The Last Days

Hmmm . . . I wrote this a couple of weeks ago and decided to wait on it and see if I still felt like sharing it. I have been thinking about it again, so I think I'll add some additional thoughts that came to mind and see if I still like it.

I avoid talking about political issues with anyone except for Ryan. Other people make comments about those things on blogs or Facebook or talking to other people, but I am always pretty hesitant to write or share any of my thoughts about politics because I just don't want to start contention or invite comments like "I know--those [insert political stereotype here]s are so [insert insulting and shallow adjective here]." But I do think about it a lot and worry.

I don't follow the news very well, but I'm a lot more informed than I used to be because Ryan does read things and we often talk about the articles. I'm getting pretty tired of hearing about the latest thing the government wants to waste money on, how big the federal debt is getting, the newest comments (not much has changed about those comments, actually) by the people who think I'm foolish and deranged because of my beliefs and the things I value, the last car bomb that killed twenty people in Iraq, or how we are in the worst economic crisis since the depression. I mean, I do like to hear about these things because it's important to be aware of what's going on, and it gives me increased appreciation for living prophets who teach us how to be happy, prepared, and provident people, but I have to make sure not to think too much about it because it's discouraging to think about these perilous times.

Lots of people seem to be looking to the president, the schools, the riches of the world, or lots of other things to solve our problems. I really think that what will make so many of our worries better is responsibility and a return to virtue. If we would learn to work hard rather than expect things just for being alive, to enjoy learning and thinking and working rather than looking to the filthy and mindless for entertainment, to be concerned about the well-being and happiness of our families more than ourselves, to focus our energy on the things that are of the most worth, it seems like a majority of the problems that people are concerned about right now would not be an issue. It all makes so much sense to me because of my testimony and my own experiences, but so many people refuse to believe that this is true, and they just keep looking for happiness by going to the things that will make their problems worse. It's really sad that there are so many people who don't understand how much the atonement can do for a person.

I have read many, many comments by people who insist on finding fault with the church. Our support of traditional marriage, our position about abortion, the way that the church runs its welfare program, and tithing are some of the things I have noticed have been criticized lately. The people who make the mean and angry comments about the church's stance and actions in these areas are completely unwilling to see how wonderful the gospel is or to believe that we have our own real testimonies that it is true. A couple of evenings ago this was on my mind as I read some of the scriptures from the Sunday school study guide. I read a wonderful explanation of the atonement and repentance given by Alma to his son, and I had to wonder how anyone could read that and say that the Book of Mormon is an evil book, or go to a church meeting and say that the church is horrible. Are they paying attention to what is being said? How could it be offensive? The truths of the gospel are beautiful and wonderful to me, and I have observed that people who are willing to accept the gospel or at least let a seed be planted feel the same way. They love the Book of Mormon and the principles taught by our church. It is incredibly sad that Satan has such a great hold on some people that they can't even feel good about the principles of the gospel and they feel a need to criticize them. What a miserable existence that must be, refusing to accept the only source of lasting joy.

I do have a plan for dealing with all this. It's not going to immediately bring world peace, unfortunately, but I think it's the way God wants me to handle it. The nice thing is that He has a really effective plan in place, and we know it will work.

• Keep faithful to the gospel.
• Protect my family by keeping our home gospel centered--like by having scripture study and prayer and teaching them the gospel, and establishing our family based on the principles outlined in the Proclamation to the World.
• Get lots of food storage.
• Be a missionary. Things will get better if we can spread the gospel. There isn't much to be done for those who are completely against the church except to love them and stand firm, but God can protect us against the damage they want to do. The most important thing is to help as many people as possible to be brought to Jesus Christ and to enter the right way to eternal life.
  
• When all else fails, wait for the King of Kings. I think He would be a really good ruler. I don't know that I feel ready yet for that time to come, but at the same time I feel excited and eager for Christ to be here because ultimately it doesn't seem like all of the world's problems can be completely solved without Him. What a wonderful time that will be.

I keep thinking that the key to making changes in this world is through sharing the gospel. There are several times in the Book of Mormon stories when some group of people has become incredibly wicked and they were changed because the few faithful members of the Church taught them the gospel with all the strength they had--it even worked on some of the Gadianton robbers. I guess that's why the Lord of the vineyard in Jacob 5 called all his servants in to labor with all their might to preserve his vineyard when it looked like all of the trees were lost, and in the end he saved his tree and was able to preserve much of the fruit. That's symbolic of our time, and we must join those servants and save as much as we can.

Built-in Space Heater

That's what Ryan says I have right now. I didn't know you got so hot when you're pregnant. In high school and during my single years I used to sleep with three blankets, and maybe another one (or even a pillow) across my feet. Now I feel like I'm always kicking off the one blanket at night. Sometimes Ryan comes home to a freezing apartment because I turn up the cold air and turn on the ceiling fan, but the temperature feels great to me.

My friend Annie asked me to come watch her baby for a while so she could teach a flute lesson. She told me I was a lifesaver for her, but I have to say I really appreciated being asked, and I really enjoyed doing it. It feels so nice to have a little baby snuggle up against you or to watch him talk to you or look around. It was a confirmation to me that being a mother really is what I am supposed to do right now. I am looking forward to meeting Baby Q and having my own special little one. And laying on my back without feeling like I'm barely getting enough air.

Something I Learned Today

When President Monson announced that Neil L. Andersen would become the newest member of the quorum of the twelve apostles, I didn't doubt that he was the person the Lord had chosen. I have faith in the process by which the apostles and prophets are chosen, and I know that they are called and inspired of God. In the past few years I have felt more strongly than ever before that they are wise, wise men. As Elder Andersen got up and took his seat with the rest of the apostles, I remembered that he had spoken in the last General Conference. I couldn't remember what he talked about, but I remembered that it had been one of the talks that stuck out to me. Watching him take his seat, listening to his responses in the press conference, and listening to the talk he gave later on in conference, I thought several times, "I like him."

Today I was thinking about some things (you will see what they are below), and I remembered the phrase, "You know enough," which had been the title of somebody's conference talk. I didn't remember who had given the talk, but I decided to look it up and read over it again. You guessed it: The person who gave the talk was Neil L. Andersen. I knew I liked Elder Andersen.

Today the topic on my mind was raising children. These are some of the things I realized again about babies and children (for the umpteenth time in the past several months):

1. They cry. Sometimes unconsolably. Nursing, diaper changes, songs, rocking, and baths don't always fix it.
2. They get sick. And they need you to help them deal with it and feel better (and sometimes clean up), all day and all night. And you have to watch them cough or deal with a fever without being able to do much about it, all the time feeling sad because you know they are feeling miserable and don't understand why. And sometimes you're sick at the same time.
   
3. Some kids are very energetic and it's hard to get them to be reverent. That's not bad. Church is a long time for them to sit still. You just have to do your best to teach them (and use a bit of creativity) and be a good example. You also may not get as much out of your church meetings as you did before the kids were around.
   
4. They don't come toilet-trained, and every child learns it differently and has to have a custom-made program.
5. Some kids won't eat most foods.
6. Sometimes you just can't decide what to make for dinner, and you have to decide anyway while you have a child or two clutching you by the ankle or the pant leg and demanding to know what's for dinner.
   
7. Much of the time you have to handle these problems with multiple children, all at once.
8. Scariest of all--there are lots of things that still haven't occurred to me that will also be challenges.
   

This is not new to me. I was in high school when my brother and sister were babies, so I changed diapers and gave baths and held crying babies and watched my mom deal with it when they were sick or irreverent or whatever else. But the point is, my mom was in charge of that, and she didn't generally tell me that she hadn't had a good night's sleep all week, so I don't think I realized just how much parents do. I was watching some parents in sacrament meeting today dealing with wiggly or crying kids (and they did a great job!), and it sort of sank in again that it's going to be my job to decide how I will deal with that, because now I'm the mom. One thing I realized is that there are a lot of things I can't really plan for until it's happening. You can think a little bit about how to teach your children reverence or how you're going to handle various challenges, but in many ways you just can't figure it out until you know them, because they will all have different needs and personalities. You can't completely know what to expect.

It's kind of overwhelming to think of all that. I don't feel like I have had much preparation to handle those tough things. This is where Elder Anderson's talk comes in. As I was thinking about it this evening, I heard in my mind, "You know enough." And I do. There is no way I could begin the experience of motherhood with a perfect knowledge of how to deal with the tough decisions. There are things I am going to learn through motherhood that I couldn't learn any other way. And even though I feel pretty unprepared in many ways to face the challenges of being a mother, I also feel that I have been given the information that I need, and I have faith in my Heavenly Father and a testimony that I can turn to Him for help with the things that I don't know how to do yet. I am also very grateful that I have wonderful in-laws, friends, and parents who are good sources of wisdom, advice, and support. Best of all, I have an amazing eternal companion who will be there to help me when I get discouraged and to bring up ideas that I hadn't thought about--I can't imagine how I would do it without him, and I am grateful that we get to experience this new stage in our lives together. It will be hard, but I think we will also have a lot of fun and we will learn many things together. So I still worry and think about it, but I think I can do it.

Here are some of the statements that Elder Andersen made that I really liked:

"Brothers and sisters, we each have moments of spiritual power, moments of inspiration and revelation. We must sink them deep into the chambers of our souls. As we do, we prepare our spiritual home storage for moments of personal difficulty."

"Our spiritual journey is the process of a lifetime. We do not know everything in the beginning or even along the way."

“You don’t know everything, but you know enough!”

"As disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, we have enormous spiritual reservoirs of light and truth available to us."

“He that receiveth light, and continueth in God, receiveth more light; and that light groweth brighter and brighter until the perfect day.” D&C 50:24

Happy day after Easter.

In the past couple of weeks I have been working very diligently on my homework, and now I have some tangible results. For my class about American Government, I have a five-page paper due on Wednesday, but it's already almost done. I decided to start working on it a couple of weeks ago so that I wouldn't be writing it the night it was due--I have done that all too often, and although it always seems to work out, it just isn't very fun to be writing a paper at the last minute. It has been great to do it this way. The paper is about why we have a two-party system in the United States and why third-party and independent candidates don't have a lot of success. I have had plenty of time to read articles and learn a lot of background information, which has helped me to write a logical paper and notice mistakes or parts that don't make sense. It has been very interesting to work on it. I also have a Calculus test on Friday, but no, I don't anticipate cramming for it the night before. I have one more section to finish, and then I will have plenty of time to review everything for the test. I know you are all probably feeling skeptical that it works better to work ahead on things rather than doing them at the last minute, but it's true, I promise. (I can think of all sorts of scriptures that I could use to back up that statement too).

We had a very nice Easter program in sacrament meeting yesterday. My friend Annie Rasmussen and I are both accompanists for the choir--when we aren't the one playing the piano, we sing. I have really enjoyed doing this. We have been running a little short on sopranos, so I decided I would try singing soprano. I discovered that I actually can sing an F or a G if I do the right things with my voice. It's been interesting to figure out how to use air, relax, and sing from the right places so that I can sing those notes and also sound better. I still have a lot to learn. I do still prefer singing alto, though. There's something that I really like about being part of the harmony rather than simply singing the melody, even though both are important. It also feels really good to sing low notes (I don't know if that makes sense). The last song we sang was a wonderful arrangement of Christ the Lord is Risen Today. For the last verse we sang in unison with the congregation, and it was so beautiful to be singing together about Christ's resurrection and the Atonement. It made me cry every time we sang that part (Alleluias omitted):

Lives again our glorious king,
Where, O death, is now thy sting?
Once he died our souls to save,
Where the victory, O grave?

I am so grateful for my Savior, that He loved me enough to suffer for my sins and to make resurrection and exaltation possible. I am so blessed to have a testimony of this wonderful truth. It has brought me so much hope and joy. How amazing it is that I don't have to remain in sin and imperfection, that Christ has provided a way to repent and become clean again.

Tomorrow is my first appointment with a midwife. I am hoping that this will go well, because this is the third doctor/medical person I have gone to for my prenatal care and I don't want to switch again. I loved my first doctor (a family physician, which is what I prefer), but he started a new practice and it was a bit of a drive. I didn't love the OB/GYN I saw next--for some reason I felt uncomfortable around her and the thought of seeing her several more times made me feel like I needed to try something else. I had been thinking about seeing the midwives who are at the same place as the OB/GYN, and after the appointment it just seemed right to make the switch. Before, I always thought it was sort of a hippie thing to see midwives for prenatal care, but after doing some research and talking to people about it I feel good about it, and now I've become the [semi-]hippie. They are certified nurses with additional training as midwives, and if there are problems at any point they can call in the OB/GYNs in the office or hospital, so it's not like I'm going to some witch doctor or anything. I feel bad for making so many switches because I know it's a little inconvenient to transfer records and start over with somebody else's patient, but I keep reminding myself that it's important to get the kind of care that is best for me and that it's okay to switch if I'm not satisfied.

My visiting teacher also asked me to teach piano lessons to two of her children. I am a little nervous to try it, but I think I can do it and I think it will be a nice experience, so I said I was willing to give it a try. They are great people to be my first students since they are so nice, and I'm glad to have something else to do.

Survey

Mosiah 4:15
15 Ye will teach them to ^dlove one another, and to serve one another.

Matthew 22:36-40
36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law?

37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt ^alove the Lord thy God with all thy ^bheart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy ^cmind.

38 This is the first and great ^acommandment.

39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt ^alove thy neighbour as thyself.

40 On these two commandments hang all the ^alaw and the prophets.

One of the things I want most to teach my children is to love and serve one another. King Benjamin taught that we are supposed to do this, and Christ said that the second great commandment is to love others. I feel that it is so important to teach my children this important truth because it is a commandment that is greatly valued by the Lord. I really want to learn to do this effectively.

I have been thinking about some ways that my mom taught me the importance of service. She really exemplifies what is taught in Mosiah 2:17 and is a great example of giving service. I definitely want to try to do similar things as an example to my own children. One of the things she is really good at is giving secret service. Sometimes I have been a participant in her acts of secret service, and I saw in her face that it makes her so excited to do those things and know that those people will never know she did it. She taught me secret service by asking for my help to do something for somebody. She also would offer suggestions of things I could do for secret service, such as putting away one of my sisters' clothes or making one of their beds. I admit that a lot of the time I was pretty reluctant to do the things she suggested, but there were still times when I felt the joy of secret service like she did. Eventually I found that it was especially fun to do secret service that I had thought of doing on my own. Some of the things I remember doing include sneaking downstairs early in the morning to set out everything for breakfast (or sometimes even making a nice breakfast) before Mom and Dad could do it and changing dirty diapers before Mom even knew they needed changing. I really liked doing these things because I liked thinking about what a relief it would be to Mom to not have to worry about that one extra thing to do. Unfortunately, the times when I did secret service really should have been much more frequent. But I feel that my mom tried very hard to teach me about service through her example and that she was successful--the times when I chose not to serve were my fault, and definitely not because she hadn't taught me to choose to serve.

So, your survey question to answer is: How are you teaching your children to love and serve each other and other people?

6 months down, three to go

Wednesday afternoon I was walking somewhere on UNC campus, and a lady who was going the other direction pointed at my belly and said, "Four . . . three months?" I knew what she meant (that I'm 3-4 months along), but I replied, "Yeah, I've got three months left." Her eyebrows rose in surprise, and she said, "Wow, you're not very big!"

I still feel big. Until I look in the mirror, anyway. I've felt big since December. It hasn't affected my self-esteem or anything--I know getting a round tummy is a good thing when you're pregnant, and I have sort of enjoyed starting to show. But it's still a little strange to look down at my tummy and see so much sticking out.

The top is what I looked like Wednesday. The bottom is what I looked like a month ago.

Wow. I actually haven't grown that much. Keeping in mind that this is my first pregnancy and that I still have three months left (in which this baby will probably gain about five pounds), however, I think I'm a normal size.

I did some baby supply shopping yesterday and found lots of clothes on sale, which made me excited. The Baby Bjorn carrier that we found on Ebay for a great price also came in the mail and looks great. I wrote a lot more about my shopping trip, but later on I deleted it because I told my mom all about it and decided that was enough. For some reason whenever I go shopping (except for groceries) I always want to show people all of the things I bought. I think it's because when I was growing up and my mom took us school shopping, she always told us to try on our new clothes and show them all to my dad when we got home. I think we even showed him all of our new school supplies most of the time.

As time goes on, I am feeling more and more excited that we are going to have a little boy. It just seems right to me. I see baby boys at church and think, "I'm going to have one of those!" I can't explain how much I already love him, even though I don't know much about him or even what he looks like. I feel that he is a special and wonderful person specifically and thoughtfully sent to us by Heavenly Father. I am looking forward to beginning my new responsibilities to nurture and love my own child.