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.