This Mormon Morsel was posted on November 27, 2011. This same story was mentioned in a Relief Society lesson this past week and I thought it would be appropriate to share again. I love the message here!
I was looking up information on http://www.lds.org/ for my upcoming lesson in Young Women and I saw this video for youth called “The Lost Purse.” Oh my goodness. It really makes you think about what your “stuff” says about who you are. Take a look at this video. I, for one, am going to check my “purse” and see what I am putting out there about who I am.
These little “MormonAds” would come out in every issue of The New Era, the LDS magazine for youth and as a teen, looking for the new ad each month was a ritual for me as I leafed through each shiny, new issue.
This particular ad was my favorite. For a couple of reasons.
One, I absolutely love daisies! And to see a daisy in comparison with all those roses….yeah, I got that, because I’d rather get a bouquet of daisies than roses. (Not that I don’t also love roses!)
But the main reason I loved it is because I never really “fit in” and needed reassurance that it was okay that I didn’t. I don’t know that I always internalized the message from this ad as well as I should’ve (and still don’t). I still spent countless hours wishing I was something I wasn’t (and still do).
But I have always remembered the image of the daisy among the roses.
And I thought of this ad recently when I watched a documentary about body acceptance. The film addressed the pressure that women are under to look a certain way in order to be acceptable. Basically, to all be roses. But not just any roses. We must all have perfect petals with no flaws. Our stems must all be long and straight. Leaves in just the right places. If not, then we just don’t belong in the bouquet!
It was very eye-opening to see just how much we have let the media influence who we should be and that we have reduced the definition of ourselves to the appearance of our outer shells.
How sad that must make our Father in Heaven!
Here we are. A diverse garden of unique and beautiful flowers. And all we want to do is look like one kind of flower. What a boring garden that would be!
How much more beautiful for each flower to be the best flower it can be, “flaws” and all. To bloom where we are planted. To face the sun, grow up strong, and be proud of who we are.
Supermodels?
Beauty Queens?
No.
Daughters of our Heavenly Father.
That alone makes us exquisite. That alone makes us beautiful.
And we enhance our beauty with the lives we lead. By being kind. By loving fully. By serving others.
That kind of beauty is the highest form of beauty.
And while I’m not gonna stop wearing makeup, I am going to try to look for and embrace my own kind of beautiful. I am going to try harder to love this imperfect body that has grown and birthed five amazing humans. And I am going to work on believing in the beauty that is already there, deep down in side.
It’s time to embrace being a unique part of a beautiful, diverse garden of womanhood.
Have you ever seen that movie, The Paper? I saw it once on TV. It was edited, obviously. It’s a rated R movie so I wanted to make that clear from the get-go.
Anyway, there is a scene in this movie that I will never forget because it made an impression on me.
The main character (played by Michael Keaton) is working on a huge story for his newspaper, The Sun. I mean, this story is ginormous if he can get it verified and to press before the paper “goes to bed”. He’s supposed to be meeting his very pregnant wife (played by Marissa Tomei) and her parents for dinner. But he’s late. Again.
He calls her to explain why he’s late. She’s heard these excuses way too many times and is fed up. She feels that he cares more for the paper than he does for anything else.
During this phone call, she surprises him with this:
Wife: You know that. – Let me give you a hypothetical.
Husband (annoyed): Really?
Wife: A guy breaks into the apartment. – Breaks into the apartment. He’s got a gun, holds it to my head. He says, “I blow your wife’s brains out or I blow up the “Sun” building.” Choose. Now. What do you say?
Husband: What do you think I say? It’s ridiculous. It’s not gonna happen.
Wife: That is exactly my point. It is never one big dramatic choice. It is little, vague situations every day…and you’re either there or you’re not. If you keep waiting for the guy with the gun to show up, it will be too late.
That stuck with me. Because our lives our mostly about all the little decisions that we make every day. Those are what really define us, right? I mean, sure, there are big decisions like marriage. But we don’t have ginormous, dramatic decisions to make every day. Our days are crammed with little decisions.
Which, when you think about it, makes each of those decisions a lot more meaningful. (And obviously, I’m not talking about decisions such as “should I have Frosted Flakes or Cheerios?”) The mundane (or what we think of as mundane) acts of service each day, such as making a meal for your family or smiling at the cashier. Decisions on what kind of media we decide to watch or not watch. The thoughts that we allow to take hold in our minds. Whether we will read the scriptures. All these “little, vague situations every day” give us ample opportunities to show what we’re made of.
And we’re either there or we’re not, to paraphrase Marissa Tomei’s character.
from lds.org
All these decisions, like the ones mentioned in Elder Bednar’s quote above, are little brushstrokes “on the canvas of our souls”. Up close each brushstroke may not seem important, valuable, or beautiful. But stand back and these decisions and actions are part of a beautiful picture that we paint.
Every day.
With every decision.
Let us paint something beautiful with each brushstroke.
It hit me the moment I sat down, all in a huff. I’m a hypocrite.
This morning I slept in because of the late BYU game last night (No, I don’t want to talk about the game!) and started thinking about what to feed the missionaries coming over for dinner following afternoon church today. I picked a couple of recipes out–one to make after church and one before–and began working on the dessert recipe.
I could just get it all done in time. IF I hurried!
In between my rushing around with ingredients I barked out an order for my 7-year-0ld to get in the bathtub. And he immediately rushed in, got in the tub, and scrubbed up obediently.
NOT.
No, he dawdled. He whined. He stalled.
He was ruining my no-room-for-error plan!
And then I remembered….oh my gosh, I haven’t prepared a Morsel post for today! Dangit!
So I rushed in to the computer trying to remember the topic I had thought of during the week. What was it…..
Nothing. Nothing came to mind. My topic was gone!
Okay, what can I post about? What have I been thinking about this week? Lemme check lds.org real quick. Anything there? Hmmm. Pinterest graphic quotes? Maybe.
And then…
“Mom?”
“What?”
“Mom!!”
“What???”
“MOM?”
“WHAAAAAAT??!?!?!?”
“MOOOOOOOOOOM!!!”
And the anger fueled me as I sprang from my chair and stomped into the bathroom where my little 7-year-old squatted in the bathtub.
“Um…I….um….I’m gonna…um…wait until the water is….um….cooler before I scrub up, okay?”
<insert ridiculous Mom lecture here on various points including, but not limited to: listening, hurrying up, making Mom late, what we don’t have time for, etc.>
Then I huffed and stomped back to my chair and sat down, as stated previously, in a huff.
Now, back to my SPIRITUAL THOUGHT POST.
Yeah. I’m a hypocrite.
Here I was trying to impart some kind of profound/spiritual/inspirational/motivational/thought-provoking message to our readers, and what was I doing?
Being a jerk.
<sigh>
Sometimes “material” presents itself.
In my Sunday morning rush (and shouldn’t I NOT be rushing around on the Sabbath?) I had allowed my self-induced stress to creep into my reactions to my son.
Was it his fault that I didn’t get up in time to calmly make a dessert for dinner? Was it his fault that I had gotten him into the bathtub during the crucial final hour before leaving for church? Was it his fault that I was too busy worrying about a blog post to “bother” with helping him at bathtime?
Of course, the answer is….no.
So, here I sit. Waiting for my probably-failed new recipe to come out of the oven. I’m late for church because it took longer than I thought to bake. And it stresses me out a little (I hate being late!).
But I feel pretty good.
Because I have a 7-year-old who quickly and lovingly obliges his mom when she asks him to forgive her for losing her temper.
I remember the first time I saw that quote. Somebody–can’t remember who–posted it on Facebook. But what I do remember, is how it cut me right to the core.
Why? Well, I’m sure you can guess.
I’ve been much TOO busy lately.
Summer was chaotic, or at least it felt that way. It seemed as though I was constantly putting out fires or spinning plates or whatever analogy works here. I kept thinking, “Okay, but after ______ is all done, I’ll be able to relax and work on some fun projects, organize my time, and get my life in order!”
Yeah.
That time never came.
Or if it did, I was too exhausted to notice it.
Now couple that busyness with this confession:
I stink at remembering to pray and read scripture. <guilty face>
As I was driving around town dropping off some kid to some thing this week, I pondered how sad it is that I am so prone to just let those VERY important things just drop out of the picture. I know we all struggle with eliminating bad habits and maintaining good ones; but these habits just seem especially hard for me to nurture. And yet, they are so very vital to my happiness.
And as I pondered this neglect, a song popped into my head.
“My Goodness” by The Belle Brigade
Now, I have no idea what the artist’s thought process was in writing this song. I just know that, in that moment, the verses seemed particularly meaningful to me. For my purposes, let’s just say that “my goodness” and “my love” have to do with my spiritual well-being and my relationship with deity.
My goodness is a tumbleweed, blowing away from me
I neglected the garden, it wilted and it hardened
Like a lifeless bouquet I let it blow away
My love is a broken wing
And it doesn’t beat
I neglected the arrow that tore into the marrow
In a feather cascade I let it blow away
Wow. Seems really depressing, huh?
But my point is, I have been negligent. And the result is….well….a wilted spiritual garden that yields no fruit. A broken wing that makes it hard to soar above problems.
And all this frustration, stress, anxiety, irritability.
Why?
Because I tried to do it all backwards.
And see that all these things are done in wisdom and order; for it is not requisite that a man should run faster than he has strength. And again, it is expedient that he should be diligent, that thereby he might win the prize; therefore, all things must be done in order.
Mosiah 4:27
I didn’t put first things first. I did it out of order.
You’ve seen it. We all have. That object lesson with the rocks, pebbles, and sand. It’s been done to death but that’s because it’s just so dang applicable. And just in case you are the one person on earth who doesn’t know what I’m talking about….
I’ve been pouring sand into my jar first, stuffing a few pebbles in, and shrugging my shoulders that the rocks didn’t fit. “Oh well,” I said. “Maybe there’ll be room for them tomorrow.”
Problem is, tomorrow is a really bad day to work on good habits because it’s always in the future. It’s never in the present.
Now, as much as I’d love to say, “And now to tell you all about how I slayed the busyness monster and reclaimed my spiritual life”…well…I’m just not there.
Yet.
I’m in the awareness phase. The phase where you realize your awful situation and are, well, kinda stymied as to how you got yourself there and why you struggle so much! But it’s a good phase because it’s a beginning.
Or can be, if you take action from awareness.
So, this is me. Moving from awareness to action.
So while you wait for me to start that post–you know, the “And now to tell you all about how I slayed…” post–how about we both watch this epic General Conference address by Elder Oaks and start figuring out how to stop just being busy and how to sift through the GOODS and BETTERS to make sure we are doing the BESTS first.
Because really, I just don’t want to be THAT busy.
As busy, stressed, stretched–but continually faithful–women, we sometimes wonder if what we are doing is enough and if we are enough. The Visiting Teaching message for the month of April assures us that we are each “a beloved spirit…daughter of heavenly parents.” I am glad I get to share this with you today, because in a couple of hours I am going to visit one of the women in my congregation that I have been given stewardship over as a fellow sister in the gospel.
Here is part of the message that particularly inspired me:
“In [the premortal] realm, we learned about our eternal female identity,” said Carole M. Stephens, first counselor in the Relief Society general presidency.
“Our mortal journey to earth did not change those truths.”2
“Your Father in Heaven knows your name and knows your circumstance,” said Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. “He hears your prayers. He knows your hopes and dreams, including your fears and frustrations.”3
“We each belong to and are needed in the family of God,” said Sister Stephens. “Earthly families all look different. And while we do the best we can to create strong traditional families, membership in the family of God is not contingent upon any kind of status—marital status, parental status, financial status, social status, or even the kind of status we post on social media.”4
I don’t know about you, but I have always struggled with having a daily, meaningful prayer life. My parents tried to instill regular prayer into our lives as a family, but we were not always as supportive to them and consistent as we could have been. How do you make time in your life for this vital communication with a loving Heavenly Father? Please comment and share with us, if you would like to.
For me, reading over some highlights from our recent LDS General Conference helped me today as I was trying to figure out a thought to share with you. This has a lot of truth to it, when you think about how our prayers can be at times, or all of the time. I am really going to work on this–it’s definitely a crucial building block for increased spirituality in our lives.
“We need to pray from our hearts. Polite recitations of past and upcoming activities, punctuated with some requests for blessings, cannot constitute the kind of communing with God that brings enduring power. Are you willing to pray to know how to pray for more power? The Lord will teach you.”
Taking the Master Gardener course was exciting. I just kept thinking, “I’m gonna be a Master Gardener!” A Master Gardener’s garden would surely look amazing–lush, beautiful, and serene. A Master Gardener’s yard would look well-kept and be a beautiful green. A Master Gardener’s veggie garden would be overflowing with perfect produce and fragrant flowers. If a Master Gardener had acres of land (like I do), her property would look like something on the cover of Country Gardens magazine.
I guess I thought I would come out the other end of the class with magical gardening powers or something.
But I didn’t.
I came out the other end with a lot more book knowledge about gardening, but with no more experience than I had before. And since that class many years ago, I have yet to achieve any of those gardening dreams. A combination of life stresses, crazy calendars, and a revulsion for hot and humid Southern summers have been challenging. And because of all that, I also did not put in the yearly volunteer hours necessary to retain my Master Gardener title.
But couldn’t I have steadily improved, even in small increments, even with my crazy schedule and the oppressive summer heat?
Of course I could have. I just chose not to. I chose instead to daydream about what my Someday Garden would look like:
once this month is over.
once this event is done.
once we get back from this trip.
once, once, once….
Gorgeous water lilies at Bodnant Garden, Wales
This past weekend I attended Time Out for Women in Raleigh NC. One of my favorite speakers, Jon Bytheway, was one of the first to address us. He spoke a lot about having roots, about seeds and soil, and then he talked just a little about gardens
.
He said that some of the most important events to have ever taken place have been in a garden. The Garden of Eden. The Garden of Gethsemane. The Garden Tomb. That last one is timely considering the holy day we are about to celebrate next week.
And I began to think about my spiritual life–my whole life really–as a garden. If I translated my life, in its current state, into a garden, what would it look like? As I imagined this garden, I began to feel uncomfortable. I imagined weeds much too large and much too numerous. I imagined some plants overgrown and needing dividing while others struggled in their little patch of earth, neglected and withering away. I saw some points of beauty there too.
Me at a park in London
But I imagined the gardener as distracted, inconsistent, and a little lazy. Yes, the gardener is busy; but busy with what? Is the gardener so preoccuppied with creating a garden art project to hang on the garden wall that she ignores watering the garden? Is she so consumed with daydreams of what the garden ought to look like that she forgets the work it would take to someday get there?
I realized that both in my actual garden and in my life garden, I have been neglectful. I have the “book learning” for both. I know how to garden; I know how to live the gospel. But am I doing either in an effective way?
Am I looking for weeds?
When I find them, am I pulling them out early, before their roots get too deep?
Am I providing nourishment regularly so that no part of the garden begins to suffer?
Am I fertilizing it with rich material that will encourage strong growth?
Am I taking time to appreciate and enjoy the garden?
Do I feel comfortable sharing the garden with others and helping them along their own gardening path?
Today is the first day of spring where I live. Spring is a time of renewal, growth, and hope. And it feels like the perfect time for me to get out my gardening gloves and go to work.
Wow. We haven’t posted one of these in a while, so quickly before the morning session of Conference comes on, I am going to share a few thoughts that I get from watching or listening to our Church leaders twice a year.
Simplify your approach to Discipleship. Start where you are.
Our individual missions in life started way before we ever came to this earth.
I am a child of God. Therefore, what?
No matter where we are, we are the Lord’s agents. We are always on His errand.
We are not always aware of what the Lord’s sacrifice has done for us.
Referring to trials/challenges: It is our load. Bearing it is necessary on our path to eternal life. Don’t expect to carry it alone. Seek help.
We were tutored in the pre-existence and were given trials and challenges unique to us.
For the women of the Church: Relax and rejoice in our differences and sisterhood. We need deep, meaningful relationships with each other.
Learn to recognize the power of the Atonement in your life
The Lord sees weaknesses differently than he does rebellion.
You must become the rock the river cannot wash away.
Challenges: some have to be solved, some have to be endured.
Okay! These were just some that stood out to me from notes I have taken over the past couple of years. I hope some of them have meaning to you and will help you in your journey. I am happy to share them and have been strengthened by reading over them again.
