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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.

“O come, let us adore Him...” (O Come, All Ye Faithful)   Why do I adore Jesus Christ? So many reasons. I adore imagining trailing behind Him for an eternity before we ever left the eternal courts - watching Him, adoring Him already, completely in awe of His already infinite capacity for obedience. I adore that Father chose Jesus as the Savior of the world because He trusted He would carry out the plan - the only plan - which could save ALL the rest of His fallen children. Revelation 12:11 says we fought the dragon before this life with the blood of the Lamb - blood that didn’t yet run through His veins! And by the word of our testimony. Not only did Father trust this perfect Son - WE trusted Him. We had never seen him disobey - and we trusted Him to fulfill our Father’s will and prepare and complete the rescue with His perfect life and sacrifice. I adore that Father trusted Him - and that we did, too. I adore that He brought light into a dark world, peace into a chaotic world, gratitude into a greedy world, purity into a polluted world, clarity into a confusing world, charity into a selfish world. I adore that He performed the last and great sacrifice - that He offered Himself as the Lamb to pay for every single thing that has gone wrong - or ever will - through the history of this fallen world. I adore that He withstood all of it as a Man, and borrowed His Godhood only to not die of it, in order to complete it. I adore that He entered the prisons of death and hell as one of us - almost under cover - and stormed the gates and broke them open from the inside - setting every captive free who will follow Him out. I adore Him as He changes the world by changing hearts and minds one at a time. This isn't always efficient, but He honors free will too much to ever, EVER force. I adore that He never ever forces; He only invites - “Come” - and I adore the invitation is never rescinded. Ever.   I adore Him as He keeps His promises. I adore Him because He is the Master of the atypical response. I adore Him because He is helping me with my shabby little fixer-upper of a life, and He isn't even daunted by the never-ending projects involved. I adore His generosity and patience, giving so very many second chances, and in a life that resembles Groundhog Day in its monotonous repetition of the same mistakes, I adore that He gives genuine approbation with my ridiculously feeble efforts to improve. I adore Him because He can take my meager efforts which resemble loaves and fishes and always make them enough - and sometimes even make them a feast. I adore Him because when my pain is so great I am sure I will die, He carries it, even though He has already carried it all alone in Gethsemane.   He is my best friend. My gift to Him is to try to copy Him, so people will think of HIM when they think of me. Did I mention fixer upper? Yeah, we still have a LONG way to go. I’m so truly sorry I don’t better resemble Him. But He has already gone the distance for me to even give me the chance, and did I mention this too? I absolutely adore Him for it.   Merry, Merry Christmas. Jesus was born for each individual in the human family. It's not the first time, nor the last, that I want to sing about this best of news: “O come, let us adore Him, Christ - the Lord.”

“How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given!” (O Little Town of Bethlehem) These words woke me up this morning. Images and thoughts flooded in behind:  - A teenage girl, bewildered at an angelic visit, but raised in a home where prophecies were taught, is willing to do the unexpected. Silently - the Son of God begins His journey on earth as one of us.  - A young man who receives his own angelic visit, does the unexpected, and marries the girl he knows is carrying a Child who is not his. Silently, the mother of the Son of God isn’t publicly rejected and humiliated in her innocent purity, which, unexpectedly, doesn’t look like innocence and purity.  - A newly married couple, miles from home, frantically try to find a place to have a baby. They gratefully accept the unexpected, but because they’ve been raised on prophecies - maybe not so unexpected? Silently, a poor, out-of-town couple embark on their journey to be parents to the Son of God. “So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of His heaven.” This is how God communicates to every single one of His willing children that His Son... IS... His Son. If the Creator and King of heaven and earth had come in a spectacular, more expected way - the way He will return - how could any of us have had the freedom to choose Him for ourselves? Our Father is so very polite; in bringing His Son into the world so silently, and in such an unexpected way, each of us has the blessing of figuring out who He is on our own, and test His fruit for ourselves. “No ear may hear His coming, but in this world of sin, Where meek souls will receive Him, still, the dear Christ enters in.” That first coming was so silent and unexpected - except for those who knew the prophecies. It was to be a pattern for the entire life of the Son of the Everlasting Father. The King lived a quiet life in unexpected anonymity. Even people who watched Him grow up, attended synagogue with Him, were His neighbors - had to decide for themselves who He really was. He died in seeming shame in His own community, and unexpectedly, in an occupied country that even its occupiers loathed. The willing death of the Son of God provided rescue for the entire human family. Now, two thousand years later, the noisy world mocks the silent, unexpected message that’s the only solution to the noisy world’s problems: love. Forgive. See. Give. Reach. Try again. Start over. Give each other room to do the same. Choose light. Reject darkness. Be good - for goodness’ sake. How on earth can such quiet, unexpected choices save the world? May you have a blessed, merry Christmas. May you have some silent, unexpected time in the next two days to ponder the silent, unexpected entrance of the Son of God into this sin sick world - and His anything BUT silent and unexpected return in the coming years - when the Babe of Bethlehem will rule and reign with justice, equity, mercy, and grace. O come - let us adore Him. Thanks to Kirt Harmon for the beautiful art. This painting of the nativity hangs in my living room all year. ( https://harmonart54.blogspot.com/ )

You know the problem with the Book of Mormon? It’s over 500 pages. In a world that has perfected and glorified the sound byte, nurturing new levels of ADD-behavior in even normal people, this is a pesky problem. That means it takes intentional effort to really mine the gold that’s in those pages.  But I second Moroni’s solid opinion that if you put in that effort and ask God about what you’re reading, your effort won’t be wasted. There are different levels of engagement: Perhaps you’ve never read the Book of Mormon or maybe tried once - sounded too hard - what is with these “And It Came to Passes”? True quote: this book would be a pamphlet without them. Perhaps you read it in seminary, and liked it depending on whether you liked your teacher. You mean to read it every four years when the Church at large reads it in Sunday School. You might even read a little more than 1st Nephi - which mysteriously always shows up at the same time New Year’s Resolutions do.  You enjoy Sunday School class about it, and by December have somewhat, semi read SOME of some of the lessons. Ish. You might have participated in various Book of Mormon challenges to read the entire book in a year, or half a year, or even a month. You might have even completed the challenge, with varying degrees of results. You read the Book of Mormon every year, perhaps even following a calendar to keep you on track. You’re always reading the Book of Mormon - beginning again the day after you read Moroni’s compelling invitation to see if this book isn’t all that it says it is. Moving through these levels of engagement was a frightening, sporadic, remarkable journey for me which took nearly 50 years of my life. In 2005 our stake had a challenge to read the Book of Mormon the first six months of the year. They printed a schedule to keep us on track - roughly 3 1/2 pages a day. I was in the midst of another self-discipline project at that time, and actually felt up for the challenge. I can do 3 1/2 pages a day. I loved it so much, I began again in July, and read the Book of Mormon twice that year. And the next. And the next until 2019.  That’s the year I slowed down and started daily study to make room for other things. I was hooked.  One year - I even snuck in a third reading the month of July with someone who has become an everlasting friend because of the shared project. In Alma 5:45-46, Alma teaches his people: “…Do ye not suppose that I know of these things of myself? Behold, I testify unto you that I do know that these things whereof I have spoken are true. And how do ye suppose that I know of their surety? “Behold, I say unto you they are made known unto me by the Holy Spirit of God. Behold, I have fasted and prayed many days that I might know these things of myself. And now I do know of myself that they are true; for the Lord God hath made them manifest unto me by His Holy Spirit; and this is the spirit of revelation which is in me.” There’s a price to be paid to fall in love with the Book of Mormon: time. Well. Time and effort. Intellectual and spiritual engagement. The price Alma testifies of is worth paying: how much do I really want to know what’s in this book? And let me tell you something fascinating: it was about the same time I was immersing myself in the twice yearly treks through this amazing spiritual tome that I became interested in current affairs and government. I began to study the founding of our country, and the principles of liberty. Then I began teaching them and writing about them. When people ask me how I got interested in politics my answer surprises them: I got serious about the Book of Mormon. I now read the Book of Mormon all the time, because we’re living in it. It’s a book about human nature and its cycles in the lives of individuals, families, and nations. Those cycles highlight the consequences of individuals and nations living God’s law - and the consequences when that law is rejected. The cycles and consequences play out the same Every. Single. Time. But its name says the most important thing about this book. The Book of Mormon is another testament of Jesus Christ - taking its place beside the Old and New Testaments of the Bible to witness that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of the world. When you’re used to sound bytes, this book is steep. At first. But as my former stake president loved to teach our youth - it’s a lot like eating M&M’s. You might nibble a few if there’s a jar sitting out. But you kind of can’t stop. If you’re willing to engage in the climb. Go see what’s in there. The people who live in those pages are ordinary… extraordinary people.  Their encounters with Jesus Christ are an incredible guide to how to have our own encounters with the greatest Agent for sustainable change the world will ever know. I am a converted lifelong fan. And here I go again. Won’t you join me?

Can you imagine having a government so corrupt, that it has set up ways of knowing your personal religious beliefs and criminalizing them? How? By demagoguing the idea that your beliefs are hateful or a threat to the very freedom of society. Can you imagine that same government has usurped personal rights to such an extent that there has been false authority given to that government to have you executed for those beliefs? A deadline has been set to even prove how ridiculous your beliefs are - in order to justify and legitimize the executions. Can you imagine the op-eds to popularize it all? How can any rational person possibly believe that one morning the sun will rise, and won’t set until the FOLLOWING night? You have been mocked for months, and anticipation is growing for your belief in an extreme prophecy to be debunked. If the sign never happens, then this humble little church is indeed the radical fringe hate group the majority has been calling it for the last 6 years. Then. The night before the scheduled executions, a desperate prophet pleads in prayer for guidance and comfort. And the miraculous answer is given: “Lift up your head and be of good cheer; for behold, the time is at hand, and on this night shall the sign be given, and on the morrow come I into the world, to show unto the world that I will fulfill all that which I have caused to be spoken by the mouth of my holy prophets. “Behold, I come unto my own to fulfill all things which I have made known unto the children of men from the foundation of the world , and to do the will, both of the Father and of the Son… and behold, the time is at hand, and this night shall the sign be given.” (3 Nephi 1:13-14) Jesus Christ took a minute before His miraculous birth to assure a faithful servant that He was keeping His promises. All of them. Timing is never sure. Neither is the outcome. Would God be any less good and great if this story were remembered as a tiny church of martyrs, the sign coming two weeks or two months later? Not even a little bit. The Christmas story as told in the Book of Mormon is the story of a miracle - an entire church community exhibiting the faith of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They waited for the sign, knowing “but if not…”, they would be executed the next day. Also knowing that God is still good, and always keeps His promises. That’s why I’m so excited that He’s coming back. Because He said He would, and I believe Him, because He always keeps His promises. So - AMEN to John the Beloved at the close of his apocalyptic vision: “Even so, come, Lord Jesus.” (Revelation 22:20) Thanks to Kirt Harmon @ https://harmonart54.blogspot.com/ for this beautiful nativity painting which hangs year round in my living room.