Wow!!! I had the most amazing Sabbath Day experience last Sunday listening to this devotional talk below by Dr. Lili De Hoyos Anderson. I listened while I worked on an Eric Dowdle 1000 piece puzzle (Salt Lake City in the winter, which I started in January and haven’t finished and here it is summer now!). Then I kept listening as I prepped Sunday dinner after church. Lili is one of the Come Follow Christ vloggers I follow. The video below is her sharing the talk she gave to the Weber State Institute students of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Ogden Utah. This talk is so wonderful!!! It’s just the best!!! She calls it “(Some of the) Things I Want My Grandchildren to Know.” She covers 10 truths.

These are also things I want my grandchildren to know, as well as my children, my siblings, my parents, and everyone! After almost every sentence of Lili’s, I felt like clapping, cheering, and saying, “Amen, amen! Preach it sistah, preach it! Go Lili go!”

Today’s post involves Part 1, which has 4 truths. Watch below, learn, love, and live it! I’ve posted excerpts from it below the video with the 4 truths/messages with some of her quotes.

She has a gift of putting into words what I have felt for decades about motherhood. She says she was so honored to be a stay-at-home mom for her 8 children. She loved being their first teacher. (There’s actually a book about that, over here, which I bought when my oldest was a baby and devoured.) I love how she says that God doesn’t work in win-lose situations when he offers the riches of eternity to us. In my words, he doesn’t ask women to be mothers at home, through His prophet, with words here, and then have the result be crumbs. Being a stay-at-home mother does not mean you are relegated to a lower class doing menial labor and brainless work, and that you are forgotten, alone, and ignored. She says being a SAHM was very fulfilling, an honor, way harder than getting her PhD and the most soul-expanding experience she’s ever had. As a mother myself, of 7, who has been at home, homeschooling, since my oldest was born, almost 32 years ago, this just resonated so much with me! (She didn’t homeschool but was she as a SAHM until her children were raised and she went back to school to get her master’s, then a PhD.) Now she is a licensed clinical social worker and marriage and family therapist.

She says when she taught the above message at BYU and then at the Weber State devotional people gasped. The natural reaction is “Shouldn’t we marry a celestial person?” She answers, “Good luck finding a celestial person!” She goes on to say that that is impossible. She says that a temple recommend is the threshold for a person being Terrestrial. It’s not a guarantee but a guide. People don’t always stay on that path because of agency. But generally, they do, with exceptions.

Wow, this part about the body being the test is so fabulous!!! She says that it used to be that the church handbook said “No treats should be given at Primary.” She followed that rule when she was Primary President. She says she is dismayed that the rule got taken out of the handbook, because it was ignored, and that people give treats at Primary. This always bugged me too when my children were in Primary. Once I was attempting to heal my son’s cavity and then I found out he was being given sugary food at Primary! You can bet I complained. I agree with her that we have to learn how to master our bodies. It starts as parents, teaching our children that they can get through church without having something in their mouth every ten minutes.

She also says that fasting is the way to increase mastery over the body, and that fasting is a “spiritual weight room.”

Sister Lili came up with this chart above. Isn’t it genius at explaining life???? We get to choose which glory we live in, now on earth and eventually after earth life.

She explains what it is like to live in each of the realms of glory, shown below.

The favorite false doctrine of members of the Church, she says, is “Don’t judge.” She explains that the scripture, Matthew 7:1, has a Joseph Smith Translation footnote that says that what Jesus actually said was, “Judge not unrighteously, that ye be not judged; but judge righteous judgment.” We have to judge righteously to succeed in life. Not judging, as well as judging unrighteously, leads to moral relativism which leads to evil and misery.

I highly recommend you watch her video above and share it! Stay tuned for Part 2 starting with Message #5.

Want more of Dr. Lili?

I blogged about her here where she talks about Jesus being the greatest alchemist.

Her website is here.

Her podcast is here.

Her book is shown below, with the summary of it copied and pasted from her website.

“Choosing Glory considers the doctrine of celestial, terrestrial and telestial realms, suggesting that here on earth we deal with all three kinds of individuals, behaviors, institutions, and ways of life. Dr. Anderson applies a three realm perspective to daily choices, dating, marriage, parenting, stress and progression. She offers concrete tools to help us find safety from telestial elements that threaten our peace and reminds us that we were meant for more than a good terrestrial life. This book invites us to recognize that every day we are in fact choosing glory.”