lajendi

Notes from the Past

     Recently we found out that our youngest daughter's birth had not been recorded with our church. Today DH is attempting to fix that but he needed the date of Baby's blessing (similar to a christening, but it's not baptism). I couldn't think of it off the top of my head, cudos to you if you can, so I went searching through our important papers. 

     I keep papers. I come from a family of hoarders but I think I've toned it down a little. I don't keep every paper, I keep important papers. DH and I might disagree about what an important paper is. He would say this year's receipts for taxes are important papers. I'd say that the good bye card I got from my Colorado friend Stephanie is an important paper. Here's a little of what she wrote to me back in 2006:

     "I'm sending you off with 2 things people have said to me that I will always remember - both of which sum up how I'm feeling right now. First- you've been such a blessing in my life, and second - it's going to suck without you...  I hope your new adventure will be wonderful - and that you get to be still and enjoy it for a while. Thank you for your friendship and your wisdom and sharing so many things and eating M&Ms with me until the bottom of the bag! I'll think of you every time I see an almond!"

 

     It is written on a beautiful notecard from Russia, where she served her mission. This simple piece of paper reminds me of Stephanie and the times we had together. How could I not be inspired to be a good friend after re-reading her note?

     I keep thank you cards too, even if it's only the card and a named signed at the bottom. Today I found one that thanked me for helping with a Super Saturday craft day but the signature was so scribbled I don't know who it was from. I've helped with so many Super Saturdays that that info doesn't narrow it down a whole lot either! 

     There are also thank you cards from young women, those are especially precious to me now. Several from girls that I helped with their personal progress. I received my medallion at the same time as three of them because we were all working on it. Now one of them is married, one on a mission, one is about to graduate from college. It makes me feel old, but more importantly it reminds me to serve diligently in my callings because I can make a difference in someone's life. 

     Then there was this, from a young woman that I went to girl's camp with a few years ago. She made it and gave it to me as a thank you. 

     It says, "Proverbs 31:10 'Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies.' Thank you Sister P." 

     What I didn't find out until later is that this young woman's parents had recently gotten divorced. Her mother had left the church and there was great pain and turmoil in their family. When I found that out it wrenched my heart, this note seemed more precious than gold, and made me wish I had hugged that girl a few more times that week of camp.

     You can guess that reading through just one folder of my important papers meant I needed another important paper - a tissue. I cried as I read through the interactions I've had with wonderful people over the years. What a great life I have and how blessed I am to have had opportunities across the country to get to know people who have blessed my life and I have, in return, helped just a little. Life is good.

     Oh, I did eventually find a record of Baby's blessing day. It was beautifully done by a friend, without it I wouldn't have such a detailed record of that day. I should write her a thank you note. 

      Tell me about your notes from the past!

      Are any from me?

DC temple

It was temple trip day. My friend Ashley and I drove three hours down to DC. When we got there I remembered it was the day for the area youth to be in the temple. I decided to help with the youth instead of going with the adults, which was my original plan. 

Being in the temple with teenagers who were reverent, respectful and virtuous was a joy. Youth today have to make a definitive decision to be good. Gone are the days when going along with the crowd was enough to get kids by in life. Now they have to think ahead and make courageous choices that create a bright future. 

 
 R. and DH at the DC temple a few years ago
 

There were several times today that I felt amazed and proud of those beautiful and handsome young women and young men. To stand against the tide of baseness, selfishness, and materialism that is so invasive in our world is an amazing thing. I know that they don't make that journey alone, to the temple or through their teenage years. Just as adult leaders accompanied them to the temple today, they need leaders to accompany them through their teenage years. Of course good parents make the greatest difference in their lives. I'm grateful to interact with the youth, to hopefully encourage them to stay strong and courageous in the good fight. 

Depression and Religion

     Today I feel ill equipped to write this post, but this is so important to me and I want to get the word out. 

 Childhood Depression, by Richard Wilkinson

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     Depression is a hugely misunderstood illness. Especially within the context of religion. Although I am heartily dedicated to my religion, over a decade ago my misunderstandings about how to apply religion to my life led to thought patterns that contributed to my depression. It took non-religious resources to help me put my beliefs into proper practice.  

     While depressed I had unknowingly used guilt as a tool of emotional and spiritual self-mutilation. Sacrifice for others was my motto for life back then, and it's mis-application left me not knowing who I was or what happiness felt like. At the same time I didn't know that what I felt was out of the norm and had a name - depression. 

     While undergoing treatment for depression I was energized with hope, amazed to find there were answers I never knew existed to a problem I didn't know I had. Through therapy and reading books like The Feeling Good Handbook I learned how to constructively deal with emotions and live my religion. It was scary and wonderful to go to therapy. I was very wary of medication, but desperate, so I swallowed it. It took all I had, and the help of experts, to come through the other side. Which is why it is so shocking and hurtful to hear some within the religious community deny the usefulness of these methods. I fear greatly for those suffering from depression within religion because there is so much misinformation and misunderstanding about it. 

     People are not weak, faithless or ungrateful when they have depression. In fact I'd say that some of the strongest people are those who fight against depression every day and manage to live a productive life in the midst of chronic emotional pain. Faith, what greater faith than to get out of bed every morning knowing it will be a day filled with emotional numbness with no light from heaven breaking through the black clouds; yet still dropping to their knees to plead and pray to the God they love.  Gratitude seemed to make my depression worse. I knew the greatness and bounty of my blessings and somehow I still felt horrible, so I heaped on the guilt. 

     Once on the other side, feeling happy, I was petrified of the depression coming back. Some call depression the black dog, mine was a dark monster; an ugly looming figure hiding around every corner. I probably suffered from anxiety at that time as I worried about depression's ever-present threat. 

    It has been long enough since the blackest days of my depression that I'm not so scared of the monster. Through the proper practice of my religion, exercise, careful balancing of my days, rest,  a understanding husband, and many nuanced coping techniques I have a happy life. But that pain - intense, dark and hopeless - it is something I will never forget. So I am outspoken about my depression. Hopefully it never prevents me from getting a job, being approved for a mortgage, or other opportunities (not that I bring it up in those specific settings, but the way the internet is now our words linger online and can be found by people looking for info about us). If it does, I'm willing to suffer the consequences rather than sit in silence while those in pain suffer. 

Please, learn more about depression because those in need are all around you. Get help if any of this sounds too familiar. Above all, be gentle with those suffering from mental illness, they are fighting the good fight and deserve a few cheerleaders. 

A series of posts about depression on an LDS focused blog. (While I don't support everything on this site I am a huge fan of the depression series.) 

A wonderful post about being a mother with depression

Wonder if you're depressed?

A study out just today about a belief in God effecting depression.

Those Greeks

I took philosophy about 18 years ago and didn't like it. 

I read Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle this week and my opinion hasn't changed. The whole dialectic argument is reason-less to me. "It seems that I'm wiser than he in just this one small way: that what I don't know, I don't think I know." That's from our old friend Sowcrates. I think debating with him is a bit like pin the tail on the donkey - he gets you good and confused and then asks you to perform a simple task - like telling him if you think you are wise. Whatever your answer is he'll find a way to twist it to fit his argument.  

 Death of Socrates, by Jacques-Louis David

 "The activity of philosophic wisdom is admittedly the pleasantest of virtuous activities." - Aristotle 

 I couldn't disagree more. There are a lot of pleasant virtuous activities that are more pleasant than philosophy, especially when you get graded on it. (One of them even produces children!) My grade in Philosophy, as you can guess from my complete lack of comprehension, was not good. (However the Apgar scores on all of my children were great!)

I toyed with the idea of posting my essay about Socrates. But I didn't want to tempt anyone with plagiarizing. Yes, it is that good - I did mention how much I love philosophy, right? There might have also been a little consideration for my future blog stats too. So if you promise to come back I promise not to post it. 

Home with Sick Baby

When you're at home with a sick Baby (she's 2 1/2, should I stop calling her Baby?) what better thing to do than waste time online. Don't answer that question. I'm not making good choices because I'm operating on bite-sized chunks of sleep. Let's hope the JWs or the Kirby vacuum salesman don't knock on the door today, who knows what I might do. For now I'm just hanging on until it's nap time for both of us. 

This is why you're fat, it ranks right up there with cake wrecks. 

Now this is a legacy!

This is mostly for DH - It's Google's newest inventions, including a feature that enables searches for programming code. "Because if you're a coder, you shouldn't waste even a minute reinventing the wheel unless you happen to know for a fact that the wheel sucked and you could do a much better job."

I believe Crazymakers exist, I also know Micromanagers exist. How to deal with them and where I fall on the spectrum is another story. 

Great garden ideas, which leaves me wondering why I haven't gotten my seed catalogs yet. Maybe they know that winter will last forever?!

And I'm such a noob (usin' that teen slang!), I forgot to tell you about my Mormon Woman post on Sunday - Check it ooooouuuuuutt! (sounded like a teenager there too, scary)

Read a tragic story of a Prom King forced to live among commoners

Wish me luck, Baby is eating, we'll see if she keeps it down. 

A Legacy of Forgiveness

     In my calling at church I have the opportunity to attend conferences around our area. Usually at these conferences I hear great men speak, it is a definite blessing associated with my service. Yesterday one of those great men gave a talk about forgiveness. It was perfect. Honestly, I don't know that he could have added anything to make it better. And to top it off he lives it, he's such a humble, loving man. (In fact in one of the later meetings our stake president called him the most loving man in the stake. Something that I'm sure embarrassed him.)

     As I listened to the talk about forgiveness, I did what I think the speaker wanted each hearer to do - I probed my heart for grudges and an unforgiving attitude. Do I hold a grudge against anyone? Who do I need to forgive? I was stunned to find that I held no such feelings. While I can think of many people that I need to apologize to, and ways in which I need to strive not to be offensive, I didn't find a grudge in my heart. 

     It may sound like I'm tooting my own horn here, but as I thought about it I realized that my attitude about forgiveness has been shaped by my family. 

     My sister once made a similar observation, that she holds no grudges. The only reason she could come up with is that it takes a lot of effort to hold a grudge and she's lazy. Now, I don't think my sister is lazy (despite the fact that she professes it often - I think she just has different priorities than productive people) but I do think she's on to something. I think one of the reasons I don't hold onto hard feelings is that it takes too much mental effort and scorekeeping. Ask my husband, I'm absolutely no good at numbers. 

     My husband, he's another reason I am able to forgive. From the earliest days of our relationship he's been teaching me about letting things go. Our first fight (heated negotiation) as a married couple was over him using a metal spatula to make dinner in our new teflon pan. Cardinal sin, right?! In my family normal people used a wooden spoon to make dinner, especially when using a teflon pan. Did the man have no respect for science? So we had this important debate and then sat down to dinner where he started asking how my day was and what should we do after dinner.  If I was physically capable of doing it, my head would have spun around. His frustration and anger disappeared in about 2 seconds, while I wanted to go on fighting until he acquiesced. The thing is, it's hard to have a fight when the other person involved completely lets go of what you were fighting over.  So over the years I've been forced to let things go by the mere fact that I have no sparring partner. Oh, there were a few times in our marriage where I've tried the pouting and vengeful attitude, but it never works for long. I like being friends with my husband too much to go without talking to him. 

     Listening to the talk about forgiveness yesterday and I thinking about my family, I wondered if this forgiving attitude was passed on as a habit of living from parent to child. So I thought back on what I know of my elders. Then I remembered something about my grandparents that brought tears to my eyes, realizing that forgiveness is a legacy from them.

     My Grandma died when I was 6 months old, from cancer. My grandparents lived in Southern Utah, in the area considered downwind of the Nevada nuclear tests of the 1960s. When someone eventually connected the dots between my Grandma's cancer and being a 'downwinder' it surprised me. I felt a bit ripped off as a grand-daughter, that those stupid government tests had taken my grandma from me before I was old enough to remember her. 

     My Grandma was a nurse so when she began to have health issues she had a good idea of what the problem was. When the cancer was properly diagnosed she refused treatment. She had watched many people under her care at the hospital spend the last days of their lives miserable and seeking a cure that wouldn't come. So she told my Grandpa that she wanted to spend her last days at home with her family. When he told me this 30 years after her death he cried and said, "I should have made her, I should have done more."

     While my Grandpa faulted himself in our conversation, I never heard him fault anyone else, including the government for it's nuclear testing. I asked once why Grandpa didn't pursue any legal action for my Grandma's death. The answer was that it wouldn't bring her back and it wouldn't make his life any better - that it would do no good. 

     An interesting sidenote to this family story is that years after my Grandma's death and Grandpa's decision not to get death benefits from the government, our family participated in a genetic study about cancer. They found that several of my family members have a gene that strongly indicates a likelihood of getting the kind of cancer that my Grandma died of. While this knowledge has been a burden, it is not the burden it could have been if my family had received money from the government for a cancer whose root cause was likely genetics - not nuclear particles. 

     This is my grandparent's legacy of forgiveness. I believe it blessed our family years ago and it continues to bless us, despite my Grandpa's death 3 years ago. While my family is far from perfect, and even my recollection of these events may be third hand and not as detailed as I would like, I remember my Grandpa as a man who forgave and passed a small part of that on to me. 

 

Teen Slang

A few days ago I found this survey online that tests your knowledge of teen slang. While it was good, it also made me laugh because of a few of the words are relics from when I was a teenager. 

I showed my teen the quiz and she came up with a few more:

1. "Mom, just chillax!" means

a. that you need to turn on the AC

b. that you are constipated and need an exlax

c. your teen is asking you to relax and chill. 

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2. Your daughter calls someone at school a N00b, she's saying that they are:

a. New at school

b. a complete idiot

c. a snob

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3. If your teen tells you that your outfit is "off the chain", then 

a. they like it

b. it is outlandish

c. both of the above

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4. Your teen's friend comes over for dinner and says that you have "mad cooking skills", this means

a. they are upset about what you made for dinner

b. you're crazy to cook instead of eating out

c. you're receiving a compliment on your cooking

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5. If a teen calls you 'homeslice' or 'home skillet biscuit' it means

 a. you're homely

b. you're a giant slice of pie

c. you're their friend

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6. Your teen pronounces that school was an 'epic fail', they mean that

a. the school was demolished

b. they read the Odyssey in English

c. they horribly messed up

Chicken and Apples

It's Food Co-op pick up day, Thursdays usually are. Last week I skipped it because of the snowstorm so today it was extra great. 

There is a new provider of chicken, a nearby Inn that is also a farm. Their price on chicken breasts was much lower than others so I decided to try it. When I picked it up today I was delighted to find that it fresh! Usually meats from the co-op are frozen so this was special.

The head of the co-op is super friendly to me (she has 3 boys so she understands raising a family and she appreciates my work on the newsletter) so today she gave me some apples for free. Adding these two special ingredients together for dinner seemed like a good idea. It was!

I found this recipe on the internet, but then I changed it a bit because DH isn't a huge fan of sweet main courses. In the end I thought it was great, like something I'd order at one of our favorite restaurants. Most of the kids liked it too. I served it with herbed potatoes. I won't say the success was all my cooking, it's hard to go wrong with great local fresh organic ingredients. 

Here's my version of the recipe-

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Chicken and Apples

4 chicken breasts

2 apples, cored and sliced thin (can leave peel on, it adds color)

1/2 c diced purple onion

1/4 c olive oil

1/4 c butter

1/2 c sour cream

1/2 c apple juice (I had white grape on hand, it worked well. You could use white wine also.)

1 tea thyme

 1/4 tea cinnamon

Brown chicken in olive oil and cook thoroughly. Remove chicken and cover with foil to keep warm. Add butter and onions to the pan. Cook until onions are translucent then add apples, thyme and butter. Cook until you're happy with the texture of the apples - you may like them crisp or soft. Pour apple onion mixture over the chicken and recover with foil to keep warm. Add juice to the pan. Add the sour cream and gently bring to a simmer, be careful not to curdle it (if you do it still tastes the same, just doesn't look as appealing). Cook until slightly thickened. Return chicken and apples to pan with sauce and warm thoroughly. Serve immediately. 

Thinking about Family-

Today many things I've read online are about families and I wrote posts for MW about my family. They won't be posted for a while, but I'll give you a sneak peek at one after I give you a few links. 

A hopeful Mom that I identify with. 

Who also happens to have a cute post on her blog today.

What do your kids think about getting married (when they're older)?

The talk referenced in the above link is here. 

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Teenagers get a bad rap. I love my teenager and not only because I’m her Mom and I have to. 

When I was pregnant with my daughter I told everyone that I hoped I was having a boy. Looking into the future I didn’t think I could handle being the mother of a teenage daughter – all those hormones, boys, and friend issues – a minefield for a parent. I knew how I was as a teenager, and I did not want to deal with that!

Now that I’m in the middle of it, it is not the horror I feared. It’s probably because my daughter isn’t just ‘some teenager’, she’s my daughter. The baby who somehow survived my first feeble attempts at buckling her into a carseat. The little girl who rode her first bike with slippers on because it was softer to pedal that way. The girl who moved across the country right before 6th grade and never got mad at her parents for it, despite the difficulty. And now she is the teenager who gets up at 5 am every school day to attend seminary (religious education). 

Yes, teenagers do have hormones, we all do. She probably understands me best on my bad days because she’s had a few inexplicable bad moments herself.  Boys really aren’t much of an issue just yet, for now she thinks most of them act like her 7 year old brother. When that day does come I will be nervous, but I’ll also be happy for her, remembering the excitement of my first date. I can’t think of a person better equipped to help her deal with friend issues than someone who has had (and continues to have) friend issues herself. 

My daughter and I were out in public once when an older person went out of their way to walk far around her. She looked at me quizzically.

 “Some people are afraid of teenagers.”

“Oh, yeah, we’re so scary.” 

I should have told her I used to be scared too. 

Valentines and Faschnachts

Did you notice that I completely skipped Valentines day here on the blog? It is not a huge holiday for me, but because I don't want my family to feel unloved I do heart it up. This year it was especially hard to have 'that lovin feeling' because of the sickness sweeping through the family, the snow and associated cabin fever, and Valentines falling on a Sunday. 

We made Valentines for A&J's school classes, but because school was cancelled last week they took them to school today. 

 

A's have a guitar and say, "You Rock". We made little packages of chocolate rocks and wrapped the card around them. 

 
 

J's were more straight forward, green hearts with blow pops. 

With Baby not in school yet and R way too old for that kind of stuff that was the extent of homemade Valentines. Well, DH did print out a Valentine card for me on Sunday, in the midst of all his sickness, it was sweet. 

DH and I 'celebrated' Valentines Day yesterday. You could tell it was a super special occasion because for our date we went out to dinner AND a movie. We saw The Blindside', it was great. It tugged at my heartstrings while satisfying DH's football love.

Things have been so out of the ordinary that I almost forgot Faschnacht Day! Now here's a holiday I can  really get excited about - donuts for all!  Baby and I made the trip to the bakery after we took the kids to school. Hopefully there willl be faschnachts left for everyone else after school.