Alone

I had to teach relief society yesterday. The lesson was on Elder Hollands conference talk, None were with Him. This was very difficult for me to teach. At some point, in everybody's lives, they are alone at one time or another. This is especially true for some of the sisters in my ward.
I don't know why this was more difficult for me. I've never felt truely alone. I had the blessing of growing up in the church, and I've always known that I am never alone as long as I am doing the best I can to follow the teachings of Christ, and go where He wants me to go.
It's hard to teach something that hasn't been experienced. If there's one thing this talk taught me, it's that I don't have to experience it. Christ, however, did. That's why I don't.
Teaching about the Savior is hard, because His life and Teachings are simple and complex at the same time. I'm kindof relieved that the lesson is over. I'm glad I had help getting through it.
When we got home, I was still worried if how I presented it was alright. I still hope it was. But, I guess today is a new day, and I have to move forward. If there is one thing better than teaching the gospel, it is living it. :)

The Day at the Lake

We went to the lake today. It was so pretty, and the fish were jumping everywhere. They jumped so high that we could see the silver from their bellies flash in the sunlight for just a split second.
There were 11 of us total, squished into one van on the way there. 9 kids and two moms ready to get out of their houses. The kids were full of energy and ready to run and play.
Jewel had the greatest time picking up pine cones and throwing them into the water. The older kids found a wauded up piece of fishing line and cut it into parts so they could tie it onto sticks for fishing poles. I snapped some of the cutest pictures of them playing.
Ducks swam hurridly away as the kids came running towards them, yelling, " Look mom! Ducks! Can we feed them? Look!"
The branches from the trees crurled up toward heaven, and little spots of sun beamed through them and hit the ground in patches of yellow. It smelled like sunscreen, dirt, and hot grass.
The playground was the center of attension for some of them. Jewel found that she didn't need my help to go down the slide. For me, it was a relief. She kept herself entertained for quite a while. I'm glad I went. It was definanlty a good day.

The Lord Provides

Yesterday Caleb and the guys at the mill found out that they were out of bags to put pellets in. His boss called the company that makes bags and found out that they couldn't get any to him for another ten days. This means that the mill is going to be shut down for next week, and there will be a pretty hefty dent in Caleb's paycheck.
Before we found this out, however, Caleb got about four calls in one day for carpet and vynl. He was wondering how he was going to fit it all in. Even his weekends are booked with work. I guess it's another chance to remember that the Lord knows what we need before we do. I was worried that he'd be so busy, that the family and I wouldn't get to see him at all for the next couple of weeks. Now, he'll have the chance to be home with us as well as work. Life is good :)

Love

I was reading in the Book of Mormon this morning, where Mormon is writing a letter to his son Moroni about the affairs of the Nephites before thier nation gets destroyed. A phrase caught my attention. It said, "and they have lost their love one towards another."
I guess this just hit me. What is a nation without love, or any good affection towards eachother? That's what the adversary wants, isn't it? To mute out all good feelings, and replace them with feelings that would make us destroy one another. How close are we to that today? What is replacing our affection towards one another? Selfishness, our inability to admit fault and apologize. We are easily offended, are quick to argue, and love to pick out everybodys faults but our own. If we do obsesivley pick out our own faults, that could be considered selfish as well: what is the reason we do that anyway?
Which, brought me to another thought. The Nephite nation was destroyed, because of "anger and revenge." In other words: they justified their own wickedness. They didn't say, "I forgive you even though you hurt me badly." They didn't say,"This has to stop, or we'll all be destroyed." Common sence was muted, because of justification.
They commited the grosses of sins as "a token of thier bravery." Bravery... how easily can something good be twisted into something so evil. Sin is not brave; sin is not a means for being an intellectual, sin will not always be glamerous. And yet, somehow in our minds, we're tricked into believing it is. I hope we don't excuse ourselves away into everlasting misery.
When that nation was destroyed, how many of them said, "I'm to busy to change? I'm to far gone to turn back? Other things are more important right now?" or maybe even, " I don't want to change. This is my life, and I'm in control of it."
I wish the people of our day could understand, even a little, how thin a thread we are treading on. I just wanted to throw that out there.

Morning Laugh

My husband Caleb wakes up at 3:15 and leaves for work at about 4:30 a.m. This is usually his "personal down time," because I am dangerous at this early hour of the morning.
When Jewel hears the door shut as Caleb leaves, the first thing she does is scream and cry all the way from her room, up the stairs, and into my bed. The entire time she does this, I reprimand her with, "Jewel, you are okay; Jewel, stop screaming; Jewel, quiet! The baby is sleeping."
When she reaches the top of the stairs, Gideon (who was before out of sight in his crib) pops up with his head above the bumper and chides, "bahbahbahbahbahbah!!!". Afterwhich, he plops down again and is instantly asleep. Maybe I should rethink my morning routine. :D

Why Curiosity Didn't Kill Me

“I could give you a ticket for inattentive driving,” the police officer stated, “but I think you’ve learned your lesson, haven’t you?”
“Yes officer —I have,” I answered.
Some people say that curiosity killed the cat. I am curious. Did curiosity almost kill me? It wasn’t until after my wreck that I thought about the answer. The situation started when I dreamed of running my car into the river. In my dream, the water ran shallower than in waking hours of the day and the current wasn’t as strong. I don’t know how the car got into the river, but that’s where we were. Streams of moisture ebbed its way into the cracks of the door as I frantically tried to climb into the back seat to undo my nine-month-old baby’s seatbelt. I imagined myself breaking the driver’s side window. Water and glass crashed down on me and my baby as my car sunk deeper into the nadir of the river. As we went down with the car, I saw streaks of light flashing down as if trying to pull us up. That’s when the dream ended.
When I woke up, I imagined what would happen if I had run my car into the river. Whenever I saw any kind of running water, I remembered my dream. The river runs about three yards from the main road and follows it, curve for curve, for miles. Nobody went anywhere without coming close to the massive body of water. My curiosity became so intense that I didn’t want to drive anywhere, even to pick up groceries.
One day, my daughter Jewel had been crying for the past hour and she refused to sleep. I decided to take her for a drive to get her to calm down. I told myself there was nothing to fear. Angry tears streamed down my baby’s face as I strapped her tightly into her car seat. After she was secured, I slipped into the driver’s seat and turned the car on. We took off down the driveway, then onto the road the dirt road that connected to the main road. Dust shot up behind us as the tires spit up pieces of gravel. Jewel’s screaming resounded in my ears like a vibrating cymbal. My nerves started to feel like flesh raking across jagged ice cubes.
As we turned onto the paved road, I looked at the meter that measured the depth of the massive body of water. It was higher than average, about nineteen feet deep. It was hard keeping my focus on the lane. My main focus was distracting myself from Jewel’s screaming. I pulled down my visor and took out the first CD I came across. I tried slipping it into the narrow slit of the CD player.
To my luck, my Clarion wouldn’t accept the CD. It acted like it had a bad taste in its mouth and spit the CD out like a child refusing to eat canned spinach. I tried jamming the disc back in when I heard the terrible crunching sound of gravel. I looked up and realized I was missing the next curve on the road. My tires were almost off the edge of the pavement. In a panic, I tried veering to the left toward the river. I realized where I was headed and steered right again.
In my head, everything happened in slow motion. The back of my car fishtailed from right to left. In reaction to the swinging I tried steering in the opposite direction the trunk of the car skidded. The river, still raging, swirled and swallowed as if inviting me to share some dark secret it held at the bottom. Its blackness shook off the sunlight and reared up in defiance. The width of the river seemed to envelope the rest of its surroundings. The river was laughing at me, like a fisherman laughs when he sees a fish swinging off the end of his fishing pole.
To my right was a mountainside. Its boulders jolted up out of the ground, like they jumped off hot coals and froze in the air. A looming mass of rock, covered in scowling shrubs and tangled branches stood barricading my way. As I was in motion, a voice came into my head. The voice was as clear and as real as if someone was really there with me —almost above me. My situation, my surroundings, everything disappeared long enough for a question to come through. All I could see was a light that I could not understand.
“Will you choose the river… or the mountainside?” the voice asked. It was just a simple question, but it shook me. I knew what I wanted to happen.
“The mountainside!” I shrieked in my head.
Everything suddenly sped up. At forty-five miles per hour I hurtled the front end of my car into the ditch. The front bumper stuck into the dirt as my tail end flew over it. For two seconds, my baby and I hung without any force but the air holding us up. Then, we crashed. I felt my weight drop against my seatbelt as we hung upside down. Ironically, music played from the now accommodating CD deck. Dazed, I turned the car off out of habit. I put my arm on the ceiling of the car to hold myself up when I undid my seatbelt.
“Jewel! I need to get Jewel!” I whispered to myself. Shattered glass was everywhere. Neglected junk now lay sprawled ubiquitously on the ceiling. I crawled over the mess and looked at Jewel hanging upside down in her car seat. She had stopped crying and was looking at me. As our eyes met, she smiled. “Yeah, now you’re happy,” I thought to myself as I carefully unhooked her from her straps. While holding Jewel in one arm I tried calling for help from my cell phone. I quickly realized that reception on the back of a mountain wasn’t that great.
I took a second to look around. We had landed in a thorn bush. The prickly branches surrounded us on all sides except one, the driver’s side window. I held Jewel out of the window first, and then tried to climb out without the use of my arms. I slipped and landed on my elbow. The thorns dug into my arm and leg as I tried to pull us back up. Finally, I managed to crawl out of the bush and onto the road. A stream of cars pressed their breaks when they saw me climb out of the ditch. A man in a green Jeep asked if I needed him to call the police. I nodded my head and he drove into town to find a phone.
When the officer arrived, he took one good look at Jewel and me. He examined my car with its wheels and undercarriage blending into the bushes and dirt. While he was talking to the people in yellow hats, I walked over to the river and looked down into the shiny surface. It bubbled and wreathed at my reflection. Did curiosity almost kill me? Yes. Though, as I looked into the water I realized something. My desire to live overpowered my curiosity. My love for my daughter overpowered my curiosity. More importantly, I have a Father in Heaven who gave me a choice. He gave it to me when he knew I would listen to him best. I could live or I could drown in my fear: I could fulfill my purpose here or face the consequences of dwelling too much on dreams. I have responsibility; I have providence. I chose, and choose now, to live. The lesson I was taught will stay in the forefront of my mind throughout my life. No mountain, no river, and no amount of curiosity will shake me away from what God wants me to accomplish— life

In Her Dreams

The house breathed silence. The only sound that could be heard was the click of the propane stove turning up its heat. Light from the flames flickered and leapt across the room; shadows recoiled into their hiding places. Silhouettes of our living room furniture rested, dark and protective, against plastered walls. A street lamp stood outside, painting stripes of orange light on the carpet through the blinds. I sat by the window in my old wooden rocking chair. It squeaked softly as I rocked.
Jewel’s eyes, puffy and swollen from frightened tears, tried to fight away any more escaping moisture. Shadows cast in the real world are never as scary to a year old girl as the ones that lurk in dreams. Memories of monsters and ghouls from my own childhood dreams flooded my memory. I shut my eyes and tried to think of something different.
Exhaustion swept over her. Jewel’s legs and arms relaxed as I swung her gently backward and forward, then backward again. She sighed, sniffled, and shifted into a more comfortable position. Her head rested on my left shoulder. Long wet eyelashes tickled my neck, and finally closed. I couldn’t help but smile. It had been a trying day for the both of us. Gently, I started humming lullabies I had sung to her since the day she was born.
Jewel Marie was born at Cathy’s house. (Cathy was the midwife and my mother-in-law.) My husband Caleb and I lay in a big, plastic water trough generally used for watering horses. The lack of gravity in the water lessened the pains of the contractions. However, the pain still clenched me so powerfully that the only thing holding me up was the side of the tub. Nothing could have prepared me for that enormous pain, nor the immense joy and worry that would follow.
The trough stood in the middle of the sunroom. Cathy attached a gray hose to the connecting hallway’s water line that was originally used for the washing machine. The long tube curved toward us, dumping water into the pool we stayed in. Hot water was heated on the wood-burning stove in the kitchen. When the water simmered, Cathy’s assistant hauled it to the tub.
Splashes fell onto tan tiles underneath us. Strips of cedar lined the walls and large, shaded windows surrounded the room. A long desk stood at the far wall with scattered with various file folders and papers. A bed with wooden poles sat waiting on the opposite wall. The third wall contained a second bed and a large wooden bookshelf turned sideways, its back facing the end of the bed. Clouds hung low over the mountains outside, as if waiting for something great to happen. Candles shining in the windows fought them back, their light dancing in frosted glass containers.
Jewel finally came. Caleb caught her, but something was wrong. The water bag still hung around her head and face. She tried to take her first breath, but instead inhaled the mucus. Cathy pulled the obstruction away. Jewel let out a slight whimper. Hurriedly, Caleb handed the infant to his mother. All feeling in my entire body had gone numb. I was so tired. Caleb and Cathy’s assistant peeled me off of the tub wall and onto the bed.
Cathy turned the baby on her stomach and rubbed her smooth, slippery back with a warm towel. Tufts of short, brown hair stuck to the infants head. Her face scrunched up into wrinkles of baby fat. Lean legs stuck out from the towel that were as thick as broom handles. I could tell she was gasping for more air that she was getting. Her breathing was dangerously raspy, and uneven. The gunk on her little body was wiped off, but there was nothing we could do about the slime that clung to her lungs.
“Is the baby going to be all right?” Caleb asked, not quite knowing what to do.
“She needs a blessing,” said Cathy, worry evident in her eyes. Her silver hair frayed out messily, and her blue eyes were sparking with excitement.
“What do I call her?” he asked.
“Baby Ward,” she responded matter-of-factly.
During the conversation Jewel was laid next to me on the lodge pole bed. Both of us were wrapped in homemade quilts smelling of lavender and rain scented candles. I noticed that not only did it smell like rain, but also pitter-pattering raindrops started falling on the tin roof above us. The rain was like heaven pouring down around us. I watched as Caleb laid his large, warm hands on her tiny forehead.
“Baby Girl Ward, by the power of the holy Melchesadick Priesthood which I hold, I now place my hands on your head to give you a blessing…” his voice sounded deep and concentrated.
Shivers overtook me. If anybody needed help at that moment, we did. Everything seemed fuzzy, and yet nothing could have been clearer. It’s a confusing sensation, almost like tears streaming down a face that’s laughing uncontrollably. During that prayer, all of my confusion died away. I’d never felt such… peace. Truly, it was the most tangible, penetrating peace I’d ever felt.
God was with us. God was with Jewel. If she lived or died, our responsibility was to trust him with her. I wished with all my heart that she could stay with me. God is a better parent than I am, or anybody else. I ached for her, and myself. Realization flooded over me that God wouldn’t protect me from my hurt, but he would let me learn from it. It didn’t matter how our situation turned out.
Caleb’s words hung in the air after he finished. All of us looked down at the little angel lying beside me. She was breathing, her mouth open. No rasping, no whisper of anything blocked her breath. She looked up at us with dark blue eyes, seeing everything- everything for the first time. Jewel didn’t cry, she didn’t whine, she just gazed up at us. A warm, comforting feeling again came over me. Just like my little girl, I was seeing much more for the first time.
Smiles crept to our faces. All I remembered afterword was my little girl, snuggling up to me and falling asleep. The stars in her dreams were not as bright as the stars in her eyes the first time she looked up at me. I couldn’t contain myself. I started to sing her lullaby.
“Hush thee, my baby- be still love don’t cry. Sleep while you’re rocked by the stream. Sleep and remember my last lullaby, so I’ll be with you when you dream…”
Suddenly I was back in my living room, holding my sleeping baby in fuzzy pink pajamas. I fumbled back up the stairs to the bedroom and laid Jewel in her crib. She wiggled, flopped onto her side, and grabbed at the covers for comfort. I stood by her, looking down at the sleeping baby as I once did long ago.
“Good-night” I whispered, “Sweet dreams.”

Just a Piece of Coal

"I just feel like what I am. A peice of coal. What can a peice of coal give to a mountain of diamonds?"

“Do you remember the Widow's Mite?I have a friend who is a professor at Chapel Hill, which is no small thing - a scholar, a gentleman, a missionary - everything wonderful. He told me one day how he's just realized - the most wonderful, impressive, scholarly work he has ever done will end up stuck to the front of Heavenly Father's fridge with a cute magnate - because Heavenly Father is so proud of his kids' stuff. We are all little. And here's this - Heavenly Father loves all of his creatures - and when somebody loves one of them, and that creature - say, a little horse - can depend on the love and the care its "master" gives it - that's just huge to the horse. And, I think, huge to the Lord who loves that horse. Even more so with kids.”

-conversation between Kristen and Audra

- Reply for Andy
“Well the value of Christ's gift as opposed to our gift is a bit like some Christmas gifts. Sometimes the ones appreciated the most aren't the most expensive ones you get from your rich uncle (I'm just making that up). Perhaps some of the favorites are the neat little creations the kids make (obviously I don't have any stories; I'm hoping someone takes over for me). Heck, it may have cost you for the supplies that they probably used to make them, but it's still special regardless. In a way, we're making arts and crafts for Heavenly Father, and regardless of the supposed value of them, there is a value to them not measurable in cost but instead in love.”