We are beginners at this, and that's okay

One of the 6 puzzles we've put together in the last 2 weeks...

One thing has become increasingly clear to me this last week - life is not going to be back to normal for a while. Our governor just issued a “Stay Home, Stay Safe” directive, the boys school announced that schools would remain closed at least until May, and even Disneyland announced it’s closed indefinitely, which is the most apocalyptic sign of them all for Simon, who is in a big Mickey Mouse phase. 

Yesterday, with all this uncertainty was swirling through my head, I was reading the book The Next Right Thing by Emily Freeman. In it she talks about being beginners, and how so often we fight against being beginners at a given task or life stage. I started to think about how we are all beginners at living in this new reality, and about two ways that adopting a beginners mindset could help me navigate the days to come. 

1. Learning a new skill set or mindset needs practice takes a lot of work
Since all the boys have done at least some piano lessons now, I often use the piano as an analogy when talking to my kids about what it takes to learn a new skill. Nobody expects to be able to sit down at a piano for the first time and begin playing a Mozart Sonata, and when we start learning a new piece on the piano we begin knowing fully that our first efforts are going to be slow and stumbling. 

But often when it comes to skills like being more patient or perhaps the completely hypothetical example of not eating all the junk foods in the house when feeling overwhelmed, I get frustrated that even though I know better I’m not always doing better. If I can adopt a beginner mindset however, I can remember that these too are skills, and that my first attempts at them are going to be stumbling, and that’s okay.

All of us have been forced to learn some new skills recently, from teleworking and homeschooling our kids to maintaining our friendships and sanity without our normal routines and places we go, be it church or the gym or book clubs. We need to give ourselves extra grace, learning new things is hard, and learning new things inevitably means messing up sometimes. Things feel overwhelming and hard right now because it IS overwhelming and hard to learn a lot of new things at once. If history has shown us anything though, it’s that as humans are capable of doing hard things and adapting to new realities. We got this. 

2. Recognizing we are all beginners can help us be more compassionate
I’ve been super into reading books on our minds/brains recently, so I'm going to start this with some brain talk, hopefully it makes sense. Our brains have evolved to eliminate unnecessary variables and to create patterns and routines to lower the workload of the brain so it can to focus on new inputs and information. In our day to day lives, a large percentage of what we do are routines or habits that don’t take that much processing power from our brains to accomplish. So what happens when all our normal routines and patterns go out the window overnight? All the sudden our entire day requires brain power and concentration to figure out what is going to work best in our new reality. This can obviously be overwhelming, and our brains tend to treat overwhelm as a threat. 

When we are threatened our brain and body go into fight, flight or freeze mode, which is a great mode to be in if you are trying to escape from a tiger, but not so great for daily life. In fight/flight/freeze mode our stress hormones go up, which leaves us feeling on edge and unsettled, and blood flow to our prefrontal cortex is diverted to other areas.  Our prefrontal cortex is the most evolved part of our brain and is where executive function happens - handy little things like self control, problem solving, decision making and planning. So when the best part of our brain is offline due to lack of blood flow, we are going to have a much harder time with things like not eating all the chocolate chips straight out the bag and staying calm when your kids (who now never leave the house) need help at the exact same time with their school work (which you are now in charge of). Once again, both hypothetical examples. 

The good news though, is that if we can recognize what is happening, if we can let ourselves feel the overwhelm and help our brain know that it is not actually a threat to our life, we can bring ourselves back out of fight/flight/freeze mode and start to get our prefrontal cortex back online. That process involves slowing down and paying attention to our mental state, and being mindful of when we need to take some time to bring ourself back into a better mental state. Here I’m going to throw in a plug for meditation. I know that meditation can feel a little over-hyped recently, but it really is for good reason. Among other benefits, meditation has been proven in multiple studies to activate and thicken our prefrontal cortex, and as you might guess, a stronger prefrontal cortex equals more access to those problem solving/self control skills that are so very useful.

There are lots of different styles and types of meditation, so if you are put off by whole sitting cross legged in silence, do some searching for a different type of meditation that might be more your style. Some resources I’ve been liking recently, both free, are the short 6 minute meditations on DoYogaWithMe.com and the 21 day meditation series that Oprah and Deepak Chopra are offering right now created specifically for this crisis. 

Alright, back to compassion. When we recognize that being beginners at almost everything we are doing right now is hard on our brains, we are more able to give ourselves kindness and compassion. And sorry for more brain talk, but the last thing I’ll say is that our brains are a lot better at learning in a state of kindness and compassion then they are in a state of frustration and discouragement. So in the long run, we’re going to figure out our new reality faster if we can slow down enough to give ourselves room and permission to be beginners. 

Last, as we look around us and realize that we are surrounded by beginners we can have more compassion for everyone else, and recognize they are doing the best they can too. Those people panic buying the toilet paper are caught in fight or flight mode, and that’s not a fun place for them to be either.

So my call today is let's all slow down and let ourselves be beginners at all this, and realize that as beginners, we are going to fail sometimes, and that’s okay. 

Thoughts on Books

I've been listening to three different audio books recently that I've really been enjoying, they've been providing me with some great thought fodder. They are Grit by Angela Duckworth, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller, and The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer.

Ms. Duckworth has been studying grit for years now, and wrote Grit about what she's learned about developing grit and how grit impacts our lives. I've realized that I have not really been focusing on grit in my life or in the life of my kids, and it's definitely a quality I could use a little more of. Or a lot more of. Probably a lot. I am definitely guilty of starting a ton of things and finishing very few of them.

She talks a lot about figuring out your... I can't remember what she called them, core interests? Or passion? I don't know, but the thing that you are most interested in, and doing daily, deliberate practice in that area. But I'm feeling a bit stuck because I don't know what that is for me. I like my kids and husband, and like reading books to try and improve in my parenting and spouse-ing skills, I like my dog, and like learning about dog training, I like writing, although every time I sit down to write I feel endlessly stupid, and I don't really feel like I have something life changing to write about,  I like reading case law, I like being outdoors and hiking, I like traveling and seeing new places, but there isn't one thing that stands out to me as something I am especially passionate about in a life-changing way. Anyway, for now I'm going to try and do daily, deliberate practice on writing, and just see what comes of that, if I start to feel like I have something to say, and if not, then... I give up on grit. Ha.

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years is, I think a memoir? He talks a lot about one particular time of his life when he was working with a movie producer to make a movie from another book he'd written, which definitely was a memoir, and his thought on story, and creating stories, and living stories, and our need for story. I really like the idea about being more deliberate about the stories we are living. I feel like often I move through the motions of life without really looking at what I'm moving towards or why I have the particular goals I have, and I want to be more intentional about what I'm creating.

The Untethered Soul is one that a friend told me she was reading and liking it, and it was available on Overdrive so I gave it a shot. I haven't finished that one yet, but so far it's been about being aware of how our thoughts are separate from ourselves, and how much our thoughts influence how we experience and react to the world. And how we limit or hurt ourselves by holding onto our thoughts about different events, and how we can create more energy and joy in our lives by being more intentional with our inner selves. Anyway, I will say it's more out-there than the other two books, I think my dad would have described it as "hippy dippy", it's definitely not a book that I would tell everybody in the world they should read and will love, but it's been useful for me to spend some time being more aware of my thoughts, and I'm liking it overall.

I have to go get Jefferson, and I promised myself I'd hit publish on this before I left, so that's what I've got today, an un-edited rambling about some books I've been listening to.

Edges

"In permaculture there’s a principle called the “edge effect”. This is where two different ecosystems come up against each other and overlap. For many reasons, this region of overlap contains a great amount of biodiversity and productivity.

I love the edge effect in permaculture and I love the edge effect in life. I think about it every time we have a quarter moon and the light is meeting up against the dark. It’s the darkness of prior phases meeting up with the potential of what’s to come. Often during the quarter moons we experience that edge ourselves. Is there anything you are pushing towards or trying to step into? The space where we meet up against something new is the space where we have the opportunity to experience the most growth and productivity.

And dear luna...she reminds us to just keep pushing. Keep pushing towards light and manifestation - even if it’s hard right now. You are getting your most growth being on the edge and I whole-heartedly believe that you’ve got this."
- Heather from StoryLunaStory on Instagram


Heather's post on her StoryLunaStory account never fail to inspire me, and her post yesterday was no exception.  And it got me thinking about the edges in my life. About why so often I want to pull back from the edge, move away from areas of discomfort and stick to what feels known and safe. How often as I stand at the edge of the old and the new, looking forward into the unknown and then down or back into where I am or where I've been, I step back or stand still, for fear that when I start moving forward I won't know what I'm doing and will make a fool of myself. Because that edge area is grey and unsure, I'm still forming my opinions and figuring out my intentions. 

But there are several areas of my life where I've been feeling very stuck recently, and I'm realizing the course forward out of that stuck-ness might not always be direct and steady, that it's more likely a two-steps-forward-and-one-step-back type of journey. And if I don't make those two steps forward because I'm too afraid of needing to take a step back, I'll just stay stuck. 

So many parenting books I've been reading recently talk about the need for children to feel safe to make mistakes, to not feel like every misstep is a tragedy, but that the path to growth is lined with failed attempts. While it's been easy for me to see how that's true for my kids, I've been less willing to accept failure as part of growth in my own life. To stop letting those failed attempts feel so heavy and important and instead just let go of them and view them as an important part of my journey instead of proof that I'm not enough for the journey. 

Today, when I feel an edge between growth and stagnation, I'm going to try and resist that urge to pull back, and choose growth. 

Just Sitting

Karl sitting with his sweet little cousin 

Last night around 1:00 AM I heard Karl calling out for me. Every night this week I'd been up multiples times with either Karl or Simon, it had just been a rough sleep week around here, so I was not too thrilled.

I went into Karl's room and he was crying that his feet were bothering him. I examined them with the flashlight, and could see a few little blisters forming around his big toe, the source of our woes. 

We tried lotion, medicine, soaking his feet in water, socks on, socks off, everything I could think of to help his feet stop bothering him enough so that he could relax and go back to sleep, but two and a half hours later he was still crying and they were still bothering him, and I was exhausted. 

Finally he calmed down enough to climb back in bed, but he still wanted me with him. I curled up at the top of his bed above his pillow and rubbed his back and hair while he continued to toss and turn and whimper about his feet. I was tired and uncomfortable, and just wanted to go and climb back into my own bed, but when I asked him if he thought I could leave he started crying again, so I settled back down and continued rubbing his head. 

I'd been praying for ideas on how to help him, praying for him to be able to relax and fall back asleep, praying for patience, and as I lay there I began to pray "Please just help me be here for Karl. Help me have the strength just to sit with him while he needs me"

Sitting with people through hard things has never been something I've been good at. I am a pretty terrible listener (which I'm really trying to work on, although I feel like progress is terribly slow) because I'm constantly trying to say or do something to "fix" things, or saying something related that just popped into my head, instead of just listening. I am much more comfortable doing something for someone, and I feel very inadequate in my ability to just be a presence. I never feel like I have the right thing to say, or even anything to say at all, and then I get nervous and start saying all the wrong things. So I avoid being the person that sits with people through things.  

But as I lay there, I thought about the idea of just sitting with someone, someone we can't do anything for other than be there with them. I thought of people who have sat with me through hard things. I thought of how uncomfortable it can be to be the person that is sitting there, but how comforting that presence can be sometimes.  I thought of our Saviors willingness to suffer all that we suffer, not because by doing so He was making it so we didn't have to suffer those hard things, but  just so that he could sit with us in complete compassion as we go through our valleys of loss and sorrow.  And as I sat there, uncomfortable and tired, I felt peace. I felt love surrounding me and Karl as we sat there together, just being there through the thing that was hard for him. 

Today I've been thinking about how little I take advantage of God's gift of being able to sit with me through hard things, being able to be there along side me. So often my prayer is "take this away", or "make this change", and I want to work on the "but if not, just be with me, just let me feel you near me as I go through this". I've realized that because of how He values my agency, He won't push himself into my life uninvited, and I haven't been inviting Him to sit with me through hard things, and what a loss that is for me. 

So, today, here's to me learning to just sit, and learning to let God sit with me. 

Moving My Matter

Christmas tree hunting last Saturday

Sorry to Katy Bowman for pretty much plagiarizing the title of your book that I haven't even read (yet!) for the title of today's post. Her book, Movement Matters, looks really good, and I definitely want to read it soon, but I've been listening to her podcast recently, and thinking a lot about how I move and why I move and how I can improve both of those things.

For so long time I haven't taken as much ownership as I should for where I am physically. For the past 11 years I've spent a lot of time pregnant or nursing, and a lot of times it almost felt like my body belonged to those little people more than it belonged to me. These past few months I've been thinking about how I'm moving out of those years, and how my idea of "me" is a little less clear than I want it to be, in many ways, physically, mentally and spiritually, and how I want to move into the future more mindfully.

This last summer I had So. Many. People. ask me when I was due (it's a little insane how many people asked me). I have a really short torso, and do carry any extra weight right around my middle, so I do end up looking pregnant if I have any extra weight on me. I think I was really lucky in that my metabolism was really high when I was pregnant and nursing, so I could pretty much eat whatever I wanted during those times and stay at a pretty comfortable weight, but as soon as I stop nursing the weight starts to climb back up, because I have a hard time stopping the habit of eating whatever I want... So my weight had been slowly climbing the last year, and I finally decided I wanted to change my habits and figure out how to keep my weight where I am comfortable sans pregnancy and nursing.

But I'm realizing I'm not really all that good at the whole fitness and nutrition thing, so I'm trying to start learning more and moving more, but I want to do so in a way that is sustainable and that fits who I want to be. For now I'm not planning on joining a gym, I have always hated gyms, and am not fond of the idea of leaving my kids to go run around, and am hoping to find ways to do things with my kids instead. This may end up being a terrible idea, and I may join a gym in the future and become a gym convert, but I want there to be a way that fits me better.

I've been looking at GMB programs a lot recently, specifically Elements and Focused Flexibility, and I like the focus of the company, and that I could do those programs at home without buying any equipment, and that Jefferson and Duncan (and probably Karl as far as his attention span goes) could do them along with me if they wanted, so I think I'm going to try starting with one of those and see how that goes.

Katy Bowman also keeps telling me I need to walk more, which is very true, but I struggle wanting to go outside when it's below 50 degrees outside... Which is going to be most of the next 6 months, so I need to get over that somehow. Anyway, this post was pretty ramble-y, but I guess this is a "here is where I am, and I'm trying to make a plan to be somewhere else" post.

Creating Space

The other day I read this quote by Ezra Taft Benson:

"The biggest business of any life is making decisions. While one of the greatest gifts of God to man is … the right of choice, he has also given man responsibility for these choices. … We put our own lives in the direction of success or failure. We may not only choose our ultimate goals, but we may also determine and decide for ourselves, in many cases, the means by which we will arrive at those goals, and by our industry or lack of it determine the speed by which they may be reached. This takes individual effort and energy and will not be without opposition or conflict."

Superimposing this quote onto all I've been thinking about technology and how I'm using it has left me thinking about how I'm creating space in my life for my goals, and trying to make sure that I'm using technology in a way that is helping me reach those goals. I definitely felt a little pang of regret when I read the quote feeling like I have not really put forth sufficient industry towards reaching my goals often in the past, and it gave me the motivation to renew my focus on what I want for my future.

One of the themes that the Bored and Brilliant podcast and the End of Absence talked about a lot was distraction, how we are pulled in so many different directions at once, and how really our brains aren't that good at multi-tasking. So the past couple days I've been trying to focus on doing just one thing at a time. I guess so often I just feel pulled in so many directions at once, and it's easy to feel overwhelmed. So when I'm doing the dishes, I try to just do the dishes, and finish them, before I start doing something else, or even thinking about doing something else. When something I need to do comes to mind I try and push it aside and just focus on what I'm doing at the moment.

It's harder than I thought it would be, and I still get side-tracked a lot, and obviously it's not always possible to just do one thing and finish it before getting pulled to something else, but it has given me a little more space for just thinking, thinking about life, and goals, and sometimes nothing particularly important,  but it has actually been pretty nice. And when I am able to really focus on one task I do feel less frantic.

I think the highlight for me was today when I was feeding Simon his bottle, and I just sat, and watched him eat, and studied his little eyes and face, and just soaked up the feeling of holding his tiny body close to mine, and it was really nice. It's made me really want to be more present and mindful, and it's definitely a habit I want to keep working on.

I'm still working on more ideas for creating space for working on my goals, but I guess I'm starting with mental space :).

Book Thoughts - The End of Absence by Michael Harris

I want to use this blog to kind of keep track of the books I read this year, but I'm not really sure how I want to do it, so I'm trying a few different things here...

This week I finished "The End of Absence" by Michael Harris, and while I'm not sure I whole-heartedly recommend the book, I did like the thought-paths that reading it started me down.

It has definitely left me evaluating how and why I use the technology I use, and the technology that the boys use. Grant has started me listening to a podcast called New Tech City, and in a funny coincidence the week I've been finishing this book the podcast started a "Bored and Brilliant" challenge, encouraging people to step away from their technology a bit to create more space for boredom, for being creative. So it's been kind of fun to be reading this book and also listening to Manoush Zamarodi, the voice of New Tech City, talk about the benefits of less technology in our lives.

I have been thinking about the constancy of information that we are surrounded by in this age of google and wikipedia, and how I really do spend less time trying to figure things out myself, and am so quick to just ask Siri when the boys ask me a question.

One thing he talked about several times was how the youth of today are so inundated with technology that they can't really separate themselves from it, they will never have a separate identity outside of technology that those of us who grew up before the age of the internet had as kids. While I can see his point, at times it felt a bit over blown to me. My kids have time with technology every day, yes, but I, and most of my peers, did too. Sure, it wasn't the internet, it was just TV, or Nintendo, or archaic video games, but growing up in the 70's and 80's wasn't like we went from a complete dearth of technology to being completely submerged in it.

I guess I think that while today's technologies may be more prevalent and more accesible and probably more addicting then the technologies of yester-year, but I knew plenty of kids growing up where the T.V. was on constantly at their house, and teenagers who wore their walkman like it was part of their clothes, and I think people found plenty of ways to avoid thinking deeply then without the internet. I think the primary problem is a choice to put away the easier mental tasks and commit to digging into the harder ones, and while the technology of the day may provide more ways to avoid that, it's an old problem, not a new one.

But I guess the constant availability of So. Much. Information. does really make us need to be much more mindful of what we are using and why. So it was a good read overall.

Book Review - Voyage of a Viking

Book Review - Voyage of a Viking, by Tim Marks 3 stars out of 5

I feel like I'm not giving anything very high marks this year... Maybe I'm just in a critical mood recently. This book was recommended by Oliver DeMille, whose recommendation I value highly, and currently has 5 stars on Amazon, so I went into it expecting to really like it. 

On the plus side, it is chock-full of pithy, motivational quotes like:

“One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.”

"Imperfect action is better than no action."

"Defeating those negative instincts that are out to defeat us is the difference between winning and losing, and we face that battle every day of our lives"

"Jean le Rond d’Alembert said, “The difficulties you meet will resolve themselves as you advance. Proceed, and light will dawn, and shine with increasing clearness on your path.”"

And the like. I will say that it did inspire me to dig in a little deeper and focus more on my goals, so hopefully that motivation sticks, and it wasn't all bad. But overall, it just felt so... canned. Like to me it felt like a compilation of a whole bunch of "how to succeed in business and life" books all crammed into one. The ones with the message "I was a failure. But now I'm not a failure! I teach people how to be not-failures for a living! And you can be a not-failure too! Just find that thing you love, and do it! Do it nine times! Do it nine times nine! Never quit! And you will win, just like me!". 

Overall I was trying really hard to be inspired by it, and I do think it has some good messages, and while I don't regret having read it, I just had a really hard time connecting with him, and with his stories. He is very much a "macho man", all about powering through whatever is in front of you, action over thought, and had several stories about his super "manliness", and I have a hard time with that type of personality, so maybe that was part of my problem. 

In conclusion, if you are feeling short on inspiration to finish a large life goal or something, maybe this book will provide you with a large enough collection of motivational quotes to get it done. 

To Be Enough

Last year I listened to the audio book for And Both Were Young, by Madeline L'Engle. I don't have the exact quote since I was listening to it instead of reading it, but there was one line in it that stood out to me. It was something along the lines of:

"She is a very nice girl, when she is not too caught up in feeling sorry for herself"

I thought about how much time I spend feeling sorry for myself, and how quick I am to think of the "hardship" in my own life, and how little time I spend thinking about the hard things that other people might be going through.

The move to Ohio has been hard in ways that I didn't anticipate, but there is so much good about it, and I feel like I keep going through this same cycle of being on a high and loving life and being able to be really grateful for the things that are going well, and then the next day I'll be in such a dark place, just feeling really overwhelmed and like I'm just not cutting it, and so desperate, and I really want to stop. I just want to stop feeling like I'm only okay if I know the people around me are happy, I want to be someone who is loving and kind and loves myself even when I make mistakes, especially when I make mistakes in front of other people.

I don't think I fully realized how much I need others approval until now that I'm living in someone else's house, and I spend so much time agonizing over if I'm doing enough, and doing things right, and I get SO anxious when things don't go as planned or when I don't do things the way that I think I should have. And it's really impacting the way I parent, and my inner peace, and I want to stop.

So I'm trying to find ways to stay focused on the positive, and to let go of the feelings of not being enough, and to find my sense of self-worth in His love. I think it will help if when I start to feel overwhelmed and sorry for myself if I try and step back and think of how this must be for Grant, and Dad, and the boys, and focus more on the love I show instead of my busy-ness.

So my goal for tomorrow is to when I start to feel that anxiety build up inside me to stop whatever I am doing, and do something to show love to someone in my life who is going through something hard. And really, who isn't going through something hard?

Batman

I finished listening to the This American Life podcast called Batman today - it was fantastic and really left me thinking.

The main theme was expectations and how they impact people, and balancing protecting our children with limiting their growth. It really gave me a lot to think about. Today we went to a place where they have a whole bunch of swing sets and trampolines and play equipment and the kids can just run free playing on whatever they want. I tried to be more conscious about my fears and expectations and stand back a little more and let the boys do their own thing without me interfering.

There was one time when Jefferson was trying this balance rope thing, and the first couple times he tried it he fell off right away. Instead of calling out "Be careful!" or trying to give instructions on how he should do it, I tried to think how I could be encouraging but not bossy, so I said "Those were good tries. I bet if you keep trying you'll find a way to get across that". And he did keep trying, and then he gave up for while, and then went back to it later, and before we left he was walking across the whole rope. And it wasn't the way I would have done it, but he figured it out, and he was proud of himself.

The most painful part of listening to the podcast and my experience today was realizing how often in the past I have been over-protective when my kids needed me to stand back, and even more painful, how often I have not been protective of the things that I really do need to protect - their little hearts. I will be so occupied trying to keep them "safe" physically, but I won't think twice before saying a sharp word when they make a mess or a mistake. It really hurts for me to realize how often I have fallen short, but I'm trying to be more mindful of the things I should be protecting, and the things I should be letting them figure out on their own.

Book Review - Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, 3.5 stars out of 5

I am always on the fence if I can really say I "read" a book if I listened to the audiobook of it instead of actually reading it, but more and more I'm leaning on the side of yes. Probably because I have been listening to audiobooks more and more frequently. They really do make cleaning so much more bearable. 

And this was a very fun audiobook. It was narrated by someone with a British accent, which made all of the ironic humor even more enjoyable. This is a book that I decided to read mostly for cultural literacy reasons, and there were several things in it that made other things make sense, like the website Babelfish. 

I decided in my book reviews to write one thing I like and one thing I don't like about each book, to help me structure my thoughts a bit more. 

I liked: It really was fun to listen to. The book is so full of improbability and impossibility all told in such a hopeless ironic way, is that a horrible explanation? Yes. Yes it is. But regardless I thought it was really just fun. The bizarre friendships and the robots with personality problems, the 30 second life of a sperm whale, it was so weird but somehow it all worked for me and was funny instead of just being annoying, which I kind of went into the book expecting. I guess that's one thing about starting a book with rather low expectations, I should always do that, because when I have high expectations I tend to not like the book as well as I wanted to. 

I didn't like: Some of the more random parts were amazingly... random. But I wasn't looking for life lessons, so I can forgive it for that. 

All in all, if you haven't read this book, I would say go for it. If your library has Overdrive or a similar app for borrowing audiobooks, that is where I listened to it, and I liked the narrator quite well. 

Help Thou Mine Unbelief

Tonight I was reading Luke's account in the New Testament of the birth of the Savior. As I was reading chapter 2, the classic Christmas chapter, verse 19 stood out to me-

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

I wondered why Luke had added that verse, what he meant by that. I pictured being Mary, the many months after the angel had come, of being pregnant, and having to travel during the 9th month, and ending up in a stable with my newborn baby. I wondered if even Mary sometimes had doubts about what was happening, if she was really and truly the mother of a God. Amid the hard of daily life, if sometimes she just thought "if this is right, then why am I not surrounded by miracles at every step?".

And so when these miracles did happen, when the shepherds came with tales of heavenly hosts, she grabbed those things and she held them, and kept them in her heart, where she could go back to them when things weren't going as smoothly.

 I love the story in Mark chapter 9 when Jesus is healing the boy "which hath a dumb spirit". Just before Christ heals the boy he looks at the father and asks if he believes.

24. And straightaway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.

I can picture being that father, so desperate for help, and wanting so much to have enough faith needed to help my child, and pleading for help to make up the difference for my unbelief. Sometimes in life when I am doing something that I knew at one point to be right, but when it's gotten hard, and my initial vision isn't as clear as it once was, I start to wonder why doing the right thing has to be so hard.

In April 2013 General Conference Elder Holland gave a talk titled "Lord, I Believe" where he said:

When problems come and questions arise, do not start your quest for faith by saying how much you do not have, leading as it were with your “unbelief.”... Let me be clear on this point: I am not asking you to pretend to faith you do not have. I am asking you to be true to the faith you do have. Sometimes we act as if an honest declaration of doubt is a higher manifestation of moral courage than is an honest declaration of faith. It is not! So let us all remember the clear message of this scriptural account: Be as candid about your questions as you need to be; life is full of them on one subject or another. But if you and your family want to be healed, don’t let those questions stand in the way of faith working its miracle.

I have often thought that even Moses, and Joseph Smith, had long periods of hard times, times where they weren't constantly administered by angels, where they were living every day normal life while simultaneously trying their best to figure out how to accomplish the divine work they had been given. I think that there must be something to moving forward in faith even when the initial clarity I had has worn off a little, and everything don't look entirely rosy anymore, and things aren't going exactly as I had planned.

Recently I've been struggling with the move to Ohio, why things are working out the way they are. It is really hard being here without Grant, and sometimes I wonder why he wasn't laid off in November when the other people were, it would have made so much more sense, and to me it feels like it would have been so much easier. So my goal for this week is to, as Elder Holland said, "be true to the faith I do have". I need to hold onto the moments of clarity I have had, and ponder them in my heart, so that on the hard days I can go back to that, and stop my questions from standing in the way of a miracle.

Book Review - Paper Towns

Paper Towns by John Green, 2 stars out of 5

I read Fault in our Stars last year and rather enjoyed it. It wasn't life changing or something I foresee ever reading again, but it was a fun couple hours reading it. So last week when I was looking at a list of "Books You Should Read Before The Movie Comes Out This Year" (Some of those words probably didn't need capitalization, eh?), and saw another John Green book on it,  I decided to give it a try. 

Quite handily my library had it available as an eBook, so I've been using it as my "keep me awake when I'm nursing Simon in the middle of the night" read. But I never really got into it. Maybe I would have liked it better if I were reading it fully awake? But usually when I'm reading a novel for my middle-of-the-night reads I have a bit of a hard time putting them down and going back to sleep, but this one was always easy to set aside and forget about. 

I didn't love any of the characters, and just had a hard time caring about the plot in general. Pretty much the whole book is set over the course of the couple weeks before Q and his friends graduate from High School, and since I never went to high school (as Grant loves to remind me, ha ha), I can't say how true-to-life the setting and characters were, but my strongest feeling at the end of the book was a general feeling that if high school was anything like that I'm quite glad I missed it. 

Summer 2013 Recap

I feel somewhat remiss at the idea of posting recap of something that is not fully over yet, but I've been thinking about what went right (and wrong) this summer, and wanting to write it down so that I can build on it in future summers.

I was so nervous about this summer, last school year Duncan was in school from 8:30 - 11:30 and Jefferson was in school from 9:00 - 3:30. So it was just me and Karl in the morning (and he still napped in the morning), then Duncan joined us for lunch, and I only had all three from 3:30 to bedtime. I have to admit this was a very nice schedule, but even then I had a hard time keeping up with the housework all the time, and once Jefferson got home he was so hungry for my attention, and it was really hard to get anything done. So I was terrified to think what would happen when I had all three home all day, and knew I needed a plan and schedule to make it through.

Thanks to good ideas from friends and several different mom blogs, I put together a combination of ideas that I hoped would work for us. It ended up being a bit over-complicated, and I will definitely try and simplify things next summer, but here is the basis of what we've done.

The first week of summer we made little magnet boards with each boys daily tasks:

Duncan decided to re-apply his name, so it has a little extra personality :). Now this part is really way too complicated (so complicated I'm really embarrassed to even type it out...), but here it is. If you can see, there are 3 different styles of borders on the different magnets. So when the boys woke up they were supposed to do the group that had "Make Bed" "Get Dressed" and "Put Pajamas Away" before they came to breakfast. If they did those 3 things, they would get 2 technology tickets at breakfast, which could later be traded in for 30 minutes of technology time or saved and traded in for quarters at the end of the week. I just cut blue cardstock with their initials on it into a ticket shape, and then made some extra red ones for when I wanted to give extra for a reward or just needed them engaged for a while or something.

The next grouping is "Brush Teeth" "Read Scriptures" "Chore 1" "Chore 2""Summer Journal" and "FlyLady Challenge". Chore 1 and 2 change each day, they come to me and I tell them what they are for the day. Next year I think I will make a chart and rotate or something so I'm not always trying to come up with things on the spot. Ones they have ended up doing a lot are unload the dishwasher (Jeff does the main part and Duncan does the silverware tray), wash doorknobs and light switches, sweep the front porch, and help switch a load of laundry. Right before I was making these I saw that FlyLady had a daily challenge for kids, so I threw that on there, but I'm not sure I'll use it again. There is a lot of repeat, and some times it was too much, but I guess overall it's been good, so I don't know, the jury is still out on that one. Anyway, each time they complete something in that grouping they get 25 cents, so they can potentially earn $1.50 a day.

The last grouping is the purple border ones, they are "Piano" "Reading" "Room Time" and "Math". We didn't really have anything set up as an incentive for finishing those, but after a couple weeks Grant suggested doing a red technology ticket that can't be turned in for money, so if they finish everything on their chart, they get one of those. They have been wanting to save all their blue daily technology tickets to trade them in for quarters, so that has worked out for this summer, although that usually only happens once a week or so...

At the beginning of the summer we went to the Lego store, and they both chose a set they really wanted, and that is what they are saving up for. At first I was keeping track of what they were earning daily on paper, and then at the end of the week I would transfer the amount they had earned to a new sheet, but that was not very motivating or visual for the boys, so Grant had the idea of giving them actual quarters, and made this money chart for them to color in, and then we went and got a couple rolls of quarters and made money jars, and that has been much better.

You can see the chart is pretty crumpled and well loved, the boys love taking it down and counting how much they have earned and how much they have left. Each day after they have done one of their chores that earn money I give them a quarter and they put it in their jar, and then at the end of the week they turn in the quarters in their jar and we color how they earned in on the chart and we start over again. I will say I *slightly* overestimated how much they would earn each week, with all the guests and trips and everything we've had going on, more days then not they don't get everything done, so I'm not sure we are going to earn these sets by the end of summer... I'm trying to figure out what to do about that! 

The last thing we did is make a Summer Bucket List while Megan was here (Megan made it for me, I wish I could take credit for how cute it is)

The first week of summer we brainstormed a lot of ideas for things we thought would be fun to do at some point during the summer, then put them all on here. We are not going to finish all of them, but it has been fun to have a place to go for ideas when we need something to do. One thing I haven't figured out, I would like it low enough that the boys could look at it more and get ideas, but then Karl grabs it and takes it apart. So right now it's hung up really high so Karl can't reach it, but it also means the boys aren't looking at it all the time. 

Another thing I did at the beginning of the summer was print off blank calendars for June, July and August, and wrote in different free or inexpensive activities that I found that were happening in the area (like dollar movies and free museum days and such), and then I could look ahead and plan for those things when we wanted to. I didn't have a good place to keep those calendars, and I keep loosing them, so next summer I need to make a place for them and so they are more useful. 

I think that is pretty much all of it... I will say that while I have NOT been able to keep up with the house work this summer, overall the summer has been a lot of fun, and gone really well, and I am really grateful for good ideas from other moms that have helped me create a little more order and sanity in our home this summer! 

A little slice of our days

Picture taking is not my forte, actually I'm pretty terrible at it, but I was looking at the pictures on my phone from this last week, and bad as they are, I wanted to save them here. Do you ever feel nostalgic for something you are in the middle of? I guess that's how I'm feeling today, so in an effort to capture our life, here are a few pictures from this last week that are pretty typical of our life right now

Karl LOVES Food. This baby can put food down like no other baby I've known. He will eat a couple pancakes, a bowl of yogurt and a whole banana for breakfast, and then be hungry as soon as he wakes up from his morning nap.

This smile melts me every time. Here is his newest trick of standing on his head and then trying to do flips on our new rug. It is super soft, and he loves playing on it. 

Duncan is such a social little guy and LOVES his friends. Every day after preschool he asks whose house we are going to, and is traumatized that we are hardly ever going to someones house, ha ha. Here are his best friends at a little Valentines party we had on Valentines day

I found a paper he had been writing/drawing on the other day, and he'd written his name on it, I had no idea he knew how to write his name!

He loves his "glass cups", and is sad when I give him the kid plastic cups. He always asks now "Can I please have a drink of water IN A GLASS CUP"

Jefferson decided he wanted to make a "quilt" for his pony Snowflake a while ago, and we finally got around to making it this week. He chose the fabrics, I helped him draft the pattern, and then he told me the widths and I cut the strips with the rotary cutter, then he pinned and sewed them together, then pinned the pattern on, cut it out, and then sewed a back on, and turned and topstitched it (he had a few areas where the topstitching swayed in from the edge, and he said "I did it on purpose, to make it look extra fancy"). He did it almost all by himself, I was amazed at his patience with this project!

All finished!

My Thoughts are Fragile

One night as I was trying to get dinner on the table Jefferson was telling me about an episode of something he had watched on PBS kids. He was explaining each scene of the show in detail, and I have to admit I was not really listening as I worked around the kitchen. I stopped him, and asked him to clear his project off the dinner table and put his shoes in the closet. He did those things, then came back, paused, then looked at me and declared "You made me forget what I was saying to you! My thoughts are fragile, you can't stop me when I'm in the middle of telling you something!"

I love how he phrases things.

Several times recently I've seen this quote floating around the internet:
"Listen earnestly to anything your children want to tell you, no matter what. If you don't listen eagerly to the little stuff when they are little, they won't tell you the big stuff when they are big. Because to them, all of it has always been big stuff" Catherine M. Wallace

Sadly, I have always been much better at making noise then listening. From the time I was little I've been a non-stop chatter-box. I remember my grandma always saying "You just never stop talking!"

Jefferson takes after me in that way, and processes things by talking through them. He wakes up talking and falls asleep mid-sentence sometimes, and then talks in his sleep during the night.

I'm trying to figure out ways to set times of when I can give full attention to him and still encourage him talking to me, but also have some time when I am "off the clock", if that makes sense. I don't feel capable of "listening eagerly" all day (I wish I did!!), but I do want him to feel loved and like I want to hear things that are important to him.

I am wondering if I set aside small portions of time where I'm listening to him with all my attention, if he will feel heard enough then that he won't feel as needy at the other times? For now that is going to be my goal, a set "Jefferson" time each day when my focus is just him, and then see how that goes and go from there.

Being Happy Now

Today in church in Relief Society (our womens group) we talked about this talk.

Two things really struck me. The first thing she focused on was the enabling power of the atonement, which she said is also called Grace. Recently I've been feeling frustrated at the slowness of change in my life. I just couldn't see that I was making forward progress, even though I really desired and was trying for change.

I think in the past whenever I heard or read the word "grace" I viewed it as a form of pity. Because God felt bad for us, He would still love us, even as imperfect as we were. Today I realized that it is not a form of pity, but a source of power. Because God loves me, He wants me to be powerful and whole, as He is. Further, He knows precisely what I need to become that way, and He offers me His grace to enable me to accomplish that change in ways that I couldn't on my own.

I loved this quote from Elder David  Bednar that the teacher used:
"The gospel of the Savior is not simply about avoiding bad in our lives; it also is essentially about doing and becoming good. And the Atonement provides help for us to overcome and avoid bad and to do and become good. Help from the Savior is available for the entire journey of mortality—from bad to good to better and to change our very nature." (from this talk)

The second thing that struck me was when we talked about this principle: "All that is unfair in life can be made right through the Atonement of Jesus Christ".

The teacher talked about what being "made right" means. That it's not just that we can survive hard things, and in the next life all will be well. But that through the atonement, in THIS life, His love can truly make all things right. It won't solve all our problems, but we can be just as happy and just as full of love as if our lives were "perfect". I realized that often I put off happiness, saying "after such-and-such happens, I will feel so much happier", but it really struck me that I will never be any happier than I am today. Or I guess I should say my capacity for peace and happiness in my life is complete today, that through Christ I can have full joy in my life today, and it's a choice I need to make, not something external that needs to happen in my life.

I am feeling very grateful today for God's love for me, for His patience and continued reaching out and lifting up. I feel hopeful that through His love I CAN change, and can become a better, kinder person, more like Him.

Block Party. Or Blocks and Partys.

I seem to have a case of writers block. If you can have writers block and not even be a proper writer. Every time I sit down to write a post I get overwhelmed, or underwhelmed, or discouraged, and have a small slew of unpublished posts building up. So I'm going to hit publish today, that is my goal.

This Saturday we're hosting a 4th of July breakfast party. This is the first real party I've hosted in my life, and I'm pretty nervous. I keep thinking through all the steps of each thing I need to make, obsessing over if I've forgotten anything important. I'm sure I will have forgotten something when all is said and done, but I really hope I've remembered enough that things will go smoothly. But I'm determined not to stress about it, and just have fun with it. I will return and report with my notes from what I learned for next year after the party.

The 4th of July has been my favorite holiday for most my life. My memories of the 4th while growing up are filled with hiking, swimming, water fights, bbq's and homemade ice cream. I think the thing that I enjoyed the most about the holiday is it never felt stressful. While I liked Christmas, there was an element of stress surrounding it that I didn't like. The 4th was also full of family time and good food, but without the stress, and it wasn't cold outside, win-win.


Anyway, I don't really have a point to this post, so I'll just say - Here's to a happy stress-free 4th of July :)

Amazing Grace

Last week I was reading the April 2012 Ensign, and there was an article titled "Amazing Grace". In it, the author says "Consider writing in your journal and sharing with your family about times when you have felt the Lord's grace healing, helping, or strengthening you".

When I read that I realized I haven't written down how much I have felt helped this year. I really forgot how hard it is to function on not much sleep, and how time consuming newborns really are. And there have been a few times since Karl has been born that I felt really depressed that I just couldn't do it. But consistently every time I have started the day while reading my scriptures while I'm nursing instead of reading my emails or blogs or whatever, I have been amazed at how well I have been able to cope with how little sleep I've had, and I truly feel it has been because He is helping me do things I could not do alone.

One instance in particular where I powerfully felt that help is while we were in Utah. On the day Erin was getting married,  when Karl woke up at 4:00 to eat, I was reading my scriptures while he nursed. I read some verses about the Lord strengthening the people of Nephi. I thought that there were probably ways I could serve that day, and the Lord could strengthen me too. So instead of going back to sleep I got ready and then when I heard people up and about downstairs I went down and was able to help with a few things down there. It really was more for me then anyone else, but I was so happy to be able to be there as Erin got ready to go to the temple, it was a really awesome sister time. The whole day was long and busy, but I had energy all day long, and although it was hard at time with the boys, we made it, and had a really great day.

So that's my little journal entry of when I've felt His grace strengthening me :)

Cereal

I found this on my computer today, I wrote it right after Grant and I got married. The memories made me smile and I decided to post it since I can't seem to write anything today :)

I try to be healthy. I try and exercise on a regular basis. I eat my vegetables, and always ignore my inner child and buy the bread that’s brown with the crunchy stuff in it instead of wonder bread. So when we went shopping yesterday, as Grant picked up his box of chocolate and peanut butter cereal, I dutifully walked over to the “grown-up” cereal section and picked up a granola-y looking concoction of “multigrain clusters”, because it told me it was a "healthy way to start my day".

So this morning, as I crunch on my “healthy” cereal, which, by the way, has a weird aftertaste, I start reading my cereal box. Unlike my husbands chocolate cereal, that had games on the back, mine only had an advertisement for energy bars. So for lack of anything better to do, I turn my box to the nutrition information. First thing I see is that my cereal has 13g of sugar. Not being any kind of dietician, I don’t know what that means, but it must be good, because it’s on healthy cereal, so I’m guessing that’s a low amount. Just for the sake of comparison, I grab my husbands cereal box. Sugar, 13g. Wait a second, that must be some kind of mistake (double check…..), nope, both cereals have the same amount of sugar. I keep reading, thinking somewhere my cereal will come out on top. Calories in mine:190. Calories in his: 130. Okay, it will get better, I’m sure, next on the list is Fat. Mine: 3g, His 3g. Hm. Neither of them have any cholesterol, his cereal has 23g of Carbohydrates, mine has 36g. His has more Vitamin A, Vitamin C, Calcium, Iron, Vitamin D, actually, it has more of every beneficial looking item on the list. The ONLY place my cereal seems to come out on top is Sodium. Mine: 95mg, his: 180mg.

By the time I had finished this comparison, my husband was feeling pretty smug, and I was feeling pretty sheepish. I guess I’m going to have to go back to eating cheerios every morning. Until then, I had something important to do. I walked to the sink, and watched with satisfaction as the disposal ground up those healthy little multi-grain clusters into oblivion, and poured myself a big bowl of chocolate peanut butter cereal. Boy was it good.