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[Originally published January 4, 2014] It's taken quite a while to figure out what I want to do with this blog, but I was so happy to get on here this morning, look around at what I'd already put here, and realize that I knew, subliminally, at least, from the beginning. I'm learning the importance of intent. Too much living takes place unintentionally, and it's usually where we humans get ourselves in trouble. When I taught YSA Institute a couple of years ago, the first semester's curriculum was entitled "The Gospel and the Productive Life". That's when the notion of living with intent first started to percolate. When I saw the lesson topics - ranging from paying tithing and living debt free to physical fitness and good health - it struck me how easy it is to slide into a path of least resistance, in almost every aspect of our daily living. It became the connecting thread of the lessons for that semester in an attempt to paint a picture for the students: living the gospel of Jesus Christ transforms a schlepping, scrubby Natural Man who is generally acted upon, into a true Saint - an agent who chooses to act, rather than wait to be acted upon - a Child of God who, because of conscious, intentional actions....IS, who steadily, daily practices and imitates developing the attributes of his Creator...the great I AM. THAT...is some pretty high living. No wonder it inspires so many of us to.....nap. But yesterday, I came across a quote I had put in the front of my planner about 10 years ago. It had great meaning for some major life changes and shifted a lot of negative energy to positive energy at the time. It's from a sweet little book called Hope for the Flowers, by Trina Paulus: "How does one become a butterfly? You must want to be able to fly so much, that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar." That really explains symbolically the purpose of this life: we were born as the children of the Creator, and must go through a metamorphic process to go back to Him. We work, and practice, and fail, and start over...and make progress, and backslide, and try again, and start over...and strive, and succeed, and fall again, and start over...and over...and over...and over...as we struggle to break free of the chrysalis that binds us. It's easy, from the perspective of inside the chrysalis, to forget that the chrysalis is not all that there is to life. There's soooo much more. There. Is. FLYING. Being a butterfly is soooo much better than being a caterpillar, but it's easy to forget that the chrysalis, which feels so restrictive and binds us down, is the very thing that facilitates the change. The work and intentional energy required to break free of it is the very process that makes the transformation from caterpillar to butterfly possible. As you may or may not know, I am not Chinese. Nevertheless, I am dubbing 2014 The Year of the Butterfly. When my little scrubby self wants to keep crawling along its usual path of least resistance, the reminding, nagging, coaching, encouraging question must override: Would you rather crawl....or fly?

[Originally published March 17, 2017] I was privileged to share this essay with UN delegates at the annual Commission on the Status of Women in March 2017: A societal movement to diminish motherhood has been in the propaganda mills of elite central planners for generations. This is spelled out in new policy being considered at the UN, and calls for "measures to recognize, reduce and redistribute women's [and girls'] disproportionate [burden] of unpaid care of care and domestic work..." Apparently, the propaganda has culminated to this bold moment of honesty, or, the central planners have decided they can wait no longer to win you over with spin. Bottom line: the State wants your children. For over a century, the most forward thinking elitists have prepared for victory on this point: a well-ordered State can raise a child to serve the State better than its parents can. The State is right. If the end of raising a child is to see it serve the collective well, then the incubator of cradle to career oversight is perfect. Devoid of any real nurturing, the State can raise serfs to its service much more efficiently when love, nurturing, and family loyalty are removed. But, if the world still wants thinkers, innovators, and people with a sense of humanity, they still need homes with mothers and fathers. Children still need to see adult human beings - appropriately sacrificing for them - to know that this is the surest way to have a life of purpose and joy. The elitists have made a fatal mistake: they say "burden" like it's a bad thing. C.S. Lewis once said that homemaking was the ultimate career that made all other careers possible. Policy crafters and influencers forget something as they deride and dismiss motherhood and family life: once upon a time, someone took on the burden of raising...them. It's a glorious burden to lose your figure, your sleep, your mind - so you can bring another human being into the world, sit up with her when she has croup, help him get his science fair project finished, and teach him to ride a bicycle. It's a glorious burden to lose all dignity as you leave your house in sweats that have spit up on them because you're out of milk, and wear last year's dress to a piano recital - your stomach in complete knots as if you were the one performing. It's a glorious burden to read a seventh bed-time story to your children, the words slurring into near-drunken incoherence, as you are the only one who gets sleepy in this night-time ritual nearly as sacred as the family prayer. It's a glorious burden to be given a necklace made of macaroni, a sloppy kiss that smears spaghetti sauce on your cheek, and a tiny wad of a love note that says, "I love you, Mom - you are the BIST!" It's a glorious burden to wander, sleepless, through a darkened house, stopping at the beds of each of your sleeping children, pouring out wept prayers of gratitude and pleading that God will watch over them when you can't. Here is what the elitists don't know, or have forgotten, so far removed from such realities as humanity can be: the very thing that makes motherhood glorious is the fact that it is a burden - a back-breaking, mind-wracking, heart-stretching, soul-forging burden. It's a glorious burden because it turns us into better, higher human beings for having taken it on. Every human on this planet started life with a mother and a father. Not everyone takes to parenthood, and tragically, there are still too many children who don't have the love and sanctifying sacrifice of present parents. But through the millennia, there is no alternative way of raising children that can hold a candle to it. To buy the lie that this is a burden that should be "recognized, reduced, and redistributed" is absurd and dangerous. The glorious burden of motherhood is most definitely to be recognized - as the highest thing a woman can choose to do with her life. Motherhood should be recognized, but it should be reverenced - and protected - for the endangered species that the central planners are trying to make of it. In spite of the spin, this is the cold hard reality: in spite of the imperfect execution, there are still more parents, around the globe, that freely choose to take on parenting, because it is a glorious burden worth shouldering. Civilization depends on it. #MomStory #EmpowerMothers #LoveIsNotABurden #CSW61

[Originally published March 17, 2018] As we embrace our divine roles as mothers, it’s natural that we will suddenly find ourselves in proper awe, respect, and gratitude for our own parents. As we serve our children in soul-stretching and sanctifying ways, we can see with fresh eyes the same service that was given to us. And suddenly, the 5th commandment to honor our parents takes on the divine mandate it should: we owe our parents everything. As we speak of the responsibilities of family life, it’s important to remember to look in both directions, generationally. We speak incessantly of the joys of mothering - as we should - but I am in the season where I am learning the joy of ‘daughtering’. My 87-year-old father lost his balance permanently with a life-threatening bout of meningitis 6 years ago, and while he’s not completely helpless, my 86-year-old mother does nearly everything in running their humble little home. She has had nearly constant and debilitating back pain for nearly 40 years. She also has macular degeneration, and a minor stroke several years ago has diminished the fine motor skills in her dominant left hand. She actually functions much better than all of that would suggest, but my parents’ increasing needs has made me most tenderly aware of the terror my mother feels about moving in this fast-paced world with diminished capacities. As my parents’ needs have become greater, my opportunities to serve them have naturally increased. It’s made me realize that it’s not just an opportunity to increase service to them - it’s a duty. These are the people who gave me my life. Serving them in this last season of their lives has taught me that family life is created because of covenant connections, stretching both forward and backward into the generations. Covenant relationships create safety. For children, going forward to future generations, it’s covenant relationships between husband and wife that provide the safety of two committed parents, and a stable, predictable home. But now, with increased service to my parents, I am learning that these covenant relationships create the same safety for the generations before us. Covenants matter because they say, very simply, “I’m not going anywhere when this gets hard.” One day, as we were entering the grocery store, my mother was leaning heavily on my arm, and we were moving slowly to accommodate her pain. She apologized for slowing me down. A wave of gratitude washed over me. I told her, “I’m quite certain my short little legs slowed you down once upon a time, Mom - don’t you worry about it.” What a beautiful type - coming home to serve and sacrifice for our parents, to repay them for their service and sacrifice in giving us life and raising us. And even greater - what a beautiful type - that in coming full circle back to them, we realize how much more we owe our Heavenly Parent - for the same? -Laureen Simper (Gathering Families) #ComeHome #GatheringFamilies

[Originally published October 7, 2019] We got a new furnace last week. It was relatively painless on my part, until the last hour and a half of piano lessons in the afternoon. At that point, it wasn’t painful, so much as loud. Drilling, drilling, sometimes RHYTHMIC drilling - during three MUSIC lessons. It was super fun, especially for those three piano students. Well, and their ADD teacher. Each of the three students struggled to keep their head in their piece - even more than a normal piano lesson. Piano lessons are terribly distracting all by themselves. This is why, after playing something in a manner less than hoped for, piano students will continue to mutter, until the end of time, “It sounded so much better at home!” At Piano Teacher’s house there are so many things to distract you from the task at hand: the smell of something cooking in the crockpot, new Halloween decorations that weren’t up last week, still decompressing from being at school all day. Meanwhile, teacher is sitting right there, and a new goal suddenly emerged: Impress her. There was an abundance of sub-par playing during that hour and a half last week. Poor dears. They don’t realize: after teaching for thirty-six years, I can filter and extrapolate to get a true sense of what kind of practicing really went on during the week - just as surely as a dentist can peek into your mouth and determine how faithful you’ve been at flossing for the past six months. I kept murmuring encouraging words throughout, but it wasn’t until the last student that the inspiration came. I stopped Lucy mid-measure, and these words came wisely bubbling out of my mouth: “Don’t listen to the drill; focus on the music.” Lucy paused for a few more seconds, then continued with far fewer mistakes, and far more musicality. She could hear the difference, and here’s how I could tell: the satisfied grin she cut me at the end of the piece. I have a theory. However randomly noisy a concrete drill may be - drilling sometimes intermittently, sometimes rhythmically, and always unpredictably in its pattern - is nothing compared to the intentional noise of the world, initiated by the destroyer who would do anything - and I do mean ANYTHING - to keep us from ever having a still, quiet moment where we can focus on the music of the Spirit. Boyd K. Packer taught: “The world grows increasingly noisy.... This trend to more noise, more excitement, more contention, less restraint, less dignity, less formality is not coincidental nor innocent nor harmless.” [The implication is that if this trend isn’t coincidental, it’s intentional; if it’s not innocent or harmless, it’s insidious and dangerous.] “The first order issued by a commander mounting a military invasion is the jamming of the channels of communication of those he intends to conquer. Irreverence suits the purposes of the adversary by obstructing delicate channels of revelation in both mind and spirit” (“Reverence Invites Revelation,” General Conference, October 1991). Irreverence is a huge objective of the destroyer; such is his despising of all things sacred. But if he can’t get us all the way to irreverent, he’s more than happy to take us to just plain old, ordinary, common... noise. And I don’t mean common in the ordinary sense. In yet another attempt to get God’s children into a collective, unworthy lump to prove his point, Satan is thrilled with the commonality of the noise - the noise we all hear, collectively. Consider these thoughts of Arthur Henry King, author of An Abundance of the Heart: “Continuous background noise, from the radio or television, for example - discourages the development of perception and discrimination. Something that is there the whole time no longer draws proper attention: it dulls; it becomes a kind of drug; it floats us sluggishly along. It is like a stream of dirty, lukewarm water, a kind of inferior bath taken disgustingly in common.” [Isn’t that a grim image, the thought that the background noise of the culture is like taking a bath in the same bath water as everybody else?] “Whatever encourages our inattention diminishes our ability to make wise choices; because of all the things that are required to make wise choices, a delicate and sensitive attention is the most important” (An Abundance of the Heart, p. 210, emphasis added). You have to consciously seek out silence in a world of spiritual concrete drills. There are TV’s or background music in every waiting room. There is hold music in every phone system. It’s as if the world, collectively, is happy to whistle in the dark, as long as they’re doing it together - terrified of it, yet maybe even more terrified they may unwittingly stumble across the Light if it’s quiet for too long. And the Light - you know... There are pesky expectations! Wouldn’t want that... To be intentional disciples, we have to tune out the noise of the drill - the commonality of the world swirling around us - and focus on the music of the Spirit. We’ll “play” with fewer mistakes, and far more musicality. Our living will look more and more like the Savior’s living. Just like piano, it’s definitely a Thing to practice.

[Originally published November 1, 2019] In spite of the natural ebb and flow of living, seasons of waves can still catch you by surprise. Oh, who am I kidding - they can completely take you under, right? Some of the worst waves for me are the internal ones. Even more than when I have physical pressures of too many things on my calendar, when I’m battling “with principalities,” I can barely tie my shoes. This was the condition of our fair heroine a few weeks ago. Though I have never - ever - EVER even remotely felt suicidal, there was a Saturday night, mid-September, when I wished there were an office - with paperwork that could be filled out - to officially Give Up. It was time to say my prayers before bed, and I couldn’t think of a thing to say to my Heavenly Father, whom I adore, except, “help me help me help me!” I wasn’t sure if I should. Or even could. Then I remembered the talk Elder David A. Bednar gave in October 2008 general conference (https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2008/10/pray-always). For the record, I just remembered a talk he had given; I had to look it up to tell you WHEN he gave it. In it, he told about a general authority staying with his family when Elder Bednar was the president of then Ricks College. The Bednars had just lost a very dear friend, and were feeling a great need to ask Heavenly Father to bless and be with the friend’s family. That night, as the general authority and his wife joined the Bednars in family prayer, the general authority unknowingly challenged the family that night to say nothing in their prayers but expressions of gratitude. Elder Bednar talked about what a great spiritual exercise it was for his family to only make statements of gratitude in this particular prayer, at a time when they so desperately wanted to plead with the Lord to bless and be with their friends. This incident wafted through my head on that fateful September night. I decided that would be an excellent spiritual exercise for me, right this minute. I knelt by my bed, and racked my brain to think of what I was thankful for, besides the usual list of suspects: a loving husband, two incredible children, a warm, comfortable home, a job I loved, opportunities to serve. As I proceeded, the list deepened: - I was grateful I could go to bed and feel differently in the morning. - I was grateful for second chances, and second millionth chances. - I was grateful God would give me strength beyond my own to try again. - I was grateful tomorrow was Sunday, so that I could be filled up again with the strength, and peace, and joy that I needed to do His will. I went to bed a much happier camper than the pre-prayer me - so much so, that I decided to have a similar prayer the next morning. - I was grateful for Sundays. - I was grateful my taking the sacrament told both Father - and myself - that I was seriously All In, even though I knew I’d made a mess of many things the previous week. - I was grateful that a night’s sleep really did make everything look different. - I was grateful the Holy Ghost had given me such a brilliant idea to say nothing but thanks. At this point, I determined that from then until general conference in two weeks, I would speak nothing to my Heavenly Father except to praise Him and express my gratitude. I would frame every need in a statement of praise, acknowledging the many tender mercies which He had already given me to meet those needs. It was two of the very best weeks of my life, and has changed the month that has come after it. When Elder Bednar taught about the spiritual work and significance of praying this way, he wasn’t kidding. It reminded me of what the brother of Jared had to do to figure out what to ask the Lord about lighting the barges. I love this story for soooo many reasons. For the Lord to directly ask the brother of Jared, “What would you like me to do?” (Ether 2:25) is so instructive about the effort the Lord would like us to put into our communications with Him. And the brother of Jared’s response is even more particularly instructive. Moltening stones does not exactly sound like a quick or easy process. This incident reminds me constantly, especially when I am stuck in those “help me help me help me” prayers, that I may want to drill down just a little more, and come up with specific things I need to ask for. But now, deciding to have two weeks of only gratitude prayers, asking for nothing - well - this was another way of moltening stones. - I have a sick friend? I’m grateful that friend can pray for healing, and for patience and comfort in the sickness. I’m grateful Jesus Christ suffered all these things to make it possible for my friend to petition the Lord for relief, and feel His peace and love in the meantime. - I’m confused about direction? I’m grateful the Lord has given me such powerful tools to receive revelation: the scriptures, the words of prophets - particularly the living prophets - the gift of the Holy Ghost. - I don’t feel strong enough to do a hard thing on my schedule today? I’m grateful that Jesus Christ has done more than make me clean - that He also lends me HIS strength when I make my best efforts. Framing all my communications as statements of praise and gratitude was a whole different way of moltening stones. It was spiritual work that was new for me - bracing, but invigorating. Let me give you a hint: you do not fall asleep in this kind of prayer! I was so much more engaged, because my mind was working to frame all my words into expressions of gratitude and praise. Within the first few days of this gratitude experiment, I had come to ending every single prayer I offered with these words: “For all these things - and for everything Thou has done for me, Father - I praise Thee!” Just to recap - here are only a few reasons this has been the greatest prayer experiment I’ve conducted in quite a little while: The more you see... the more you see. When you start to look around at the blessings, more pop out. We all have tender, darling stories of the Tinies in our lives, thanking Father for noses, toast, or pillows, but seriously - what would we do without them? The more you notice - and acknowledge - the myriad bounties dumped upon your head, you start picking through the stuff, and find even more! That whole thing of teaching yourself to work harder at your prayers. What a blessing to learn how to pray better! I will never say another prayer without being more thoughtful about the way I frame what I say to my Father - my Maker - my God. And since the experiment? I'd say my thanks-to-asks percentage ratio is roughly 70-30. Overall, everyday, general happiness quotient? Off the charts. If you really had filled out paperwork to Give Up, and stuck it on your desk with last week’s catalogs and bills, I promise you this - one week of praying like this would have you digging up that application and ripping it up. Who wants to give up when you’ve got unlimited help from the One with unlimited knowledge and strength? Seeing it better, saying it better, feeling it and living it better. That’s what two weeks of saying nothing but thank you did for me. So here it is, November 1st, and the social media posts of gratitude will begin. There will be awesome posts to remind us of the many things we have to be grateful for. But if you want an epic month, I’ve got a challenge for you. Don’t just come up with one thing a day to be grateful for. Say nothing but thanks and praise - all month long. Spend this month doing nothing but saying thank you. It’ll change the kind of waves you’re surfing in, I promise.

[Originally published April 9, 2008] I was talking to my friend Melanee on the phone the other day about the challenge of too much on a woman's plate at any given time of her life. Something about the conversation reminded me of something I had written about 7 years ago, and at Melanee's request - here it is. From my journal, dated Feb. 21, 2001: "I made a comment to the kids [Megan was 15 and Grant was 10 at this point] yesterday about the prophets' counsel to not be too busy to make time for family prayer, scripture study, and home evening. Their reply was prompt and simultaneous. They both said it wasn't "busy-ness" keeping us from doing those things; it was that we were being lazy. They have good insight on that, and yet, at the risk of sounding like a rebuttal, I feel I must qualify to a certain degree. If we are so busy all the time that we're always near the point of exhaustion, then shouldn't we free up some time just to better budget our strength and energy resources? "This is especially important when you consider what a challenge it has always been to me to keep foundational things in place when I start to build. This has been such a huge challenge in my life that it starts to form an "either-or" in my mind: either this is The test of my life, or, it's The test of this life. Perhaps, with the acceptance of so many deceptions, the world has got many good people - even some of the elect - doing much of this life test...backward. You cannot build anything lasting and worthwhile without a solid foundation. And the great and spacious building in Lehi's dream had no foundation. "Of course, the sure foundation is Christ. But I'm thinking that there's a missing step after that sure foundation is in place. And, having that foundation in place is why the prophets continue to stress that first priority goes to family and individual prayer, scripture study, and home evening. "In the building process, framing is the next step beyond the foundation. I'm thinking there must be some vital activities in this step that are being overlooked, or discounted, or even some lies are clouding our ability to even see very clearly that it's second in the process. This stuff is key in mother responsibilities as well, because it's stuff like rest, nutrition, cleanliness - both of body and environment. "In earlier times, these things took high priority because survival depended on it. You couldn't leave this stuff out - you'd die! Today, though, the lie is still crooned into our eager ears, "you can buy anything in this world...with money." And so convenience and ease bombard us from every side, making it quite easy to gloss over building a frame that can withstand either external, or even internal, pressures. Meals largely devoid of nutrition are prepared in minutes - often by someone else, or picked up and paid for on the way home from something or other. Meals are not being shared together in families - a place where foundation and frame building used to come together. The consequences are far reading. A new generation of young adults don't recognize basic vegetables (like broccoli!), don't know how to set a table properly, don't know how to discuss ideas and explore opinions, and have a 40-year head start on degenerative diseases, largely caused by poor nutrition. "As I look around, I see that many build shaky buildings because step 1 and step 2 are getting skipped, or, at best, getting scanty attention. The deception is that 'underneath' stuff is just that - beneath our attention or efforts. Those with the financial resources pay to have others pay attention to it. Those without the resources have been lulled into ignoring it, discounting it, or stretching their resources to buy convenient substitutes. Could it be that many mothers are working outside their homes, just so they can afford those conveniences that they wouldn't need so much if they didn't work outside their homes? What a ridiculous cycle! "It seems like the foundation and framing are not only connected, but maybe even inseparable..."

[Originally published April 19, 2021] From my journal March 14, 2021 I’ve seen more fear in my world in the last year than I have in my entire life. It’s been an extreme challenge, and caused me to spend a fair amount of time thinking about what fear does to a mind. Just a few important ones to consider: Fear can block rational thinking. Fear is the emotion triggered by the limbic fight-or-flight response. The fact fear can shut down the reasoning frontal cortex is a simple matter of cause and effect. But because God is so big on honoring personal will, is it possible for a person with a deeply held value system - who constantly taps into it through personal practice - to block the fight-or-flight response? Fear can override compassion and charity. Prophets who have been given the discouraging and often life-threatening assignment of preaching to dying societies always preach about faith, hope, and charity. I wonder - is charity particularly important in a dying society because fear is so rampant? Is it possible that practicing charity can help override fear? Fear can trigger anger. Fear is a primary emotion; anger is a secondary. Fearful people can be easily manipulated to become angry people, and angry people can be easily manipulated to violence. Fear can be a powerful weapon in the hands of power mongers. Is it possible that practicing controlling anger can help lessen this trigger from fear? Fear inhibits connection. Fear turns every other child of God into a soulless ‘It’ - an ‘Other’ who is so different from ourselves, we can’t possibly see anything in common with them. In the absence of fear, we can more clearly see all others as sacred like ourselves - with thoughts and feelings and fears and phobias like ours. Is it possible that in practicing seeing others like ourselves, we can inhibit our fears? Fear erodes faith. It has been said that faith and fear can’t co-exist, and I believe it. Fear is walking on water towards a Savior we very often can’t see, yet keeping our eye on the waves beneath our feet; faith is walking towards a Savior, and with an eye of faith, keeping our eye on a beloved Face which we WILL see with our physical eyes one day. I can tell I’ve spent a good part of this last year in the stages of grief as I’ve mourned how successful the fear campaign has been with people all over the world. I’ve experienced denial that fear is driving any of the dramatic changes we’ve seen, and optimistically hoped that reason would eventually prevail. I’ve experienced anger at what has felt like a complete abandonment of common sense, common interests, and common values. And I’ve finally come to an acceptance that none of these problems will be solved without Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the solution. Even those who don’t want to recognize Him as the Son of God and Savior of the world would do well to consider His teachings as solutions: reason, compassion, charity, overcoming anger, connection, faith in unseen goodness. We’re all walking on a pretty stormy sea now. Take a chance - look up from the waves and into the dearest Face I know. “Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God...” (Isaiah 41:10)

[Originally published October 11, 2011] Six months ago, in the thro's of bleak mid-winter (yes, it was April, and yet, this particular year, it WAS the bleak MID-winter) I started to worry that I may be slowly dying. So much of my life was in a comfort zone, that - as often happens when we get a little older - I was starting to feel like that comfort zone was beginning, ever-so-slightly, to shrink. I'd been teaching piano, off and on (more on than off), for 28 years (yes, I started when I was 10). I had had teaching callings in the church for 12 consecutive years. I struggled with routines, but I was even used to that, recognizing my need to approach them with my unique little A.D.D.-ness, and knowing that with the ebb and flow of each year, it always felt like I was fighting my way out of a paper bag... When in May, as I was still fighting my way out of this year's paper bag, I started to have problems with tendonitis in my right wrist. I continued to nurse a war wound in my left foot as well - aka: zip line injury from girls' camp four years ago. I laughingly noticed one day that every single move I was making - to get in and out of my car, put groceries away, change laundry, etc. - was designed with one major objective: AVOID PAIN. As very often happens when I make these wry little observations, the spirit whispered the eternal truth connected to my observation, "You're doing that spiritually, too." That feeling I had had in the previous several months, that I was slowly dying inside, crystalized in this new realization, and with it, the further realization that if I was going to make the choice to avoid pain in this life, I was going to die before my heart had the sense to stop beating. If I continued on the path I had set my unwitting feet on, I was going to become incapable of feeling, all because I had decided it might be too painful. C.S. Lewis said, "There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk [my italics] of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell. "I believe that the most lawless and inordinate loves are less contrary to God's will than a self-invited and self-protective lovelessness....We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armour. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as a way in which they should break, so be it." In my prayers, I began asking Heavenly Father to help me wake up, and live. In feeling the kind of pain connected with my current trials, I didn't want to shut down and be incapable of feeling anything. And as part of that, I didn't want to sleepwalk through life, incapable of being an instrument in the Lord's hands, to bless, and serve, and minister. I've always loved learning new things, and I didn't want to shut myself off to one of the biggest joys in this life, and in the next life: growth and progress. Fast forward to Sunday... I was talking to a friend about having too many new things on my plate, and it hit me how every single thing going on in my life right now has me in a huge learning curve. Six months ago, everything in my life was in my comfort zone. Now, everything in my life is OUT of my comfort zone. And since I begged the Lord to not let me die inside, it's all tender mercies. It's like the Lord plucked me out of my old life, and tossed me into the deep end of the swimming pool. To have EVERY. SINGLE. THING be out of my comfort zone puts me in a state far, FAR from grace. That learning curve is messy, and awkward, and clumsy. And when you've been in your comfort zone for any extended period of time, all your natural man instincts practically scream at you to go back to the old way, where you're comfortable, where it's easy. I just have to know that the Lord's grace is available in all of these new circumstances...AFTER ALL I CAN DO. And it's just going to look messy until that starts to happen. He is sooooo good to me, to answer my prayer in such a huge way. It's one of the reasons I feel hesitation to put anything down while I'm figuring it out. I keep trying to just take one day at a time, and since all these messy things are gifts from a loving Father, I plead for guidance, and strength, and FOCUS. Always focus... And then, as I get up off my knees, and wonder where on earth to plunge in today, I hear this hysterical little voice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-ZF5r1F7nY

[Originally published April 21, 2015] Great fiction writers have taught me that there may not be such a thing as fiction at all. Great fiction – the stories that transcend generations – are just a new way of telling a true story – the story of the human condition. J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, with its make-believe hobbits, wizards, dwarves, hellish orcs, and celestial elves, is just such a story. In the very real battle of good versus evil that each of us fight every day, here are just a few lessons we learn from this fantastical battle of good versus evil: Evil never sleeps – not ever. If it looks like it’s been defeated, it just goes underground to build its strength back up, restructure, and resurface to fight again. The war between good and evil is waged on two fronts: it seems to be perpetually moving over broad, sweeping landscapes with legions of soldiers; but it always starts deep inside one individual heart at a time. The good who fight evil are in many cases not the “most likely to’s”. And yet, when you see the task at hand – what must be done to battle evil this time, the small, the weak, the “least of these” end up being not only the only choice, but very often, the inevitable, and best choice. When it comes right down to it, good would rather not fight at all. Those who are good look desperately for anyone else – ANYONE ELSE – to fight evil for them. Or, when the battle du jour is won, forgetting the reality of Lesson Number One – that evil never sleeps - they just want to go home. Like the hobbits that so sweetly portray the truly good in this world, those who are good mostly just want to stay home, visit with friends, bask in the sweetness of the shire, and, of course, have lunch…since it’s been clear since elevensies since anyone has eaten. The person in history who really got me thinking about this was George Washington – the most anti-hobbit-built military hero ever to mount a horse. Tall, handsome, disciplined – the man looked, sounded, and acted like a man who was born to be followed into battle. But underneath his Aragorn exterior, beat the heart of a Frodo Baggins. Washington continued to find himself at just the right place at the right time – or the wrong place, at the wrong time – depending on how you want to look at it. Because of his extraordinarily high character, he continued to be needed at critical moments of the beginnings of the new nation of the United States. But…he didn’t want the ring! After the French and Indian War, he just wanted to go home. After the Revolutionary War, he just wanted to go home. After the Constitutional Convention, he just wanted to go home. And finally, after serving two terms as president, he just…wanted…to go…home. With all his years of public service, away from home, there was no place Washington wanted to be more than Mount Vernon. It was most definitely his shire. And in spite of his lifelong yearning to be there, he responded to the call to serve – every single time. Benjamin Rush, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, said this: "’To do good’ is the business of life. ‘To enjoy rest’ is the happiness of heaven. We pluck premature for forbidden fruit when we grasp at rest on this side of the grave.” Tolkien’s stories hold a beautiful analogy that affirms that reality about life: the shire is an almost Eden-like memory, and the beauty of Rivendell is a mere hint of a more heavenly future existence. George Washington possessed a nobility of character that instinctively seemed to know this. He said: “How, in the end, will we be able to live with ourselves when we weren’t our highest self and didn’t do the right thing in the first place?” Tolkien created 6-toed hobbits…but our country’s beginnings depended on a living, breathing, 6-foot tall hobbit. Both teach me that the fight isn’t over in this life, and call for something higher in me to step up and out…of my shire.

I wrote the essay, below, for an essay contest sponsored by Utahns Against Common Core. It gave me the opportunity to highlight some of the glaring problems I have with the Common Core State Standards. More importantly, it gave me the opportunity to articulate what I am for. I am for the UNcommon The Common Core State Standards have raised red flags to watchful parents across America, and awakened the most fearful creature in all of nature: a parent who senses that the well-being of its offspring is at stake. The red flags are daunting, because there are so many. Here are a few: When parents can’t get anything more concrete from a teacher other than to call these standards “more rigorous”, that is a red flag. When teachers are afraid to speak against the Common Core standards for fear of losing their jobs, that is a red flag. When university education students are told that their professors don’t know what to teach them to qualify them as certified teachers, that is a red flag. When teachers skulkingly hand a parent a text book to help a child at home, as if that text book is contraband, that is a red flag. When a federal government, spending money from taxpayers who have not yet been born, bribes states to receive waivers from ridiculous practices or money to adopt untested, unused, unwritten standards, that is a red flag. When educrats advocate funneling a child into a system that will determine what that child will grow up to be, for the good of a global job market, which undermines the true self-determination that has been a prized value of liberty since this country’s beginnings, that is a red flag! It is at this point in the conversation that any good disciple of Saul Alinsky will hurl this question accusingly at the protective parent: “so aren’t you for any standards in education?” Parents: it is at this point that we must have an answer so ready, that it nearly bursts from us because it burns within us: I am for standards that are NOT common! Excellence is not common. And rigorous does not equal excellence. Rigorous is defined as “thorough, exhaustive, and accurate”. Do we as parents want that kind of education for these beautiful, snowflake-like individuals, these magnificent children, who came to us – as Wordsworth said, “trailing clouds of glory from God, who is [their] home”? Remember: the word ‘rigorous’ has the same Latin root as ‘rigor’ – as in ‘rigor mortis’ – the stiffening of muscles that follows death. In the context of Common Core, I pray that ‘rigorous’ isn’t referring to stiffening that leads to the death of our children’s ability to imagine, dream, create, and think for themselves. We are for the uncommon, the excellent, the exceptional. We are for the individual liberty of directing our children’s education – with decisions made locally in homes and local community schools and districts. We are for the individual liberty of local teachers – gifted and dedicated professionals who love and praise and encourage our children, who spend countless hours of personal time and too much unreimbursed personal funds on their students, and who often intuitively know – without multi-million dollar assessments – which of those students are struggling and how to adapt lessons to reach them. We are for the privacy of our children as guaranteed to us by the 4th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. We are for our children having the once-in-a-lifetime experience of a protected childhood, of them having the freedom to succeed – and fail! - and through their experiences, gain the strength and wisdom to choose for themselves the path their lives will follow. I quote Dr. Everett Piper, president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, who delivered a masterful speech last summer, on what he was for in education. He said: “The goal of good education should be the pursuit of what is good…and true…and just…and right…and REAL, not the protection or the propagation of what is COMMON. Good education has never been about dumbing down the academy to a group of ideas that are agreed upon by the powerful and the popular. The goal of the educator should be the pursuit of truth, not the construction of what is common. Education should be about an open mind that challenges the consensus, rather than a set of closed constructs of commonality that capitulate to the mediocrity of the group, group think, and the collective opinion.” He goes on to say: “I am against Common Core because I believe in intellectual integrity – the integration of head, and heart, and fact, and faith that is directed by the student’s thirst for truth and not the state’s hunger for control.” I stand for excellence, for local control, for privacy, for teachers, but first, last, and always, I stand for my children.

[Originally published October 31, 2011] You can learn a lot from your kids. Grant spoke in church yesterday, and gave a beautiful talk about what he learned on his mission: 1. Don't be a baby. This is never a bad thing to learn, and generally needs to be learned over and over. And over. 2. Put God first in your life - He is your DAD. No one loves you more, and your prayers should be TALKING to Him. It's so much more than "We thank Thee, we ask Thee...." from Primary. Grant told a story about a little tiny boy, Tino, the stake president's son, who gave a prayer and kept calling Heavenly Father "Poppy," as he asked Heavenly Father for things that Grant felt that he specifically needed at that time. Grant said he was very grateful to have learned to TALK to His "Poppy" from Tino. He told about a tiny little outpost of the church, down at the tip of the continent, called the 28th of November (it's cooler in Spanish). He said one member's home was the most holy place he had ever been, besides the temple. He said the man felt his home needed to be sacred, because of being so off the path of any church jurisdiction. Grant said he could feel that the Lord had not forsaken these few saints in this tiny little area, out in the middle of nowhere - that no one in the world may know about them, but the Lord knew about them, and watched over their lives. "For can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on ths on of her womb? Yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee, O house of Israel. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me." (1 Nephi 21:15-16). He learned that he is not alone from the 28th of November. Lastly, Grant told of David and Maria, a family who had a huge trauma befall their family the day after their baptism. He told of counseling David that this event could bring him closer to God, or tear him away from God - but that he, David, would be the one to decide. He said one of the most meaningful moments of his entire mission was watching the change come over David's face as he made the decision to stay with the Lord. He learned to stay with the Lord, through anything that could happen to him, from David. The last area in Grant's mission was a return to an area where he served very early in his mission. He spoke about how powerful it was to see different people's choices to move closer to the Lord - or not - over that year and a half in between. It reminded me of Alma meeting Ammon and his brothers after their fourteen-year mission to the Lamanites, how overjoyed Alma was at learning that his dear friends were still faithful to their covenants. It was particularly poignant to consider, after hearing about a family who could have been ripped away from their tender, newly-planted gospel roots at the very outset of their planting, but instead, to reach down deep into that soil and cling to their covenants, and to their God. I love what I've learned and how my faith has been strengthened as I've watched my son serve a mission. I'm sure gonna miss those Monday emails.

[Originally published October 21, 2011] Two days ago, we had a taste of what I imagine it's like to pass through the veil at the end of our lives. As I stood in the airport waiting to see our missionary man child come down the escalator inside the terminals, we waited with three other families whose sons were traveling with Grant: Elders Harris, Healey, and Peterson. Naturally, we were all instantly friends, because we were all there for the same purpose, to welcome valiant sons home. Then we caught that first glimpse of them, predictably near the end of the disembarkment, and suddenly, we weren't one big group. We were four individual groups, sacred family units, sharing a private, sweet moment of reunion. Suddenly, Grant wasn't the disembodied idea of Grant that he had become over the past two years. He was my Grant, our Grant, that sweet little boy, loping down that hallway towards us, a man home from his first big commission from the Lord. It was Wednesday afternoon, and because of changed travel plans, the dear boy had essentially been up since Monday morning at 6:30 Buenos Aires time. He looked dazed and confusedly happy. This must be what heaven will be like, welcoming each other after completing our life's missions. There will be people there to greet us and welcome us home again. It will be familiarly strange....and strangely familiar. Being together again with people we may have been separated from our entire mortality, it will surprise us that we remember and know grandparents and others whom we never met in this life. You can't really say that it feels like he's never been gone, because the separation mattered so much. It was vital that Grant's first two decades of life be tithed for the Lord, and all four of us are different people because he served. I am so grateful for this son. It was joyful, yesterday, to watch him get up and study, make his bed (!), clean up after himself, ask every few minutes, "What do you need? What can I do for you?", thank me for the meals I've fixed him, allow me to chase him around the bar in the kitchen for hugs, the way I used to before he left.....only now, turn around suddenly and run right into my arms. I'm so grateful for children who grow up and still want to come home! The apostle Paul calls followers of Christ "children of light." I am so grateful to have raised children who love light. Light is the way by which we see everything else. The Light, is what helps us discern truth - "things as they really are."