Look at this deer I randomly saw on my walking trail this past week! Oh my! So cool! It didn’t run off after it saw me! It just quietly bent down to take a cold drink in the stream by the trail. I’ve been walking at least an hour a day at least 4 days a week the past two weeks. I found this cool walking trail not far from my home and wondered why I hadn’t been using it before, in the past almost 4 years since moving here. Well, it’s because I didn’t know about it. I just love it! It is a tree tunnel. I can go walking there anytime I want and feel like I’m in a forest on the east coast instead of in a suburban desert.
For my Come, Follow Christ study this past week my family and I have been studying the Anti-Nephi-Lehites in the Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ. They were a group of hard-hearted bloodthirsty souls who softened their hearts and converted to Christ, due to the missionary efforts of Ammon and his brethren. In Alma 26 we seen the sons of Mosiah talking about their reasons to rejoice in Christ. That made made me ponder about all the things I have in my life that bring me joy, with it all because of Christ because He created all things. It’s his light that sustains the world and guides it. He works in partnership with His Father, our Heavenly Father, and the Holy Ghost, to facilitate my life.
Alma 26:16 quotes one of the missionary sons of Mosiah, Ammon, as saying the following:
“Therefore, let us glory, yea, we will glory in the Lord; yea, we will rejoice, for our joy is full; yea, we will praise our God forever. Behold, who can glory too much in the Lord? Yea, who can say too much of his great power, and of his mercy, and of his long-suffering towards the children of men? Behold, I say unto you, I cannot say the smallest part which I feel.”
That’s how I feel. I rejoice in Jesus Christ being my one clear, sure path to heaven. That brings me a lot of joy! When I was a younger mom I used to wonder what it would be like to be a millionaire. I wondered what it would be like to go about my day with the knowledge that I could spend whatever money I wanted because there was plenty more where it came from. I remember hearing a speaker at my church share the truth that when Jesus Christ atoned for our sins on the cross at Calvary and in the Garden of Gethsemane, it was like he gave us a spiritual blank check. Because of Christ’s atonement we are each inheritors of spiritual infinite amounts of millions. I can feel like I am heir to a millionaire because I am an heir to a spiritual millionaire, our Savior.
I also rejoice in this promise from Alma 26:22:
“Yea, he that repenteth and exerciseth faith, and bringeth forth good works, and prayeth continually without ceasing—unto such it is given to know the mysteries of God; yea, unto such it shall be given to reveal things which never have been revealed; yea, and it shall be given unto such to bring thousands of souls to repentance, even as it has been given unto us to bring these our brethren to repentance.”
I just love this promise! It’s so tremendous! We can know “things which never have been revealed.” It’s all conditional on us doing those four things mentioned: repenting, exercising faith, bringing forth good works, and praying continually. I recently heard a fellow Latter-say Saints express the truth that praying is repenting. Reading your scriptures is repenting. I had never thought about it that way.
In our process of moving and unpacking and organizing the past few months (it never seems to end!) I’ve had a lot of negative thoughts from satan go through my head like, “oh it’s so awful you can’t live in a bigger house,” thoughts of comparing my material blessings to others, thoughts of feeing sorry for myself that I’ve had to move three times in nine years when my sister has only had to move once in her married life of 20+ years (!) Oh how would it be?!?! And when she did move she didn’t have to do any of the packing because the professional movers did it all. Yes I admit it’s hard not to be envious of this! These scriptures I just mentioned and others help me to let go of those negative thoughts the enemy throws at me.
Reflecting on the random things that bring me joy also allow me to quickly dismiss those negative thoughts. Here are some random things that bring me joy that have happened lately:
-the walking trail I mentioned above
-bacon and beef, which I eat almost every day and don’t get tired of
–my homemade Greek yogurt, which I eat almost every day and don’t get tired of
-seeing one of my Veggie Gal friends (the one who rescued the bird in the story linked here) at a thrift store and discovering that she loves to thrift too! Now I have another thrifting buddy to text my discoveries to!
-this new home I’m in has such a better view from the front window than the old one. I sit and eat breakfast and look out the window at the mountains and absolutely love it
-my new house has a front room that doesn’t seem very big from the outside. It’s technically a living room but we are using it as the dining room, as it is off the kitchen and the only place in the home that makes sense to have our dining room. This dining room feels bigger when you are in it inside. It has a long wall. Before I moved here I was so excited to line it with bookshelves. My former home did not have any long wall because of either a doorway or window interrupting it. So that meant no ideal wall to line with bookshelves. So even though I miss the cheery yellow painted walls and French doors of the old place, I just love this new place because of this wall. My friend Katie convinced me to get new IKEA shelves to give it a uniform look, instead of just having a mish-mash conglomeration of all my old shelves. Can you believe I’d never been to IKEA before? So back in June off my husband and I went to get some. I just love my new dining room/library with all of these shelves and baskets! The baskets hold all the quiz game cards and conversation cards I like to use at mealtime, mostly dinnertime. This is not ALL the books I own but most of them. The rest of them are all on shelves downstairs. For the first time in our married lives, we are able to have most of our books together on nice shelves. I love it! I’m sad I didn’t get a “before” photo, with all the piles of boxes of books lining the walls, looking so chaotic. So even though I hated moving, and the move was arduous, as many moves are, it was a blessing in that for the first time in almost 4 years all my books are unpacked and I can access them! In the old house some of the books stayed unpacked in the garage, other books were in the upstairs bedroom which was packed with other stuff in front of the bookshelves, so it was hard to get to the books. Therefore I didn’t access them and I forgot what book was where. I just love my new dining room/library!
-I found this darling desk for only $50 used on KSl Classifieds. At first I had the desk by the IKEA shelves then decided to move it and replace it with another IKEA Billy bookshelf to match the other side. It would be nice to now get some white chairs and white dining room table to match the shelves. Ultimately I also want to add curved tops to the IKEA shelves to match the curved top of the desk.
-I just love the crown molding around the windows of my new dining room. It has been so fun to get out my Independence Day decorations and deck out the crown moldings with my banners and garlands. I’m sorry the tablecloth isn’t ironed in the photo below…too much unpacking and organizing still on top of regular living to stress about ironing tablecloths!
-one of my single adult sons told me of a recent decision he just made to save the rest of his kisses until he is engaged. Not quite the Duggar level of “pure” courtship that I idealize (waiting to kiss until married), but we are getting there! I’m so thrilled that he came to this decision without any input on my part. He realized the truth of what I heard John Bytheway say, “When you give out your kisses like they are free samples at the grocery store, they are as valuable as free samples at the grocery store.”
-this same son asked me about natural family planning. He said that when he helped us move he noticed one of my books about it in a box he moved. So I told him a bit about NFP. He said that when he’s married he wants to use that method. This makes my naturally crunchy mama heart so happy!!!!! My heart is turning backflips and cartwheels over this!
-my teen daughter decided to go to the temple preparation class for our ward/congregation. I am so pleased about this!
-my mom crocheted these gorgeous flowers for me. I love how they go with my different Pioneer Woman tablecloths.
-it’s summer so I can lie in the sun for a little bit daily like I’ve blogged about here
-thrifting treasures continue! I found some 2 x 2 IKEA kallax shelves at the thrift store for only $15! They are regularly $45. I’m building a similar bookshelf as the one in my dining room pictured above for my office/school room in the basement, but it is black. Then I found a 3×4 black kallax shelf on KSL Classifieds for $80. So then I just had to buy another 2×2 to complete the look. I got some beige bins this time instead of baskets like above, along with birch colored drawer inserts. We got it all built on Saturday and a lot of the cubes filled but I’m still organizing it all. So when I’m done I’ll share the finished look. I’ve also found a bunch of other fun stuff like a beautiful white chair to go with the white desk I bought used shown a few photos above, and some fun books, including the Food Nanny Cookbook which I borrowed from the library (and returned after devouring it) over 14 years ago and never bought. I found it for only $1.50 at D.I. in perfect condition in June. I had found it a few months ago as well, again at D.I. but it had a bent and torn cover. I told myself to wait for a nicer copy to come along, and it finally did. I also found three adorable photo frames in colors I love. For years I’ve had this photo of my husband and me from a Valentine’s Day church dance, back when we had only three children. As soon as I saw this frame at Savers I knew it would go well with our photo. So now I have this photo on my kitchen wall and love it! Sorry for the glare on the glass in the frame. It looks better in real life.
-My other single adult son came home from Maryland so we get to have him for 6 weeks until he moves out to his own apartment for fall. He wanted to watch Fiddler on the Roof as a family so we’ve been doing that. That’s probably my second-favorite musical, after the Sound of Music. This son is so sweet to me. Whenever he leaves he comes and gives me a hug and calls me “Dear Mother.” This is such sweetness making up for the few years we had of him being a rascal.
-some of my children gave my husband a BBQ grill for Father’s Day. This is something I’ve wanted for over a decade. We finally have one! In the old days sometimes the kids would take our huge electric pancake griddle outside and we’d have a cookout that way with burgers and dogs. Now we can finally have a real one. So I’m using the Food Nanny’s idea of Saturday night being grill night. I’m also asking my husband to be in charge of prepping and serving Saturday night dinner.
-My husband and I had a disagreement. I prayed that his heart would soften to my point of view and it did and he apologized. We had a great day together last Saturday with him running errands for me while I organized my aforementioned black IKEA shelves and then we dejunked our bedroom together. We capped off the day with a family BBQ using the new grill, then we had a movie date night in bed. I once again was blessed to find a great movie about married love. Stay tuned to hear about that movie.
-Yesterday we celebrated the 23rd birthday of one of my sons. We gave him an electric guitar! That spurred on the idea for three of us to make music together, my 14 year old on drums, 23 year old on guitar, and me on piano. I’ve always wanted to have a jam session with my children and this was the first time we did it, because we finally have a trio in the home who can each play an instrument. It took us a bit of time to figure out what we could all play together. Since it was the Sabbath Day we settled on “Gethsemane” by Melanie Hoffman and used the interactive feature on the music library page of churchofjesuschrist.org to transpose it into a key our guitarist could play since his capo is missing. Right during the climax of the song, when you sing “the hardest thing that ever was done, the biggest battle that ever was won,” our drummer (the 14 year old) got bored and had to add more, so he started clashing his cymbals. My 23 year old shouted, “Hey you’re ruining it!” and then burst out laughing. He said it was like the scene in Muppet Christmas Carol during Fozziwig’s party. The muppet Animal is in the background with the band, placidly dinging the triangle softly. Then he gets bored so he starts beating on the drums and cymbals, unleashing all his energy. He hijacks the music to turn it from a soft romantic tune to a rambunctious jig. We then all laughed so hard even more after watching the clip on YouTube. The Animal part starts at the 1:44 mark.
I’m looking forward to many more times of making music together. When I focus on all these positive things instead of the negative, my heart is just so happy. We are “prospering by degrees,” as it says in the Book of Mormon. Despite trials, we can all prosper by degrees as we turn to Jesus and look for the reasons to rejoice.
Tree of Life Mothering 