There is always Hope

I am a crazy chicken lady.

My husband grew up on a farm.  I grew up in the suburbs.  When we met, and he told me his family were all farmers, I thought he was kidding.  I was the kind of clueless idiot who thought all our food today was grown on commercial farms, owned by Simplot or Green Giant, and that there weren't really people who did "farming" anymore, unless they were working for some big company.

So when Whit asked me about three years ago to get chicks around Easter, I thought he was nuts.  He was so adamant about it, and reassured me that the kids would love them.  He told me that he would do everything, that they're super easy, and that I wouldn't have to do a thing.

The kids did love them.

That was the only thing he said that turned out to be true.  They were in a box in our garage and they made big messes.  They pooped in their water, they scratched and ate and drank and made messes and pooped and pooped and pooped more.  Did I mention the poop? Then they ate and pooped enough that they grew pretty big and they were hopping out of their stinky box and wandering around pooping in the garage.  I had cleaned the box to the best of my abilities, but they needed a bigger box.  And the coop I ordered never came, so I tried to go buy one at the store, but the season had passed and they didn't have them anymore! Crisis!  On Whit's next day off, Whit and I spent the whole day getting stuff, building a coop and painting it.  This was pretty much the opposite of what I had been promised, and I was not super happy about it.

Egads they were messy and I worried and worried and worried about them.  It was cold, it was rainy, so I was outside putting heat lamps and changing the coop shavings and buying them special supplemental foods and taking them scraps and putting up fabric to block the rain.  (I did get over that.  I mean, a chicken's gonna get wet.)

But then on my birthday, disaster struck.  They'd been laying for a month or so when an opossum found them.  And killed my favorite one!  Did I mention this happened on my birthday??  I was so sad to lose Trip and I really didn't want to lose anymore, but then the opossum got another, and a dog got two more.  I was down to just three.  I did what any sane person would do--I bought more!

This was the first step on my descent down to crazy chicken lady-ness.

It was not my last.

So I bought TEN more chicks.  Because I loved the first seven.  But first, I secured my coop from predators.  I prepared a room and a heat lamp and a space for the chicks.  I took way better care of these little guys.

I still lost two to hawks when I let them out too early.

But the worst, the lowest moment of my chicken parenting was the night of the raccoon.  I had a little four month old puppy who weighed about 2.5 pounds.  We went out to lock up the chickens for the night at dusk and I could just make out the shape of a raccoon ahead of me.  My puppy went charging for it, and I called Foxy back because I knew the raccoon could end her.  I shouted and waved and the big old raccoon ran up into a tree.

I kept walking and found that the chickens, instead of being holed up in the coop, were in complete disarray.  All over the yard.  The raccoon had already killed one, Whitney's (my husband's) favorite one.  I found another one huddled at the far end of the coop.  I couldn't get her to move, or come to me.  It was one of the young ones, and I locked the rest in before going to get her.  I couldn't make out much outside but she wasn't moving at all.  I was worried she might be dead.

I carried her inside and she still wouldn't move.  I could see why in the light.  See, raccoons like to eat chicken's heads.  If they have several around, they will ONLY eat the head before they move on to another chicken head.  (Delightful, right?) I interrupted the raccoon, so it hadn't really eaten this one, just gnawed on it.  Both eyes had been mangled beyond repair, and I was heartbroken.

Whitney offered to wring it's neck.  He told me it was really the only thing to do.

I just could not let him do it. I googled what to do and found out it was in shock.  I got antibiotics and put them in its water.  I pushed its beak down and made it drink.  It would not move otherwise.  I put it in a box and kept it inside, since it was March and it is vital to keep a chicken in shock warm.  Foxy was beside herself, but we put her far enough away that she would leave the chicken alone.

The injured chicken stank.  By the next day it was way worse.  She would not eat.  Nothing.  She wouldn't move.  I kept making her drink at intervals all day.  When I went outside that day, I discovered the darn raccoon had eaten another chicken.  I spent a lot of time re-securing the coop.  I was beside myself.  I went out and bought this kind of expensive spray-on antibiotic and Whitney helped me clean the wounds on her eyes as well as we could.  We put neosporin on them and later I used the spray like clockwork.

She still would not eat.

Although her eyes looked better and better, she would not eat, even a bit, despite my best efforts.  By day three, the internet said that if she didn't eat she would die.  I had read a lot on blind chickens and I knew that if the rest of the flock helped her, she could survive.  The odds weren't good, but it had happened.  The blind chicken could follow the sounds of the other chickens to find the food and eat the grain.  I thought maybe she would eat in her old surroundings, so I took her outside. She perked up right away and I was so hopeful.

The second I stepped away, she felt my absence and hunkered down.  I was delighted to see her sisters/friends come running over.  Then they reached her and immediately began pecking at her injured eyes.  I was crushed.  I can't tell you how much it upset me, to see her friends, her family, trying to tear at her when she was down.  I cried and cried, so concerned for this little chicken who I had been trying to help (all to no avail) for three days. I can't tell you how many times people suggested I put her down, or let her die.  They told me that I was prolonging the inevitable.  She was in pain.  She was miserable.  Stop trying and let her go.

I just couldn't do it.  I couldn't let her die.  So I read about force feeding chickens.  I read about how they have this little area where their food goes before it goes to their stomach and you don't want to overfeed them or it will burst and they'll die.  Small frequent meals, then.  Whit helped me at first.  I tried to feed her alone and could not get her to eat anything.  She squirmed and flailed and turned away and I made a huge mess.  I was trying with yogurt, which they say is the thing to kick start a gut when it's been going hungry.  We were on day three, the make or break day.  If she didn't eat she would die on her own.

With Whit's help (he's unfailingly supportive, even when he thinks I am being crazy) I fed her.  Then an hour later, we fed her again.  Then an hour later.  Whit made me go to bed after that third feeding.  I wanted to feed her through the night.  After all, we were on day three.  How much was enough to save her??

We did the same thing the next day, but Whit came up with a way to shove her down in the sink so one person could feed her and water her alone.  We gave her a bath and cleaned her eyes again so they didn't stink so bad and a small miracle--one of her eyes was THERE!! I had so much hope.

So that day, she started eating by force and she had an eye.  I started to really hope (for the first time) that she might live.  I told the kids I hoped she could make it.  They would say, "is she gonna die?" and I would say, "I sure hope not."  Eli and Dora started to say "we hope she lives.  We sure hope so."  And Emmy picked up the refrain and began calling her Hope.

Each day I force fed Hope and I put her outside whenever it was nice, but in a pen so no dogs, cats or other chickens could harm her.  They all wanted to.  She was so scared she would hardly move.  I also think she was adjusting to the loss of one eye.  We still don't know exactly how well her "good eye" works.  During those days, she would not eat a single thing I did not force on her.  She would not drink a single thing without me forcing her.  We were at day 11 and she was eating grain, watermelon, yogurt, bread, greens, and on and on, but she still she had not eaten or drunk a single thing without my help.

The problem was that in two days, I was leaving to go to Moses Lake Washington to visit Whit's family.  I had no choice but to dump her into the coop with the rest of the flock to pick her to death or for her to starve because she couldn't eat alone.  I was so scared for her.  I felt sick.

I had asked my mom over the phone if she wanted to take her and feed her and my mom laughed.  My mom had grown up on a mini-farm and she said the same thing everyone else did.  "At some point she has to either reintegrate or die."

"No chance you want to take her to your house?  Have a pet chicken??"

My mom laughed.

And then she came to get Eli's fish the night before we left.  She saw Hope, eating now from my hand without force.  She would not eat on her own, but she loved me.  She would open her beak up for me to feed her.  She never ever tried to get out of her little box.  She let me carry her around like a lapdog.  She loved me and I loved her.  Her eye was getting better.  She didn't stink anymore.

My mom, with her heart the size of Texas, could not resist.  "Oh give me her stuff," she said.  "I'll take her with me."

I will not bother with the rest of the story, since this is already super duper long, but let's just say that Hope survived, one eyed and all.  You would never know she only has one eye unless you looked close, and she still thinks she's part of the family.  She loves kids, she loves people and the only thing she would ever do to hurt someone is peck at their toes if you have a flower on them, because she loves little yellow flowers.  Tasty.

She will jump up in the air to get a treat, she lays a beautiful brown egg, and she is the sweetest, kindest chicken you've ever seen.

There were many moments, many hours, many days and yes, even weeks, when I thought she would not survive.  I had a baby, a puppy, twelve other chickens plagued by a persistent raccoon, a husband and three other kids and it was very very very hard for me to care for little Hope.  I am so glad that I did.

In our lives, there will be many such times, times where we feel like giving up.  Times where people are telling us we are stupid to keep trying.  There will even be times when our family and friends try to tear us down.  Satan wants you to give up in those hard moments.  He wants you to give in.  He wants you to throw in the towel and by the way, he's the one behind you telling you to pick at those family and friends who are down.

I am here to tell you the following:

DO NOT GIVE UP.  HAVE HOPE.

If you do, you never know how good things can get.  Even with one eye, life is pretty good.  God loves you and he has a plan for you.  It's a plan you can't see, and it's a plan you can't predict, and that makes it so hard to have hope, to have faith that it's there.  But it is.

If a little bitty three pound chicken can do it, so can you.  And when I say your Father in Heaven loves you more than He loves that little chicken, you should believe me, because it's true.  He has so much beauty and joy in store for you that you can't even take it all in right now, and you can't comprehend it's magnitude.  Just have a little hope and keep on going. Your good times are right around the corner, I promise.

Crusty

Just after we moved into our new home, I purchased a venus fly trap.  It sits in a little clear plastic cup that you keep full of water so when it needs water it can suck it up from below.  I'm not sure if this is really how you're supposed to do it, because as a kid I remember misting them, but in any case, it's what the directions said when I bought it and I believe in following directions, for the most part.  

A few weeks ago, I noticed the peat moss around it looked kinda moldy.  So I thought I should let it dry out a bit.  Last week, I noticed it was dying!  The little trap parts were turning black.  I realized it was… CRUSTY!  I had gone from probably overwatering to under watering and it wasn't going to survive unless I did something.  I did not go to great lengths.  I just refilled the plastic cup.  You can't dump in a lot of water or it's too much.  You can't ignore it or it's too little.  As with many things, it requires a delicate balance.  

This got me thinking.  There are a lot of things in life that require constant maintenance.  In fact, most everything does.  No matter how often you feed your family, or yourself, if you wait a few hours, you will be be hungry again.  Sometimes I feel like all I do is feed the kids, clean up and feed them again.   Similarly, bath times.  Clean them up and they're messy again.  But you can't stop, because then they will get stinky and CPS will come and take them away.  

If you look around, you will see this principle everywhere:  plants, animals, working out, teaching kids, cleaning, work, and on and on.  I tried to ride a bike a few years ago and discovered that, in fact, that phrase, "like riding a bike" is not correct.  I had a lot of trouble because I hadn't been on one in years and years.  Everything requires maintenance or it will fall into disrepair.  I learned about this as a child, the tendency of everything to fall apart if not maintained.  In science, it's called Entropy.  I think I will bag that term and just call it being Crusty.  

This week, I got Crusty.  

I was thinking about the gospel and I got all Crusty.  I was mad.  I won't bother you with details, but I was angry.  My faith was shaken.  I went to talk to my husband about it, one of the few people in the world I can say anything and everything to.  Instead of being appalled, mad, condescending or many other responses, he was his normal humble self.  He tried at first to explain his positions to me, but it was too late for that.  I was Crusty.  I needed more than reasoning because I was past reason.  I realized that we began the conversation sitting on either end of the sofa, but we had moved even further apart and were raising our voices.  

In fact, we were approaching a fight.  But I didn't want to fight with him--I love him.  So I moved over right next to him and I hugged him to show him I wasn't mad at HIM.  I loved him.  I wanted us to be on the same page.  That's when he bore me his testimony.  You know the gist of that, because after we spoke last week, I wrote my blog, about him and his testimony.  You might have noticed his words factored very heavily into last week's blog because folks, I was not feeling it much last week.  I was still a little Crusty. 

But that was a turning point for me.  Whitney (my husband) pointed out that I hadn't been doing everything I should have been doing.  I hadn't been going to the temple.  I've been in nursery for what feels like years now, and if you aren't mormon, I will explain.  It means that after Sacrament meeting (which is an hour long meeting in which I typically watch all my kids alone because Whit's working), I head straight to babysit the kids aged one to three.  I referee fights, give snacks, help them go potty and generally just babysit.  While everyone else is in Relief Society and Sunday School, getting uplifted, I am just being beaten down.  They usually limit people to a year, I think, but I am in a brand new ward, I know no one and I am still in nursery.  That means I haven't gotten any nourishment from church.  I haven't been reading enough in my scriptures or praying with enough fervency.  These things are the ways we water the plant of our testimony and mine was drying up.  

It finally occurred to me this week that maybe God is teaching us something with all this entropy stuff all around us.  It takes constant vigilance, continuous effort, never-ending enduring to the end for us to become what our Heavenly Father wants us to become.  And even then… news flash, it won't end.  Because our lives are not static.  Like it or not, we are living beings and so we are always either growing and progressing or we are falling backwards, becoming Crusty.  

The only way we can become like our Father in Heaven, fulfill our potential is to study the things of God. We can't learn about the sky by looking at the ground.  So this week, I've tried to study the scriptures, pray, and focus on pondering the things of God instead of the things of man.  It has helped me tremendously.  My hope to all of us this Sunday before Christmas is that we may all turn to Christ and focus on learning of Him, this week and every week so that we don't get Crusty.  And I hope you all have a Whitney in your life who will bear their testimony for you, or spray you down, when you need that little bit of extra nourishment and can't see it yourself.  

Timing

I am mortal.  Weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds, they all seem to zoom past me.  One day I am going to die.  Until then, all I really have for myself, all I really own, is my time here. 

Time isn't really the same for God, since He isn't facing eminent demise like we are.  I mean, I have the hope and belief of a life after this, but if God exists, which I believe He does, He knows, because He is living it.  It gives Him interesting perspective and insight into my life, your life, and every mortal life.  I believe one of the main things we have to learn here on earth is to place our trust in God and be patient.  

I have four children.  I am almost an expert on patience.  I'm either telling them to practice it (a futile reminder), or I am practicing it myself.  I wait all day long.  I wait on the kids to eat breakfast.  I wait while Emmy goes potty.  I wait for the bus.  I wait wait wait and then wait some more. 

In all this waiting, I am typically armed with knowledge, albeit limited.  For instance, I know the bus should be here around 7:35.  It might be a few minutes early, so I insist we get there by 7:30.  It might be a few minutes late, so I always wait with the kids until at least 7:45 before I start to worry.  In all this waiting, I typically have a general idea of when my waiting will end.  

In life, we frequently don't have that sort of timeline, or predetermined expectation.  Or sometimes, we do, and it gets blown out of the water.  My husband and I were talking tonight and he shared a very powerful testimony with me that reminded me of all the times I have had to wait, and all the times I have struggled with that.  He said when he was at BYU for undergraduate, he had two main life goals: to become a doctor, and to get married and have a family.  He prayed for help with these regularly.  He worked hard and did his best to make them happen.  He went on a lot of dates, and he studied in all his other free time.  

To his great disappointment, or I might even call it heartbreak, when he applied to medical school the first time, he was not accepted.  The world, including his family, friends, and BYU's (in my opinion inept) pre-med counselor told him to give up. They told him that he obviously wasn't meant to go to medical school.  He would never be a doctor.  He was wasting his time.  Whitney prayed about this decision.  He felt like it was his calling, and yet, everyone said he was wrong.  Everyone in the world told him to quit.  

After praying, he received the certain and steady answer that he would be a doctor.  That he would help many people and that he should not give up.  He left home with very little money and no job and moved to Texas, to pursue residency in a state with several medical schools.  He also found a job at MD Anderson and was able to develop some publication credits (in the science field.)  He kept dating as much as he could.  To his great dismay, he still had not found anyone he felt he could marry.  He kept praying about it and God told him to be patient.  The Spirit reassured him that God had a plan for Whitney and that He would lead him to his wife someday.  

Whitney kept dating.  He kept working.  He kept praying.  It was hard.  He struggled.  He wondered whether he was worthy and whether he would ever get into medical school.  He wondered if he would ever get married.  He had faith in his God and in the Holy Ghost's promptings.  He carried on.  

Then, one day, after studying and retaking the MCAT, after getting two research thingies (I am not medical okay!?) published, he got accepted to medical school.  I should mention here for the record that he was right--he was meant to be in medicine.  He was made Chief Resident in residency and he was named Doctor of the Year last year by his system, and even now he is getting all kinds of patient recognition awards.  The man was meant to be a doctor and God helped him to stay the course.  

Back to the time period we were in, Whitney kept working really really hard in medical school.  He kept dating.  He kept praying.  He had accomplished the first step in one goal, but he had a lot more work to do and he did not shirk it.  He also had another goal which he felt he had not made any progress in.  For a while, he thought maybe he found someone.  Her name was Birgette.  Or something else similarly close, but not quite right.  But it turned out, they were not a good fit and Whitney was back to square one.  He prayed and God told him to have faith.  He would find her.  She was out there.  

Then finally, in November 2005, Whitney was in his third year of medical school when he met me.  He knew very quickly that this was it.  He had waited, he had worked, he had been patient, and finally, he met the right person.  I'm not going to say it was a fairy tale, but our story is way better than Sleeping Beauty.  We even had our first kiss during a Disney movie.  Oh wait, that might make us sound lame...  

In any case, the point is this: God has a plan for me.  He has a plan for you.  It's super easy to wait when someone says, "Bridget you need to be here at 5:04.  Not 5:03, not 5:05.  5:04.  Okay?"  Of course we can wait until then.  Anyone could do that!  You just count down the hours, minutes, seconds and fill your time until that designated time arrives.  

God doesn't work like that for a reason.  When we are praying for something, struggling with something, He doesn't tell us, "Don't worry.  In 3 years, 2 months and 16 days you will find that!"  Sometimes I wish it worked that way, but it just doesn't.  We are expected to have faith and to learn the lessons we need to learn before we can get what we're asking for.  In the book of Nephi, God tells him to build a boat.  Why oh why didn't he just GIVE him a boat?  He could have had another guy who was an expert boat maker just show up and hand one over!  It would have been so much easier and Nephi would have gotten to the promised land (America) so much FASTER and had so much more TIME to appreciate his newfound blessings.  But no, Nephi had to build the tools to shape the metal.  Find the metal.  Shape it, and then build the dang boat.  What a nightmare!! That's all before taking a bazillion years on a boat built by someone who is a complete novice to get over to the new land.  Talk about faith promoting.  Talk about development.  Talk about enduring to the end.  Good grief.  

As humans, as mortals, as people, we WANT our blessings.  We don't really understand that it's the life we live while pursuing those things that has the value.  It's the waiting, it's the obstacles, it's the effort that changes us.  That's what makes us who we are, what molds us into the people God wants us to become.  I am writing for those of you who are floundering, as I have floundered so many times, to those of you who are moaning, crying, wailing or gnashing your teeth because you want something, or forget want, those of you who need something so badly you can taste it and you cannot wait another single, solitary second, I will say this: 

God has a plan for you.  

It's more splendid, more beautiful, more breathtaking and awe-inspiring than you can possibly imagine.  It may even have something as wonderful as a Whitney at the end of it.  Or as beautiful and unimaginable as my four angelic children at the end of it.  Those things might even be the beginning of a whole new chapter in God's itinerary for you.  Take heart.  Have faith.  It's so hard, so hard, so so so hard.  I know that.  Life is difficult and it's a struggle and we don't want to wait and believe and believe and just keep believing, but it's the growth we have during that all that believing that makes the blessings God has in store for us possible.  So just hang on, and I promise you, it's right around the corner.  You are stronger than you know.  You can wait just a little bit longer.  He will help you do it, and it will be worth it in the end.  

Bah Humbug

If you've been near me around Halloween, you probably know it's not my favorite holiday.  Before you completely freak out on me, I participate.  I dress up! I was Rainbow Brite this year, and  I went to several Halloween parties.  I even took my kids trick or treating.  I also let my daughter have a Halloween Birthday party in May, at which we had trick or treating, costumes, and so on.  I guess my main problem with it is that I feel like it encourages greed, grabbiness and a lot of candy, all of which I feel like I already battle as a parent a little too often.

So then, why is Christmas my favorite holiday, beating out even my beloved Valentine's Day??

If you look at it objectively, Christmas sort of encourages greed.  I mean, every kid comes up with lists of things they want and then they expect those things to just be given to them.  It pushes grabbiness, too.  I mean, on the day after Thanksgiving, my kids took turns sitting on Santa's lap and he asked what they wanted.

My three year old said, "I don't know.  Anything."

Santa prompted, "Well, if you tell me what, I can have my elves make something special."

Emmy finally says, "Okay, a teddy bear."

"What color?" Santa asks.  (I'm thinking, COME ON, stop making me work here, dude!)

Emmy asks for a yellow teddy bear.  The other night though, my little non-grabby three year old informs me she can't wait for Christmas because she will get her yellow teddy bear with a bow, her red bear with a bow, and a box of candy.

?!?

*&%$

"Why do you think you're getting all that?" I ask.

"Because Dora (my five year old) said we get two things and candy."

Okay, so Christmas makes even the happiest kids a little greedy, a little grabby, and there's candy involved.  So why do I love it!?

Well, probably everyone reading this is thinking of the obvious: because the heart of Christmas is not about Santa, presents or even Christmas lights.  It's about celebrating the birth of our Savior, celebrating His life (a perfect one), His example, and His love for us.  It's about so much more than the "commercialization".  I have heard people complaining about how commercial Christmas has gotten for years and years and years.  I think the first memory I have of someone criticizing this aspect of Christmastime comes from Charlie Brown, where little Charlie himself sits whining and moaning that it's all about money and stores and presents.

Ya know what?  I love all that too!! Bring on the commercialized, Santa and Rudolph-centric parts!!! I adore those!  And I will tell you why.  I've been thinking about this all week.

I could start with all the explanations for the existence of Santa and justifications of gift giving.  The wise men brought Jesus gifts, so we give others gifts, too.  Or Jesus isn't here, so we celebrate His birthday in the way He would want, giving to others.  (Just as He gave us the greatest gifts--his perfect example in life, the atonement, and the opportunity to live again.)  I could mention that Santa's existence dates from the stories of Saint Nicholas.  All of those things are true, but they aren't the gist of why the commercialization doesn't bother me.  None of them explain why the greed in my kids isn't so annoying.  It doesn't explain why I try to force myself to do a shelf elf and make cookies and carol and hang lights.  I think to really explain, I need to go back a bit.

When I was a kid, I was all about the presents, like every other kid on the planet.  Christmas, for me, was all about the gimme gimme gimme.  Then I recall with perfect clarity that one year when I searched the whole house for my mom's stash.  My mom plans ahead, so I knew the gifts had to be hidden somewhere, some bought months in advance.  I found it.  In the back of her moth proofed closet, there it was.  All our presents.  Every last one.  I was really excited that afternoon, and I felt a little all-knowing.  Like somehow because I knew what everyone was getting, myself included, Christmas would be better than ever.

Boy was I wrong.  That Christmas goes down on the books as the worst Christmas of all time for me.  I still loved my Savior.  I still loved that He lives and He loves us and I knew all of that.  But that year, I was sad because all the magic of giving, of seeing people get things and not knowing what they were, was gone.  See, when you're a kid, you're excited because you don't know what's in all those paper wrapped boxes.  You're excited for what you will get, and seeing how excited your loved ones are at what they get.  When you're an adult, you're excited because although you know what's in those boxes, you put a lot of time and thought into what the people you love will want, so you are vested in it.  If you're just a kid who knows what's in them, you don't get credit, and you didn't spend time figuring out what to get, so there's no excitement.

That's when I realized that it's in the surprise of receiving, or seeing the joy in others all around me that I found my happiness at that time of year.  As I grew older, that feeling only intensified.  Don't get me wrong, I love getting presents.  But mostly, I just adore giving gifts to people.  I love sending them things.  My mom is the same way (which is why our house is full to the brim of toys and crap for my kids!)  And that's why, to me, even the commercialized part of Christmas is pretty darn good.  I am hoping my little bratlets grow up like I did and find that there's more joy in the giving than in the receiving, but even if they don't, the giving itself makes me happy, no, more like downright jolly, and that's enough.

I think that's the spirit that our Savior appreciates about the celebration of His birthday.  I envision Him sitting upstairs, eating cake with his Dad (and maybe my brother Jesse) and thinking about the happiness all around the Earth on that one day, and I think it makes Him happy, too.  I guess I am saying, don't get bent out of shape about stores having sales and people buying stuff other people don't need.  Just smile and relax.  Christ is still in Christmas as long as we are trying to bring joy to the ones we love.  So go buy another present, eat another cookie and say your prayers for a few extra minutes tonight.  We have so many things for which to be thankful.  If you're reading this, you're probably one of the people I am thankful for.  Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas to you all.

Shine On

I spent a lot of Friday and really all of Saturday putting up Christmas lights.  I have the distribution of the interior Christmas decor (trees, etc) down to a science.  I did almost all of that on Thursday evening, but I am new to the Christmas lights game.  I decided we should really try this year, and to that end, I took the 30 boxes of icicle lights I bought on clearance last year and (even though Whit was working and I had all the kids "helping me") on Saturday I was determined to hang them all up.

I took Whit's big, huge ladder, and my boxes of Wal-Mart plastic clips and absolutely zero knowledge of what I was doing and I just started going.  If you know me, you will know that I have occasional manic (not diagnosed or anything!) fits where I get going and I just cannot stop.  This was one of those.  I am telling you, I took breaks to be a parent only.  Otherwise, I was up there, clipping, hanging, connecting new strands, moving the ladder, lather...rinse...repeat.

I am not a complete moron.  I plugged each and every strand in to check that it worked before putting them up.  I set the ones that didn't work aside, as diagnosing the various reasons for such malfunctions is beyond my limited skill set.  Every single strand I hung worked.

So I decorated all day.  I got lights all the way across the house and around the side and then across the back patio.  Oh, I was so proud.  I stopped to put the kids to bed.  I went back out for my pinnacle moment, I was ready to plug them in just before my husband came home.  He would oooh.  He would aaaaaahhh.  He would be so impressed with my industry, my skill, nay, my artist's touch.

I dug around in the garage until I found an extension cord long enough.  I recall standing on that ladder, peering at the row of lights that stretched out in front of me.  If I closed one eye, it looked like they stretched out forever... or at least until the fence line.  I plugged them in.  They lit up!! And then promptly went out.

What!?

Maybe I had a bad cord.  Checked it.  Not the cord.  Maybe something went out on that strand.  I moved the ladder.  I am a pro at moving the ladder now, so that was no biggie.  I plug in the second cord.  They light up! And then promptly go out.  WHAT THE SNOWBALL EGGNOG CHRISTMAS TREE???  What is wrong!?

Okay I should say, on the record, that I know the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.  I stand by my decision to plug in the third strand.  There was an outside chance it was the outlet I was using, so I tried another outlet on the THIRD strand.  Same.  Exact.  Thing.

Happiness evacuated the premises.

Cue my husband's arrival.

So it turns out, I might have had just a few too many strands all on the same uninterrupted line, or something.  Suffice it to say, if one bulb goes out on a strand, they all go out.  As I have pondered this over the past day I have come to a conclusion.  I feel like it's a good analogy.  (It might be that the haze of my frustration has befuddled my brain, so if this doesn't make sense to you, feel free to let me know).  In any case, here is my epiphany for the week:  Humans are like that strand of Christmas lights.  Except if you look behind us, the lights go on and on and on in that direction too.

We lived with our Heavenly Father before we came here.  We knew and loved Him and He loved us.  He created us!  Then He sent us here.  We will go on being forever after we die, so that string of lights really does go on forever, just like it looked (and felt!) to me.  One other similarity--we have the capacity to be full of light.  His light.  He wants us to have it.  He is dying to fill us with the light of His love, although to be more precise, He really did send His son to die for just that reason: so we can return to Him and be filled with His light forever.

One tiny little short can derail all His glorious plans.  He has provided us with the means to set things right.  The way to prepare for His light again.  We have an entire kit to repair our bulbs, so to speak, if we will just read His instructions (the scriptures!) and then DO IT.  Oh we may need more help.  That's where other people come in.  They swoop to the rescue.  Neighbors, friends, the occasional electrician!  God will do whatever it takes to get us there.  Oh how He loves us.  Oh how He wants to see the glory of our lights shining for all the world.  Unless we let a little thing derail us.

I was listening to one of my favorite hymns in church today.  Number 27.  Do you know it?  Praise to the Man, a hymn about our prophet, Joseph Smith.  Let me be clear here.  In our faith, we DO NOT WORSHIP JOSEPH SMITH.  We worship exactly three deities, who are all related.  God, our Heavenly Father, His Son, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost, a member of the Godhead who agreed to stay in His Spirit form to help us all recognize truth and light when we hear, see or experience it during our sojourn on earth.  And yet, there is a big push right now in the media to malign our faith, and our entire belief system based on the acts, whether real or exaggerated/twisted, of one man.  The man who helped restore the gospel.  Don't get me wrong--I LOVE Joseph Smith.  I have a testimony that he was called of God.  I believe that in a very difficult time, he did something truly earth shattering.  As a young boy of only 14, he followed the directions of God the Father and His Son, and then followed their ongoing directions either directly or through angelic messengers.  I believe that to my toes, and yet, that is one of the least important parts of my testimony.  My real testimony has everything to do with God the Father, his Son, and the Holy Ghost.  We only need the Book of Mormon because it has been through less translation error and it outlines some aspects of Christ's gospel a little more clearly than the Bible.  It adds to it, nothing more, nothing less.

As I listened to and sang this hymn I thought how these questions about, nay, attacks upon Joseph Smith are Satan's current method of attacking the faith, the belief, the light, of so many people I know and love.  I thought of how those people are letting one misdirection from the adversary blink out their entire strand of light.  I thought about the joy I have from the gospel, from a relationship I enjoy with my Savior.  I thought about the beauty of the light of so many souls all around me and I rejoiced in that beauty and I sorrowed at the diminishment of that light.

So my message tonight is a simple one: Let your light shine.  This isn't specific to Joseph Smith and it's not only applicable to mormons.  I think this is true for any Christian on earth.  Don't let one little bulb going out short circuit your testimony, your love for your Savior.  Don't let a hiccup today derail your eternity.  Happy holidays everyone!  Our Heavenly Father truly sent his Son to live here on Earth, amidst all of us imperfect mortals.  After living a perfect life, and being abused in every way possible, Jesus Christ still loved us enough to die for us, and then to live again.  I am so grateful for that knowledge and for the beauty of the light all around me.  Shine on.

Consequences

We are here on the Earth, in bodies of flesh and blood, and most of us, at least most of you reading this, are free to make choices.  We live in the United States, a mostly free country, and we get to make decisions every day.  I decide when to wake up.  What to wear.  What to eat.  Whether to care for my children, and how.  I choose, choose, choose, all day.  Sometimes I am baffled by all our options.

Just last night, I stood in front of the freezer and stared at all the things inside it.  Frozen fruit, ice cream, tiny little individual sized cherry pies, ground meat, frozen chicken, egg rolls, pot stickers, frozen meals.  I could go on and on and on.  (It's a big freezer.)  This is just one teensy tiny example of how many choices we make, how much freedom we have in this day and age.

What you may not remember, or what you may not believe, is that this freedom wasn't free to us.  I'm not even talking about the wars fought by American troops to keep us safe and free, although of course, I am eternally grateful for their sacrifices.  I'm talking about a much older battle on a much more dangerous battlefield.  Long ago, in heaven, there was a different kind of battle, and that battle rages on all around us every single day, every hour, every minute.  That battle is for your soul.

God had two sons, both angels of the morning.  Both beautiful, talented, smart.  Both had ideas for how all of us, God's spirit children, could go about obtaining bodies.  There was only one real difference between their plans.  In Jesus Christ's plan, we had to come to Earth, gain a body and then make choices.  We were free to choose to follow God, to love God, to become like him, or we could choose not to.  In Satan's plan (also known by the name of Lucifer at that time), we didn't have that option.  We would, like robots, come to earth, gain a body, and make all the right decisions.  We would be ushered back to God's presence to live with Him again.

God knew that would not ever result in his children becoming like Him.  We would have bodies, created in his image, sure, but we would not have become closer to Him in any other way.

To succeed, you must first be able to fail.

God chose Jesus' plan and we came to this Earth.  We make decisions every day, ranging from small to large.  We can choose to do and say and be most anything, if we are willing to work for it.  There is only one thing we can't choose:

the consequences of our choices.

My kids are learning this the hard way.  I look at them with wise, old eyes and I shake my head as they experience this truth.  Tessa will insist she absolutely must hold my cup.  She will pull and pull on it until I let her.  Then she will pour the milk, or ice water, or whatever it contains all over herself.  And then she will cry, because she is inexplicably wet.  Six years down the road of life, I watch my son Eli, who is like genius level smart, talk about how the other kids around him just aren't very good at reading.  Then I see him struggle to make friends with those same kids.  Oh, Tessa.  Oh, Eli.  Choice.  Consequence.  The one follows the other as inexorably as the tides.

As wise and old eyed as I may feel, I still learn this principle myself on a regular basis.  In fact, just last week, I sat in my house, crying, sobbing on the floor with my baby Tessa because I didn't have the proper paperwork when the entire family reached the dock in Galveston, and the cruise line wouldn't let my one year old on the family cruise.  Whose fault was that?  Mine, of course.  I made choices that landed me at home, during a vacation, with no one but myself to blame.  I am sure my Heavenly Father was up in heaven shaking his figurative head over my frustration and my hurt.  "Oh darling Bridget, it was due to your own decisions that you're in this mess."

So is this post about being depressed or upset or frustrated?  About pointing out that we are all a bunch of morons, banging our heads against the wall because we don't want to deal with the consequences of our own choices?  Well, I would be lying if I didn't admit that this country certainly seems to struggle with this simple concept.  Oh how I wish people were willing to accept the problems they create for themselves.  As a society, we seem to want to be able to sit around and have everything handed to us.  We want toned, fit bodies without working out, nay, worse.  While we scarf down cookies.  We want the world give us free health care.  Free food, free housing, the latest new gadget and by golly, we deserve it.  Why?  Because we've been told since we were born that we are super special perfect little princesses, every single one of us beyond price and precious.

That's wrong of course.  You are only you.  You are entitled to exactly what you earn, and not one iota more.  You are worth nothing more than what you can make of yourself.

Except that's also wrong.

In a miracle I may never be able to fully understand, my perfect, sinless, brother, Jesus Christ loves me.  He died for me, as most of us have heard, but what you may not know is that He also Lives for us.  Today.  Yesterday.  Tomorrow.  He lives for us every single day and He atoned for our sins, in the Garden of Gethsemane, and again on the cross.  He lived a perfect, blemish free life full of absolutely, positively perfect choices, followed by more selfless and perfect choices and more, and more.  We can't even understand Him, and yet, he did this so that He could take our sorrows, our sins, our bad, devastating, unsurmountable consequences upon Himself.

With Christmas around the corner, I am reminded more than ever of the greatest gift I ever received.  The amazing news is that you received it, too.  You truly are a perfect, precious, super special princess (or prince.)  Your older brother gave you the greatest gift of all, because He wants you to return to His presence, to live with Him forever.  He has the Grace to save you and He will save you if you will just accept His gift and let go of those treasured sins.  Hand them over to Him and accept his atonement.  That is my prayer this holiday season and every other day of the year.  We have to accept the consequences of our actions whether good or ill, but we don't have to do it alone.

I am Pro Life AND Pro Woman

This week, not for the first time, I read an article that equated being Pro-Life with being Anti-Woman.  Let me say clearly and unequivocally that if you believe these to be synonymous, you are wrong.  You can be Pro Life and also Pro Woman.  I am going to try my utmost not to say anything inflammatory or do any name-calling in this post and I would appreciate if you could honor that sentiment in comments, etc.  I do believe that people who are "Pro Choice" also have valid reasons for their position, and probably interesting perspective and life experience that has molded their beliefs.  I mostly just want the chance to explain mine.

I am an attorney.  I am a writer.  I am a mother of four.  I am a daughter, a sister, a friend.  I have been a woman in many of the ways you can be a woman--career woman, stay at home mom, part time mom, student, friend, sibling, mother, and on and on.  I could keep spouting labels indefinitely.  The fact is, woman includes a LOT of women, a lot of lifestyles and a lot of circumstances and all of them are special.  In fact, as Latter-day Saints (aka, Mormons), we believe that each person on earth has a spark of the divine.  We believe that we are God's offspring and that we all carry within us the potential to become more, to become better, to become in our own way, divine.  In that regard, men and women are completely equal.  We don't believe men are more, are better or have greater worth.

Equal Doesn't Mean the Same:

I don't mean to reference Brown v. Board of Education, because what an unmitigated mess.  Obviously I am not saying separate but equal.  In fact, quite the opposite.  We are all in this together and we are all equal, but we aren't clones.  Let me give you an imperfect analogy.  My kids are all very different.  One likes playing outside, one likes playing inside.  One always wants boots on, and one loves to be barefoot.  One loves bananas and one loves apples.  If I am packing their school lunches, and I put a banana in one lunch and an apple in the other, their lunches are not the same, but they are equal.  I have given them each fruit.  Similarly, in life, we can all have different things that make us who we are, and we are not the same, but we have equal value.  Isn't it glorious that the world is so full of different people and things?

I think you can see where I am going here--women and men are NOT the same, not at all.  Not even all men or all women are the same, but there are some things that are a little more universal than others.  Most women are able to (biologically speaking) have children.  Some women choose to pass up on having them, for whatever reason, and some decide to have children.  There are also women who are not able to have children.  My heart hurts for those women who want to experience this and cannot, so I say the following with every bit of respect and honor that I can, and I do not in any way wish to offend.

Physically growing a child, giving birth to that baby and then nursing a newborn is absolutely awful.

It is also an incomprehensible miracle.

Men will never experience those things.  Never, ever, ever.  Parts of me pity them and parts of me envy them.  That is life.  Things in life are interesting, but rarely fair, rarely just.

My Position: 

I believe that women have a choice, many choices in fact, but that the point at which a child has been conceived, they have made a choice (to have sexual relations) and therefore I am opposed to abortion of any kind, in all but two circumstances: if the fetus poses a risk to the life of the mother, or if the baby was the result of rape.*

Conception as my Bright Line:

So why draw the line at conception?  Believe me, my husband is an ER doctor, so I am familiar with the scientific discussion of the common rate of miscarriage in the first 12 weeks or so.  I am aware that not all fetuses are viable and that the body determines some are not and expels them.  So be it.  That may be so, but the only bright line that can really be used to determine when a fetus is viable is conception.

I believe this for a variety of reasons, but let's start with the most basic.  If we plonked 100 people down in a new country and said, "You're the new world.  Get going and form a government," anarchy might exist until someone said, "Hey, I don't feel safe."  Government's most basic purpose is to protect the weak from the strong.  Could anyone be more weak or underrepresented than an unborn fetus?  Now, when one person's safety begins to impact another, you have to make a difficult call and that is why I would leave it in the mother's decision making wheelhouse to determine whether to abort a fetus if its continued existence could pose a risk to her life.  

Let me be clear:  preventative birth control is acceptable to me.  Sperm alone, and eggs alone?  They cannot create a baby.  Mixed together, but without fertilization?  No baby.  Once the sperm has fertilized the egg and it has implanted in the uterus, there is a baby and it is likely to become a fetus.

If you have heard of Jonathan Swift, you might be familiar with a satire he wrote years and years ago.  It was pretty revolutionary at the time--he suggested that starving colonists could eat babies.  The arguments he made really stuck with me.  If you've read Roe v. Wade (the Supreme Court Case that legalized abortion), the test of whether an abortion is okay is whether the fetus is "viable."  What a terrible line!  I mean, I have raised children and let me tell you--if you left my five year old alone she might not survive.  I can say with no uncertainty that any newborn left alone will die.  So if your line is viability, you may as well condone infanticide, and you may very well be stuck accepting toddler and young child-icide, too.

Choices for Women:

I, too, believe in choices for women.  I just happen to believe in a little something called Consequences as well.

What do I mean?  Well, I have worked hard to teach my children that while we are here on Earth, we can make decisions about everything under the sun, but after we have made our decisions, we do not get to choose what happens as a result.  If we leave our bike out, it might be run over by our mom's car.  (Yes, that happened tonight.  Doh!)  If we gobble up all our Halloween candy in two days, we will probably get a stomach ache.  If we never water our plant, or feed our fish, they will probably die.  We all have choices to make, from what to eat, to what to wear, to where and how to spend our time and money.  Choices, choices, choices.

My second grader likes to say, "You can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you can't pick your friend's nose."  This is a ridiculous thing to say, but it has a decent point.  You can make choices that impact you alone, but when the consequences of your choices impact another person… well, then you might not be as "free to choose."

I believe (for religious reasons) in abstinence prior to marriage.  Let me save my explanation on that for another post because this one is already REEEEEAAAALLYYYY long.  But if you don't believe in that, it's okay.  My point is that if you choose to enter into sexual relations with someone, whether you use birth control or not, nothing is perfect.  You know the risks, or you should.  (I think sex education has made some progress here, but parents should be addressing this, too.)  It is not fair that women can get pregnant and men can't but, have I said this enough yet?  Nothing in life is fair.

It is the reality.  If you make a decision that results in a pregnancy, guess what?  Having to give birth to a baby is your CONSEQUENCE.  Even then, you have choices!  You can keep the baby, you can give it up.  You can let a family member raise it.  There are open adoptions, closed adoptions, and on and on.  You can choose, but your smorgasbord of choices should not include the one thing that impacts that other life, the one that exists as a consequence of another decision you made.  The fetus.  You should not be able to choose to kill it.

Okay so there it is.  I am pro-woman.  I would vote for a woman president, I would encourage women to do and be anything they want, but I also believe we should hold women accountable for decisions they make.  I also believe in holding men accountable, by the way.  I believe they have rights and obligations that accompany this issue, from child support to knowledge that a new life exists.  But that's for another post as well.

One last issue.  Why am I posting this on a religious blog?  Isn't it political?  Well, it is and it isn't.  The views I have on choice, on free agency, on accountability and on the importance of life are all shaped by my religious beliefs and who I am.  I believe in the importance of each life because I believe God has a plan for us all, love for all of us.  I believe there are little spirits up in heaven He lovingly created who are waiting for bodies, who are waiting to come down to earth.  I just want to conclude by acknowledging that I know there are gray areas and it's confusing and it's hard.  I believe in His love and His concern for us.  I hope I haven't offended anyone and I hope we can all be a little more civil, a little more understanding on this topic and on others.  I especially hope that we can remember that the people who hold these beliefs are still people.  Not idiots, not morons, not a vast group of confused imbeciles.  Every single person on Earth is precious to God and I think that's my very point.

-Bridget

*I am aware that this raises the issues of "How will you enforce those two exceptions?"  Well the health of the mother is easy.  If the mother's health is at risk, she needs a doctor to sign off.  Done.  On the secondary question, whether the baby was the result of a rape, the answer is that anyone who was truly desperate could lie.  She could get an abortion for a fetus that wasn't the product of a rape.  So, this also rebuts all the arguments that there will be back alley abortions with coat hangers, etc.  If a woman is truly desperate enough, she could go in and lie and get an abortion, but as an attorney, I want it on the books that it's illegal except in those circumstances to that women will take it seriously.

Are you in the Trenches, too?

I'm not sure what you know about trench warfare (I didn't know much), but it was pretty horrific.  Basically, at the time of World War One we were way better at blowing people up than we were at moving safely amidst explosions, so the opposing sides would dig trenches to sit and defend.  In fact, defending was easier than attacking.  Between the people with guns pointed at you and the barbed wire, any attack resulted in almost certain death.

In the famous Battle of Verdun in 1916, almost 700,000 people died.  Fighting in trenches has become almost synonymous with the concept of the futility of war.  It was dirty, it was protracted, and the conditions were apalling.

I have no experience with trench warfare.  I am a stay at home housewife, after all.  A few days ago I hurt my back picking up the dog toys, for heaven's sake.  What I am familiar with are my own difficulties, which do not compare to trench warfare at all.  For instance, my husband was scheduled to work this entire weekend, so I would be taking care of our four children, aged 7, 5, 3, and 1, alone.  My husband works in the ER, so this is a regular occurrence for me.  My four children are my joys, my little loves, my inspiration.

They also cry a lot.

Today was stake conference, which for non-mormon readers, means the entire region of church members gets together and goes to a 2 hour meeting with wonderful speakers, beautiful music and uplifting themes.  Today's theme was … hmm, I'm not sure.  I actually went to Stake Conference today.  I fed and dressed my kids.  I did their hair.  I packed a 30 pound (I am not exaggerating) bag with snacks, drinks, books, toys, coloring books, pens and paper, diapers, wipes, and on and on.  I dressed and got myself ready.  I loaded everything into the car and I went.

I honestly don't remember much of anything at all that was said.  In fact, there was a five minute period where I wanted to sit down and bawl on the floor.  Literally.  I almost did.

It's kind of my own fault, really.  I arrived too late to find a padded bench. Most weeks, it would be a minor issue.  Most weeks, I would be fine on the metal folding chairs.  But I hurt my back a few days ago, and sitting on those chairs was (pardon the pun) very hard.  Add to that frustration, a one year old who insists she sit on my lap and a bag I need to manage.  Plus my kids all kept dropping toys, so leaning over to pick them up (while holding a whiny one year old) hurt my back even more.

I also have a kid who's potty training.  We had to run to the bathroom to poop on the potty.  There was a LOT of crying.  Stake conference time fell during the exact time of my one year old's nap.  I could go on, and on.

If you have young children, you are nodding your head because you may not have experienced every element I just listed, but you have corresponding issues that are at least this hard and you know exactly what I mean when I say that several times the same thought popped into my head:

What in the world am I doing here?  I'm a moron for putting myself through this.  I should have stayed home and put the baby down for a nap, taken some ibuprofen for my back, and let the other kids play.

I mean, you've all thought it.  Maybe you've even done it.  After all, if I'd stayed home, I wouldn't have needed to do my makeup and hair, get dressed, get the little nuts dressed, pack this bag and struggle through this.  I could have read a book, made dinner, taken a nap.  Anything but THIS!!

I had a very, very difficult 45 minutes there, from about 10:15 until about 11:00, and then I had a horrible 15 minutes after that.  In despair, I noticed that my kids, not a single one of them, were even paying attention.  None of the five of us had heard a word that had been said.  No one had derived a single thing from this entire debacle.  Around 11:30, I returned from the toilet trip and my one year old was so tired she sort of passed out on my chest, awake but blessedly not crying.  My three year old was sitting on the floor jabbering and playing with toys (very messily) and I never ever let them do that, but they kept falling off the chair and I was too tired to fight about it anymore.

Something strange happened:  I heard part of one of the talks.

I couldn't tell you much about that very fine talk.  I know he discussed a lot.  I know it was funny, and moving, and obviously very well prepared.  I am new in this Stake and I have no idea who the speaker was.  His son wanted him to be a professional wrestler, but for me, I was just delighted he had been asked to speak because something happened to me.  The Spirit lifted my flagging soul and filled me with light.  That might sound melodramatic, but I swear it's God's honest truth.   I realized something then.  When we are wrangling our kids, when we are slogging through the day to day, hour to hour, and minute to minute of our time with young children, when we feel like we are banging our head against the wall and we think the crying will never stop, we are fighting a war.  We are in the trenches.

It might seem futile.  There will be a lot of casualties.  So far I've lost lots and lots of time.  I've lost my own selfish wants.  I've lost my figure, and my hobbies and so many many other things.  As this war goes on and I will lose more and more.  Sometimes I feel like I've lost myself, everything that made me who I was before I had kids.

In the New Testament Jesus said, "For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it."

That verse in Matthew 16:25 explains what is at stake in this war, in this trench warfare.  It feels futile.  It feels like we are stuck, making no progress and losing and losing.  But we can't forget who we are fighting--Satan--or what's at stake.  Satan will do most anything he can to win this fight because the prize is monumental, and Jesus Christ has already made the ultimate sacrifice for the prize: our immortal souls.  Our children's live's, and our lives, too.  I forget that sometimes, that I am doing this for my babies and for myself.  I am losing my life in this war, and it is because of that loss that I will become what He wants me to become.

I testify to you that the trenches seem pointless.  They seem futile.  In World War One, they really might have been.  Maybe it was the worst kind of battle at that time, but today, in our ages, if you are in the trenches with me, please hold on.  You don't need young children to be in the trenches.  You could be suffering the loss of a loved one, you could be fighting addiction, you could be battling a disability or struggling to make ends meet.  Whatever the fight, if you are struggling to survive, you are down here with me.

My message today is a simple one.  It's the same message that Christ has given over and over and over again.  You are not alone, and just when you realize you've lost your life, you will find it again.  This is a battle worth fighting.  So tonight, after I dose a baby who now has a fever, and I go to my bedroom to lay down, I will be praying for all of you.  Every mother and father in the trenches.  Every son or daughter, every friend.  If you are struggling in the trenches, I will pray for you and I hope you will pray for me.  It is my sincere prayer that each trench fighter will experience that flash of brilliance tonight, or tomorrow, or every day, that shows you that one day this battle will end and all the misery will truly be worth it.

I was raised a Mormon, but I don't know that the church is true. I don't know that God exists.

I don't know that the church is true.  I don't know that God exists.

Let me tell you a few things that I do know.  The sky is blue.  I have milk in my fridge.  I know because I have seen them.

I do not, however, know that God lives. I do not know that I have a Heavenly Father or that he had a son who lived on this earth. In fact, I don't really know anything the mormon church (or other Christian faiths) teach to be true.  I can't, by definition, see the Holy Ghost.  I don't know if Joseph Smith came and restored the gospel because I never met him myself--I wasn't even alive.  If he did do what he claims, he still could have been a bigot, a real jerk.  He could have been a lecher.  I just don't know, because none of these things are facts.  No matter how long I live, I'll probably never see God face to face.

What probably seems the strangest to most people is that I'm okay with not knowing.

In the Book of Mormon, there is a verse I love.  I first heard it when I was very young.  Alma 32:21:

21 And now as I said concerning faith—faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true.

Having faith in God means I don't know.  I hope for the truth of the things about the gospel, about my Savior, about my Heavenly Father.  I believe they are true, but I don't know.

In the Book of Mormon, there's this character, Nephi, and he has a great dad, Lehi.  He also has two pretty crummy brothers.  I mean, these guys are always whining.  They are always complaining.  Nothing ever makes them happy and they never believe what their dad says, and constantly criticize whatever he does.  I never kept track of how often they are called to repentance in the Book of Mormon account, but I think it's probably safe to assume it happened even more times than the scriptures record.  They never seem to believe in their dad (a prophet of God), or by extension, God, no matter what happens.  God's power shocks them at one point.  Their brother keeps accomplishing things they are sure he can't accomplish--building a boat, finding the promised land, and on and on.  

No matter what happens to them, what miracles they witness, it's never enough.

At one point they even see an angel.  As in, a real angel of God comes down to stop them from attacking their righteous brother Nephi.  If seeing an angel is not enough, let me promise you, no knowledge will ever be enough to convince you.  It is counter-intuitive to me that to believe something is stronger than to know it.

It may be counter-intuitive, but it's still true, because believing in something is an action.  Actions are stronger than facts.  Actions make us stronger, too.  I am who I am because I BELIEVE in God.  I believe in his Son.  I believe in something more than what I am, and I believe that, yes, with God and Jesus on my side, and with the guidance of the Holy Ghost, I can become something I could never be without them.

In Mormon churches, the first Sunday of every month, we are asked to fast, and instead of prepared talks, the members of the congregation are invited to stand at the pulpit and bear their own testimony, without script or preparation.  On these Sundays, called "fast and testimony" Sundays, people always say they "Know" things and it has made me uncomfortable for years, because I couldn't say that.  I just don't know.  In the past, it always felt like I was somehow missing something, like my testimonty was somehow inferior to everyone else's.

I finally realized this week what it means to believe, and that believing makes me stronger, not weaker.

So I will close with my brief testimony.  I believe in God, and in his Son Jesus Christ.  I believe in the Spirit, and in the eternal nature of families.  I delight in the fact that there is a world beyond this one.  That God has a plan for me and for my family and my friends, too.  I am happy that I can grow through trials, through difficulties.  I believe God sent a true and living prophet, Joseph Smith, to restore his gospel many years ago, and I believe He has chosen a prophet to lead his church today--President Thomas S. Monson.  I believe I have been richly blessed, both temporally and spiritually and I am so very very grateful for all that I have.

In the name of my Savior, Jesus Christ, Amen.

Baptism and the Wobbly Path

I recently was blessed to attend the baptism of a family friend, Bailey.  She just turned eight and she is a gorgeous girl.  My kids went with me (and one kept crying, sorry Bailey!) but it was still such a wonderful experience.  Of course I could feel the spirit there, but her grandma gave a great talk on Baptism (which I capitalize because it was all about how Christ was baptized and why, and why we should be baptized.  It was everything I would expect from Lori, which is a compliment).  Anyway, this got me thinking about baptism and life in general.

Then that same night, in my personal scripture study, I read in Mosiah about King Limhi and his people.  For those of you not familiar with Limhi, let me tell you, he did not have a fantastically easy life.  His dad was a Royal Jerk.  (King Noah of the famous photo with leopards.  He's fat, he's hedonistic, and he's a horrible, lazy, lecherous, murderous, well... jerk. But I digress.)  Limhi didn't have a great father.  In spite of that, he turned out pretty well.  His dad's advisers were as bad, or maybe worse, as his dad.  So poor Limhi did not have a life full of spiritual role models.  To top that off, the one fantastic guy (Abinadi) gets burned alive (by his dad) and then the other great guy who Abinadi really gets going (Alma) gets run off by Limhi's evil dad, along with all his followers... so Limhi doesn't have a lot of good counsel.

Now, add to that the fact that his dad has really, royally ticked off the Lamanites.  Now he's stuck making a deal where he agrees to give half of every single thing that he (and all his people) own to the Lamanites every year in exchange for, you know, keeping their heads connected to their necks.  Some deal, right?  (Actually 50% taxation doesn't seem THAT far fetched, but I am right there with Limhi and his people in thinking it stinks.)  On top of that, the oppressive (and lazy?) Lamanites are MEAN.  They get right in the faces of Limhi's people and rub it in that they're basically slaves.  They push them around, make fun of them, take their stuff and generally make life miserable.  Is it any wonder that the people finally come to Limhi and beg to go to war?  Let's fight our way free, or die trying!!

Limhi's people try a lot.  They secretly send scouts looking for the people they'd broken off from, the other Nephites like them.  That fails completely.  So finally, Limhi says, "Okay, let's go to war."  They're destroyed.  Again and again.  There are literally widows they can barely afford to feed because there just aren't enough fathers to go around.  Life is NOT good and the Lamanites don't make it easier.

Now, where's the biggest problem here?  Like always, it's not that they aren't rich.  It's not that they aren't free.  I know those sound bad, and the almost starving sounds awful, but the real problem, the underlying CAUSE of their woes is that... anyone?  They aren't turning to GOD.  They are getting angry, frustrated, furious, dejected, depressed, irate, and on and on.  But they are looking to Limhi or themselves and NOT to God.  It is not until they are literally beaten like drums over and over, dead or dying that they finally humble themselves and?  You've guessed it.  They turn to God.

It is then that God helps them completely whoop up on those Lamanites and break free.  Not.  Because that's not how God works.  That's when God says, "Oh good.  FINALLY you have turned to me.  You are looking my way.  Now the next baby step."  He doesn't free them.  He knows that if he does, they just slump right back. It's like a child with a toy.  They cry and cry for it and when they get it, they go right back to how they were before, no different.  God needs them to CHANGE.  So instead of an easy victory, which is TOTALLY what they wanted and what I would want in their place, God gives them something else.  Something harder.  He lightens their burdens.

NO NO NO! That's what I scream when God does this to me.  Not LIGHTER burdens.  I want those darn burdens to be GONE!!

God knows.  He lightens them.  We know he's listening and we keep praying.  We keep being humble.  We keep asking.  And then he sends them a lifeline--another Nephite group from the big group.  Hope.  They know they aren't alone.  If only they can get away, they can rejoin their people and be out from under the thumb of the Lamanites.  So now they have a goal.  And guess what?  God eventually helps them do that.

But first?  He gets them to the point where they want to be baptized.  This is important.  Before God GIVES them what they need (no burdens), he makes sure they have grown enough for that challenge.  They have all become desirous to be baptized.  Their hearts are changed.  It was a long time, and a hard path to get there, but they are there.  They have changed and NOW God can give them what they so desperately desired.  They humbly escape, no destruction and vengeance, and rejoin their people.  They get baptized there in Zarahemla and they can live beautiful lives, unfettered by the Lamanites for a while, but more importantly, unfettered by SIN.  The real thing that was weighing them down.

I loved that story.  Aren't we all on the same path?  Whether we have been baptized already or we are preparing for it, we are all on the wobbly path either to or from a happy situation.  If you are miserable, THAT'S OKAY!  I have been there!  I might be there again, too! But God has a plan for you to get back to happy!  He has a purpose for you and a way to get there.  You just have to trust that He knows how to get there and it's usually those wobbles that help strengthen us and open our hearts so we are ready to receive all he has to offer.  So we can see what truly matters.  I am so grateful for all the blessings I have been given, and all the wobbles it took for me to get there.

A few photos

I mentioned last week that I found a few pictures that really touched me.  I have had a crazy busy week and now I am home and exhausted.  So this is kind of a lame cop out, but I thought I'd upload two of the photos I really loved.  The first is the one I saw in the Uffizi that really captivated me.  I felt like I could feel the Savior's sorrow, his heavy burden, and also, I felt like I could see the love he had for the people whose burdens he is carrying.  I've seen a lot of depictions of the Savior over the years, but I think each one has a little different take and I loved this one.  It is a very tall order to depict the only perfect person who has walked our Earth.

I loved this one, too.  It's Mary, offering a rope to help people get up to heaven.  I love the idea of Mary (or anyone else, really) helping other people up.  Mostly because I feel like we are all here for more than one reason.  The first is to get back up to heaven, but the second is to help our loved ones to do the same. 

I guess my thought for the week is, drop a rope.  Lend a hand.  Start a blog.  I don't know how you are supposed to be helping your friends or your family, but get your act together.  Jesus has already saved all of us, but we have to take the rope and pull ourselves up, AND we also have to be the hand that tosses that rope down for others sometimes, too.

Bridget

Beauty all Around Us

When I was in high school, I sort of believed in God because my parents did. I wasn't just going through the motions. I mean, I felt the Spirit and I was happy doing what I was doing but I didn't feel it in my bones. It wasn't who I WAS. It was just sort of something I thought seemed good and made sense.

When I started college at BYU, I was expecting a miraculous experience. After all, I'd spent my entire life as an outsider. The only Mormon (or one of very few) at my school. Finally I would be part of a majority. Surrounded by people who believed just as I did.

I was very disappointed.

Not because the BYU kids were bad. Not because they were boring. In fact, I don't think it had much to do with them at all. I was alone for the first time and something shocking hit me. I didn't really want to go to church. I had buckets of reasons, ranging from being tired to feeling sick (I got mono) but the real reason was this: I didn't have a real testimony.

During my second semester, I decided to give this thing a real try. I'd start from the beginning. "Is there a God?"  I'd do everything they tell me in Sunday school, including church attendance, prayer, scripture reading and contemplation daily. I gave myself one month to figure that one thing out.

The month came and went with no clear answer. Maybe there wasn't a God. After all, He'd never spoken to me. He hadn't sent me any clear messages. Maybe because He didn't really exist. My reading slacked off. I skipped a Sunday.

Then one morning I woke up inexplicably early. It was cold. I dragged myself out of bed and walked to my crack of dawn (er, 10 am) class. On the way something touched my heart. I know it now for the Spirit, but at the time it felt unfamiliar. I am sure it had spoken to me lots over the past months but I hadn't been tuned in. That morning my heart opened and I really looked around me. I saw trees just beginning to have buds. I saw bugs scuttling around. I saw the sun in the sky and I just knew. God had created the beauty all around me. He lived. I got a little bonus that morning. Something I hadn't even asked to know. God loved me. Little old doubting me. Lazy, wanting to sleep in every day and coast through life me. He loved me and he had plans for me.

I can't say I've always been tuned in for the messages He sends and I can't say I always look for the beauty around me, but I can say I have continued to look in the intervening years and I've never been let down when my eyes were open.

I am in Italy right now on vacation. I've seen beautiful things in the past few days. Lots of gorgeous and moving art, including the David. Nothing has touched me so deeply as a painting I saw near the exit in the Uffizi. It's dark dark. I snapped a photo with my real camera and so I'll have to add it here later but it's Christ wearing the crown of thorns and being mocked but prior to His crucifixion. It spoke to my heart. I could see in his face the love He had for the world and the deep and profound sorrow He felt that we are all so confused and lost here in this life. Oh how He loves us.  Oh how grateful I am for that love.

It reminded me that although not everyone around me is Mormon, although not all of us believe in God in precisely the same form, He loves us all. There is beauty all around us if only we will look. And we will see His face in all the beauty if we will open our eyes and look for it. I pray we all can look and find Him this week.

An Open Testimony: I am Mormon

My name is Bridget Baker.  I am Mormon.

For years now, I've seen people posting things on Facebook and blogs.  Photos of Jesus.  Quotes from the scriptures.  Other "religiousy" things.  When I saw them, I would think, "Oh that's nice, but I'm not like that.  I keep my religion, my spirituality and my testimony private."

Then a few weeks ago, I was listening to the Phillip Phillips' song, Raging Fire, while I was driving across town to close on a new house.  I was in the process of moving myself and my family of four children, a husband and a dog into a new home, and this bizarre thing happened.  The Spirit spoke to my heart, and it was clear and obvious to me what I was supposed to do.  God wanted me to bear my testimony, loudly, clearly, openly.  Now, if you've heard the song I was listening to, you'll know that it's a beautiful song.  I really love all of his songs.  I could listen to most of them on repeat for hours.  (This might make me sound a bit nutty, but I am like this with most songs I really like.)  My point is that it's not a religious song, but it says, "Won't you turn my soul into a raging fire."  As I thought about that idea, I just knew, that no matter his intended context (romantic), God has done that to me in my life over and over.  The world drops away for me, and I know without a doubt that God loves me.  My Savior loves me too, and He lived for me, and He died for me.  And even better, He lives again, for me, and for each of us.  It was time for me to tell everyone, tell the world, not just a few people I happen to meet.  

This isn't supposed to be a one and done thing, the Spirit told me.  I am supposed to bear my testimony regularly.  Answer questions, if people have them.  Address things I'm thinking about, talk about things that happen in my (somewhat boring) life, and articulate how the things I experience impact, expand, or sometimes hurt, my faith.  I am going to attempt to blog every Sunday.  This will be hard, since I have a lot of busy little kids (1, 3, 5, and 7), and I do part time legal work, and I write novels, and I have a life and on and on. I am sure you all get it.  We are all busy busy.

For me, lately, I have been thinking a lot about the context of my testimony.  I have a lot of friends and family who were raised like me, born into a family of Mormons, raised in the Church, and taught good principles.  They have now gone off and gotten educated, some of them to a very high degree (bad pun).  They have developed careers, and many have families.  They are successful, bright, talented.  God has showered them with blessings, and also placed trials in their paths.  (That's how I see it.  It's not how they see it, at least, not anymore.)  A large number of these dear family members and close friends have examined the gospel with their developed intellects and have concluded that it's not true.  They have approached the topic of God with their mind and determined that He does not exist, or that if He does, He couldn't have come to a 14 year old boy to restore His gospel to the earth.  They don't believe in the restored gospel, and some of them do not, in their hearts, believe in God at all.

I can't adequately express the profound sorrow this causes me.  I couldn't care less what they tell the world.  I don't care whether they are looking or acting a part.  I hurt inside for them (not in a condescending way) because my connection to God, the love He has for me, the connection I have with my Savior is a raging fire that lights up my life.  It brings me joy, love, hope, and it anchors me during my periods of sorrow and frustration.  I can see God, I can see the face of perfection in each of the angels He has allowed me, entrusted to me to raise.  I see Him all around me.  I felt Him keenly when my brother died.  I felt Him when I went through a divorce.  I've always felt Him there for me when I've taken wrong turns, when I've repented, when my heart was broken and again I have felt Him heal it, heal me.    

This first blog, I am not going to delve into the basic tenets of my faith.  Instead I want to deal with just one thing--what Faith means to me.  It's not about reading and figuring things out with your mind.  You can't gain a testimony of God through intellectual pursuits.  In fact, I think trying to confuse our imperfect minds is one of Satan's best tools.  (Of course the glory of God is intelligence, but Satan is a big fan of sophistry, too.)

My point is that you aren't Mormon because you've studied all God's words, or because you read Hebrew or have read the text of the New Testament in Greek.  You are Mormon (or substitute Christian here for my dear and beloved non-Mormon friends) because you feel it with your HEART.  You know in your bones, or even in the marrow, that God loves you.  You uncover that faith from reading God's word, through service to others.  Serve your own children, family or friends or strangers on the street.  It doesn't matter--Jesus served everyone and His Father loves us all.  When we serve others, when we live like He did, we grow to become like Him.  Our hearts will open.  I am Mormon because my heart is open to God's love, to God's message.

This is my message to the world.  I am Mormon and I am not ashamed.  I believe I was created by a loving Heavenly Father and that my brother, Jesus Christ, came to the earth and saved me, physically by breaking the bands of death through His own resurrection, and spiritually by atoning for the sins of the world.  I am grateful that after all they have done, my Heavenly Father and my brother Jesus Christ, are still interested in hearing from me, through prayer.  They are still interested in my well being and they have sent me a comforter in the form of a Holy Ghost who reassures me in my heart.

I am proud of my beliefs and I am happy to discuss them with anyone who wants to know more, or who has questions to ask.  I will post about something new every week.  (Or try to... I will be in Italy for 10 days starting tomorrow, so I will try to set something up to post on Sunday, but who knows if it will work??) My goal is to talk about, and to testify of, my feelings, my beliefs, and the joy they bring me without upsetting anyone and without hurting feelings, which I understand is hard.  People take offense even when it's not intended.

I plan to use my mind to its fullest on this blog, as I do in life, but that will never take the place of having an open heart.  God wants us to have and value both.

With love and hope,

Bridget Baker