Tuesday, December 26, 2006

*HOMESICK*


Sometimes I feel this emptiness, this hole in the heart kind of feeling. It has nothing to do with rain or storm, a broken heart, loneliness, unfulfilled wishes or dreams, or just a bad day. It's just deeper than those things....something that took me awhile to put my finger on. But then in a moment of clarity, I knew. I was homesick. That moment of clarity came when I was lying on my back, in my comfortable bed, with my cloud colored sheets, in my warm house, staring up at my favorite glow in the dark moon. I WAS home. But not really. I was missing another home... my real home. My heavenly home. Actually I think this understanding has come at several different times in my life, and I knew what it was, but I had forgotten.

I'm grateful, that as a Latter day saint, I have a knowledge of a pre-earth life. An understanding that I lived with Heavenly parents and the Savior, and I walked in their sight. I was taught under their watchful eyes, and loved by them in a way that can't truly be understood in this life. It was a place of great peace. A place I loved more than anything, and oh how I miss it.

I like these lyrics, "I should just kick my heels together and go home, but I'm not sure where that is anymore." I think a lot of people feel that way. Not because they are moving around from place to place, or they are away from the home they grew up in...or perhaps nothing has ever felt like home to them. But like me, they feel something deeper. They are homesick for their REAL home. (they just don't know it)

Today is just one of those days for me. I miss it. I would love to "kick my heels together and go home".

Just for a visit. :)

Thursday, December 14, 2006

*FREE HUGS*



The day before Thanksgiving, my mother went to pick up several dozen rolls that she had pre-ordered. She had a handfull to carry out to her car and was assited by one of the workers, a young lady. My mom soon realized that she would need to move around some bags she had in the trunk. It took her a minute and she glanced over and told the girl that she could just set them down. My mom soon noticed a far away look in this girls eyes. My mother stopped what she was doing and held her arms out. Without hesitation, this sweet girl walked into my mothers arms and my mom embraced her. The girl quietly cried in her arms. My mom said to her, "You must be so worn down". The girl nodded and explained that she was indeed overwhelmed and tired. After hugging her for several minutes, this girl said "Thank you" and began to walk back into her work. But she soon turned around and said to my mother, "I will never forget you".
I loved hearing of this experience. I loved my mother for being intune with the spirit and offering the love and compassion of the Savior. This happens to be my mothers gift. She doesn't just have four kids, she has hundreds.

The simplicity of a hug. The depths of a hug. I know forsure that we all need them. I also know that it's not always easy to give them. Perhaps we have fear...or maybe we are just to busy thinking of other things.

My friend, Val, sent me this video yesterday. I was touched to say the least. *Big Tears* (not shocking ;) What a good man. What a pure heart. What courage. I wouldn't doubt that he touched many lives. And I would bet that he lifted a burden, brightened a day, and maybe even changed a life. "The door of history turns on small hinges".
Enjoy watching this.



(This photo is of my best friend Dave giving his father a hug :)

Monday, December 11, 2006

*LUCKY MONEY*


You know those times when you happen to reach inside your pant pocket...or a jacket pocket...and you find a dollar bill? And your like "Saaweeeeet!!". And if it happens to be a bit bigger bill your even more happy.Well...today I heard my cat playing with something on the floor. He always plays with something. Usually one of his toys, fake mouse, or something else. I don't usually notice. But today I noticed the sound was a little different. I looked down to see he was swapping around a folded hundred dollar bill! I grabbed it from under his paw and thought...Ahhh yeah! Today is my lucky day! Who randomly finds a hundred dollar bill?!! But of course my concience always gets the best of me and I wonder where it came from and if someone was missing it. And with that moment of integrity and honesty...I tossed it in my own purse! hahahha
Awhile later I heard my mom walk in. I was in the other room. I sat and thought....grrr....okay fine! "Hey mom...uh...are you missing any money?" ....she replys, "Actually I am"....pause....."Uh how much are you missing?".....reply, "100 dollars"..........(dang!).... " Well...I found it" She was glad. Apparently it had fallen out of her pocket. (Why in the world she was carrying a 100 bucks in her pocket is beyond me!)
So I took it out of my purse and gave it to her. Apparently it wasn't my lucky day. *blank stare*
The moral of the story is this, If you find a dollar in your pocket or a hundred dollars under your cats paw....ask no questions and RUN WITH IT!!!
Bahahhaha Just kidding. ;)
During this MAGICAL holiday season *rolling my eyes* I wish you all the experience of finding lucky money! (and getting to KEEP it!):)

Sunday, December 10, 2006

*IF I PERISH, I PERISH*


(I have no idea who wrote this...it was sent to me in an email...with no Author. But I do know that it was a talk from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.)

"I’d like you to list all of the symbols of fire you can think of:

TG—Fire See also Earth, Cleansing of; Flame; God, Presence of; God, Spirit of; Hell; Holy Ghost, Baptism of; Transfiguration; World, End of;

I think it is ironic that fire not only represents the presence of God, but also hell. Perhaps for some it is the same thing. My mom got an idea that I thought was interesting. She said that she thinks that hell is actually cold, referring to the scriptural phrase, in Matthew, which says “the love of many shall wax cold.” She said that God lives in “Eternal Burnings” and it would actually be hell to live in His presence if you were not worthy. She thought that the final state referred to as “hell” might really be a more comfortable place for those who wish to make it their home.

As a young boy, Daniel was carried captive from Jerusalem to Babylon. He and other promising Hebrew youths—including his friends Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego—were trained in the court of King Nebuchadnezzar. They exercised great courage in refusing to worship the false Gods of the Babylonians. Not only did they refuse to eat the kings’ meat, which was part of the Babylonian ritualistic worship, but they also refused to bow to the idol built by the king.

• King Nebuchadnezzar built a 90 foot tall golden statue in the form of a man and decreed that anyone who would not worship his idol would be cast into a fiery furnace. How did Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego respond to the decree? (See Daniel 3:12.) What did Nebuchadnezzar do when he found out that they would not worship his idol? (Daniel 3:19–20.)

• What did Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego say when the king threatened to throw them in the furnace? (See Daniel 3:16–18.)

What is it about their response that is so inspiring?

They were willing to obey the Lord whether He protected them or not. What was the outcome of their story? Does obedience always result in miracles and freedom from harm? What examples can you think of where it did not?

Sometimes obedience yields great suffering. The people of the Lord have been persecuted for centuries. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were Jewish. And I’d like to introduce you to a story of another Jew. His name was Elie Weisel and he lived through the holocaust. He recorded his heart wrenching experience at Auswich in a book called Night. A Christian man by the name of Francois Mauriac wrote the foreword for his book. I’d like to quote a portion of it:

“The child who tells us his story here was one of God’s chosen. From the time he began to think, he lived only for God, studying the Talmud, eager to be initiated into the Kabbalah, wholly dedicated to the Almighty. Have we ever considered the consequence of a less visible, less striking abomination, yet the worst of all, for those of us who have faith; the death of God in the soul of a child who suddenly faces absolute evil?
Let us try to imagine what goes on in his mind as his eyes watch rings of black smoke unfurl in the sky, smoke that emanates from the furnaces into which his little sister and his mother had been thrown after thousands of other victims:

[Quoting a poem written by Elie Weisel he writes]

Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed.
Never shall I forget that smoke.
Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky.
Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever.
Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live.
Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.
Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to olive as long as God himself.
Never.

It was then that I understood what had first appealed to me about this young Jew: the gaze of a Lazerus risen from the dead yet still held captive in the somber regions into which he had strayed, stumbling over desecrated corpses. For him, Neitzche’s cry articulated an almost physical reality: God is dead, the God of love, of gentlenss and consolation, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had, under the watchful gaze of this child, vanished forever into the smoke of the human holocaust demanded by the Race, the most voracious of all idols.
And how many devout Jews endured such a death? On that most horrible day, even among all those other bad days, when the child witnessed the hanging (yes!) of another child who, he tells us, had the face of a sad angel, he heard someone behind him groan:

“For God’s sake, where is God?”
And from within me, I heard a voice answer:
“Where He is? This is where—hanging from this gallows.”

On the last day of the Jewish year, the child is present at the solemn ceremony of Rosh Hashanah. He hears thousands of slaves cry out in unison, “Blessed be the Almighty!” Not so long ago, he too would have knelt down, and with such worship, such awe, such love! But this day, he does not kneel, he stands. The human creature, humiliated and offended in ways that are inconceivable to the mind or the heart, defies the blind and deaf divinity…

And I, who believe that God is love, what answer was there to give my young interlocutor whose dark eyes still held the reflection of the angelic sadness that had appeared one day on the face of a hanged child? What did I say to him? Did I speak to him of that other Jew, this crucified brother who perhaps resembled him and whose cross conquered the world? Did I explain to him that what had been a stumbling block for his faith had become a cornerstone for mine? And that the connection between the cross and human suffering remains, in my view, the key to the unfathomable mystery in which the faith of his childhood was lost? And yet, Zion has risen up again out of the crematoria and the slaughterhouses. The Jewish nation has been resurrected from among its thousands of dead. It is they who have given it new life. We do not know the worth of one single drop of blood, one single tear. All is grace. If the Almighty is the Almighty, the last word for each of us belongs to him. That is what I should have said to the Jewish child. But all I could do was embrace him and weep.

Why doesn’t obedience guarantee our freedom from harm?

Man must exercise his agency and be judged by his choices.

Alma 14

8 And they brought their wives and children together, and whosoever believed or had been taught to believe in the word of God they caused that they should be acast into the fire; and they also brought forth their records which contained the holy scriptures, and cast them into the fire also, that they might be burned and destroyed by fire.
9 And it came to pass that they took Alma and Amulek, and carried them forth to the place of martyrdom, that they might witness the destruction of those who were consumed by fire.
10 And when Amulek saw the pains of the women and children who were consuming in the fire, he also was pained; and he said unto Alma: How can we witness this awful scene? Therefore let us stretch forth our hands, and exercise the power of God which is in us, and save them from the flames.
11 But Alma said unto him: The Spirit constraineth me that I must not stretch forth mine hand; for behold the Lord receiveth them up unto himself, in glory; and he doth suffer that they may do this thing, or that the people may do this thing unto them, according to the hardness of their hearts, that the judgments which he shall exercise upon them in his wrath may be just; and the blood of the innocent shall stand as a witness against them, yea, and cry mightily against them at the last day.
12 Now Amulek said unto Alma: Behold, perhaps they will burn us also.
13 And Alma said: Be it according to the will of the Lord. But, behold, our work is not finished; therefore they burn us not.


We are shaped by our afflictions—How has suffering become a blessing in your life?


To test our faith, or our trust in God

As a young man, I returned home from an eighth-grade basketball tournament dejected, disappointed, and confused. I blurted out to my mother, “I don’t know why we lost—I had faith we’d win!”

I now realize that I did not then know what faith is.

Faith is not bravado, not just a wish, not just a hope. True faith is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ—confidence and trust in Jesus Christ that leads a person to follow Him. 1

Centuries ago, Daniel and his young associates were suddenly thrust from security into the world—a world foreign and intimidating. When Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego refused to bow down and worship a golden image set up by the king, a furious Nebuchadnezzar told them that if they would not worship as commanded, they would immediately be cast into a burning fiery furnace. “And who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands?” 2

The three young men quickly and confidently responded, “If it be so [if you cast us into the furnace], our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand.” That sounds like my eighth-grade kind of faith. But then they demonstrated that they fully understood what faith is. They continued, “But if not, … we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.” 3 That is a statement of true faith.

They knew that they could trust God—even if things didn’t turn out the way they hoped…

The world is a testing place for mortal men and women. When we understand that it’s all a test, administered by our Heavenly Father, who wants us to trust in Him and to allow Him to help us, we can then see everything more clearly…


Men accomplish marvelous things by trusting in the Lord and keeping His commandments—by exercising faith even when they don’t know how the Lord is shaping them…

[There are many scriptural accounts of miracles wrought by faith, but]

“others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, … bonds and imprisonment:

“They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about … being destitute, afflicted, tormented; … 17

“God having provided some better things for them through their sufferings, for without sufferings they could not be made perfect.” 18

Our scriptures and our history are replete with accounts of God’s great men and women who believed that He would deliver them, but if not, they demonstrated that they would trust and be true.

He has the power, but it’s our test…

We must have the same faith as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego.

Our God will deliver us from ridicule and persecution, but if not. … Our God will deliver us from sickness and disease, but if not … He will deliver us from loneliness, depression, or fear, but if not. … Our God will deliver us from threats, accusations, and insecurity, but if not. … He will deliver us from death or impairment of loved ones, but if not, … we will trust in the Lord.

Our God will see that we receive justice and fairness, but if not. … He will make sure that we are loved and recognized, but if not. … We will receive a perfect companion and righteous and obedient children, but if not, … we will have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, knowing that if we do all we can do, we will, in His time and in His way, be delivered and receive all that He has.”

May we each have the courage to faithfully endure our fires; for it is through them that we are prepared to enter and embrace the eternal burnings of heaven."

Friday, December 08, 2006

*NO MAN IS A FAILURE WHO HAS FRIENDS*



That is the ending line out of one of the great classics, "It's a wonderful life". "No man is a failure who has friends." How truth those words ring forth to me. My desire and strength to survive the past few years has been little. Infact....that desire mostly slipped through my hands as I lay bound to whatever fate was to come upon me. But one by one....a friend would carry me....they would hold my hand....they would lay by me....they would cry with me...they would offer inspiration or encouragement....they would send me a blue butterfly :)....they would pray for me...they would "bare me up even as upon Eagles wings".
If I were to tell you the thing I am most proud of in my life, it is that I have the greatest blessing of having precious friends. But not just friends....friends who walk with these words engraven in their hearts; "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another."
For those who are thinking, "I have no friends or I have very little"....I would say that you are mistaken. If I had power somehow to rent the veil, I promise you that your very own host of friends and loved ones would be standing in reverance as they beheld you. Friends who have loved you long before....who walk with you even now...who watch over you...who know you in ways that only heavenly friends could. I would remind you of the movie "It's a wonderful life" About a man who get's a rare glimpse into what his life would have been like without him, how he changed lives, saved lives, and how many people loved him and needed him.
Our eyes are not always open to those around us who really are our friends. Sometimes our own eyes deceive us. Sometimes we need to pray that our eyes will be open to see with eternal perspective.

I have a saying above my "wall of fame" that says "I get by with a little help from my friends" :) And I do. I really do. :)
If I could leave any legacy upon this earth...it would be that I was a friend to every man or woman who crossed my path. And that the friends I have...would never ever doubt my friendship.
"NO MAN IS A FAILURE WHO HAS FRIENDS"

Friday, December 01, 2006

*THE LAST LEAF*


I have no leaves left on my trees. None. But on my doorstep there was this one beautiful leaf. It made me smile.

*LIFE ISN'T*

"And the world thought she had it all"

Life isn't about keeping score. It's not about how many people call you and it's not about who you've dated, or who your dating. It isn't about your shoes, or your hair, or the color of your skin. It's not about money or clothes. It's not about where you work or the size of your house. Life isn't about how accepted or unaccepted you are. Life just isn't about that.

But...life is about who you love and apologizing to those you've hurt. It's about forgiving. It's about how you feel about yourself. It's about trust, happiness, and compassion. It's about sticking up for the underdog. It's about not judging a book by it's cover. It's about replacing jealousy, overcoming ignorance and indifference, and building confidence. It's about what you say and what you mean. It's about seeing people for who they are and not for what they have. Most of all it's about choosing to use your life to touch someone elses in a way that could never have been achieved otherwise. This is what life is all about.

-Author Unknown