Easter Week is Coming

This is just beautiful and says it all. Remember Him!

A Beautiful Way To Move Forward Today

Dawn...Each New Day 

I seriously don't think I could accomplish a single thing if the Lord had not seen fit in His wisdom to allow us a new beginning whenever we need it. And even when we don't think we need it, we get a new morning every day!

I read a blog post by a good friend who talked about her weight loss struggles. It just made me realize how much I have been coasting. I recently joined Weight Watchers again.  I will never give up but sometimes I take long vacations from it.  Too long.  I just have to dust myself off and look forward with hope and determination and resolve.   

Sometimes my perceptions in this department get very skewed.  If ever I want to know how skewed my perceptions can be...I can use the scale as my tool. It seems like when I should be up I'm down or vice versa fairly regularly.  I can't use it for self-esteem but rather as a tool.  And not just one day but serval days in a row which shows me that people fluctuate daily but the trend needs to be downward.  That is all.  If you graph it you will see what I mean.  To know I am doing well I just have to eat well.  Then no matter what the scale says I am OK.  However when I get into the game playing on the scale or ascribe too much importance to an ounce here and there it gets ridiculous and controlling and self defeating.  

As we sing in one of our church hymns, "Do What Is Right Let The Consequence Follow.  When I go long periods staying off the scale I know it is because I know what the consequences are for not making the best choices most of the time.  There is nothing complicated about it.  It is what it is.  Denial is dangerous.

The complexities of what motivates us to do and be who we are continue to confound me. Still waters run deep and I think for each of us it is a combination of so many factors. It is never just one thing but many experiences and hurts, and failures that add up and become the devil's favorite tool~Discouragement. Without hope there is no faith to go forward with a plan that will work. We have to kick discouragement to the curb and just keep going no matter what happens. Never giving up!

We need to stop the negative self-talk. It is more than positive affirmations that are needed. You can tell yourself you are a thin and healthy person even when you are not but, once that hits your brain, your brain tries to figure out if the thought is true. Quickly everything you know tells you the positive affirmation is a lie and you throw it out as nonsense, or worse yet it becomes a negative affirmation. It then produces the 'why am I this way' type questions, leading to discouragement and eventual defeat. This applies to everything not just weight loss.

Recent studies have discovered that our brain works by solving our dilemmas by answering our questions. As an example...When we are unable to succeed at losing weight we ask ourselves why this is? Immediately our brain sets out to answer that question. I am just not good at this, I love my ice cream (or whatever), I have never been successful at this, I'll just gain it back, people will be watching me to see how long I can keep it off, I hate to exercise, it's my genetics, etc.  The thought occurs to be me that being overweight is probably more difficult than losing weight.

What is even more important is concentrating less on the weight and more on being healthy and fit.  This is probably a good idea.  As we improve our lifestyle the weight loss will follow as a natural consequence. Right? That changes the whole process from what we don't want (being overweight) to what we do want (being fit and healthy.)  Thinking and acting in a positive frame of mind is always a winner.  It also takes the sting out of the many past personal failures and puts it where is should be.  Focusing on improved behavior.  You are the same person of infinite worth no matter your dress or pant size.  Sometimes we forget that.

Think of something that you are struggling with, again we will use weight loss as an example...Ask yourself this question instead..."Why am I a fit and healthy person?" Why am I a happy person?" What things have I been successful in accomplishing in my life? Immediately your brain starts to answer you with real, not hoped for positive affirmations! This is powerful. Try it. Seriously try it! Another word for this is gratitude.  I was amazed at the difference and have been using this when my thoughts go to self persecution.  I have had some  very positive results.

One reason I love my Weight Watcher meetings so much, and my friend of over 30 years that is teaching it, is because Lanette goes the extra mile. She puts in lots of hours outside the meeting room, researching concepts like this that really do bring success. The success you will see is not just in the weight loss arena but applicable in many aspects of your life.

Another simpler way of seeing this concept is to ask yourself what am I doing RIGHT to accomplish this goal? Our brain automatically goes to what am I doing WRONG if we don't direct the question differently. I promise you, your brain will answer you and reveal to you what you can and have already been doing. This actually does kick discouragement and a desire to quit to the curb! We all need this tool when struggling!

When discouragement comes and is allowed to stay...it follows that it's very hard for us to continue on any kind of journey when we feel sad, alone, depressed or afraid of success. We may have a habit of thinking that we can never measure up...no matter what we do.

This can be brought on by something someone will say or just something we think and it drags us down to the depths for days sometimes. Thoughts precede feelings. This I know for sure! We have to control our thoughts and not allow anyone else to have this power over our thinking or to allow ourselves to think we are incapable or unlovable. I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out why we do this.

Just like God loves us not because of who we are, but because of who He is, we must love ourselves because of who we are (His daughter/son) not because of who we perceive ourselves to be. (Our self-esteem) Isn't one of our greatest desires to be loved unconditionally rather than judged and misunderstood? In Christ we have that. Where does the hope and faith come from if not from this gift? I know I cannot find it anywhere else.

Passing unrighteous judgment on ourselves or others destroys hope. We have to stop doing this. And sometimes when others do this to us we have to realize it is because of who they are not because of who we are. What a brilliant concept. Why would we assume they are always right? This is not a good way to think.

I am one, I am only one, no more than one, no less than one. We cannot keep internalizing offenses, we just have to be more thick-skinned and carry on, secure in His perfect love. We need to listen and contemplate criticism, but we do not need to beat ourselves up, even if there is some hint of truth in what is said. We need to take a positive spin on it and just quietly determine to become better, ever moving forward. In this way we abandon pride and acquire humility or the ability to be taught. Simply put, our brain can derail us or help us. We just have to pursue the right questions as we try to solve our dilemmas. This really works; talk about new beginnings! We just have to retrain our brain to think in a way that helps and encourages success, not defeats it.

Sometimes the whole scramble gets confusing~
we need to step back and view each component specifically!

And remember we need to be a friend to ourselves
as well as to others.

Staying closer to the Lord seems to be the answer to every problem, burden or concern. For all things unto the Lord are spiritual. My desire is to remember this day by day! I will ask myself the right questions to my dilemmas and trust in myself in addition to the Lord, so I can accomplish the desires of my heart. I am putting all my eggs in one basket~The Lord's.

When I hear something that is true,
I know it~ if I am living close to Him.

As For Me And My House...We Will Serve The Lord."

One of the important things about writing is that sometimes you can see things that are true more clearly than when you are not struggling with an issue.  I wrote this a few months ago and had no idea how much it could help me right now.  So I am doing a reprise for you in case you might need it now and for me.

This past couple of weeks I have had some new insights about the Pure Love of Christ or Unconditional Love.  When I feel those things floating around in my head and heart I must put fingers to keyboard...to sort, to discover, to understand.  So here are some thoughts to peruse and ponder on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

Since I have been a wee child I have known the song, "Jesus loves me" this I know for the Bible tells me so...   How can it be that I am still assimilating this truth at this stage in my life?  Who is this Man of Galilee that knows me enough to love Me?  Not me, collectively as in all of us...but ME?

I was well into my adulthood when I began to think about this pure love of Christ or the unconditional love that He has for me.   I never felt I was able to be unconditionally loved or loving without fear of losing that love, until we had children.  That gave me a glimpse of what it felt like to love and be loved in that way. Until those three, I never felt anyone was mine in a way that no matter what they did, I would still love them (or they me) completely, purely or unconditionally.  It was as though my feelings, my wants and needs were not part of the equation, when I learned about unconditional love as I felt for our babies.  There was no pride or selfishness at all.

 I loved them completely because of who they were.  And I knew they loved me in the same way.  I was their Mommy, that was enough for them.  In all their imperfections and mine the love never wavered.   The astonishing thing was it came so naturally.  It was not a struggle, I didn't have to keep trying for it.  It just was and I never doubted it or questioned it, no matter what they did.  I know their Dad feels the same.  This is a kind of love that transcends the earth.  It is divine.  It is also quite interesting to recognize that grandchildren also inherit this type of love as well.  It is their birthright.

I remember the first time I felt unconditional love.  I remember the hour, the moment and the rapture of it as though it were a moment ago.  I was lying in a hospital bed around 10:00 pm in Las Vegas, Nevada. I had just given birth to Jennifer at 3:38 that afternoon.  Jim had gone home reluctantly, after visiting hours and our tiny girl was in the nursery.  The day had been filled with excitement, hard work and euphoria that would not let me sleep as I pondered what had just happened.

Suddenly I felt a deep sadness come over me.  The thoughts were along the lines of...this is the most important day of our lives together...why are we all in separate places?  It was not normal, or natural to the point of being physically painful.  It was not long after that that the nurse brought our little burrito-wrapped baby into to me for the first time.

She looked so beautiful with her dark hair long enough to be combed and curled over a nurse's finger before her grand entrance.  Her cheeks were so rosy and her eyes the deepest blue! Her irises covered her entire eye sockets, not even a glimmer of the whites of her eyes were visible.  I held her in the crook of my left arm and began to talk softly to her in the quiet of that cold, mint green hospital room. 

As I gazed into her eyes and she into mine...it happened. Just like a bolt of gentle and tender lightning our love was sealed to me.  It was spiritually electrifying.  By the time Chris and Laura were born it was there in all its glory, but not as dramatically presented because by then I was well acquainted with it.  That gift that is inherited by grandchildren may even come before their actual birth I discovered.  It is miraculous, penetrating, instantaneous and unconditional love!

Any number of things our children and grandchildren do may irritate us, saddened us, even offend us but the notion of withdrawing our love is not even an option, not even a thought.  This is different that worldly love, isn't it?  It is about God's Work and His Glory: to bring to past the immortality and eternal life of man, woman and child.  Our families teach us how to love unconditionally in the most conducive setting.  We are all a part of a family, past, present and future. 

That is how our Savior loves us.  As I try to comprehend that I can only compare it to the love of our children.  It is never intermittent, never faltering no matter what we do or how we think or how much we protest.  It just is, whether we know it, believe it or even want it.  He is the Great I Am and His love is perfect even as He is perfect.

It seems so completely different than the way we experience love in the world.   Hearts are broken constantly by a trust that fails when someone gives and takes back their definition of love at will. How many of us guard our hearts because of experiences like that that we have had?  I would venture to say most of us.  We learn to protect ourselves by expecting less of people who say they love us and then hurt or abandon us.  It can be parents or spouses or siblings or friends...it doesn't seem to matter. 

But the Savior will never love us like that.  There is safety and peace in His love.  And even more important is that He never misunderstands us or judges us unworthy of His love.  He never tires of doing all in His power to care for us.  He knows us without our having to prove ourselves by our words or deeds.   He just "gets" each of us to the depths of our heart and loves us, as is. No qualifiers.  No conditions.  Just Love, the kind we all yearn for from the deepest part of us.  We have that in Him.  What does He ask in return?  What is the greatest commandment, the one that all the laws of the Gospel hinge upon?  In Matthew we read.

"Matthew 22:36-40

King James Version (KJV)

36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law?

37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.

38 This is the first and great commandment.

39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

As we learn to love the Savior as He loves us, we will learn to put our full trust in Him, in His plan, in His will for us.  Imagine what our lives could be like if we just had unconditional faith in Him and His will.  If we didn't kick against things that we don't think are fair or right or good for us and we just had unconditional faith in him, how different would life be?  If we loved Him that much, even as much as He loves us.  It we actually tried our very best to be perfect, or whole, just as He is.  If we knew Him like He knows us and could give over the driver's seat and let him be our pilot?  What if we would stop worrying and started trusting Him more?  

Why do we love Him?  The scriptures tell us because He first loved us.  Not only that but He shows us how to love so that we can get on to the next commandment which is like unto the first.  So that we might love our neighbor as ourselves.  

Because on these two commandments hang all the laws and the prophets.  To me that is saying that if we can master these three things, life will be the very best.  

Love Him as He loves and teaches us, 
Love ourselves as He loves us 

and love our neighbors as He loves all of us. 

 It is the beginning and the end of a perfect plan.  Mastering that kind of love is key.  Love is what we give.  Just as Love is what He gives.  All the other commandments comes easier to us when we have the foundation of unconditional love in our lives.  First His and then our own for Him and for all His children including ourself.

That kind of love that looks outside of our own wants and needs and to Him and His children around us is the goal.  It takes a life time and probably longer.  It is not easy nor was it meant to be.  It is a refining process.  It is growing in His Gospel.  It is repentance and forgiveness, it is faith...lots of faith in Him.  It is learning to be humble and teachable.  It is forgiving ourselves when we fail miserably at His kind of love.  It is getting up, dusting ourselves off and keeping our eye on the target.  As we become more like Him we never want to hurt another person no matte what sacrifices  are required of us.  He has shown us what an ultimate sacrifice for another is by His atonement for us. 

It is simple and yet so profound.   I constantly find myself having to relearn this and I am so far from being where I want to be.  I guess the first steps are seeing His unconditional love for us, then seeing Him as our example and then following Him.  He is God; we are mere mortals with but a spark of divinity within us.  But we can make progress.  We have that hope and that faith for the very fact that He is our God in whom we trust.  And we see evidence in many around us who are farther along the path than we are.  Our Prophet, the Apostles, the very special and loved people in our lives that are closer to loving as He loves.  They are all around us to lead and inspire us on our way.

I am grateful for the chances and choices placed before me and I want to love as He loves.  I never want a person I love to doubt my love for them.  I want to be a person of tender mercies as He is.   It requires us to overcome the natural man inside of each of us.  It requires us to be obedient and trusting, and it requires work.  It is a good work to be engages in and it brings happiness in the struggles.  The greatest understanding I have gained of this kind love is through being a parent.  It helps me to know that the Savior loves us in that way and I find comfort in it.  I hope you do too in whatever way He teaches you.

So what do we need to do to be worthy of His love?  Absolutely nothing.  He simply does Love us unconditionally.  What do we need to do to partake of His promises of joy in our eternal life? Humble ourselves to follow Him, to be taught by Him and redeemed by Him and perfected or made whole in Him.  Does He coerce us and force us to comply?  No, He offers us all that He has and then allows us to choose for ourselves.   What a gift for us to be able to choose.  As Joshua said, "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." Joshua 24:15.

To Be Worthy Of His Love

This past couple of weeks I have had some new insights about the Pure Love of Christ or Unconditional Love.  When I feel those things floating around in my head and heart I must put fingers to keyboard...to sort, to discover, to understand.  So here are some thoughts to peruse and ponder on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

Since I have been a wee child I have known the song, "Jesus loves me" this I know for the Bible tells me so...   How can it be that I am still assimilating this truth at this stage in my life?  Who is this Man of Galilee that knows me enough to love Me?  Not me, collectively as in all of us...but ME?

I was well into my adulthood when I began to think about this pure love of Christ or the unconditional love that He has for me.   I never felt I was able to be unconditionally loved or loving without fear of losing that love, until we had children.  That gave me a glimpse of what it felt like to love and be loved in that way. Until those three, I never felt anyone was mine in a way that no matter what they did, I would still love them (or they me) completely, purely or unconditionally.  It was as though my feelings, my wants and needs were not part of the equation, when I learned about unconditional love as I felt for our babies.  There was no pride or selfishness at all.

 I loved them completely because of who they were.  And I knew they loved me in the same way.  I was their Mommy, that was enough for them.  In all their imperfections and mine the love never wavered.   The astonishing thing was it came so naturally.  It was not a struggle, I didn't have to keep trying for it.  It just was and I never doubted it or questioned it, no matter what they did.  I know their Dad feels the same.  This is a kind of love that transcends the earth.  It is divine.  It is also quite interesting to recognize that grandchildren also inherit this type of love as well.  It is their birthright.

I remember the first time I felt unconditional love.  I remember the hour, the moment and the rapture of it as though it were a moment ago.  I was lying in a hospital bed around 10:00 pm in Las Vegas, Nevada. I had just given birth to Jennifer at 3:38 that afternoon.  Jim had gone home reluctantly, after visiting hours and our tiny girl was in the nursery.  The day had been filled with excitement, hard work and euphoria that would not let me sleep as I pondered what had just happened.

Suddenly I felt a deep sadness come over me.  The thoughts were along the lines of...this is the most important day of our lives together...why are we all in separate places?  It was not normal, or natural to the point of being physically painful.  It was not long after that that the nurse brought our little burrito-wrapped baby into to me for the first time.

She looked so beautiful with her dark hair long enough to be combed and curled over a nurse's finger before her grand entrance.  Her cheeks were so rosy and her eyes the deepest blue! Her irises covered her entire eye sockets, not even a glimmer of the whites of her eyes were visible.  I held her in the crook of my left arm and began to talk softly to her in the quiet of that cold, mint green hospital room.

As I gazed into her eyes and she into mine...it happened. Just like a bolt of gentle and tender lightning our love was sealed to me.  It was spiritually electrifying.  By the time Chris and Laura were born it was there in all its glory, but not as dramatically presented because by then I was well acquainted with it.  That gift that is inherited by grandchildren may even come before their actual birth I discovered.  It is miraculous, penetrating, instantaneous and unconditional love!

Any number of things our children and grandchildren do may irritate us, saddened us, even offend us but the notion of withdrawing our love is not even an option, not even a thought.  This is different that worldly love, isn't it?  It is about God's Work and His Glory: to bring to past the immortality and eternal life of man, woman and child.  Our families teach us how to love unconditionally in the most conducive setting.  We are all a part of a family, past, present and future.

That is how our Savior loves us.  As I try to comprehend that I can only compare it to the love of our children.  It is never intermittent, never faltering no matter what we do or how we think or how much we protest.  It just is, whether we know it, believe it or even want it.  He is the Great I Am and His love is perfect even as He is perfect.

It seems so completely different than the way we experience love in the world.   Hearts are broken constantly by a trust that fails when someone gives and takes back their definition of love at will. How many of us guard our hearts because of experiences like that that we have had?  I would venture to say most of us.  We learn to protect ourselves by expecting less of people who say they love us and then hurt or abandon us.  It can be parents or spouses or siblings or friends...it doesn't seem to matter.

But the Savior will never love us like that.  There is safety and peace in His love.  And even more important is that He never misunderstands us or judges us unworthy of His love.  He never tires of doing all in His power to care for us.  He knows us without our having to prove ourselves by our words or deeds.   He just "gets" each of us to the depths of our heart and loves us, as is. No qualifiers.  No conditions.  Just Love, the kind we all yearn for from the deepest part of us.  We have that in Him.  What does He ask in return?  What is the greatest commandment, the one that all the laws of the Gospel hinge upon?  In Matthew we read.

"Matthew 22:36-40

King James Version (KJV)

36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law?

37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.

38 This is the first and great commandment.

39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

As we learn to love the Savior as He loves us, we will learn to put our full trust in Him, in His plan, in His will for us.  Imagine what our lives could be like if we just had unconditional faith in Him and His will.  If we didn't kick against things that we don't think are fair or right or good for us and we just had unconditional faith in him, how different would life be?  If we loved Him that much, even as much as He loves us.  It we actually tried our very best to be perfect, or whole, just as He is.  If we knew Him like He knows us and could give over the driver's seat and let him be our pilot?  What if we would stop worrying and started trusting Him more?  

Why do we love Him?  The scriptures tell us because He first loved us.  Not only that but He shows us how to love so that we can get on to the next commandment which is like unto the first.  So that we might love our neighbor as ourselves.  

Because on these two commandments hang all the laws and the prophets.  To me that is saying that if we can master these three things, life will be the very best.  

Love Him as He loves and teaches us, Love ourselves as He loves us 

and love our neighbors as He loves all of us. 

 It is the beginning and the end of a perfect plan.  Mastering that kind of love is key.  Love is what we give.  Just as Love is what He gives.  All the other commandments comes easier to us when we have the foundation of unconditional love in our lives.  First His and then our own for Him and for all His children including ourself.

That kind of love that looks outside of our own wants and needs and to Him and His children around us is the goal.  It takes a life time and probably longer.  It is not easy nor was it meant to be.  It is a refining process.  It is growing in His Gospel.  It is repentance and forgiveness, it is faith...lots of faith in Him.  It is learning to be humble and teachable.  It is forgiving ourselves when we fail miserably at His kind of love.  It is getting up, dusting ourselves off and keeping our eye on the target.  As we become more like Him we never want to hurt another person no matte what sacrifices  are required of us.  He has shown us what an ultimate sacrifice for another is by His atonement for us. 

It is simple and yet so profound.   I constantly find myself having to relearn this and I am so far from being where I want to be.  I guess the first steps are seeing His unconditional love for us, then seeing Him as our example and then following Him.  He is God; we are mere mortals with but a spark of divinity within us.  But we can make progress.  We have that hope and that faith for the very fact that He is our God in whom we trust.  And we see evidence in many around us who are farther along the path than we are.  Our Prophet, the Apostles, the very special and loved people in our lives that are closer to loving as He loves.  They are all around us to lead and inspire us on our way.

I am grateful for the chances and choices placed before me and I want to love as He loves.  I never want a person I love to doubt my love for them.  I want to be a person of tender mercies as He is.   It requires us to overcome the natural man inside of each of us.  It requires us to be obedient and trusting, and it requires work.  It is a good work to be engages in and it brings happiness in the struggles.  The greatest understanding I have gained of this kind love is through being a parent.  It helps me to know that the Savior loves us in that way and I find comfort in it.  I hope you do too in whatever way He teaches you.

So what do we need to do to be worthy of His love?  Absolutely nothing.  He simply does Love us unconditionally.  What do we need to do to partake of His promises of joy in our eternal life? Humble ourselves to follow Him, to be taught by Him and redeemed by Him and perfected or made whole in Him.  Does He coerce us and force us to comply?  No, He offers us all that He has and then allows us to choose for ourselves.   What a gift for us to be able to choose.  As Joshua said, "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord." Joshua 24:15.

I Stand All Amazed

Google Image

The week of Our Easter celebration and commemoration is upon us.  The glorious event pictured above is the culmination of this week.  The joy of the open tomb of our resurrected Lord and Redeemer. The events leading up to it were not so pleasant.

I have written a lot of Easter posts in the past few years and have given talks about Easter on Easter in church more than once or twice.  But for a couple of years I had been trying to remember where I had seen the Easter passages that really touched my heart several years ago.  It was in one of our church books somewhere.  I am excited that I have found it again and I love this so much.  This is a talk given by Jeffery R. Holland when he was the President of Brigham Young University in 1985.  I found a portion of it in his book entitled On Earth As It Is On Heaven.  It was published in 1989 By Deseret Books.

The book included a portion of the talk in this anthology.  The Chapter heading is I Stand All Amazed.  Hmm, being the researcher in training these days I thought maybe...just maybe there is a talk online by Elder Holland with the same title.  Bingo.  I found it on Google is a nano second.

So I have given you a portion of his words where he is quoting a former Apostle, Elder Melvin J Ballard later on in the text.

Elder Holland...

“There was a certain householder, which planted a vineyard, and hedged it round about, and digged a winepress in it, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into a far country:

“And when the time of the fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the husbandmen, that they might receive the fruits of it.

“And the husbandmen took his servants, and beat one, and killed another, and stoned another.

“Again, he sent other servants more than the first: and they did unto them likewise.

“But last of all he sent unto them his son, saying, They will reverence my son.

“But when the husbandmen saw the son, they said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance.

“And they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, and slew him.” (Matt. 21:33–39.)

That is the moment at which we find ourselves on the summit of Golgotha. It is not a pleasant story. Through patience that seems inordinately generous, the Father and the Son have waited and watched and worked in this vineyard for mercy to run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream. But they have not run. Not only have the prophets and faithful few been killed, but now so is to be the son of the Lord of the vineyard. A terrible, incalculable price is to be paid, and it wounds the human heart to tell it.

In the midst of the swearing and the spit, the thorns and the threats, the ridicule and the rending of his garments; added to the crushing weight of his own body straining for support on the very nails that have been driven into his hands and into his feet; with friends in retreat and foes as far as the eye could see, the worst possible scene in this divine drama unfolds.

Perhaps the briefest glimpse is given of the terrible emotions and forces at work here when we read lines intentionally preserved for us in the original Aramaic: “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46.)

There is one thing and one thing alone this Only Begotten Son has been sure of: the love and companionship and unwavering support of his father. Consider these lines taken almost at random from the Gospel of John. They are suggestive of a theme that runs throughout that book.

“The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: … The Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him all things that himself doeth.” (John 5:19–20.)

“I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.” (John 6:38.)

“I am not come of myself, but he that sent me is true, whom ye know not. But I know him.” (John 7:28–29.)

“The Father that sent me beareth witness of me. … If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also.” (John 8:18–19.)

“I and my Father are one.” (John 10:30.)

“He gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak.” (John 12:49.)

“Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me.” (John 16:32.)

And then this assertion, perhaps the most painful of all: “I am not alone, but I and the Father that sent me. … He that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him.” (John 8:16, 29.)

That one constant thread of doctrine and belief, the one certainty he had in spite of what might happen among mortal friend and foe: “[My] Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things which please him.”

And now, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

May I share this from Elder Melvin J. Ballard, written many years ago:

“I ask you, what father and mother could stand by and listen to the cry of their children in distress … and not render assistance? I have heard of mothers throwing themselves into raging streams when they could not swim a stroke to save their drowning children, [I have heard of fathers] rushing into burning buildings to rescue those whom they loved.

“We cannot stand by and listen to those cries without its touching our hearts. … He had the power to save, and He loved His Son, and He could have saved Him. He might have rescued Him from the insult of the crowds. He might have rescued Him when the crown of thorns was placed upon His head. He might have rescued Him when the Son, hanging between two thieves, was mocked with, ‘Save thyself, and come down from the cross. He saved others; himself he cannot save.’ He listened to all this. He saw that Son condemned; He saw Him drag the cross through the streets of Jerusalem and faint under its load. He saw the Son finally upon Calvary; he saw His body stretched out upon the wooden cross; he saw the cruel nails driven through hands and feet, and the blows that broke the skin, tore the flesh, and let out the life’s blood of His [Only Begotten] Son. …

“[He] looked on [all that] with great grief and agony over His Beloved [Child], until there seems to have come a moment when even our Saviour cried out in despair: ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me.

“In that hour I think I can see our dear Father behind the veil looking upon these dying struggles, … His great heart almost breaking for the love that He had for His Son. Oh, in that moment when He might have saved His Son, I thank Him and praise Him that He did not fail us. … I rejoice that He did not interfere, and that His love for us made it possible for Him to endure to look upon the sufferings of His [Only Begotten] and give Him finally to us, our Saviour and our Redeemer. Without Him, without His sacrifice, we would have remained, and we would never have come glorified into His presence. … This is what it cost, in part, for our Father in heaven to give the gift of His Son unto men.

“He, … our God, is a jealous God—jealous lest we should [ever] ignore and forget and slight His greatest gift unto us”—the life of his Firstborn Son. (Melvin J. Ballard, Crusader for Righteousness,Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1966, pp. 136–38.)"

Elder Holland continues...

So how do we make sure that we never “ignore or slight or forget” his greatest of all gifts unto us?

We do so by showing our desire for a remission of our sins and our eternal gratitude for that most courageous of all prayers, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34.) We do so by joining in the work of forgiving sins, which is so clearly demonstrated hour after hour, day after day, in temple work, from the baptismal font on the back of those twelve oxen deep inside the House of the Lord clear to the veil of the temple, the celestial room, and the Holy of Holies beyond it.

“‘Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ,’ [Paul commands us]. (Gal. 6:2) … The law of Christ, which it is our duty to fulfill, is the bearing of the cross. My brother’s burden which I must bear is not only his outward lot [and circumstance], … but quite literally his sin. And the only way to bear that sin is by forgiving it in the power of the cross of Christ in which [we] now share. Thus the call to follow Christ always means a call to share [in] the work of forgiving men their sins. Forgiveness is the Christlike suffering which it is the Christian’s duty to bear.” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, 2d ed., New York: Macmillan, 1959, p. 100.)

Surely the reason Christ said “Father, forgive them” was because even in the weakened and terribly trying hour he faced, he knew that this was the message he had come through all eternity to deliver. 

All of the meaning and all of the majesty of all those dispensations—indeed the entire plan of salvation—would have been lost had he forgotten that not in spite of injustice and brutality and unkindness and disobedience but precisely because of them had he come to extend forgiveness to the family of man.

Anyone can be pleasant and patient and forgiving on a good day. A Christian has to be pleasant and patient and forgiving on all days. It is the quintessential moment of his ministry, and as perfect in its example as it was difficult to endure.

Is there someone in your life who perhaps needs forgiveness? Is there someone in your home, someone in your family, someone in your neighborhood who has done an unjust or an unkind or an unchristian thing? All of us are guilty of such transgressions, so there surely must be someone who yet needs your forgiveness.

And please don’t ask if that’s fair—that the injured should have to bear the burden of forgiveness for the offender. Don’t ask if “justice” doesn’t demand that it be the other way around. No, whatever you do, don’t ask for justice. You and I know that what we plead for is mercy—and that is what we must be willing to give."

I find this to be extremely beautiful and poetic and true.  I especially love the portion where he is quoting Elder Ballard.  We often think of the magnitude of our Savior's sacrifice which is incomprehensible to us.  

But until I read this passage I never pondered deeply about the unfathomable anguish of Our Heavenly Father as He watched His Only Begotten Son experience this horrific death one hideous abuse after another, knowing that he could have stopped it.  But He, Our Heavenly Father, suffered it for us. Having a son of your own adds yet another dimension of appreciation for His gift.  Our Heavenly Father did this because He loves us...that much.  Imagine it!  It was for you and for me individually and all of us.  Not as a group but for each one.  

There are not words sufficient to express the gratitude we should feel for both The Father and The Son not just in this Holy Week but all the time.  Because of that pivotal and universal sacrifice the opportunity for everything that is important in this life and the next can be ours.  This should give us great cause alone to have A Very Happy Easter!

"Lord, I Believe"

This past weekend The Church Of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints held our April Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah.  What a beautiful and uplifting experience it is for Church members and other Christians throughout the world to assemble and watch together via satellite broadcasts.  In all there are ten beautiful hours of faith promoting talks that strengthen us a followers of Christ and empower us to go forward in faith, regardless of our current situations.  I would like to share one message of hope that I just loved today.  This is by, Elder Jeffery R. Holland, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve and a Special Witness of Jesus Christ.  May it lift your heart, spirit and your day! Bonnie

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An Endowment is a Gift With a Twist

Several years ago I attended a Sunday School Class where Brother Tony Damiano was giving a lesson that really got me thinking. I have wanted to do a post on it ever since.

He talked about how commodities and things change hands between various individuals.

1. A Gift~ A person chooses something that they find valuable and hopes the recipient will love it also. The gift is given as a token of esteem, love or appreciation for their association and nothing is expected in return.

2. A Sale~One person has something of value and another person wants it. They negotiate a price that seems fair in both of their eyes and an exchange is made. This works best when each feels that got the better end of the deal.

3. An Endowment~One person has something of great value that he wants to give to another but in exchange he wants something of far less value from the recipient.

He then told the story of Duke University to illustrate his point.

Duke University in Durham N.C. was originally known as Trinity College. A very wealthy family endowed the college with three $100,000 gifts. This endowment was huge by the standards of the day and since 1925, it has given over a billion dollars to the people of North and South Carolina. The Endowment makes gifts to support child care, hospitals, churches, and higher education in those states.

The Duke Family asked for a few things in return, one that women be admitted with the same status and criteria as men and two that they rename the college, Duke University in honor of the family. There may have been a few more stipulations but, the point is that what they asked in return was nothing compared to what the University received by complying with the family's wishes. Much was given ~ very little was expected in return.

I thought this was really brilliant as a way to more fully understand how little our Father in Heaven and the Savior ask of us to inherit all that they have. I just love lessons like this that stay with you a long time~and get you to really ponder things of the spirit.

Unwrap the Gift!

What Color is Your World Today?

Some days look like this...

Other just look like this.....

What contributes to the difference? For me I think it is the futility of certain things, discouragement and a lack of vision to recognize where the color actually is. It comes when I am depending too much on the arm of flesh. It comes when I am so busy looking within and around myself and forget to look up! It comes when I feel impatient and unforgiving and when I expect too much. It comes when I feel I am battling the black and white alone. It comes when I forget to remember.

What do you do to put some color back into your world? What does it take to paint your world in vibrant beautiful colors again? What are the brush strokes that bring out the sun? Where is the red that brings out your passion, the yellow that brings out your courage, the green~your zest for life and blue, your sense of peace and hope and love? What is the wind beneath your wings that dissipates the clouds of gray and helps you see things as they really are?

For me it is when I do remember and also when I try to forget. For me it is a complete palate of vibrant colors that I need to actually seek and find and reclaim through faith, hope and charity. It is giving myself permission to get it back through repentance, forgiveness and gratitude. It is remembering that the Savior holds out His hand to me and forgetting about the things that make me sad. It is about moving on, moving up and moving mountains. A little here, a little there until the perfect day. It is about loving and thinking of it as something you give, not just get. It is acting, moving, doing something. It is building a bridge to your dreams, not just passively waiting for what you want or need. It is being a lifter and an encourager to someone else. Letting the light within you come out to brighten and bless the world around you. Our color comes from the light of Christ in our lives. Without Light we cannot see any color at all.

It is feeling the love from
its source, letting it nurture us and being satisfied!
It is sharing what we know to be true
with those we love most
by what we say and do every single day...it is integrity.

The lovely town above is Burano, Italy.
It is a tiny island near Venice.
It is full of color...
I could go there and just never leave.
Want to come with....?
Rifugio Bella!

Kathy and The Weaver and His Tapistry

A year ago last spring I wrote this post about a dear friend who passed away. While looking for something to share on this Sunday with you, I ran across this and thought it had some important points to ponder and reflect upon. There are lessons to be taken away for all of us from people like Kathy Sandoval.

March 2010:

Yesterday was the most beautiful spring day. As we listened to the little birds chirping and enjoyed flowers outside, our thoughts were turned to a lady in our church who died last Sunday. Jim and I were going to be helping in the kitchen to serve lunch to the family members who had traveled from as far away as France to come to her service.

Kathy was 61 and had been bedridden with MS for a little over 30 years. She worked in a nursing home years ago and fell in love with a man named John who was a quadriplegic due to a spinal cord injury. She took him home and cared for him after they were married. They eventually had three children.

When Kathy's youngest was around 18 months old, Kathy was diagnosed with MS. Within a few years she could no longer take care of her children. Her brother who lived in Alaska adopted their three kids. They grew up hundreds of miles away from their parents and saw them rarely. She and her husband shared a room at the convalescent home until his death. For the last 20 years she has lived alone in a bed since her husband died, basically just waiting to be taken home.
I met Kathy about 7 years ago when she moved into our town. She was angry for having had to move due to finances, as she had left a wonderful ward full of people that knew her and John and their kids. They had loved her and cared for her.

It was my job to try to help that happen in her new church family. Kathy lived a miserable existence physically; one most of us cannot even imagine. She could not move anything but her head from side to side. She could not wipe away her own tears, feed herself, partake of the Sacrament on her own, hold a book, dial a phone number...all she could do was breathe and talk.

I lost a lot of sleep over Kathy. My own mother was ill at the time and in a different convalescent home, and I just didn't have a clue how to help Kathy. She missed her friends so desperately and she didn't know me at all. We were both struggling. Anything that I had ever known to comfort someone did not work with Kathy. I spent hours just wiping away her tears. I organized visits from others, and slowly the service and love grew for her and she began to allow others in. I have never felt so inadequate in my entire life to help another person.

Her faith in the Lord was strong but she had questions no one could answer...a lot a 'whys' I sure didn't have adequate answers for. You could not just chime in with something trite when she asked you why this happened to her, her kids, etc. We shared a lot of very silent moments together. I thought about her constantly wondering how I could help. Finally the Lord answered my prayers in this way. "Bonnie, you cannot fix it, just love her."

So I did...and I stopped worrying about what to say and do and just loved her. I bought her a book from one of her favorite, Christian authors, Neal A. Maxwell. I asked various ward members to read to her and she loved that. Jim thought maybe she would like to be a visiting teacher so she could serve too. We got that going. People started having her over every Sunday on a rotation basis and she started to feel a part of our ward... finally. Every week that she was able, she got a ride to church. Kathy didn't own much but she did have her own van with a lift for her wheelchair. Many people learned to operate it and get her out of the home as much as possible. They were amazing! I had my own mom to care for so I had to leave a lot of it to everyone else.

When someone would die, Kathy would always cry. Tears for them and tears for herself. She longed to be released from the body that held her captive. She would say, "When I die...dance for me!" A lot of people have been dancing for Kathy lately.

Yesterday was a beautiful celebration of her courage and fortitude as she dealt as best she could with her terrible circumstances. Kathy taught everyone well. She taught us to endure to the end no matter what, she taught us not to complain and to be thankful. She taught everyone that knew her how to minimize the whining about their own small troubles. Kathy was amazing. Kathy was real, she didn't try to hide her pain and frustration, her life was unbearably hard. She shared that. Others were blessed. Kathy will be missed and never ever forgotten.

Through a mutual friend, Elder Maxwell was made aware of Kathy's situation and and he wrote her a letter that included this. I thought it was beautiful and was happy we got a copy of it in church today. I am sure we can all find application in our own lives someplace.

"My life is but a weaving between my God and me,
I do not choose the colors, He worketh steadily.
Ofttimes He weaveth sorrow, and I in foolish pride,
Forget He sees the upper, and I the underside.

Not till the loom is silent, and shuttles cease to fly,
Will God unroll the canvas and explain the reason why.
The dark threads are as needful in the skillful Weaver's hand
As the threads of gold and silver in the pattern He has planned."


Kathy on the left with our good friend, Lanette.
May She Rest In Peace... while moving around freely at last!

When you have the privilege of knowing someone like Kathy, who truly struggled every minute of her last 20+ years, you wonder and marvel that we could ever complain about anything don't you? What a blessing she was to all who knew her and hopefully to those who just read of her story as well. I cannot help but think about the hymn, "Count Your Many Blessings"...Name them one by one... when I think of her! Even in her darkest hours she did not lose her faith. She questioned, but she always believed in a better, eternal life and a Father in Heaven and Savior that loved her. She was an outstanding example of enduring to the end. Sure miss that sweet lady in my life and think of her often when I am whining about something that is nothing. She helps me keep an eternal perspective....I hope she never stops dancing!