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There's a story behind the name of this website. I love it so much because it's been an important private lesson - so I thought I'd let you in on it. For many years, I wrote a weekly email to my two children in an optimistic attempt for our family to feel connected and to and remind them of their roots. What it actually did was serve as a weekly journal entry of sorts, recounting life events when I didn't sit and write with a pen in my journal. Which I still love, but rarely do. In my mind, writing with pen and paper looks a lot like this picture. Late in the summer of 2020, as I got ready to click "send" one week, I realized I'd left the subject line blank. I considered the prior weeks filled with more breathless and whirlwind living than usual, and realized this past week had been uncharacteristically calm, with nothing in particular meriting a headline. Imagining that would last all of fifteen minutes, I somewhat wryly typed the subject, nearly as a quip: "Living in the pause", and sent the email. Fast forward a few months to the very end of the year. My darling friend Gale Sears, a prolific writer of historical fiction, called to see if I was interested in contributing to an anthology project she was involved in. If so, she'd have the project's editor contact me, as Gale had recommended me to her. The project was to be a collection of 24 essays - two on each of twelve qualities possessed by the Savior. The book was to be titled Like Him, and was slated to come out the following year in time for Christmas. The one quality she had yet to assign - which would be mine if I wanted to submit something - was temperance. The editor hesitantly told me all the other contributors were turning in their final drafts on Monday. This was the Friday after Christmas. The deadline was in three days. No. Pressure. She hastily assured me I could have more time - THANK YOU - and asked me how much I thought I needed. Funny thing, the minute she said the word temperance, my funny little brain - which lives in a constant state of free association - plucked that random email subject line out of the millions of locked file drawers: living in the pause . I told the editor, "I think I have an idea - can you give me a week?" She agreed. I awoke early two days later on Sunday morning, earlier than usual. I didn't need to get up yet, because it was only 5:30 a.m. I worked on nestling for a little while longer, but my brain wouldn't have it; off it went in different directions about a potential essay on temperance. As I lay there with my body and brain arguing over nestling or writing, the Holy Ghost broke the tie with a whisper: "Why don't we get cracking on that article?" It stuns me as I type this to recount: what ended up being published in that beautiful anthology is very nearly the first draft that spilled out on the sleepy winter morning. I instantly knew it wasn't mine; I was just God's little helper on this one. Mother Teresa wrote: "I am a little pencil in God's hands. He does the thinking. He does the writing. He does everything and sometimes it is really hard because it is a broken pencil and He has to sharpen it a little more." (Mother Teresa, The Joy in Loving: A Guide to Daily Living ) It was like that. I made a few minor edits over the next two days and submitted the essay on Monday with the other writers who'd had their assignments for months. There's a technical word for what happened: miracle. The book came out in late 2021 when I was in a coma on a ventilator. It was months before I could get the rush of going into a bookstore, finding the book, and looking on p. 49 to see my name looking back at me with the title: Living in the Pause . Fast forward again to early 2024. My dear friend who became my web designer, Abe Sloan, asked me what I wanted to call the blog we were about to launch. Again, those four words got plucked from the mess of locked file drawers in my brain, and this website, Living in the Pause, was born. That original phrase - "living in the pause" - was so instinctive and random when it glibly became the subject for an email to my children in 2020. Little did I know God was beginning an incredible private lesson which would take more than three years to get to the punchline. First, God took that original random thought and helped me develop it into an essay on temperance. Viktor Frankl epitomized this kind of pause when he wrote: "Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom." (Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning) Later, God taught me more when President Russell M. Nelson spoke to the young adults of the church in May 2022. He said: "Mortal lifetime is hardly a nanosecond compared with eternity. But my dear brothers and sisters, what a crucial nanosecond it is! During this life we get to choose which laws we are willing to obey - those of the celestial kingdom, or the terrestrial, or the telestial - and, therefore, in which kingdom of glory we will live forever." ( https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/broadcasts/worldwide-devotional-for-young-adults/2022/05/12nelson?lang=eng ) Calling mortality a "nanosecond" in this context put profound import on those four glib little words; President Nelson was describing THE pause! The eternal pause where decisions are going to matter SO. MUCH. It was this further learning of the lesson that led to the website having a subtitle: "Living in the Pause: Navigating the Temporary of Now While Living for the Eternal " Learning to live in the pause makes living more intentional. Recognizing mortality as an eternal pause helps me prize the chance to practice and try again every day. We're here to practice preferences, and if I don't prefer the eternal yet, I can educate my desires until, over time, I do. I hope that's what you'll find here - perspective to sift through the temporary, temporal, stuff that in the end, doesn't really matter - and cleave to the stuff that will always matter - the eternal stuff.

Come Follow Me (4 Nephi) The idea of a perfect society has eluded humanity since our first parents left the original Garden. The Fall didn’t just introduce death to this world; it also introduced the fallen nature of mankind - the disinclination to align desires and actions to eternal laws. Basically, it put us at odds with God. If one human can’t pull off anything approaching ideal in an individual life, the chances of an ideal society is going to be pretty slim, what with a society being comprised of individuals and all. Even so, there have been two glimmering short seasons of utopian living - like elusive shooting stars flashing briefly, then disappearing across the night sky of history. The first season was Enoch’s stunning missionary success, which created an ideal society (see Moses 7). It left such an impression on the unwilling and unchanged fallen world that its exit from the planet was followed by the first counterfeit utopian attempt: Babel. The original lie of utopia as peddled by the destroyer always involves offering what God offers - at a discount. Do it your own way - don’t align your will to God’s laws - and still receive the blessings of obedience. It’s almost like Satan convinces humans that if they all agree more vigorously and unanimously natural law will be suspended. The second season was the people of Lehi, following the personal ministry of our resurrected God, Jesus Christ. This society didn’t leave the planet, but rather, enjoyed nearly two generations of ideal living : “there could not be a happier people among all the people who had been created by the hand of God.” (4 Nephi 1:16) How did they do it? How did a community of humans tame their human natures for nearly two hundred years? What helped them create a utopia? “…they had all things common among them; therefore there were not rich and poor, bond and free, but they were all made free, and partakers of the heavenly gift.” (4 Nephi 1:3) Isn’t that interesting? Satan first whispered the lie to Cain that killing his brother would make him free (Moses 5:33). But true freedom only exists when an individual - and by extension, a collection of individuals - freely choose to govern themselves by God's laws. More interesting still: historically, societies which have attempted a utopia have failed miserably, with a significant loss of freedom as a most notable hallmark. Yet here, Mormon records that happiness, peace, and prosperity involved freedom as the citizens of this society became " partakers of the heavenly gift." As humans accept the doctrine of Jesus Christ, they invest in the project of taming human nature - inherent in their bodies composed of "unredeemed earth" (See Melvin J. Ballard, "Struggle for the Soul"). The natural consequence of leaning out of fallen human nature is a leaning into divine nature - inherent in the human spirit with the divine DNA of heavenly Parents. The apostle Peter wrote: "According as [God's] divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue; "Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature , having escaped corruption that is in the world through lust. "And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; "And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; "And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity, "For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ." (2 Peter 1:3-8) To invest in the doctrine of Christ is to invest in a program of eternal self-improvement. The power to make such vast changes with mortal limitations is only possible because of the one Human who transcended the limitations. Jesus Christ didn't just execute a perfect mortal life, but suffered the spiritual pain of all humanity to give us power in this project. Self-improvement is only possible because of Jesus. Self-improvement is a key feature of living the doctrine of Jesus. Converted disciples take responsibility for their own lives by investing in the project of self-improvement, aided by Jesus. A collective of converted disciples, invested in self-improvement, create an ideal society. The entire collective of citizens is invested in the results. There is no force in the equation - could it be utopian if anyone were forced against his will to participate? The only way for it to truly be a utopia is for everyone to freely choose to participate - to be invested in taking responsibility for their own self-improvement with Jesus. The world calls it utopia, but disciples of Jesus Christ know such a society by another name: Zion. Zion can only exist in a state of freedom - freely chosen by its citizens. And Zion requires priesthood - so saving and exalting ordinances can be administered, binding those citizens in a covenant relationship to Christ. Then, they can access His redeeming power to continue their project of growth and self-improvement. Mormon records the conditions of the Nephite Zion: "...they did walk after the commandments which they had received from their Lord and their God, "...continuing in fasting and prayer, "...and in meeting together oft both to pray and to hear the word of the Lord." (4 Nephi 1:12) "...there was no contention among all the people in the land..." (4 Nephi 1:13) "...because of the love of God which did dwell in the hearts of the people." (4 Nephi 1:15) "And there were no envyings, nor strifes, nor tumults, nor whoredoms, nor lyings, nor murders, nor any manner of lasciviousness; and surely there could not be a happier people among all the people who had been created by the hand of God." (4 Nephi 1:16) At some point, when you're converted enough, committed enough - you stop worrying about how your neighbor is weeding his garden. You stop worrying if he's weeding at all. You just weed your own garden, because when you signed up with Jesus, you knew it was an eternal investment with eternal dividends. In fact, if you discover your neighbor's weeding isn't going so well, Jesus may enlist the Holy Ghost to tap you on the shoulder, and invite you to pitch in over there for a little minute. When Jesus returns to rule and reign for a thousand years, absolutely no one will be forced to be good. Everyone who gets to stay will have chosen to invest in Zion by investing in repentance. Repentance: the lifetime practice of self-improvement with the aid and power of Jesus Christ through covenant. As President Nelson just reminded us: "It is neither too early nor too late for you to become a devout disciple of Jesus Christ." (Russell M. Nelson, "The Lord Jesus Christ Will Come Again," General Conference, October 2024). Today would be a great day to choose to invest in Zion. If enough people make this choice and this investment, maybe we could get this Millennium thing going already.

Friends in the cybersphere, I'd like to introduce you to a dear friend of many years, Mr. Eric Metaxas. Technically... we've actually never met. Truly, this is a mere technicality. In 2011, a good friend from my book group heard Eric speak at an event, promoting his recently published biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, titled Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy. She chose the book for our book group to read the following year. Besides learning about the incredible man whom the book was about, that book also served as my introduction to the mind and faith of Eric Metaxas. I look forward to eventually indulging in Eric's two other lengthy biographies on the lives of William Wilberforce ( Amazing Grace), and Martin Luther ( Martin Luther) . His take on people's approach to living in faith and discipleship is insightful and inspiring. He's an artisan wordsmith - that's my writer's version of "You had me at hello," and has a delightful and winsome sense of humor which can border on the ridiculous. ALWAYS A PLUS. The other of his many books I've read are worthy of mention and recommendation: Miracles - In 2014 Metaxas wrote a fabulous piece for the Wall Street Journal titled "Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God." ( https://www.wsj.com/articles/eric-metaxas-science-increasingly-makes-the-case-for-god-1419544568 )   The article was so wildly popular and so widely viewed and shared, his editor suggested he flesh it out for an entire book. Miracles is the result. The first half of the book is an expansion of the original 2014 WSJ article. The second half are personal witness stories - Eric knows each subject personally - who have experienced what he believes is a true miracle. As he puts it - he didn't want to use mere coincidences which serve miraculously in helping someone, but the miracles where God unmistakably intervened by suspending what we humans recognize as the natural laws of the universe. They are truly phenomenal. 7 Men and the Secret of Their Greatness - an anthology of short biographies on men as diverse as George Washington, Chuck Colson, and Jackie Robinson. 7 Women and the Secret of Their Greatness - an equally enthralling anthology of women including Rosa Parks, Corrie Ten Boom, and Joan of Arc. I was quite taken with both the introductions to these two anthologies. Eric makes the case for what makes a man or woman great in these introductions, but he also lays out his view of the divine roles of men and women as he understands them from his faith as a converted evangelical Christian. As a member of what I believe is the restored church - the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints - I could imagine any of my church leaders, whom I sustain as prophets and apostles, quoting from Eric's introductions in our church's general conferences. His opinions of men and women mesh beautifully with our church's document from 1995, "The Family: A Proclamation to the World." My fandom of Eric's writing became a genuine feeling of friendship as I began to listen to his radio show on podcasts, or listen to his lecture/discussion events called Socrates in the City. As I wrote about in a recent post, "Having a Thing with God" ( https://www.laureensimper.com/post/having-a-thing-with-god ), the best friends are those where we share more things in common - from cooking to quilting, from writing to faith. Those friendships deepen when friends draw you into their world, and you are the Thing, or your friend's friends are the Things. Friendships are sweetest when the Thing you share is mutual love for mutual people. That's what Eric has done for me over our many years of friendship. He's introduced me to: John Zmirak - a brilliant writer at www.stream.org who haunts Eric's podcast regularly, and who frankly needs his own post. Os Guinness - another brilliant writer whose book, A Free People's Suicide: Sustainable Freedom and the American Future, inspired a book from Eric, If You Can Keep It (It's in the stack, I'll get to it). His speeches and/or interviews at Socrates in the City are worth listening to more than once. ( https://socratesinthecity.com/guests/os-guinness/ ) N.T. Wright - Anglican bishop and New Testament scholar who HAS been quoted in general conference! ( https://socratesinthecity.com/guests/n-t-wright/ ) Gabrielle Kuby - author of The Global Sexual Revolution ( https://socratesinthecity.com/guests/gabriele-kuby/ ) Walter Hooper - editor of many of C.S. Lewis' posthumous books. When a dear friend of mine was a little boy, he wrote a letter to C.S. Lewis after his first adventure in Narnia. As this letter was written many years after Mr. Lewis' death, Mr. Hooper actually took the time to reply to my friend's letter. <3 The list is far too long; through Eric I've met so many wonderful people: Naomi Wolf, Andrew Klavan, John Lennox, Armand Nicholi, Beckett Cook, Ryan Bomberger, Baroness Cox, Rosaria Butterfield... it might be too late to add, TO NAME A FEW. But there it is - the great influence of someone I consider a friend - even though we haven't met. Yet. I'll never forget hearing Eric's witness of Jesus Christ in this short YouTube video - from a series of similar witnesses recorded in 2013. It reminded me of Oliver Cowdery being told, through the third person of Joseph Smith, of a personal experience with the Savior - which was only known by Cowdery and the Savior Himself (D&C 6:22-24). https://youtu.be/F_GTMgckqi4?si=5Pw3euYYlGF9GI_c So many reasons I consider Eric Metaxas a dear friend. Discipleship absolutely shortens the divide in the timeline of friendship, don't you think?

I was privileged to speak to the youth of our stake and testify of the prophetic restorative mission of Joseph Smith. I have never had a talk given to me so quickly by the Holy Ghost - as if I had received a heavenly download. Except for looking up a few references, the talk in its entirety was given to me before any study or preparation had taken place. The experience was so singular in its completeness that in the days leading up to presenting the talk, I started to worry about the few thoughts I had jotted down that first night. How could this brief outline refute the massive body of slander which was a mouse click away? How could I defend this man who had nearly become a personal friend - the way any do with whom you spend time - learning their voice by reading their own words? How could I convince the youth that everything this man said happened to him - really happened to him? About three days before the talk, I had a panic-filled prayer. I had gone over the outline so many times, I nearly had it memorized. "Is this seriously all You want me to do to defend Joseph Smith?" I pleaded. The answer came into my mind in a single phrase - instant and complete, the way the talk had come: "Your job isn't to defend him. Your job is to testify. My job is to send the Holy Ghost to bear witness that what you're saying is true." The rest of this post comes from that brief outline, and stands as my witness of what I've learned about Joseph Smith the only way anyone can learn the truth of who and what he is - by the power of God as manifest by the Holy Ghost: (Notes from Standards Night, Murray Utah Little Cottonwood Stake, September 24, 2017) I'm here tonight to leave you with three admonitions, and one statement of fact: Defend the absent Check your sources The statement of fact: Truth has no agenda Catch a wave - shamelessly borrowed from the Beach Boys Defend the Absent Have you ever been in a position where someone has been criticized in your presence - gossiped about, or spoken about in a derogatory way? What did you do? Has it ever been a friend who was talked about? A good friend? I would challenge you to be a person who defends the absent. Even those who talk about others behind their backs will be safe with you if you make the decision to always be the person who defends the absent. But I would particularly challenge you to defend your friends, and tonight, I want to challenge you to use this next school year [or in our adult case - this next year of Come Follow Me] becoming friends with Joseph Smith. Defending Joseph Smith doesn't mean you have to prove anything right or wrong - to anyone. It just means you would say about him what you would say about anyone you know well when they're not present: " You don't know him like I do." I challenge you to become a person who can say that about Joseph Smith. Angel Moroni told Joseph the first night of his visit that his name " should be had for good and evil among all nations, kindreds and tongues, or that it should be both good and evil spoken of among all people." Joseph Smith is absent - for now. Decide to defend the absent. Become someone who can say: "You don't know him like I do." Check Your Sources When you get to know someone, what sources are you going to use? At school - if you wanted to get to know someone you didn't know - whom would you ask to learn something - his friends, or his enemies? Beware of the voices - both inside and outside the church - that debase Joseph Smith by calling into question any aspect of his character. Ezra Taft Benson warned about attempts to bring a humanistic philosophy into our Church history by exposing weaknesses of Church leaders. ( https://video.byui.edu/media/Jayson+Kunzler+%E2%80%9CMillions+Shall+Know+Brother+Joseph+Again%E2%80%9D/0_jun5hvww ) [Parenthetical to the talk and speaking to 2025 readers: This notion of humanizing historical figures isn't to simply point out that they weren't perfect; it is at the heart of the critical method and the cancel culture. A person is dismissed, in spite of his goodness, because of his human flaws - and even sins. It means you can never live past the worst moments of your life. It doesn't just cancel a human soul; it cancels redemption .] The best sources are the words of prophets and those who loved him and knew him best - and the Book of Mormon itself, of course. The more you have a sure witness from the Holy Ghost that the Book of Mormon is the word of God, the more sure your witness will be that a 21-yr-old kid didn't write it on his own in 65 working days - over 85 calendar days! Listen to the words of Brigham Young: "I can truly say, that I invariably found him to be all that any people could require a true prophet to be, and that a better man could not be, though he had his weaknesses; and what man has ever lived upon this earth who had none?" Or John Taylor - who was present at Joseph Smith's murder: Joseph Smith, the Prophet and Seer of the Lord, has done more, save Jesus only, for the salvation of men in this world, than any other man that has ever lived in it. In the short space of twenty years, he has brought forth the Book of Mormon, which he translated by the gift and power of God, and has been the means of publishing it on two continents; has sent the fulness of the everlasting gospel, which it contained, to the four quarters of the earth; has brought forth the revelations and commandments which compose this book of Doctrine and Covenants, and many other wise documents and instructions for the benefit of the children of men; gathered many thousands of the Latter-day Saints, founded a great city, and left a fame and name that cannot be slain. He lived great, and he died great in the eyes of God and his people; and like most of the Lord's anointed in ancient times, has sealed his mission and his works with his own blood. (D&C 135:3). Years after his life, Lorenzo Snow said this: "Joseph Smith, the Prophet, wit whom I was intimately acquainted for years, as well as I was with my brother, I know ... to have been a man of integrity, a man devoted to the interests of humanity and to the requirements of God all the days in which he was permitted to live. There never was a man that possessed a higher degree of integrity and more devotedness to the interest of mankind than the Prophet Joseph Smith. I dan say this from a personal acquaintance with him" (in Conference Report, April 1898, p. 64) A British scholar by the name of Arthur Henry King joined the church because of Joseph Smith's writing style. He studied and taught language stylistics at Cambridge University, and was struck with the sincerity of Joseph Smith's writing. He believed that good men - and bad men - revealed themselves in the way they expressed themselves in writing. Imagine - making a career of studying that! He has written about the genius of Joseph Smith as a writer - this New York farm boy with a 3rd-grade education. Listen to his impressions of reading an account of the First Vision: "When I was first brought to read Joseph Smith's story as recorded in the Pearl of Great Price, I was deeply impressed. I wasn't inclined to be impressed. As a stylistician, I have spent my life being disinclined to be impressed. So when I read his story, I thought to myself, this is an extraordinary thing. This is an astonishingly matter-of-fact and cool account. This man is not trying to persuade me of anything. He doesn't feel the need to. He is stating what happened to him, and he is stating it, not enthusiastically, but in quite a matter-of-fact way. He is not trying to make me cry or feel ecstatic. That struck me, and that began to build my testimony, for I could see that this man was telling the truth." (emphasis added) ( https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/1989/03/a-man-who-speaks-to-our-time-from-eternity?lang=eng ) Truth Has No Agenda To that end - as Joseph Smith wrote not to convince - truth doesn't seek to convince. It just sits there... being true. Truth has no competition. It really can't be argued with - unless you've become untethered from reality. Satan only has one way to effectively attack truth - attack the messenger. Joseph Smith simply said, "... I had seen a vision; I knew it, and I knew that God knew it, and I could not deny it, neither dared I do it..." (Joseph Smith History 1:25) Catch a Wave There are two waves - one is flowing into this church, and one is flowing out. The wave that flows in is focused on doctrine - eternal, unchanging doctrine. It centers on Jesus Christ and focuses on making covenants with Him. It focuses on your individual responsibility to God to be true to what you know. Not your truth; that's absurd. The truth as you know it. The wave that flows out is focused on people - the flawed nature of the human beings running the church, and the rank and file inside the church. And you can't swing a dead cat without hitting an imperfect person in this church. You get to decide which wave you want to be a part of. The wave heading out can't get past mistakes - and believe me - there are mistakes - because this church is FULL of humans who make them every day. But the wave in preaches there's a solution for those mistakes - a cure. A rescue. Jesus Christ came into this world as the only perfect human so He could be the Lamb without blemish - suffer, and die to pay eternal justice for every single mistake every made - if I will accept His gift. I love this doctrine, and I choose it. Everyone can know for himself - and choose it for himself. I invite you to do the spiritual work necessary to know for yourself - and choose the doctrine of Jesus Christ - as it was perfectly restored by an imperfect farm boy from New York.

Come Follow Me (1 Nephi 11-15) I love 1st Nephi chapter 8 - Lehi’s dream of the Tree of Life. There’s so much to study and dissect and ponder. And it would seem Heavenly Father thinks so too, because it’s one of the rare places in the Book of Mormon where not only do you get a retelling from another perspective, you get additional details and interpretation to help you with your pondering. And God bless that Nephi, by the way. I love that when his father shares some powerful spiritual knowledge with his family, Nephi goes straight to the Lord and asks, “Can I know what my dad knows, the way my dad knows it?” And because he’s serious - TRANSLATION: he means to do something with his newfound knowledge by way of obedience - the Lord generously responds. AND A HALF. I’ve always been fascinated with the image of the great and spacious building in Lehi’s dream. Back in chapter 8, we learn that it sits in the air. TRANSLATION: It’s a building without a foundation. We also learn that peer pressure isn’t a modern phenomenon. Some of the people who find their way to the tree are influenced by the mocking of those in the building, an activity which Neal A. Maxwell wryly notes is the chief preoccupation of those who reside there ( Neal A. Maxwell, "`Becometh as a Child,'" Ensign May 1996). People hate to be mocked, so mocking serves very effectively as a worldly tool for compliance. Satan uses shallow vanity to create peer pressure - with images and lifestyles of sophistication and glamor. I dare say peer pressure is at the heart of political correctness: create a culture that is desirable and sought after by the standards of the world, and brand anyone as outcasts who doesn’t have the correct attitudes, values, beliefs, possessions, titles, or education. That would become the first step of sifting into forced compliance: first create this culture which mocks any who don’t clamor after it themselves, and eventually punish those who don’t clamor after it. Mocking is the opposite of charity. And if charity is the pure love of Jesus Christ, the math seems to work out that mocking is an anti-Christ activity. All this is simply prelude to a big AHA that hit me one day while reading 1 Nephi 12:18 - where the angel interprets an image from the dream I’d never caught before: “And the large and spacious building, which thy father saw, is vain imaginations and the pride of the children of men. And a great and a terrible gulf divideth them; yea, even the word of the justice of the Eternal God, and the Messiah…” How did I miss that the gulf separating those at the tree and those in the building was an image to be interpreted? “Even the word of the justice of [God].” What is the justice of God? The principle that we will be judged. We will make an accounting to our Father and Creator for our actions in this life. That’s the ideology of the believer: my behavior must be accounted for. The ideology of the unbeliever: you answer to no one for your actions. Satan has gone to more work to obfuscate the eternal truth of accountability than possibly any other of the implacable laws of the universe. That’s the gulf. A gulf of ideologies. The gulf in the dream represents the gulf of ideologies between the world’s view of life and the actual reality of it. The reality: you will account for your choices. The illusion: you are free to do whatever you want. Satan has even wrested the term free agency by injecting the lie that our choices aren’t affixed to inevitable consequences. There has been propaganda since the first sin recorded in scripture over this concept. What did Cain say after he killed Abel? “I am free” (Moses 5:33). Satan had convinced him he was free to do what he wanted. He just left the fine print out or put it in a teeny tiny font: However - you are not free of the consequences. Cause and effect is a natural law. God must administer these unbending laws of the universe, or as Alma taught, He would “cease to be God” (Alma 42:13). But Father paid an incredibly high price to honor our agency: the life and blood of His only perfectly obedient Son - the Lamb without spot. He will not force us to follow these laws of the universe. He will only invite. Well. And also plead. But He is very clear in His warnings about consequences. He must administer them. Hence - He sent His Son. Especially for the people in the building.

Come Follow Me (1 Nephi 11-15 Part 2) The panorama of Nephi’s vision continues in 1 Nephi 13 - amazing prophecy where Nephi is shown many future events that are our history: - Christopher Columbus  - a righteous man (verse 12 - take that, history revisionists) - the settling of the colonies (verse 13-16) - the Revolutionary War (verse 17) - a record of the Jews not as big as the brass plates (verse 23 - and we thought the Old Testament was big) Chapter 13 is the first time the idea of a great and abominable church is introduced. Nephi is told the devil is the founder of this church (verse 6). With every reading of this incredible book, my understanding deepens as to what this church is - and what it isn’t. Interestingly, the people of this church are described in much the same way the people are described who inhabit the great and spacious building.  Expensive fabrics, expensive jewelry, ornate trappings. And then… harlots. Nephi mentions seeing many harlots with this observation: “…the angel spake… Behold the gold, and the silver, and the silks… and the precious clothing, and the harlots, are the desires of this great and abominable church. “And also for the praise of the world do they destroy the saints of god, and bring them down into captivity.”  (verses 8-9) Harlot was a slightly more polite way to describe a prostitute, and is considered - by the world who embraces them - to be an archaic, prudish word. But to have harlots included in the description of well-dressed people with expensive trappings is important because harlots are people who have intimate relations without the benefits of a covenant relationship.  Harlots don’t tie themselves to what they consider the restrictions of a husband. A Bridegroom. The great and abominable church is peopled by those who view covenants as binding, in the sense of no freedom.  Satan has seduced the world to believe that freedom is outside the bounds of covenants with God. The great and abominable church - his church - receives the praise of the world because in destroying God’s church, it destroys the voice of conscience in the world. The church of God is the last holdout voice in a world that has embraced a life of no accountability. If you don’t want accountability a conscience is simply pesky. A church that authentically teaches the word of God has the audacity to teach that there is such a thing as absolute good and absolute evil. If you want to be a law unto yourself (D&C 88:35), the last thing you want is for someone to tell you there are laws which can’t be disobeyed with impunity. Even the existence of other humans believing there is such a thing as sin is going to feel uncomfortable which will also feel like a restriction to such a person who has carefully practiced living a life with “no divine limits on their behavior” (Dallin H. Oaks, “Kingdoms of Glory,” General Conference, October 2023). Those voices which even suggest the idea of the reality of boundaries on behavior must be silenced. Hence - the great and abominable church fights against God by fighting against the agency of man. No wonder this is seen by Nephi as taking plain and precious truths away from the gospel! Forget about leaving only the message of salvation in scripture and deleting the message of exaltation - the whole purpose of the additional testimony from the Book of Mormon. The most plain and precious truth is that there is eternal law which defines good and evil. While in the scriptures of every major religion, this simple eternal truth is glaringly absent from the gospel of Satan and his church.  Why? “And all this have they done that they might pervert the right ways of the Lord, that they might blind the eyes and harden the hearts of the children of men.” (1 Nephi 13:27) Why would men want to blind other men’s eyes and harden their hearts?  To rule over them. When men have correct principles they can govern themselves. Not only can they, but they want to. If men need correct principles to govern themselves, that means they must be taught in correct principles for someone to rule over them.  Talk about fighting the agency of man. The principles that define God’s “church” are unmistakable in their authenticity. God honors agency, which includes accountability for its use. He provided a Savior to provide a way to be clean after the earthly experience of practicing self-government goes so horribly awry, you can’t imagine being able to ever fix it and go home again, reconciled to your beloved Father. The principles that define Satan’s “church” are equally unmistakable in their imitative counterfeit. Satan wants to destroy agency to stunt any growth towards God. He obfuscates accountability by preaching freedom from divine limits and consequences.  And no need for a savior - mankind can elevate itself to utopia - an ordered society of forced compliance rather than chosen obedience and discipline. Only two churches (1 Nephi 14:10). Zion teaches discipline to train chosen obedience. Babylon teaches no restraints which leads to forced compliance. As things continue to shake out in this crazy world,  the time for choosing one or the other feels like it’s looming larger than ever.  It’s impossible to choose both.

Did you know there were two plans? I mean two real plans - not the counterfeit plan of the destroyer - no, no. I'm talking about two plans that involve getting you and me - the fallen humans - back into the presence of God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. The first plan is THE plan- what the scriptures refer to as the plan of salvation, the plan of redemption, the great plan of happiness. It's the Big One - the overarching plan of our God to make us clean again after experiencing the filth of the fallen world which is the classroom of our mortality. The Main Plan centers in Jesus Christ - the Lamb of God - Father's perfectly obedient Son who came to pay the price of all our learning experiences - experiences which, ironically, and without Him - impossibly disqualify us from ever entering Father's presence again. Without Jesus Christ, God's glory is simply too much for a fallen human to abide - to tolerate. "For he who is not able to abide the law of a celestial kingdom cannot abide a celestial glory." (D&C 88:22) Without Jesus Christ to sanctify us and help us become holy, God's glory is simply too much. But with Him - we can be clean again. Because of Him, we can change. Even people who have never heard of repentance - anyone who decides to make any changes in their lives to learn and improve and climb... Even if they don't believe in Jesus Christ now, those hardy folk will one day recognize that growth and progress were - and are - and will be only possible because Jesus Christ shed blood to pay for the mortal school of experience for all of us. Faith in Jesus Christ and the Main Plan are talked about a lot at church and in home gospel lessons. While the finer points distinguishing salvation and exaltation are often muddy, most rank-and-file members of the church will tell you that because of Jesus Christ, we will be resurrected as He was, and can potentially live eternally in the presence of God. But the other plan... the other plan is much harder to nail down. The overarching plan is somehow like the blueprints of an exquisite building. Let's call it a mansion. The foundation and framework are all in place. Everything is finished to perfection. Nothing has been left to chance; every detail has been considered and planned for. But the other plan - it's uniquely yours, and yours alone. It's the plan for your life, tailored to your intelligence and spirit, and designed to give you the ideal testing experience for your optimum growth - exaltation. It was the plan roughly sketched with you and Father before this life, thanks to foreordination ( NOT predestination! Let's not go there). This plan is filled out in more detail as the days of your life unfold, choices are made, and mortality does its work in your curriculum to teach you all the things Father sent you here to learn and become. He was - and IS - personally, intimately involved in this plan as surely as He was the Author of the overarching plan that applies to all of us. At the risk of revealing too much, I feel to ask: is it just me, or is your plan super messy, and seems at any time to be completely off the rails? Do you feel like it's a bit of a train wreck on any given day? Do you feel like you're struggling with the same test questions over and over and over again, like a real-life version of the movie Groundhog Day ? Is it ever challenging to see the hand of God in this sketched out plan that's still being written in mortal time for us here - and hard to see any eternal value and purpose in any of it? Sometimes it feels like this beautiful template of the Main Plan doesn't fit over the vague, still-being-written, smudged and tear-splattered blueprints of my life. How is this all going to turn out? The worst of these times is when I'm waiting: for answers, for my own growth, for someone else's - and dang, that means their agency to change as well - for relief, for healing, for different outcomes, for a harvest of any fruit at all after years of planting, digging, and pruning. Waiting means that making sense of my blueprint and reconciling it to the blueprint of the Main Plan often creates a cognitive dissonance that seems completely irreconcilable. If it were a movie, these are the parts where we muttered in the dark theater, "This is never gonna work out." I would humbly submit that having faith in this space is the very most challenging - and crucial - faith to develop. This is faith inside the space of that cognitive dissonance - in the space between our faith in the Main Plan and the uncertainty we feel on any given Tuesday about it all working out and showing up in our plan. I'm learning - slowly, glacially slowly learning - that this space is the most sacred ground I walk. If I can hang on to God when I don't know, when I'm sure I've wrecked everything, when there is no fruit in spite of planting, then I enable God to help me in developing unshakable faith that He can do amazing things with. This is where miracles are born. And sometimes, the miracle isn't... the miracle. Sometimes, the miracle is what God forges in the waiting. Sometimes, it's learning to thank God for the miracle... in advance of the miracle, trusting the Giver of all good things, knowing this is a Father who gives bread and stones - fish and serpents. ( https://www.laureensimper.com/post/let-me-tell-you-about-my-god-how-much-more ) Something is being built while we wait, while we don't know the answer, while we get it wrong, while we weep. If we weep with Jesus, He'll weep with us. He'll stay with us, and quietly creates a bond to lend us His strength to get through all of it. He promised: "In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." (John 16:33) The challenge in having faith in both plans is putting into the proper light the purpose of both, and trusting the architect of both. Here is the perspective of two of my favorite writers, thinkers, and disciples in all the wide, wide world. Neal A. Maxwell reminds us of the importance of patience in the waiting: "Patience is a willingness, in a sense, to watch the unfolding purposes of God with a sense of wonder and awe, rather than pacing up and down within the cell of our circumstances." (Neal A. Maxwell, Patience, BYU Devotional, November 27, 1979) ( https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/neal-a-maxwell/patience/ ) C.S. Lewis (who saw that coming??) reminds us of why we wait in the discomfort and sorrow of mortality: "Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. "But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. "You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself." (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity) God is up to building humans, in covenant partnership with Him. From everything I see of what He's built, I trust He's up to something quite beautiful when He's finished, in spite of the oh-so-raw material He started with. Thanks to Jesus.

This picture is from a few years ago. Until mission season hit, these two cute ladies and I would retreat once a year to a beautiful cabin in the mountains and sew. It's our thing. We take turns fixing meals for each other, sew our guts out, talk our tongues off or watch favorite movies, catch up with each others' lives and solve all the world's problems, and make quilts - quilts which at home, interrupted with that pesky thing we call Life, would take weeks or even months to finish. But give these three women a few uninterrupted days with a sewing machine and shared irons, and LOOK OUT. We are women with sewing machines, hear them roar. If you stop to think about it, don't you love having shared things with certain people? Take my grandson, for instance. He's only been mine a few years, but when I first met him, we bonded over brownies, and now, cooking is our thing. We've swapped recipes ever since and enjoyed cooking or baking together whenever we get the chance, living as far away from each other as we do. My heart turned over last year when I got a text from him - twelve by then, saying, "Lulu, I think I found a recipe better than our brownies." Followed by a screen shot of his hand-written recipe. He was right. This past Thanksgiving, we also discovered that roller coasters is our thing. And what a thing it was, when we actually got to ride one of our favorites two times in a row. I love having shared things with people - books, music, scriptures, following world events, quilting, cooking, sourdough - it doesn't seem to matter what it is, but to have a shared thing bring you together is the perfect spark to start a friendship - a relationship. True Things seem to make the things you don't have in common not seem to matter so much. At least, that's the way true Things should work. You don't even have to have a full-blown relationship with someone to have a thing with them. The way you connect with the grocery store clerk, the mailman, a person in line - anytime you acknowledge you share a Thing with another person, you close the gap of loneliness in this cold ol' dark and dreary world. You're not quite as isolated as you were a minute ago. It's so worth looking for those things - enjoying them, and even celebrating them for a little minute. You'll recognize this in your very best friendships and relationships, too: those you have the very most Things with are those you love the very most and enjoy spending time with more than anyone else. When you think about it, no wonder; you need to spend time together to get to all of the Things. So I ask this not at all rhetorically: do you have a Thing with God? Because if you don't, I would really encourage you to find one. Having even one thing with Him is a complete delight. For instance, if you have a thing for sunsets, let me ask you: where do you think you get that? From the One who does an art project in the sky each and every night, that's who. When your heart drops or wrenches in a gorgeous piece of music, know that the Creator of music feels the same way about the music He inspired. When you feel complete joy and exhilaration at going fast - where do you think you get that? The Creator of the universe and all things speedy. No way He doesn't feel the thrill of fast. When you are moved to tears by something beautiful or tragic - or both - know that you get that from the One who sees the beauty and tragedy - and triumph - of every life. You get that from Him. Ask Enoch. When you create something and feel the deep satisfaction of the creative process as well as the end product, remember: you get that from the Creator who paused after each creative period to pronounce it "good." When no one else appreciates something you find hilarious - know that our Father has the best sense of humor in the universe. He created us , after all! Every single eccentric thing you possess, all the Things which make you certain you are an alien on an exile planet, all of this makes better sense when we know He made us that very way - the way He is. We share His DNA - which is most definitely a Thing. Because He is God - He is ALL of the Things. And because He is all of the Things, He craves having a Thing with each of His precious children - whom He created, nurtured, misses as He's sent them off to school - and craves being with - the way every parent craves being with their children. Father in Heaven is waiting for us to discover the Things we share with Him - the things we both enjoy - so we can have a real relationship. One day when I was having a chat with Heavenly Father (aka praying), I said something that I swear felt like an inside joke about the unique weirdness that is me. I ruefully, wryly chuckled to myself. Right in the prayer. Because that's a Thing Father and I have talked about often - how hard it must be for Him to teach me because of that particular weirdness He baked in right along with my good stuff, I fancy I sort of felt Him chuckle, right along with me. Because we've discussed Him helping me in spite of the weakness, it's kind of like we have a Thing there. I've actually said in prayers, when asking Him to short circuit and send help in spite of me, "You know you You're dealing with, Sir." Because seriously, if He doesn't - the Being who created me - who does? It's our Thing - how is Father going to work around my weaknesses to send me the help He always promises to send when I'm trying? Now that is one of the mysteries. The more joy and beauty I discover - even the more heartache and homesickness I feel - every time I am hard at work processing this strange fallen planet I live on, trying to make sense of it, and what am I even doing here? - I feel the One who created me, sent me, and tailored the private curriculum of my life - encouraged that I'm on the brink of finding yet another Thing in common with Him. He waits and hopes that I've discovered another place where He can enter my story, and be a part of it. Father in Heaven and Jesus Christ are in "relentless pursuit of you" - because Their intent is to bring you home. ( https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2024/04/45kearon?lang=eng ) I ask again - and not rhetorically: do you have a Thing with God? Because if you don't, I would really encourage you to find one. As I said, having just one Thing with Him is a complete delight. Having many Things is a relationship. Having all of the Things? That's the most magnificent relationship worth nurturing that you will ever have. My life has been so much richer with Him in it, and the more Things we have, the more I feel His relentless pursuit of me. Feeling Someone so mighty and grand loving you like that changes everything.

Come Follow Me - 1 Nephi 1-5 I remember a day when my children were still at home and I was experiencing a powerful episode of cheerful, good-natured disobedience on the part of my children. After a number of attempts at cheerful, good-natured admonishing, I marveled at the profundity of an extremely UNcheerful, bad-natured comment tripping from my tongue. Okay, I yelled. "DISOBEDIENT children obey when they're in the mood!" I roared. Wow. Never thought about that before. That was the beginnings of an inkling of a thought: a person might be obedient or disobedient by nature, but he or she can train himself or herself into obedient behavior. There it is again. Practice. You can practice being obedient. Here's the biggest challenge to being obedient: what if ya just don't wanna? C.S. Lewis said: “The promise, made when I am in love and because I am in love, to be true to the beloved as long as I live, commits me to being true even if I cease to be in love. A promise must be about things that I can do, about actions: no one can promise to go on feeling in a certain way. He might as well promise to never have a headache or always to feel hungry.” (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity) Part of the magic of growing up is understanding that there are many, many things you have to do that you might not want to do, but do them anyway. Even when you're not in the mood. Even when it's hard - especially when it's hard. The Book of Mormon begins with a story of hard - returning to Jerusalem and retrieving the records of family history and scripture in the custody of a good ol' boy. Nephi's reply, "I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded,..." is universally remembered and oft quoted. But Lehi's reply is equally insightful and instructive: " And it came to pass that when my father had heard these words he was exceedingly glad, for he knew that I had been blessed of the Lord ." (1 Nephi 3:8) What if obedience is a natural law? If it's possible to improve your obedience quotient - by being obedient - does being obedient get easier? Is it possible to be more in the reach of God's light, love, help, and guidance, when we move the needle by obeying? Especially ... when we don't want to? If that's so, then is it also possible that an obedient heart is a gift of the Spirit? Because if it is, there's good news! We can ask for it! We can become more obedient by asking for a more obedient heart. This is potentially a precarious thing to pray for. If we pray for it, does it mean ... GULP ... we then need to obey and do the thing we didn't want to do? Pretty much. I'm thinking that may be why some prayers don't get answered in the way we hope. It's entirely possible our natural man selves are praying: "Lord, please help me in this way that requires absolutely nothing of me." Clearly, you see the problem. George Q. Cannon writes in compelling tones of the duty we have, as children of God, to see our lacking, and pray for God to fill the gaps: We Are to Seek the Gifts of the Spirit Which Will Correct Our Imperfections We find, even among those who have embraced the Gospel hearts of unbelief. How many of you, my brethren and sisters, are seeking for these gifts that God has promised to bestow? How many of you, when you bow before your Heavenly Father in your family circle or in your secret places, contend for these gifts to be bestowed upon you? How many of you ask the Father, in the name of Jesus, to manifest Himself to you through these powers and these gifts? Or do you go along day by day like a door turning on its hinges, without having any feeling on the subject, without exercising any faith whatever; content to be baptized and be members of the Church, and to rest there, thinking that your salvation is secure because you have done this? I say to you, in the name of the Lord, as one of His servants, that you have need to repent of this. You have need to repent of your hardness of heart, of your indifference, and of your carelessness. There is not that diligence, there is not that faith, there is not that seeking for the power of God that there should be among a people who have received the precious promises we have... I say to you that it is our duty to avail ourselves of the privileges which God has placed within our reach.... I feel to bear testimony to you ... that God is the same today as He was yesterday; that God is willing to bestow these gifts upon His children.... If any of us are imperfect, it is our duty to pray for the gift that will make us perfect. Have I imperfections? I am full of them. What is my duty? To pray to God to give me the gifts that will correct these imperfections. If I am an angry man, it is my duty to pray for charity, which suffereth long and is kind. Am I an envious man? It is my duty to seek for charity, which envieth not. So with all the gifts of the Gospel. They are intended for this purpose. No man ought to say, "Oh, I cannot help this; it is my nature." He is not justified in it, for the reason that God has promised to give strength to correct these things, and to give gifts that will eradicate them. If a man lack wisdom, it is his duty to ask God for wisdom. The same with everything else. That is the design of God concerning His Church. He wants His Saints to be perfected in the truth. For this purpose He gives these gifts, and bestows them upon those who seek after them, in order that they may be a perfect people upon the face of the earth, notwithstanding their many weaknesses, because God has promised to give the gifts that are necessary for their perfection. (George Q. Cannon, Millennial Star, 23 April, 1894, p. 260) Daunting news, for sure. But if you suspect there is a blessing being withheld because you lack stronger obedience, it strengthens my faith to know my Father - the best Life Coach I could ever ask for who tailor-designed my earth curriculum - means to help me. Even if I don't wanna. It would seem the prayer of the disobedient child would be thus: "Father, I don't want to do x-y-z, but I want to want to do x-y-z." And since this is the God of the universe we're talking to, who knows and sees all, perhaps even this prayer makes us wince, and we meekly add, "At least, I wish I wanted to want to do x-y-z." Believe it or not, that's enough for Him to work with.

[Originally published May 25, 2022] (Original Facebook Post March 3, 2022) I think it's time to tell you a story. I still can't go into every detail. There's so much in my mind and heart, I need more time to sort that all out. But so very many friends have literally prayed me to this place, I have to thank you. I fell and broke my shoulder on October 27, 2021 - on my morning walk! How many horrific health stories start with a fall? The trip to the ER put our minds to rest - no surgery needed - huzzah. Just physical therapy, because hello! Shoulder. Three days later, both Dale and I presented with covid symptoms. How many people do you know who were exposed to covid in a hospital? We tested positive two days later, and as my breathing quickly became an issue, I was admitted to Park City's IHC facility on November 3, 2021, because there weren't any beds available at IMC. I was life flighted back to IMC and intubated on November 22. With the inevitable slowing down of body functions that accompanies sedation, I developed a bowel obstruction that required life-saving surgery. Except when covid has weakened your body, the sutures leak, and you go into septic shock. Suddenly, Dale was wondering if I would live, if I would function again - even cognitively, or if he should start planning a funeral. That's when the fasting and prayers really intensified. After nearly three more weeks on a ventilator, I came to, almost completely immobile and helpless. It was a week before Christmas. The only explanation for my survival was Divine Intervention. Clearly, God wasn't finished with me on the planet yet. For two weeks, IHC's patient services tried to find a skilled nursing facility that would take me. Because my kidneys had failed because of the sepsis, none would take me because of my immobility. How would they get me to a dialysis center? At first, we were heartsick when the only place that would take us was in Roy - 45 minutes from home. Little did we know how God's hand was in that as well. We learned that this particular SNF, and its sister facility in Bountiful, were the only places in a 4-state area that had in-house dialysis. They had the ability to use a Hoyer lift to get me to dialysis down the hall, versus across town. I was admitted to Heritage Park on January 6, 2022 for rehabilitation. I had to learn everything over again. Literally. Everything. How to breathe, talk, swallow, eat, sit up, stand up, walk. Thanks to more fasting and prayers, priesthood blessings, and the help and support of family, friends, and angelic health care workers, I was discharged on February 23, 2022, and came home. I hadn't seen my home for nearly 4 months. It will be months before I can approach the Laureen of October 26, 2021. But as of today, I don't have to rest after I brush my teeth anymore, and I am rocking the stairs. I have never felt God's presence in every second of every day the way I have in this 4 month experience. I've come to think of it as my personal Liberty Jail winter. The hardest thing I've ever had to endure happened on the most sacred ground I have ever walked. God used many people to serve me, and He allowed me to serve Him as well - in testifying of Him every chance I got. Those of you who have fasted and prayed for me - I will never be able to thank you properly. Just know - you are part of a cloud of witnesses to God's goodness, His love for His children, and His healing power. Jesus Christ succored me through this experience so all of us can know that miracles still happen. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/liahona/2023/04/united-states-and-canada-section/praise-in-the-hard-things?lang=eng

I'm not quite sure how it happened. Whenever football has been discussed in my lifetime, the conversation has taken on the sound of an adult in a Charlie Brown cartoon. And yet here we are, fresh into 2025, at the height of the college football playoffs, and I am INTO IT. Dale had me fill out brackets like it was March Madness. We've been perfecting tailgate type recipes for yesterday, and - I swear I'm not making this up - the other day talking to my brother, I rattled off eleven of the twelve teams in the playoffs like I was reciting my grocery list. I forgot Indiana. Dale looked at me in wonder, like maybe he'd fallen in love with me all over again. I must confess, I felt like Ken Jennings for a minute. Those who have known me since childhood would say, "Your dad was a coach - how could you not be interested in sports?" But somehow the sports talk never crossed the gender barrier when I was growing up, and I'm not sure if I wasn't allowed in the clubhouse, or it was simply assumed I shared my mother's disinterest. I followed the cue cards dealt me and went shopping with her on long Saturday afternoons with sports on TV. When Dale and I became engaged, I was delighted to not be marrying someone quite as crazed about sports as my dad and brothers. Little did I know we had dated on the off season. Fine by me. I started to quilt, and over the years assembled a killer sewing room to rival Dale's killer woodshop in the basement. There we happily coexisted, two floors apart from each other, to come together in the middle for equal doses of Bourne or Jane Austen marathons when we were in the mood for a movie. Then that Thing happened three years ago, where I tried to die, God said "NOT NOW," and then I tried not to die. The whole thing took the better part of 4 months, and during that time, the sun pretty much came up every morning when Dale walked into my hospital room. He was so instrumental in bringing me back to life, I had a happier version of Stockholm syndrome when I finally got to go home on February 23, 2022. I just wanted to hang with Dale, and that's pretty much all I had the strength to do. Thus began my first taste of March Madness, and the team colors determined which teams I cheered for. I genuinely enjoyed the playoffs, but I assumed this was an outlier as far as my interest in sports was concerned. My dad WAS a basketball coach, after all, and one of my brothers played basketball in high school. THAT sport made sense to me. Football? Not so much. I'd gone to football games in high school and college, and I understood the basic premise of advancing down the field in increments of 4 downs per possession, punting, touchdowns versus field goals if you were out of downs and within kicking range, etc. But as far as I could tell, there were clots of men pushing each other, lunging at each other, flinging each other to the ground, and falling down on top of each other. My succinct explanation of football back then would have been: they throw the ball; then they all fall down. Yet suddenly, the referees were throwing little flags, apparently indicating that someone had fallen down WRONG. It was quite a mystery. I stopped wanting to go to football games with Dale - an ardent BYU fan - because his fervor shut me down the entire day. I was shushed all the way down to the game, throughout the game, and after the game on the way home, because Dale needed all his attention for: The Pre Pre-Game Show The Pre-Game Show The Post Pre-Game Show The Kick-off Show The Show (listening to the very game we were watching LIVE in front of us) The Pre Post-Game Show The Post-Game Show The Post Post-Game Show The Coaches' Show The Scoreboard Show The Call-In Show The WRAP UP Show And if the traffic cooperated, we got home in time to RE-WATCH the very game we had just spent the entire day attending. I couldn't talk? All day? ME? Besides, I had a life. I had hopes, dreams, laundry. There simply wasn't room for a football obsession like this. Fast forward to Fall 2022: as life had a glimmer of normal after nearly a year of illness and recovery, I had major surgery to finally hook all my insides back up. Weeks of recovery and convalescence again... during college football. There I was again, with energy only to hang with Dale, who had finely honed a system of woodworking during halftimes. Now, thanks to computer-generated lines, many more things in football made sense to me. And thanks to the continued Stockholm Syndrome, I loved it when Dale patiently explained many of the finer points of those flags, more than once if necessary. I still didn't understand all the positions, and I caught myself when I asked him what that player's "calling" was. Last year was even better. By then, I had some preferences of my own, not relying only on Dale's favorite - or nemesis - teams. And now this year, I know to look for Matthew McConaughey at the Texas games and the Gaines at Baylor games. I actually got the joke when Ellen Skrmetti - a favorite on Instagram and an Ole Miss fan - said she could live with Texas coming into the SEC because at least they had a Manning. I've got a long way to go - right now I'm far too random or quixotic in my fandom: - I tend to cheer for: Any non-California school Any Christian school Any underdog Any team whose team colors catch my eye, most particularly Carolina blue Any team with a jaunty checkerboard endzone (Go Volunteers!) Any team with a quarterback who looks like I wish he was my grandson and has a fun name (Stetson Bennett III). Hey. If Dale can still cheer against Ohio state because of his strong dislike of a FORMER coach, I can still cheer for Georgia because I think the FORMER quarterback has adorable dimples. The past two days have been a great ride with my football captor. Our newest tailgate recipe, sausage balls, was a huge hit. Thanks to 25 days on a ventilator, I thought I had lost the pitch my screams hit when Texas scored twice so quickly - and then again when they won in double overtime. The next couple of weeks are going to be a lot of fun, because now I'm INTO it, not simply indulging it. For all this, I've still gotta say - I don't know how you fall down wrong.

I've posted several book reviews on this blog, and will continue to use this space for writing about books which have mattered to me. True story: when I was a tiny little girl, my mother could get me to behave by threatening to take away my books. She would also wait until I fell asleep to remove a tower of them beneath my pillow, worried I'd have a permanent kink in my neck if she didn't. No teddy bear for me, no sir. Ralph Waldo Emerson said it well: “I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.” In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury wrote about revolutionaries clandestinely gathering in the forest to preserve books which had been outlawed by a surveillance state. How? By becoming the books which mattered most to them - memorizing every word and passing them on to younger generations, as they, in turn, memorized the books with ideas that mattered. I can't end this year without leaving a review of the book that has mattered the very most in my life. The Book of Mormon made the Bible make sense to me. It's given me the best lessons from the best friends. The 'characters' in this book are real people whom I absolutely cannot wait to meet some day. I want to thank them for writing their lessons so I could learn from them. So I write this review as thank you notes to some of the finest humans I've ever met - in the pages of my favorite book. Thank you, Nephi - for being willing to consistently and repeatedly do back breaking, hard things your entire life, because you knew it was God's will, and because of that, He would help you. Thank you, Abinadi - for looking evil in the face and calling it what it is. It has mattered to see you do it in the face of unspeakable consequences. Thank you, Alma, Sr. - for bucking the worldly culture of your peers in an effort to save a man's life, and for taking the time to write every single thing down that that martyred man taught you. I can barely speak of how it has mattered to know you prayed for a wayward son, and that because of your faith, God rescued that son. And thank you, Alma, Jr. - for your undeviating course after that rescue, and for your tender handling of your own wayward son. Thank you, Zeezrom, for your integrity when called out on your lies. That's the hardest thing people have to face, and though you get little press for your miraculous conversion, I love that your story is included, and that you are listed among the mighty missionaries. Thank you, to a man whose name isn't even recorded - Lamoni's father - for teaching me how to utter the most important prayer anyone ever utters in his lifetime - "I will give away all my sins to know Thee" (Alma 22:18). Thank you, king of the Lamanites - for your guileless humility in being willing to give up anything - everything - for the privilege of knowing God. Thank you, Captain Moroni, for loving liberty and for teaching your people to love it, for preparing them to preserve it, for seeking revelation in how to physically fight evil, for fully and completely understanding and acting on fixed, correct principles. Thank you, Pahoran, for being an amazing example of true charity when unjustly criticized and accused by a friend. Thank you to another Nephi, generations later, for sitting at the feet of the resurrected Jesus Christ, and recording every word He uttered. Thank you, Mormon, for the years it must have taken you to sift through the generations of history of your people - a decaying, dying society - for doing the spiritual preparation necessary to receive revelation as to which records we needed - I needed - to live in our own decaying, dying society, and remain a disciple of Jesus Christ. Thank you, brother of Jared, for daring to go before God with physical needs, and with an outlandish suggestion of your own as to how God could meet those needs. Thank you for warning your children that kings lead to bondage. Nations generally do not heed that warning, but it stands as a witness to nations through the ages - wicked leaders will harm their people. Thank you, Moroni, for your courage in living on the run for more than 20 years, for protecting these sacred stories with your life, for telling a teenager where you hid them 1400 years later, and teaching him why these stories are important for our time. This is a book about Jesus Christ. I love Him, and I love this record of some of His finest disciples, whom I also love. It has mattered to know them. It has mattered to read their stories, and liken their experiences to mine. It has mattered that they literally gave their lives, in a variety of ways, to being His disciples, so I can better learn how to be one. If I ever had to go into hiding in the wilderness and become a book, this is the book I want to become. I am a witness - if becoming this book becomes the quest of your lifetime, in the end, you will have become like Jesus Christ (Moroni 7:48). If you love Jesus Christ, you will find Him in this book. It's a handbook full of patterns - not just patterns of how to become like Him, but how to have Him be with you as you learn how. This. Book. Matters. It matters most of all.