Mistakes & Miracles

Oops. 

Do you ever get paralyzed because you are afraid to make a mistake?
Do you run and hide when you make a mistake? Or blame it on someone else? Pretend it never happened? Convince yourself that you meant to do it anyways?
That's fear talking.

Over the past year, I have learned three very important principles relating to miracles and mistakes.

Because of our Savior Jesus Christ, It's okay to make mistakes... try to fix them, and learn from them too!
One morning, I sat at breakfast with my children, pondering how I would get them to stay at the table long enough to actually fill their bellies. Appetite regulation (the balance between eating too much or eating too little) is one of the first things to disappear when there is a lot of stress in the house. The invitation came into my mind to turn on Daniel Tiger and discuss it with the children. Daniel Tiger has helped me speak with my children about the emotional challenges of growing up, but today's episode was for me.
It's okay to make mistakes... try to fix them, and learn from it too! 
We learned the song and practiced singing it every time someone made a mistake. It changed the atmosphere in our home from "I don't want to" to "I'll try." We discussed the importance of our Savior, who helps us clean up the mistakes and learn from them. Sometimes  Often, my children make a mess too big for them to clean up by themselves, so we practiced asking for help cleaning up mistakes. Parenting seems to be making mistake after mistake while you try to do the near impossible task of encouraging your children to grow into happy, healthy, productive, respectful, compassionate adults. I learned to ask the Savior to help me clean up the mistakes I make as a parent, just as I taught my children to ask for help cleaning up their messes.

"Your honest mistake is someone else's miracle."
Around this same time, I was struggling with making the Sabbath Day a delight for me and the children. As a young stay-at-home mom, my workload is no different on Sunday than any other day of the week except for the fact that we attend church instead of another errand. My children were squirming, the quiet activities we brought for them no longer holding their attention, and worship services were becoming a chore. In counseling with my husband, we determined that the success of our Sunday needed measured differently. On Saturday night, we told each other one small thing that would make Sunday feel like Sunday to us and made those wishes our priorities. One Sunday, my wish was to be able to hear the prayers spoken over the sacrament. When the time came, my daughter was noisily squirming in my lap and I was unable to hear the words. I felt so disappointed- the one little thing I'd asked- 45 seconds of quiet from my children - had not happened. And then suddenly, I realized that the young priest had made a mistake and needed to say the prayer again. His mistake, leaving out one word of the ordinance prayer, was my miracle! A voice came into my mind, speaking clearly the words: A mistake is someone else's miracle. Please tell that young man how his mistake helped you. After the meeting I sent a note to the young man via his mother letting him know how his mistake was my miracle.

Making mistakes into miracles is a choice. 
I was making pancakes with my children one morning. They were measuring, scooping, and stirring very well. My youngest daughter (not yet two years old) was mixing the dry goods, my 4 year old was beating the eggs, oil, and milk together. My 6 yr old son was observing. I went to get the cinnamon. My youngest saw me in the spice cupboard. She looked around, found the garlic salt someone had left on the counter the night before, and heartily shook some into the bowl.
I froze. I had a choice to make.
My daughter had made a mistake. Her intentions were good, but her actions ... It was so tempting to yell and scream at her for the waste. But I didn't. Instead I hummed Daniel Tiger's song to myself and said to my children, "Uh oh! I don't want to eat garlic pancakes. How can we fix it?" My 4 year old suggested throwing it away and starting over. My 6 year old suggested trying to skim out the garlic powder. Neither way felt like a miracle. So I asked them, "How can we turn this mistake into a miracle?" As we pondered, I realized that I knew from my 20 years of baking experience that the ingredients (and the proportions) in the bowl were almost identical to my recipe for biscuits. Garlic pancakes sound disgusting, but cheesy garlic biscuits are something else entirely. BINGO! Miracle found. I added a little extra baking powder to the bowl and set it aside. I got out a new bowl and we mixed up another batch of dry pancake ingredients, with cinnamon this time. After breakfast, we shredded cheese and cut the butter into the first bowl, making a set of lovely garlic biscuits for lunch.

I invite you to practice these three fear-defeating principles into your life this week. Please share with me your experiences, and any experiences you read about in the scriptures that apply.


Further reading:
https://www.lds.org/study/general-conference/2018/10/be-not-troubled?lang=eng
https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2004/04/do-not-fear?lang=eng
https://www.lds.org/blog/turning-our-messy-complicated-lives-into-something-holy

The Maker's Mark

Evolution, Creation, Paleontology, and Time...
A can of worms to the God-reverencing, homeschooling family with a child who loves dinosaurs. So  many different competing theories and emotionally charged accusations.
But what if it didn't have to be that way?



What if we could see with God's eyes?
What if the whole purpose of leaving fossils in the ground was to help us learn how to ask questions? A learning opportunity for His children to learn a little more about what He does?
A chance to look at the scraps of his creative process and figure out for ourselves how He did it?

God is a creator.

If God created all things, doesn't it make sense that it would all bear His maker's mark? That things would follow the patterns of His design preferences?

We are created in His image. The perfection of His creation. His masterpieces.

But more than that, we are His children.
This one fundamental truth changes everything: I am literally a Child of God. And He loves me. Say it to yourself every day and feel the truth of it work inside you.

And like every good parent, He wants us to become as He is. He doesn't intend for us to sit on a shelf and become dusty- He wants us to become as He is- to become Creators of wonderful things. And that means He invites us to learn about this workshop: Earth from Him and from our own experience.

This begins a short series of posts compiling my thoughts. I welcome your well-intentioned thoughts. I don't know everything, but God does.

Readings:
Isaiah 40:28  "Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding."
Mosiah 3:8 And he shall be called Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Father of heaven and earth, the Creator of all things from the beginning; and his mother shall be called Mary.
Pearl of Great Price - two additional scriptural accounts of the creation and early years of the world.
You are Special by Max Lucado

Why a Garden?

Why a Garden?

As I raise my children, I have noticed something interesting. 

They LOVE mud. They LOVE to forage and collect bits of nature. They LOVE experiencing the rain and wind and sun and all of God's weather. But best of all, they LOVE to eat food right off the bushes and vines and out of the dirt.
 

My son's favorite toys, from the time he learned to walk were: STICKS.
He has a total meltdown if one of his friends takes one of the sticks- we're talking total complete meltdown. He could care less about the expensive toys he gets for Christmas. If he can't build with it - he doesn't play with it. My daughters collect and carry tiny stones and seeds and flowers. They build little dioramas around the house and yard as they explore. It is adorable to watch them build a little world and act out different stories. 

Which leads me to my question- WHY a GARDEN?

God has commanded me to care for my children in HIS ways.
What did He provide for His children upon their first excursion into this mortal world?
Did He build them a beautiful mansion full of fancy light-up toys and every useful convenience?  

No.

8 ¶ And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.
9 And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
15 And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the gardenof Eden to dress it and to keep it.
16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
18 ¶ And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.
21 And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;
22 And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.
24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.


Instead he planted a garden and commanded them to learn how to care for it.
To learn the skills they would need when they left the garden.

• How to work, 
• how to wait until the fruit is ripe
• how to listen to their body's signals
• and most of all, to turn to Him always. 

Counsel with the Lord in ALL of thy doings, and He will lead thee for good.

I  had a dream...

Actually, I have a lot of dreams. It's how my brain figures out how I feel about my situations in life. So I've learned to pay attention to the feelings in my dreams- the events are made up, but the feelings are real.

In this dream (October 3), I was moving into yet another new apartment. This particular model had a very narrow kitchen and I was trying to determine the placement for the stove. While I was rearranging the kitchen parts and pieces, my best friend asked for help making holiday decorations. So I left off the kitchen and went to help her. While there I felt impressed to pay closer attention to her words and then to testify to her of her own innate self-worth, which happens to be one of her earthly challenges.

Then I was back in the kitchen moving the stove. Another friend came by with her young family and as I watched her infant daughter cry, I quickly realized that her milk supply was diminishing. Knowing her past challenges, and remembering my own milk supply difficulties, I realized it was because she was trying to lose weight. I felt impressed to help her adjust her diet so that her body wasn't mistakenly going into "famine" mode and instead going into a "use our resources" mode. In the dream, this understanding unfolded: (I still have yet to test it out.) Our bodies are designed to hold onto sugars and fat stores when it is cold outside, and designed to use those fat stores when the weather warms before the harvest begins. During these lean times of year (February-May), after a cold winter, people craved green foods. Dandelions were one of the first green edibles that grows after winter. By eating lots of salads while restricting calories and going outside to feel the warmth from the rays of the sun, our body metabolism will shift. Weirdly enough, maintaining a healthy body is one of her earthly challenges.

They left and I was again shifting the oven around, this time accidentally knocking a hole in the wall that opened into a bottomless pit with rickety stairs going down. (Dreams are awesome in that way). The ghost of a Native American princess floated up and began ordering me around. Again, I felt an impression to pay closer attention to what she was saying and what I felt. She had very little power of presence, and I somehow realized that this was not a princess, but her true form was that of a worm found in apples. She worshipped the apples. I summoned my own inner powers to decide what influences would be allowed in my home and dismissed her, despite her protests that she had a great treasure to give me if only I would help her get to the apple.

And yet again I was left to figure out the layout for the kitchen. As I pondered my situation, I was given an impression again: You can't make a mistake on this one. Try it one way, and if it doesn't work, try something different. This challenge is for you to learn through your own experience, through trial and error, because it doesn't really matter in the eternities any more than wearing a brown shirt or a blue shirt matters.

As mothers we will receive specific and powerful guidance
1) as we minister and testify to others of their worth
2) as we minister to the physical needs of our children's bodies and our own body's role in meeting those needs
3) to protect our homes from other influences that would be damaging and distracting to our purpose of coming to Christ.
Or we will be given the knowledge that this particular decision really doesn't matter in the eternal scheme of things and therefore, we are free to make our own decision.

But when everything is small decisions, we can't always decide when the decision doesn't matter. That's why the Lord expects us to Counsel with him in ALL of our doings.

Scriptures to ponder: (I would love to hear your thoughts)
Alma 29:8
Doctrine and Covenants 3: 4,7, 13, 15
Psalm 73: 24
2 Nephi 28:9, 28-29

Why he needs to homeschool

"But what if I miss out?"

"I have to do everything."

It pains me to hear my child echoing my fears. To know that he will have to someday overcome them like I am in the process of doing. And yet, it gives me comfort to know that many of the trials I have overcome were, like his, products of being raised by imperfect parents.

That is why I'm choosing to homeschool him. To give us both a chance to let go of the fear and just focus on being present.