Six months

Well, I'm back. At least for today. My drive to write has been significantly diminished lately, and I'm working on reviving it. It's tricky, it used to be so intuitive for me to just sit and write . . . I write a lot less when I feel the weight of challenges on my shoulders. I wish that I used such times to pour out my soul onto a page, but I seem to be wired the other way. It's wiring I can change, and am working on, but rewiring human impulse does take time and effort. I thought back and forth about writing this post today. I felt like it would seem like I was trying to say "look at me, look at my story! Everybody should pay attention to me because of what I've been through!" It felt like I almost should ask my family's permission to write this post, too, in a way, because it's a situation that involved the whole family. My brain came up with so many reasons that I shouldn't write, but deep down, something quiet and steady inside of me persisted in telling me to write the story. It persisted in telling me that there is no competition, that in sharing my story I am not diminishing anyone else's experiences or trying to say that I am any better or worse than they are. Which, interestingly, is a concept that I normally feel that I have a very good grasp on. I've had six months' perspective on this story now, but at the same time, it continues to unfold. It's the kind of story that, in a way, happens all at once with a single stroke, but in a different way, will color and impact the lives of those touched, well, probably for the remained of their lives. Because six months ago today, my mother passed away. It was hardly a shock to anyone who knew her at all. She had been physically ravaged by multiple sclerosis, a disease that attacks the central nervous system, and slowly but surely wears down a person's ability to use first their fine motor skills, then eventually any motor skills, their ability to use each of their senses, especially touch and taste, but also vision. Emotions are heavily regulated by the nervous system, so they are affected as well, and ability to reason and remember starts to go. And fine motor skills includes the use of the tongue, so speech is slurred. My mother was seventeen years into her diagnosis of MS by the time of her passing, and her speech was often unintelligible to me, and even to those family members who lived with her and spoke with her on a regular basis. So when I got a phone call from my dad telling me that my mom had passed minutes before, I was not surprised. My brother Mark put it very well when he said that the news had been so expected for so long that it was unexpected when it actually came. She'd been clinging to the tattered remains of life for so long, continually slipping a little further down in her functionality, that it wasn't a surprise, but it was almost surreal. It was surreal to walk into my parents' house and see my mother sitting in the same green chair that she spent her days in any more. Her ability to move her limbs at all was so limited by the end that I kept expecting when I looked at her face to see her eyes open and watching me, proof that there was still some vitality in that frail, powerless body. But now her body was not still because of her disease. Now it was still because she was no longer inside of it. It's a curious situation in so many ways. Because really, my mother got her death sentence when I was twelve. That's when the years of disease began, and so many of the changes came on so slowly that I feel like I adjusted to them as they came, and it rarely occurred to me to contemplate how different my life would be if I had an active mother instead of filling in her role for her in many situations. In fact, the amount of mourning and grieving that I went through in the years before my mother's death far outweighs what I've experienced after her passing. There have been times in the last six months that I've felt a sudden sadness out of nowhere or cried at the thought of my mom, or had a sleepless night, but it feels like nothing compared to the moments I had in high school realizing that she wouldn't be able to walk on her own, in college realizing that I'd supplanted so many of her roles in taking care of the younger siblings, the yard, and some cooking, and the slow, bitter realization that as her ability to be emotionally healthy diminished, I no longer felt comfortable of safe confiding in her or sharing my hopes, dreams, and fears. That was when I really mourned the loss of my mother. So losing her physical body was actually, in many ways, a sense of closure. It was a release, knowing that her pain was over, her intense suffering done. I looked forward to working on my relationship with her now that she was no longer bound by the warped, twisted reality that existed in her head. And I realized something today. I felt her physically nearby several times shortly after her death, but I haven't been reaching out to her lately, and I haven't felt her. It's time to recommit and work on being close to my mom. Because the beautiful thing is that she's still my mom, we're just in different lands right now. And she'll be waiting for me.

On being a single LDS girl

I’ve been in a few situations lately that have reminded me that a lot of people my age, or older, who are single- and often LDS, although that’s not requisite- are very frustrated and rather jaded for being single. And while a lot of it can come from their own internal desires being frustrated, it seems like a lot of it is visceral reaction to the attitudes of others and their rather humorous attempts at conversing with said single people about their singleness. Honestly, I find it kind of off-putting. Conversations that focus on moaning and discussing with a kind of cynical superiority (because all those people who got married at 22 have no idea what they’re even talking about when they say “I know how you feel”) leave me squirming for an exit. Because I just don’t feel that way. I know that a huge chunk of that is due to my amazing family and fantastic friends. Maybe due in part to the fact that my own parents were 25 and (a day short of (27) when they got married, which in the 70’s was a later age than now, and both had master’s degrees and had both worked, I never felt any pressure from them. In fact, I feel like they are some of my biggest supporters. When I joined the Tabernacle Choir, I think my dad was almost more excited than I was, and he has always been enthusiastic about my interest in genetics. My siblings likewise are very good at being supportive and not feeling the need to push talk about relationship statuses. And for whatever reason, I get the same positiveness from all the other people in my life, too. So I guess when I hear a friend talk with frustration about their mom getting on their case for still being single at 28, I can’t relate, and I’m glad. So that’s a huge chunk, but the more I ponder over it, the more I realize that my own personal attitude and decisions are also a huge chunk of the fact that I am single and happy. It wouldn’t matter how supportive my parents were if I had made up my mind to be miserable or to just mark time until Mr. Right showed up. I remember actually a very pivotal moment in my decision to live my life to the fullest, regardless of when dating or marriage came up. It was a Monday evening, just over five years ago, and I had been napping in my room after a long day at school. My phone rang, and I was surprised to see my brother Tim’s name on my caller ID. Tim and I get along great, but he doesn’t call just to chat usually. This was no exception- he was calling to let me know that he was engaged. This didn’t come completely out of the blue, but I was still surprised- I didn’t realize that he was that close to proposing. I congratulated him and told him I’d come up to the parents’ house to congratulate him and Tina in person. Then I hung up the phone and stood in my room and felt my world shift. Tim is two years younger than me. I learned a lot about my perception of how things should be in those few minutes. Younger brothers aren’t supposed to get married before older sisters. That’s not how it works. My mental paradigm of a lot of things had to be rearranged. It was hard, but at the same time, I felt the beginnings of a sense of liberation. “All the rules just changed,” I thought. All the rules that I made up for myself in my head about what should happen when somehow got altered because of that brief phone call. And while I did struggle to be cheerful all the time during Tim’s engagement and on the wedding day, that sense of liberation continued. And I discovered that I could do all kinds of wonderful things, because the rules had changed. I went to Kenya and worked in an orphanage. I moved to Salt Lake and took up new hobbies and worked on old ones. I resumed voice lessons and auditioned for the Tabernacle Choir. I went back to Africa and discovered I could make my way from Rwanda to Uganda by bus. I went to China. And those are just the big, noticeable things. So many other things, too. During that time, two more of my younger siblings got married, too. Now I have five married siblings, and three of them are younger than me. Does it bother me? Well, yes, but only on days when something else is already eating at me, and maybe once every other month. Do I want to be married and have kids? Of course! But it’s not worth ruining my life over. When first Mark and then Laura got engaged, I decided that there wasn’t going to be an elephant in the room, and I had frank talks with both of them. I told them I was very happy for them, that I might have a few bad days when I was sad, and that it had nothing to do with them as people or my love for them. And I felt so much better after that! I am a daughter of God, and guess what. He has a different plan and a different path for every one of us. That’s the beauty of it! This may sound counterintuitive to the culture that we build in the LDS church sometimes, but I find so much happiness by focusing on me and what the Lord has give me, rather than focusing on all the married couples around me and what the Lord has given them.

Discovering the *Real* True Meaning of Christmas

Today I was going through some old files and happened across an essay I wrote while I was in grad school. I was visiting my favorite guys' apartment in the ward, where most of my best friends lived and where I had many amazing and involved conversations. On this particular night, I was talking to Josh when his roommate Brad came in, in the midst of some new insights about the atonement that he wanted to share and discuss. After some very good conversation, curfew came around so I went home and went to bed. However, it must have still been on Brad's mind, because he ended up writing an essay on his thoughts and sharing it with Josh and I. It was a very good and interesting essay, but I don't have his permission to post it, so I won't. However, he ended with this paragraph:

I haven’t figured out the mechanism behind the application of grace, nor how the Atonement supplies the “infinite grace” (Moroni 8:3) that was “made possible by his atoning sacrifice (Bible Dictionary). I’d also like to learn how to “tap into” this grace more. Please send me any insight into these three matters.

I was so intrigued by this line of thought that I wrote my own essay and sent it to him and Josh:

First, a quote from "The Broken Heart," Elder Bruce Hafen’s excellent commentary on the atonement, which I really give a very high recommendation. This is from the introduction, on page 7: "I once wondered if those who refuse to repent but who then satisfy the law of ustice by paying for their own sins are then worthy to enter the Celestial kingdom. The answer is no. The entrance requirements fro Celestial life are simply higher than merely satisfying the law of ustice. For that reason, paying for our own sins will not bear the same fruit as repenting of our sins. Justice is a law of balance and order and it must be satisfied, eiher through our payment or His. But if we decline the Savior's invitation to let Him carry our sins, and then satisfy justice by ourselves we will not yet have xperienced the complete rehabilitation that can occur through a combination of divine assistance and genuine repentance. Working together, those forces have the power permenantly to change our hearts and our lives, preparing us for Celestial life . . . the 'natural man' will remain an enemy to God forever- even after paying for his own sins- unless he also 'becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ and becometh as a child' (Mosiah 3:19)." I believe this is the general idea that you are getting at in your grace essay. So, the general question becomes then, how does the atonement give us that infinite grace that allows us to become like the Father, so that the atonement is a rehabilitative thing instead of just a restorative thing? To answer this question, I think we need to take a step back in time to the Garden of Eden. Before Adam and Eve partook of the fruit, there was no death in the world. They were both spiritually and physically intact. (2 Ne 2:22-23). They had physical bodies, but they were not truly separated from God the way we are today. But they were incapable of progressing. Without the fall, “all things which were created must have remained in the same state in which they were after they were created; and they must have remained forever, and had no end” (2 Ne 2:22). It was only after the fall that Adam and Eve had the necessary knowledge to know good from evil and to make conscious, informed decisions that would either bring them closer to God or farther away from Him. As we know, this agency is a critical part of the plan of salvation. No man can be saved in ignorance, it is only by consciously making good decisions and intentionally turning our hearts to God and allowing Him to change them for us that we can achieve Exaltation. However, it was also the fall that created the first real spiritual distance between God and His children on earth. For the first time, they really needed Him, His wisdom and guidance and love, but since God cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance, they were cut off from Him- they were spiritually dead. From this, I can see two important ways that the atonement provides grace for us. First, it provides us access to God. Because of the fall, or because of Adam’s transgression, we all undergo spiritual death with our physical birth. We are separated from God and He can no longer come to us and assist us because of the unclean state in which we live. Christ and the atonement are a critical part of our contact with the Father. We pray to Heavenly Father in the name of Jesus Christ because He is literally our contact between earth and heaven. Although I do not understand how, the atonement bridges he gap of spiritual death for all men who will merely come unto Christ and allow Him to open a window to heaven. Now comes the second point. The atonement overcomes spiritual death, and by so doing, allows us access to God’s goodness and blessings- or what we might call this grace. Grace, ennabling power, that which compensates for our imperfect attempts and sanctifies us. Another quote from Elder Hafen: “Consider the life and experience of the Savior himself, because His own development was marked by his receipt of the Father’s grace. His experience shows us also that being free from sin is not quite the same thing as attaining divine perfection. ‘Though he were a son, yet he learned obedience by the things which he suffered; and being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him’ (Hebrews 5:8-9)” Even the Savior Himself learned things and attained perfection through mortality and grace. Now, how does one access this grace, this power that allows us to take what we have, and through the Lord’s assistance, become so much more than we could on our own? Honestly, I think the answer to that is much more closely tied to the basic teachings of the church than most people realize. When we are asked to read our scriptures and pray and ponder on the solemnities of eternity, we are doing those things which bring us in line with the will of God. Another way of saying this is that we are coming to Christ. It is by grace we are saved after all we can do- and what we can do is come unto Christ. You may find, as I do, that the nearer I come to Christ, often the less satisfied I am with myself. In these instances, I take comfort from remembering Ether 12:27: “And if men will come unto me, I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto all men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me.” See the connection? As we come unto Christ, He shows us our weakness. He shows us things we could not see before and helps us correct them- through His grace. It is sufficient to perfect us, but only if we are humble. Any man who is absorbing the gospel through constant study and conversing with the Lord through frequent prayer should be on the right path. One other principle that I find to be quite applicable to accessing grace through the atonement- we must offer everything we have to the Lord if He is going to be able to do anything worthwhile with it. He asks for our hearts- our whole hearts, not just part. He asks us to love him with all our minds, not just half. Only when we can give our whole selves to Him can He really start to make a masterpiece. We must consecrate ourselves to Him, consecrate our actions and our desires and ourselves, so that “he will consecrate [our] performance[s] unto [us], that [our] performance[s] may be for the welfare of [our[ soul[s]” (2 Ne 32:9). For further edification, I strongly recommend reading “The Broken Heart.” I have a copy in my apartment if you want to borrow it (you’re welcome to it also, Josh). Also, for something a little shorter but also loaded with lots of insights on the atonement, Elder Hafen wrote a conference talk that covers many of the same basic ideas, “Beauty for Ashes.” It can be easily found on the church website. Thanks for giving me an excuse to write this out. It’s a lot longer than I anticipated, but it felt good.

I'm so glad I happened across this today. Isn't this what Christmas is really about? Celebrating the beginning of a life that would end with the greatest act in history? Merry Christmas to you all, and remember that the true spirit of Christmas is not about giving each other gift of merchandise, no matter how selflessly given. It's about changing our souls from the inside out and rejoicing in the atonement that makes all men free. This is the true gift of Christmas.

Today was amazing- we visited gorillas and the Rwandan Genocide Memorial in Kigali. I want to write my thoughts on the Memorial before I forget. [p] I've been reading Paul Rusesabagina's autobiography as well and I'm in the middle of reading about his experiences hiding over a thousand people in the Hotel Milles Collines in Kigali during the Interahamwe bloodbath. He had been in Brussels with his wife and two-year-old son on a vacation a mere week before the genocide's official and intense beginning when the president's plane was shot from the sky. Through a truly amazing set of events, Paul and his family stayed safely- although not comfortably- in the hotel with their refugees. [p] Paul notes several times how he wished he had stayed in Brussels a little longer, and not come back when the trouble started. I read that last night. Today as I walked from exhibit to exhibit, I thought about Paul and what he went through to save those lives, and his periodic regrets of having returned to Rwanda. And the other thought that kept popping through my head was from Music and the Spoken Word this past summer- "a ship in a harbor is safe, but that's not what a ship is made for." [p] Paul Rusesabagina and so many other brave people like him were ships on the ocean during the genocide. They risked their own lives to protect the lives of others. Paul wished that he was safely in Belgium- in his harbor, as it were, but it's hard not to believe that this particular ship's voyage was perhaps one that Paul was assigned before he came. [p] Like Paul, we all long for our safe harbor on some level. It's different for each of us, but each of us deserves to reflect on what that harbor is that's keeping us off the high seas- or perhaps a better approach is to identify the high seas when they arrive and sail into them without looking back at the harbor. [p] The other mail idea I took from the memorial was a theme I saw throughout the building. There were allusions to "how could we let this happen?" and "we must prevent this from ever happening again." And there was one very powerful plaque that related something like this: "The Nazis did not exterminate six thousand Jews and the Hutus did not kill a million Tutsis. They killed one, then another, then another, a million times." [p] As Paul writes in his book, there was no magical switch on April 6th, 1994 that caused the Hutus to suddenly hate and turn on their Tutsi neighbors and friends. It built up slowly, over years of propaganda and decades of racial division encouraged by foreign powers. It was done one toxic idea at a time, as people played on wrongs, real and imagined, , that the Tutsis had inflicted on them as the ruling class. [p] And then I pondered how those small grudges and divisions built and built until they created a genocide. [p] Last year, I had a powerful conversation with someone about a close friend of mine who I'd been having some trouble feeling close to. As we spoke, this man asked me what I had done to create the distance between us. I reflected and confessed that all I could think about were the thinks she had done to me. [p]I was gently reprimanded as the man stopped me and said, "no, no, that's not how you go about healing a relationship. Can you see that really the conflict between you and your friend is no different than the conflicts that we are at war over? They all start with a misunderstanding that goes deeper and deeper until a relationship si broken, or a war begins." [p] So, as I read the plaque that stated that until we truly learn from the past, "never again" will stay "again and again," I concluded that the way to prevent a genocide is at the very roots of a society. If we can set aside our pride for humility and allow love to swallow up our differences, if we can have the courage to be honest with each other and live the mantra that we are all on the same team- if my friend loses, I also lose in some way- then we need never fear another genocide. However, if all we are relying on are the band-aids of law enforcement, armies, and the UN, then who's to say it won't happen again? [p] So, for myself, I choose to take a stand against genocide and other atrocities by living my principle. I chose to take a stand by eliminating prejudice from my life, and living so there are no strangers in my life. I choose to love, and to feed that love so there is no room for hate. If I do this, if we do this, how many lives can we change? [p] perhaps you'd like to reflect on yourself and make your own personal resolution to stand with me.

'Twas the night before Thanksgiving . . .

And all through the house, the nephews kept stirring around like a mouse. The sisters were cooking in the kitchen with care, in hopes that good dishes soon would be there. And I on my sofa was trying to sleep but near me were young boys who kept making peeps. There's an interesting trend the last couple of years when I spend the night at the family house if my nephews are there. They magically gravitate to wherever I'm sleeping at night. And since I long since lost the privilege of having a dedicated room to stay in (which is very appropriate), often that means that there are three of us piled on couches and on the floor. We've had some adventures, including the time that I was planning on staying in the room with two twin beds and both T and K wanted to join me. I gave them a little explanation about how there were only two beds but three people, so one of them would be sleeping on the floor, when K piped in, "that's okay, you can share my bed." So I ended up sharing the bed with a five-year-old. Tonight we are downstairs, with T and I sleeping on the leather sofas and K sleeping on the floor in a little low fort that he made himself, mostly consisting of blankets draped over upside-down banana chairs. It completely reminds me of something I would have done at his age. He spent a long time adjusting it, until it was time to pull out the stern aunt voice and tell him that it was sleeping time. Then he ran upstairs for a drink of water and I'm almost positive he snuck a fresh Thanksgiving roll from the rack while he as up there, because I can hear him quietly smacking on something under the blankets and chairs. At this point I'm not sure it's worth it to fight that battle, though. Time to go to sleep so I can be awake for the family Turkey Trot tomorrow morning. And have a good Thanksgiving before heading off to Rwanda on Friday. Hooray! Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

A stroll down memory lane

Smeels of Kenya walking past houses, when I first moved here tree with lamplight and Nauvoo secret pathway and orchard and secret places maple leaves and botany class It snowed today. First, it was gusty and drizzly. I was at work this morning and when I left at lunchtime, the wind blew the door right out of my grasp and would have kept it blown open if I hadn't forcibly closed it. Then as I ran some errands, the weather got wilder and wilder until it seemed to kind of snap into a sudden calm as the rain turned to a quiet drifting of snow. It was beautiful and peaceful to observe from the snugness of a blanket. Then a moment hit when I decided I'd been inside long enough, so I put on my bright green coat (not only is it cheerful, but it's a very nice pedestrian coat when it's dark- very noticeable) and hiked up into the foothill neighborhoods. And I do mean hike. It's a bit of an adventure just getting up as high in the hills as my own house when the snows come, but things get progressively steeper from my house up, and I have no clue how those people get their cars home in the winter. But it's great for a stroll with some beautiful architecture to observe, and on the way back, beautiful vistas of the city. This stroll also seemed to be triggering all kinds of random memories for me. As I first began walking, I realized I was on my old street, where I lived when I first moved to Salt Lake, and I suddenly recalled the walks that I took in those first days and week, especially before my job began. I had forgotten just how isolated and lonely I felt, coming from the camaraderie of a tight-knit BYU ward with friends I'd known for years- and now I knew Melanie, and I was meeting people in my new ward, but I didn't have a network. And I went on walks and I looked at houses and I felt a deep, aching hunger to be inside them, where warmth and friendship and love exist. It was that very driving emptiness in my life that propelled me to get Melanie to go meet our neighbors in our apartment complex, even in the midst of the onset of depression. The desire for human contact was stronger. And it was during that quest that we met our wonderful neighbors Daniel and Dallin, who became a critical part of my support network and who are really responsible for the base of friends I developed in the singles' ward (they also convinced me to attend their singles' ward, the student ward, rather than the stake ward I had been attending. That also made a massive difference in my life). So tonight, as I walked past the houses, and thought of everything I've built in the last three years in terms of friendships and relationships and deep human connections, I felt a huge amount of gratitude. Belonging is a critical feeling. I kept on walking, and I found a row of maple trees with most of their leaves still on. They were delicately iced with a thin layer of snow, and a streetlamp was shining through one of them in a slightly surreal way, the light from the lamp dancing off the edges of the snow. This time I was taken back by my memory almost nine years ago. I hadn't realized it was that long ago, but the memory was of Nauvoo. I lived there from January to May, taking classes at the BYU-Nauvoo center, which has since been torn down. I loved that building and I love that city. I loved putting on multiple layers of clothing to go out and brave the zero-degree weather, but even more I loved when the seasons began to turn and the river ice broke up (I watched this transition eagerly through my bedroom window, which afforded a great view of the Mississippi), and when the spring bulbs began to push their way up and I didn't require my trench coat when I went on walks, I just about went crazy from spring fever. I walked all over that city, exploring historical sites and back woods, and groves of trees. Then the magnolias started to bloom, and they were all over the place, covered in delicate pink and white blossoms that smelled, oh, so divine. One night in particular, Danielle and I went for a moonlit walk. We set out to watch the sun set over the river at our special place, past the Sarah Granger Kimball home to a grassy little bend in the river. Then on the way back, with the moon shining down, we stopped to glory in the magnolias- their scent, their beauty. The moon was full and shone down through the petals, a scene that Monet would have loved. It was quite a bit different than looking at lamplight through snow-frosted maple leaves, but the memory came back so sharply, and made me smile again. Nauvoo was a period of huge blessings and the formation of deep friendships was instigated there. Danielle is still one of my best friends. I curved around the peak of the road and began descending in the rambling, roundabout way that those streets do. I passed another maple tree, but this one made me pause for a different reason. It was a silver maple, a beautifully delicate tree with silver bark and very intricately designed leaves. This time, I was reminded of a class I took at BYU- one of my very favorite undergraduate courses. Not surprisingly, it was called field botany. The gist of things was that we would follow our professor around campus until he found a tree or shrub we hadn't learned yet, and as we gathered round, he would give us the necessary information to identify it. We learned the silver maple, Acer saccharinum, towards the end of the class, and the beautiful leaves were changing colors and falling. I gathered up a handful of them and stuck them in my binder. Later on, when I found them, they'd essentially been pressed, and I tied them to pieces of string and hung them from our living-room ceiling. Botany nerds do things like that. But tonight, as I saw the silver maple leaves, in a kind of tribute to Professor Furniss and everything I learned in that class, I collected some and carried my little bouquet home. Rounding back down my street to go home, I caught a whiff of something indescribable that smelled like . . . something. I actually have no clue what it smelled like, but I can tell you that whatever it was conjured up very clear memories of Kenya. For a moment, I was back in Gathiga village, walking down the bumpy, uneven red clay roads with random trash piles being incinerated at various lengths. I was laying in my bed, being awoken by a combination of the rising sun, the chickens and pigs outside, and the neighbors who every morning, without fail, played beautiful, happy ukulele music that kind of became my soundtrack for the trip. I wonder what it will be like to go back. Will any of the kids even remember me? So many volunteers come and go. I'm sure the older girls will. I'm hoping that I can get another Kenyan pedicure sitting on the ground while the little kids crowd around. And it will be so different to be there without crazy Kate, my wonderful, spontaneous British roommate, or Cynthia, my anchor who guided me around Nairobi, or even Dominic, the fascinating and very offbeat volunteer who arrived the week before I left. And of course James won't be there. But Grace will, and I am so anxious to get to spend time with her, one of the most amazingly strong women I've ever met. I ended my walk home with a spring in my step- so many good times have been had, and so many good times are in store. And best of all, right this moment, things are good and peaceful. What a lovely little walk down memory lane.

Music Therapy

It's been a great week. Good progress on sewing projects, an evening run to the hot tub generously shared to us by the Boys on Laurelhurst (we are the Girls on Blaine, it works quite nicely). I have almost all the necessary components for my Halloween costume, which will be fun. A very busy, full few days at work.
The only part of this week that hasn't been as good was an unexpected, painful conversation with a friend last night that left me in a state of, shall we say, emotional delicacy. This is not the place to go into details, but it was a conversation that left me with a hole in my gut all day.
But I knew that I had something waiting for me at the end of the day- choir practice. A choir loft full of almost four hundred good, fun, loving people singing together. I found myself praying that I would find songs in my folder that could give me a happiness boost. As I flipped through the sheet music, I was a little disappointed that none of them stood out to me as old comfort favorites, but still to get to sing was good enough.

Then we started actually singing. Somewhere in the mix, we sang "Consider the Lilies," an old favorite of mine. I sang it at my college graduation for my bachelor's degree. Something about the last verse started working on my tear ducts

Consider the sweet, tender children who must suffer on this earth
The pains of all of them He carried from the day of His birth
He clothes the lilies of the field
He feeds the lambs of His fold
And He will heal those who trust Him and make their hearts as gold

It especially resonated because on Monday, as I was driving to work and having a little chat with God on the way, I happened to pose the question to Him, "why on earth do you put up with my crazy antics?" And the response came in a startling flash- an image from the previous evening, Sunday, when I had been playing with my great little buddy H-man, my 20-month-old nephew. He's got some antics, I tell you what. But I love him so much, and I think he's adorable.

As this came up in my mind, I started laughing out loud. "Heavenly Father, really? You think I'm adorable?" and I felt the answer come right back, "Yes. I do. You're my little girl and I love you."

So here I am, trying to be a sophisticated adult living on my own, having a career, and traveling the world, and my Father is telling me that I still am, and will always be, His little girl.

Consider the sweet, tender children who must suffer on this earth

All of this popped through my head while I sang tonight.

Then, we proceeded to sing "I Believe in Christ." I must admit, it's a stirring anthem, but it's never been one of my absolute favorite hymns, probably mostly because I don't like the flow of the melody. Regardless, tonight, since I was already leaking at the eyes, that song struck me more forcefully than usual. Once again, it was a certain segment of the last verse that really woke up my spiritual senses:

I believe in Christ, He stands supreme
From Him I'll gain my fondest dream
And while I strive through grief and pain
His voice is heard, ye shall obtain

And yes, I'm definitely feeling some grief and pain right now, and that made me tear up, but more powerful than my own emotions in this case, I had a memory pop up that I hadn't thought of for a long time. I remember, as a teenager, sitting on the church pew with my family and singing "I Believe in Christ" during sacrament meeting. I was sitting near my mom, who was probably about three or four years into her multiple sclerosis diagnosis, and definitely in a lot of pain- beyond my comprehension, and that was well over a decade ago. In any case, as we sang the last verse, she visibly began to weep. It touched me. She didn't outright complain much about her condition, so I guess back then it was relatively easy to forget how hard the disease had made her life. But she did, and does, believe in Christ, and is truly committed to the ideal of standing with Him at the last day.

I don't know why I thought of that tonight, except the theme of the evening seemed to be the tenderness of Christ's beckoning to us, first with Consider the Lilies and now through I Believe in Christ. By this point, I had salt streaks down my cheeks and the front of my dress was soaked. But you know what? I felt so good inside. Not happy, exactly, but peaceful with a deep kind of peace- I might even call it the peace that passeth understanding.

It turned out that there were a few other tender mercies in the form of songs, too, and by the time I left, although I was tired and ragged, I felt so good inside. I'll just leave you with the lyrics to the song that touched me the most. I wish I could play a recording of it on my blog, because the arrangement is breathtaking as well, but you'll just get the words tonight:

Praise, my soul, the King of heaven,
to the throne thy tribute bring;
ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven,
evermore God's praises sing.
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Praise the everlasting King.

Praise the Lord for grace and favor
to all people in distress;
praise God, still the same as ever,
slow to chide, and swift to bless.
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Glorious now God's faithfulness.

Fatherlike, God tends and spares us;
well our feeble frame God knows;
motherlike, God gently bears us,
rescues us from all our foes.
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Widely yet God's mercy flows.

Angels in the heights, adoring,
you behold God face to face;
saints triumphant, now adoring,
gathered in from every race.
Alleluia! Alleluia!
Praise with us the God of grace.