New Year, New Blog!

Eight and a half years ago, I started this blog on a whim. I didn't know what I was going to blog about, but I knew that as a newlywed I was probably supposed to have a blog.

Since then, I've amassed about 600 blog posts. Some of them could be edited for length and clarity, but I'm still really happy with what I've produced.

The past several months, though, I've been thinking a lot about the direction I want not just for this blog but for social media in general. Here are some of my conclusions:

1. I would like to share personal information on Facebook since it's such an easy place to share news with a large but select audience, but I have been getting more and more bothered by the company itself. So, I've been doing a bit of a boycott there. I still share pictures on Instagram, but I've been holding back on any kind of new information.

2. Google isn't a great company for privacy either, but since I still have to use the Internet I accept that Google will probably always know a lot about me, even just from my emails. For now I'll live with that.

3. Since we are planning to stay in the same house for a long time, I'd like to do as much as possible to up my privacy on the internet. The local news isn't always encouraging on the creeper front, unfortunately.

Soooooooooooooooooooooo,

I started a new blog. A private one. The kind that you have to physically check rather than just scroll through on your blog feed app.

It's not my ideal, but I think it's what is right for our family moving forward.

I know that not too many people read this blog, but I also know that I don't know everybody who reads this. And for the most part, that's fine. I mean, I check various websites without participating in the community, so I have no disdain for lurkers. But I'm at the point where I don't want my life or my kids' lives to be lurked at. So sending out blog invitations it must be. (Comment if you want one! I've already posted on the new blog!)

I might still post here some, but I wouldn't count on it. I've still got plans to work on music websites, and those will be public, but I don't know when that will be.

So, I guess it's goodbye for now?

It's been really, really fun.

Time flies when you're having fun

Today Kevin and I commemorated a very important occasion -- it's our meet-iversary! 10 years ago we met and didn't think much of the encounter. This just goes to show why it's okay to be wrong sometimes.

In honor of this special day, I wanted to share the first picture that was taken of us together. Unfortunately, it no longer can be found on Facebook (another friend shared it and deleted the album later), but at least I can share the second picture taken of us together:

Here we are, just lost somewhere in Provo Canyon with my dad and friends and siblings. We thought we were going to hike Mount Timpanogos that day but a couple of misleading signs led us nowhere so we spent the time traipsing around on deer trails until we found our way back to the trail (about a half mile from the trailhead and it was 1 in the afternoon). There ain't no hike like a Moon hike, he learned that day and has relearned a couple times since.

Speaking of things from 10 years ago, Facebook reminded me that on January 10, 2009, I went sledding with my ward and looked really cool doing it:

I'm glad that I was not hurt so that 3 days later I could meet Kevin.

While I'm at it, since everybody is doing it, here's the first profile picture I put on Facebook in 2007:

This picture was taking the day of my high school graduation. I had just gotten back from hair salon where they whacked off about 16 inches (I only asked for 12) of my hair. So the ends look kind of blunt.

And here's my most recent picture:

I think I look older but I could still pass for a high schooler if I had to. I at least look older than the 6th graders at Joseph's school.

This picture of Jacob reminds me of two more pictures that I happened to share on two different January 13ths two years apart:

This is literally my favorite picture in the world

I thought it might be fun to do a redo picture now that we have a Jacob instead of a placeholder, but I couldn't get Matthew to put on the blue shirt Joseph was wearing and then I forgot about it so it never happened. Oh well. I feel like winter is just not a great time to take pictures of kids anyway. Between hardly taking any pictures of my kids (well, by my standards) and not writing in my journal since sometime in December (or even blogging about life) I feel like I'm living an undocumented life. Someday historians will just have to look through gchats, texts, and credit card purchases to figure out what we did each day.

But back to the original point. How, you might ask, did we spend our super important meet-iversary?

We got our kids dressed for church. With my parents' help, we wrestled with our kids (mostly Jacob) during Sacrament Meeting. We played with our kids.

And of course, we went on a date. We spent last night painting our 7th-11th paint samples, and then today we went to our house to see how they looked there. 

some contenders

If you have to watch paint dry or look at undertones of paint on drywall, it's always nice to do it with the person you are happy to spend your meet-iversary with. 

Time flies when you're having fun.

Good Ideas Belong to Everyone

"Sister Elaine Jack said with a smile, “You know, Elder Ballard, the [women] of the Church may have some good suggestions … if they [are] asked. After all, … we are their mothers!" - Neil L. Andersen, "Power in the Priesthood"

I never wanted to write a letter to an apostle until I was called into a Primary Presidency.

My concerns were primarily logistical, and they stayed at the ward and stake level. "We can't do Cub Scouts in this ward! There are so many language barriers that make it hard to get normal paperwork filled out! Even getting everyone to give me their rechartering certificate was almost impossible with all the computer issues people faced week after week! Can't we just do Activity Days for Boys? They would still get to do fun stuff, only we wouldn't have to buy them patches and pins!"

As it turned out, repeating that mantra multiple times over multiple months to leadership was sufficient, and the ward switched to Activity Days. To be honest, I felt a little guilty that I had brought it up so much since I was throwing in the towel after only one recharter and Blue and Gold banquet, but I felt a little validated a few months later when the Church announced it would formally withdraw from the Scouting program in 2020.

You could argue I had been a few months ahead of the prophet and therefore was in the wrong. But regardless, it was still a good idea.

That wasn't the thing I wanted to write a letter about, though. The main thing was just how difficult it was to staff a ward like the one I was currently in. I knew my time in it was short, and I knew that it really was fairly functional considering everything it was up against. But as I thought about it, I realized most wards outside of the US or certain parts of Latin America (and plenty within those areas) were likely facing the same challenges we did (transportation, kids who wanted to come but their parents didn't, multiple languages, burdens on young families). Did they know about these challenges?

As it turned out, they did. And the very next conference, President Nelson freed up all of the High Priest Group leadership so they could help out with callings such as Primary! I again felt so grateful for their inspiration.

***

There's a phrase people say, "Prophets are fallible, but no one believes it." I don't think that's accurate -- I think most members really don't mind that prophets are human too. What people like less is the idea of them needing input from lay members.

I mean, surely if Joseph Smith could translate the Book of Mormon without any prior knowledge of ancient languages, then modern leaders could determine which missions to open and which ones to close without looking at data, right? Surely God can lay out clear visions of how to write manuals or design temples.

And yet . . . there are divisions in the Church Office Building devoted to data mining and statistical analysis of all those numbers missionaries track. There are correlation committees and temple contractors and all sorts of jobs that seem rather, well, mundane.

So, okay, fine, but that doesn't mean they really want or need lay members to share their opinions, right? They would never put out surveys, right?

They do that too.

I absolutely believe that revelation can come in bursts of light straight from heaven, but I think most of the details to implement those revelation come in less dramatic ways. Those details include stake executive secretaries who suddenly have three times as many interviews to schedule. They include committees called to sing each hymn that's submitted. They include a lot more surveys and statistics than we like to romanticize.

A friend of mine recently had a song come straight into her heart that she asked me to help transcribe and write accompaniment for. The song was absolutely a revelation. My part, though, was to use the gifts of God that had already been given to me to write it down. I spent hours tapping my leg to figure out the syncopation and time signature changes. I used my perfect pitch to figure out the notes without too much help from the piano. I input the notes using computer software on a laptop with an external monitor on the other side of the piano due to a broken laptop screen. It was tedious. (I think I'll charge $200 an hour to do this from now on.) But the fact that my part was tedious didn't mean that her part wasn't inspired. That's just how revelation works sometimes.

And any amount of mundane, human, tedious input doesn't mean it's not inspired. It's still a good idea.

***

In April 2013, Jean Stevens was the first woman to offer a prayer in General Conference. Prior to her prayer, several women had sent letters to the First Presidency asking that this change be made.

And it was.

But the Church had already been planning to do it. Six months earlier they had lowered the mission age, and they had several other changes in the works. It was just a coincidence that the letters had coincided with the pre-planned change.

So, were those women wrong in writing those letters? Were they out of line, steadying the ark, exhibiting no faith in the prophet?

That's between them and God to decide. I will say I do know people who don't like to stir things up who were nonetheless led by the Spirit recently to write letters to the First Presidency about similar concerns. And their concerns were addressed.

Perhaps we worry too much about where an idea comes from or when an idea comes when the real question is, "Is it a good idea?"

And, as it turns out, feminists have good ideas. Prophets have good ideas. People of any race, nationality, sex, age, educational attainment, or marital status can have good ideas.

And I don't think we need to be scared or defensive when someone outside of our "group" has a good idea, even if it's shared more forcefully than we approve. Instead, I think we should evaluate the idea based purely on its own merits. And if it really is a good idea, then the primary feeling we ought to have is gratitude. We ought to have gratitude that Heavenly Father can communicate good ideas to any of His children. We ought to have gratitude that we are part of a church where we know firsthand that God speaks! We ought to have gratitude that it is an organized church that can handle good ideas coming from anyone -- regardless of the original source, there will be an organized pattern for the good idea to make its way to all of the members, and we all can have witnesses of its truth.

As Joseph Smith said,

People acting together are the foundation of the authority of the church. “I informed the people [that in] the government of the church, in business transactions, every man should have a voice in the matter as if the whole responsibility were on his shoulders.

-Joseph Smith, JD 3.89 (as quoted in Brother Brigham Challenges the Saints)

 And, like we learn from Joseph F. Smith, we ought to have gratitude for our Savior. In Section 138 of the Doctrine and Covenants, he tells his story:

 2 And reflecting upon the great atoning sacrifice that was made by the Son of God, for the redemption of the world;
3 And the great and wonderful love made manifest by the Father and the Son in the coming of the Redeemer into the world;
4 That through his atonement, and by obedience to the principles of the gospel, mankind might be saved.

He reads some scriptures, and what happens next?

11 . . . the eyes of my understanding were opened, and the Spirit of the Lord rested upon me, and I saw the hosts of the dead, both small and great. 

He saw one of the most magnificent visions ever! He learned so much about what happens after we die, and it gave so much hope to people exhausted by war and influenza.

If we look on good ideas with gratitude and charity rather than derision or judgment due to their original source, then I think we will see and learn even more magnificent things.

And it will be wonderful.

Word made flesh

I was recently thinking about how much my religion is often as much about the tangible as it is the spiritual.

For example, religion asks that we not only have a broken heart and a contrite spirit. It also asks us to take bread and water each week.

It asks us not only to follow Jesus and keep His commandments but to put on a jumpsuit and walk into a font of water to get baptized.

It asks us not only to obey God's commandments and live the gospel of Jesus Christ but to make tangible covenants that show we really mean it.

It even asks not only for people who have died to accept Jesus Christ but to be baptized by proxy by living people in jumpsuits and fonts holding little slips of paper they printed out that morning.

It's as if religion says, "It's not enough for your heart to be in it. Your body has to be in it too."

I used to wonder about what there was about the nature of the water or the words that provided the transformative effect to cleanse us or endow us with power beyond what the Holy Ghost accomplished spiritually. But now after having three kids with very literal needs, I don't care that much about the metaphysical or symbolic. Maybe we'll find out someday that most of the tangible things we did were important only symbolically to keep our minds on the right track. Maybe we'll find out it was all literal. Maybe the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

But I still think there's something to the idea that our body has to be in it just as much as our heart. I think of what Jesus Christ taught about baptism both in the New Testament and in modern scripture. I think about an entire Plan of Salvation that depended on us getting mortal, fragile bodies. And tonight, I think about a little baby born in to tired parents in a tired, confused nation. And I am grateful for his literal, tangible life.

11  And he shall go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind; and this that the word might be fulfilled which saith he will take upon him the pains and the sicknesses of his people.

12 And he will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death which bind his people; and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities.

13 Now the Spirit knoweth all things; nevertheless the Son of God suffereth according to the flesh that he might take upon him the sins of his people, that he might blot out their transgressions according to the power of his deliverance.

I'll just leave this here for you

Hinges

"So what kind of hinges do we want?" Kevin asked the other night.

I was shocked. I had to have opinions about hinges? We looked through an online catalog and saw options like brushed nickel, satin nickel, etc. I had never cared about anything less in my life.

You know who does have opinions about hinges? Matthew. The other day he was eating a snack and suddenly had a full blown meltdown about hinges because he didn't want to crack. I mean, technically the song says "I've got to have hinges or else I would crack" but I guess he took it to mean hinges would make him crack and so we had to reassure him about 50 times that he didn't have hinges. Hopefully he won't crack when he learns that we chose brushed nickel hinges.

It's not like I don't have lots of opinions about homes. I have opinions about built-in bookcases (not appropriate for rooms you can see from the front porch), bathtubs (should have space on the edges for shampoo), microwaves (should not be above ranges nor in the island where the kids can reach), and balusters (should be spelled ballisters and should not be as expensive as they are). But at the same time . . . it would be nice to delegate all the decision making to the people with the most strong opinions in my life. My kids.

But that wouldn't quite work either. I asked Joseph which color the house should be and he said the color of his coat. I'm assuming he's talking about the royal blue part and not the orange part, but even that would be a bit intense. The interior paint colors would follow a similar color theme. And of course, if it were up to them each room in the house would primarily be a toy room.

So I guess the decisions are up to Kevin and me (and our moms, who tell us to "do what you want" but also will probably never visit if we choose the wrong paint colors). Windows on a garage. Painted or stained. Linoleum or carpet in the kitchen (just kidding, Mom).

I know that none of this matters in the long run. There are big important things to think about, and cabinets do not fall in that category. But it's still been valuable studying ways to make a house beautiful. It's been mind-stretching to use my imagination all the time, trying to create a space that will require as little thought as possible once it's done. It's a process of knowing when to have a backbone and when to be flexible.

All that said, if I have to think about hinges ever again I might crack.

Cake

Right now Kevin is in the kitchen working on his birthday cake. We started the tradition of making our own birthday cake years ago, and we have no plans of changing it yet. Every year I begin my hunt anew for the perfect treat, except for the time I accidentally made the same dry brownie cake I had made 2 years earlier. I've had a few things that were pretty close to perfect, but nothing is quite the holy grail of birthday desserts.

On the other hand, Kevin discovered a recipe for cheesecake with an Oreo crust and Snickers on top, and he's been fine with that since 2014. I don't blame him -- it is really delicious.

But I didn't think my family would be too interested in it since I didn't ever remember eating much cheesecake growing up. Nor did I think they would be too interested in the cheesecake that Kevin's parents had gotten while we were in town for Thanksgiving. It had gone untouched for days since we had so much other pie to eat, and I thought it might stay untouched if we took it back to my parents' house. But my mother-in-law insisted, so we took a big chunk of it with us.

The minute we showed my mom what we brought, she was really excited. "I love cheesecake!" she said.

"You do?????" I asked.

"Yes. Don't you remember? My friend Meg had a cheesecake party and I came home with her recipes and made a different cheesecake every month one year."

"Right . . ." I said as I tried to remember any cheesecake I had ever eaten in my own home. I guess I had filed it away with all the real Christmas trees my parents ever had (I only have memories for the fake Christmas tree).

"Later, I would make a cheesecake and have a fudge sauce and a raspberry sauce that we could pour on."

That I did remember, and I apologized for almost convincing Kevin to not bring home any cheesecake.

Anyway, I found this song a few months ago on lds.org and I'm wondering if I sing it over and over if the memory of all those monthly cheesecakes will come back.

I suppose maybe we should make another verse about "When Father bakes his own birthday cheesecake."