seasons

Today in Sacrament Meeting I was feeling really frustrated. Kevin was wild. By the time the sacrament was passed he was launching himself over the bench in front of us and jumping up and down on the floor. He also thought it was fun to spit at the family behind us. The kids were crawling all over me and I was tired of being treated like a jungle gym. Ryan ended up taking Kevin into the hall to sit on the couch.

I was feeling pretty upset. A lot of Sundays I wonder why we even bother to come to Sacrament Meeting because it's always a wrestling match. I often contemplate just taking the kids for a drive until it's time for Sunday School so that I can hand Kevin off to his nursery leaders. (I haven't resorted to that yet, by the way.)

So while I was sitting in the chapel and thinking about how my life is falling apart, and Heidi was continuing to crawl all over me and attempting to escape into the aisle, my friend Nicole Empey went to the front and bore her testimony. She wanted to bear her testimony that there are times and seasons in our lives, and sometimes they're good seasons and sometimes they're hard seasons. (She has twin boys who are Kevin's age and a little girl who is older than Heidi, so she knows about hard seasons.) We just have to realize that sometimes we will have hard seasons because that is how life goes. I knew as soon as she started talking that this was for me. I usually only get snippets of thoughts from Sacrament Meeting talks because my attention is so divided, and it's frustrating for me because I need that spiritual nourishment too and it's hard to get it right now. And I really do often feel like my life is falling apart these days. The clothes are never folded, the sink is full of dishes, and there's a growing pile of "stuff to go through/finish" on the floor by my bed, and meanwhile I'm struggling to get school assignments done. But today I was grateful for this reminder that right now I'm in a challenging season, and even though I'm often frustrated and stressed and upset, this season is good for me and it is teaching me important things. I guess even though it's harder to get spiritual nourishment from the sources I'm used to, my life experiences are also strengthening me, so that's spiritual nourishment too. I appreciate that when God gives me challenges to help me grow, he also gives me experiences along the way that remind me that He is watching over me and is not forsaking me. Today was one of those times when He reminded me that He is aware of my spiritual needs and will provide for them if I am open to receive them.

off topic

Today in my philosophy class we were talking about Aquinas's thoughts about the goodness of God. The teacher had drawn a scale on the board that shows a range of existence. Fictional characters are a little bit above the non-existence line, next comes rocks, next plants, next animals, and then humans. Then, on the opposite end of the spectrum (an infinite distance away) is God, who exists the most and who is the most perfect. All things strive to be more like God.

So while we were talking about this, a guy raised his hand and asked, "So, if God is timeless, does that mean he is in our universe or out of it?" Then we spent several minutes answering this unrelated question, which, by the way, we had already beaten to death a week or two ago.

This kind of thing happens fairly often. It makes me wonder. I don't really know if the other students are just really lost and they don't understand what we're talking about, or they don't know how to think logically enough to know which questions aren't related to the current topic, or what.

The Code of Student Courtesy

Apparently many of my fellow students don't realize it, but manners do, in fact, apply when you are in a classroom. The following are some important, and largely forgotten, rules in the code of student courtesy:

1. Do not pack your bag until the instructor is finished with the lecture. It's incredibly offensive to the instructor, and it's very inconsiderate of the other students who actually want to hear what he has to say but can't because of the cacophony of zipping bags and rustling coats and stomping on the stairs.
2. While it may be admirable that you enjoy the subject so much that you want to ask questions that go beyond the material, it is inappropriate to frequently ask questions that go way beyond the material, especially if they are irrelevant and nit-picky and take at least ten minutes to answer. If you just can't help asking about it, the best time is outside of class. I have yet to have a professor who doesn't hold office hours or make himself available by appointment.
3. Do not sit on the edge of an empty row in an auditorium. It is incredibly uncomfortable and awkward and dangerous, if not impossible, to climb over your legs, your backpack, your umbrella, your cup of coffee, and your trombone just to get a seat. Sit in the middle of the row and let students fill in from the center. And if you sit on the edge of an empty row in one of the auditoriums of the MARB at BYU, you deserve every evil eye and black spot you receive, because in case you haven't noticed, the seats are so close together that the desks are about an inch away from the seat backs of the row in front. Nobody has knees that small.
4. I am not left-handed, but for the sake of left-handed people I feel it important to point out that those funny seats where the desk sits on the left side that are so uncomfortable for you to use are, in fact, for the people who write with their left hand.
5. I'm sure your computer is awesome, but it doesn't need it's own seat and desk if the auditorium is full.
6. Your earphones were designed to keep the sound in your ears. Nobody else wants to hear Justin Bieber. Turn down the volume.

lists (short ones)

I feel like I have a lot on my plate right now between my kids and my schoolwork. When I have a lot to do, sometimes it gets so overwhelming that I don't know where to start and I just get paralyzed. Recently, I have been learning to make a plan so that this doesn't happen. If I am starting to feel overwhelmed, I make a list of the most important things to get done that day, in order of importance. I try to only put 2-3 things on my list, and I also write down what we are having for dinner so that it's already decided, because dinnertime is one of the times when I am most prone to get overwhelmed. (I'm also getting back into writing a weekly menu.) I know that really I am accomplishing a lot more than 2-3 things per day, but this helps me focus.

I'm starting to come to the conclusion that there will never be one perfect way for me to organize my life. It's kind of like chore systems for kids. Every once in a while the method stops working as well, so you have to tweak it or try something new altogether.

The other thing that helps is to tell myself, "Just do one thing." Usually if I do that one thing it's enough to give me some momentum to do more.

Yesterday's list said:
Dinner is lasagna with zucchini.
1. Read Geach article and write response.
2. Work on lab.

Today's list:
Dinner is leftover lasagna and leftover taco soup.
1. Finish handout for Women's Day class.
2. Fine-tune and turn in argument reconstruction.

some thoughts on God and philosophy

In my Philosophy of Religion class we have been discussing several issues with the nature of God. In the past week and a half we have spent a lot of time discussing whether God can be omnipotent and omniscient.

There is a pretty well-known paradox that challenges the idea that God is omnipotent (i.e. can do anything). If God can do anything, can He create a stone that is too heavy for him to lift? The difficulty is that if he can create the stone, that means He can't lift it, which means He is not omnipotent because there is something He cannot do. On the other hand, if He can't create it, then there is still something He cannot do, so He is not omnipotent. The author of the paper we read about this had an interesting solution to this problem. He said that before creating the stone, God is still omnipotent, because He could create the stone, even if He chose not to. After He creates the stone, He is no longer omnipotent. So in order to remain omnipotent, God chooses not to create the stone.

With respect to omniscience, one of the difficulties is that if God is omniscient it seems like we can't have free will, because if God knows everything, then He knows everything we will do, which means that everything we will do is already decided. The same author had an interesting solution to that problem too. He pointed out that if God knows everything that we will do, He also knows everything that He himself will do, which limits His own free will. So the author concludes that while God could know everything about the future, He chooses to limit His knowledge in order to preserve His own free will and our free will.

These topics were not completely new to me because Ryan did a second major in philosophy at BYU, so we've talked about these things before. But one of the things that struck me as I was reading the papers was that these problems with the nature of God don't really bother me. I've been aware of them, but I'm not worried that God can't make a stone too heavy for Him to lift or that He can or can't see the future. The reason it doesn't bother me is because these problems focus on God's power. They're worrisome because they seem to diminish God's power. And what I am realizing is that I'm not bothered by that because to me, the reason God is God is not because of His power. God is God because He is good.

Love Will Set You Free

Ryan followed the Eurovision contest several months ago and I saw a few of the submissions too. Here is one of my favorites. Love Will Set You Free.

on birthday cakes

This evening I was reading someone's blog post and she posted a picture of her son's birthday cake. It looked fairly simple and I said to Ryan, "Oh, look at this cake! It's so cute! I bet I could do that."

Ryan said, "I can hear the screams all the way from July."
Me: "What screams? Oh, you mean me screaming in frustration and deciding to just dump frosting on the cake?"
Ryan: "Yeah. And then I would have to clean the frosting off of the wall after you throw it."
Me: "Well, I could at least do these cupcakes. They're just pink frosting with marshmallows mashed into it."
Ryan: "You can do whatever you want. And then I'll clean the frosting off the wall."

I scrolled down and read some more of the post, and then I stopped and said, "You know, I hate decorating cakes. I don't think I've even ever decorated a cake and I still hate decorating cakes."

Ryan: "That's the Marcelaine I know."

It never ends.

Sometimes I use the to do list on Google Calendar. Today I was looking at my to do list and I realized that this portion is probably going to be on there the entire semester:

bapron

This bib is one of my Pinterest finds. It's actually called a bapron, and the pattern and tutorial are at this link. It was quite a learning experience because I made my own bias tape (the blue around the edges). Making the bias tape wasn't too bad, it was just time consuming, and now I have a ton of bias tape. Once I had the bias tape done the bapron came together pretty quickly. I'm planning to make several more of these bibs because this one seems pretty functional, although I think I'm going to try to make it longer and wider on the bottom.

Q-tips

I think there were about ten left in the box.

playing with boxes

The kids have been having an awesome time playing with this big box.