbs and bird seed, but also full of little candies and chocolates.

Petra was quite sad now, but she simply sighed and said, “Oh well. At least the young lovers will still sit on the park benches and admire my beauty as they hold hands and whisper.”

But a few weeks later, the young couples no longer sat on her benches to hold hands and whisper. For you see, they’d always been whispering about a future with children and growing old together, and it was always food for their imaginations to watch the cycle of life before their eyes and dream about it together.

Now Petra was really, very, very sad. She wanted to cry great sobs but because she was made of stone all she could do was let a little more water pour down from her mouth. “Oh, if only I had let those pigeons stay,” she said. “I guess they were a small price to pay for all the joy the brought. And what good are my lovely, slender arms, even if they are clean now, without children and grandmothers, and young lovers to see them?”

Just then, a small pigeon flew by and Petra stopped her stream of water long enough to let out a small bird whistle. She was in luck, because this bird was new in town and did not know about Petra’s reputation for squirting loud and dirty birds who dared to land on her. So the small pigeon decided to stop and rest on one of the graceful gray arms for a bit.

Petra stayed very still.

Soon, a flock of pigeons flew by and saw a bird on Petra’s arm. They wondered how this could be and flew down to get a closer look. When Petra saw them coming closer she once again stopped the water coming from her mouth as a sign of goodwill and to show that she promised never to squirt them again. The pigeons all landed on her arms and head because really, they had missed their favorite perch. The cooed together and left many a white streak and splotch before flying to their nests for the night.

But in the morning, they were back. And the next day and the next day. And soon, Petra saw an old grandma sit down on the park bench, open her purse and begin to feed the birds. “Yes,” thought Petra. “Yes, soon everyone will be back.”

And soon, they were. The children, the mothers, the grandmas and grandpa, the young lovers. All sitting and smiling or running and laughing. “This is the most wonderful spot in the park,” she once again heard them say. “What a beautiful fountain.”

And Petra learned to love the pigeons, no matter how loud or dirty they were. Because even though they made her less than the perfectly, beautiful statue she’d started out as, she became much more when they were around. She became a centerpoint for love and life. And that’s really much better than being perfect and beautiful, don’t you think?

Coming to Know God

“There are musicians but most of us are not musicians, some lacking musical talent, but the majority probably lacking inclination. But of those who are musically talented none ever becomes a great musician without years of persistent, continuous work. Great performers continue long hours of practice even though their reputations may be international. … No athlete becomes outstanding, no mechanic becomes skilled, no physician becomes an expert, no orator becomes great, no lawyer becomes renowned, except by persistent practice and many, many hours of hard work. … How foolish it would be for me to close my eyes and ears and say there are no musicians because I am not talented to become a musician; that there are no Edisons because I cannot become an inventor; that there are no artists because I do not have the talents and inclinations to become an artist. Does not reason tell us it is equally foolish for a man to declare there is no God simply because he has not discovered him? …

“He who makes no effort to learn of the existence of Deity will, in this life, likely not learn there is a Deity. But his ignorance does not warrant him in declaring there is no God.” (Joseph F. Merrill, The Truth-Seeker and Mormonism, Deseret Book Co., pp. 76–77.)

I was asked to speak about knowing God, but as you see from the quote I just read, it is something that takes hours and hours, years and years. We don't get to a finish line and, "Now I know God. I'm done." It is a life-long endeavor. And yet, hours and years of practicing it? It can't happen just by reading our scriptures and praying. We have to actually go out and live our life. 

So I turned to stories in the scriptures of people who spoke to God or Christ face to face. Who had special interactions with Him, so that I could draw conclusions of how to come to know God in our daily life.

Moses and the burning bush (in nature)  Exodus 3:21  

 1 Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father in law, thepriest of Midian: and he led the flock to the backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb.

 2 And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.

 3 And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.

 4 And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I.

Alma 30:44 But Alma said unto him: Thou hast had signs enough; will ye tempt your God? Will ye say, Show unto me a sign, when ye have the testimony of allthese thy brethren, and also all the holy prophets? The scriptures are laid before thee, yea, and allthings denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator.

Psalms 46:10

10 Be still, and know that I am God:

I can't help thinking that if Moses had been looking at his cellphone while he was leading the flock of sheep that he would have missed the burning bush and missed God entirely. How often do we allow ourselves to connect with God through nature? To be still? To see His hand and His works. 

Mary, mother of Jesus  (in parenthood)  

 Luke 2:19 But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.

Being a parent gives us the opportunity to understand how God feels about us and sees us. Even on my kids' worst days I still am able to see all their potential and goodness. But in addition to that, we have the opportunity to see God in our Children. They are so innocent, they are windows to the divine. Tell story about Max and crying about the beautiful flowers.

The woman who anointed Christ’s feet  (in our service)

 37 And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster box of ointment,

 38 And stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed themwith the ointment.

There are lots of examples in the New Testament of people who interacted with Jesus. I chose this one because this woman truly recognized Jesus for who and what He was. Her act was one of respect and gratitude, but also service. When we serve we come to know better Christ who “went about doing good.”  By developing Christlike attributes we will come to know Him. Jane and Christmas Stockings.

Saul/Paul  (in our sins)

 13 At midday, O king, I saw in the way a light from heaven, above the brightness of the sun, shining round about me and them which journeyed with me.

 14 And when we were all fallen to the earth, I heard a voice speaking unto me, and saying in the Hebrew tongue,Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.

 15 And I said, Who art thou, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest.

 16 But rise, and stand upon thy feet: for I have appearedunto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and awitness both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee;

 17 Delivering thee from the people, and from the Gentiles, unto whom now I send thee,

 18 To open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness tolight, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in me.

God has a higher calling for us. He welcomes us under his wings even in our sins. Turn to Him. He is never too far away. What can we learn of God when He calls us back from sin. We know He is both just and merciful. He is neither a vengeful wrathful God, spurring people on to acts of terror and violence, nor a big teddy bear who expects nothing of His children. But His grace is sufficient. God saw something more in Saul of Tarsus. Even in his vast and terrible sins. The best bishop, the best YW President, best YM pres. I have ever known have all wandered but were never lost to their Father in Heaven. 

On the Road to Emmaeus  (in those around us)

 13 ¶And, behold, two of them went that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem aboutthreescore furlongs.

 14 And they talked together of all these things which had happened.

 15 And it came to pass, that, while they communedtogether and reasoned, Jesus himself drew near, and went with them.

 16 But their eyes were holden that they should not know him.

 17 And he said unto them, What manner of communications are these that ye have one to another, as ye walk, and are sad?

 18 And the one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answering said unto him, Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are come to pass there in these days?

 19 And he said unto them, What things? And they said unto him, Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people:

 20 And how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to be condemned to death, and have crucified him.

 21 But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel: and beside all this, to day is the third day since these things were done.

 22 Yea, and certain women also of our company made us astonished, which were early at the sepulchre;

 23 And when they found not his body, they came, saying, that they had also seen a vision of angels, which said that he was alive.

 24 And certain of them which were with us went to the sepulchre, and found it even so as the women had said: but him they saw not.

 25 Then he said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart tobelieve all that the prophets have spoken:

 26 Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?

 27 And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, heexpounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.

 28 And they drew nigh unto the village, whither they went: and he made as though he would have gone further.

 29 But they constrained him, saying, Abide with us: for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent. And he went in to tarry with them.

 30 And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them.

 31 And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight.

I sometimes wonder what Christ would look like if He came in our day. He loked like everyone else at the time in Jerusalem. They didn't recognize Him by looks but by how He made them feel.

4 Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

 5 And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faithvirtue; and to virtue knowledge;

 6 And to knowledge temperance; and to temperancepatience; and to patience godliness;

 7 And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity.

If this is the nature of God, then I guess we know Him now, right? These are just words to me. What do they mean, really? We are all children of God. We all have part of His divine nature within us. Look around you. Do you see those who exhibit faith? Virtue? Knowledge? Patience? Study them. Watch them. Try to be like them. That is how you come to understand the nature of God. 

Mary at the Tomb   (in our sorrow)

 14 And when she had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus.

 15 Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.

 16 Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni; which is to say, Master.

Mary recognized the Savior not because she saw Him, but because she recognized the way He said her name. It was probably one of the greatest sorrows of her life. Here she had put her faith in someone to be a Savior and now He was gone. Not just gone, His body had been stolen and probably desecrated. But then Christ called to her and she turned and recognized Him. Tell story about being angry with God. Are we allowing our sorrows to bring us nearer to God. To converse with Him and understand?

God is all around us if we will only take the time to listen and watch and recognize Him.