thinking again

Long time, I know, but the juices started percolating last night in the Fred Meyer parking lot and I had to write it down.
Setting the stage:
     Two Sundays ago I taught my Primary class of 11/12 year old girls about the Word of Wisdom. The point of the lesson was that God gives us prophets who receive information and knowledge to help prepare us for stumbling blocks that get in life's way.  Being bright little dumplings, the girls were already versed with that. One of the girls spoke about how her mother had heard the talk given by President Hinkley about limiting earrings and tattoos and how back when it was given, it really wasn't a big deal. Today, gauge earrings, piercings, and tattoos are becoming far more prevalent than they were at the time the counsel was given.
     We then got wa-a-y off topic and talked about different things that have been considered beautiful through out time and cultures which were, in all actuality, deformations of bodies. The ringed necks, gauged ears, and huge lower lips. The bound feet and the flattened heads. All of those things took the natural beauty that Heavenly Father gave to His children and converted it to a temporal (sometimes horrific) cultural norm of abnormality.

Pretty extreme, huh? 

     Do any of these things take away from the person? Do they become less than? Why should it be avoided? And except for the obvious forced inactivity of the bound feet, do any of these things turn a person into a slave?

Back Story:

     When I was younger and we would read the Book of Mormon and come across 2 Nephi chapter 13, where Isaiah chapter 3 is quoted, my dad would helpfully add in his versions to the verses. I will helpfully add his comments in red.

16 Moreover, the Lord saith: Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched-forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet (all because of their clogging shoes)—

17 Therefore the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion, and the Lord will discover their secret parts.

18 In that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments, and cauls, and round tires like the moon;

19 The chains and the bracelets, and the mufflers; (and their curling irons and crimpers and blow dryers)

20 The bonnets, and the ornaments of the legs, and the headbands, and the tablets, and the ear-rings (and their fathers threatened to use a paper punch to give them earring holes); 

21 The rings, and nose jewels;

22 The changeable suits of apparel, and the mantles, and the wimples, and the crisping-pins; (and their stretch pants, and their neon, color changing shirts, and their gladiator sandals, and their mini skirts)

23 The glasses, and the fine linen, and hoods, and the veils.

24 And it shall come to pass, instead of sweet smell there shall be stink; and instead of a girdle, a rent; and instead of well set hair, baldness; and instead of a stomacher, a girding of sackcloth; burning instead of beauty.

     For whatever reason, the spark that alighted in my mind yesterday brought the two of these things together.  This is what I figured out.

     The Daughters of Zion symbolize the strength, purity, faith, and goodness of God's people. They are people who know of their inherent worth as Children of God. They are familiar with their standing before Him and while imperfect, are actively striving to be worthy of the blessings He pours out. 

     So, if while an extra hole in the head is no big deal and won't keep you out of the presence of God or make you a bad person, it is what happens to the collective "Daughters of Zion" when they embrace the world and its wisdom. It's what happens when culture becomes more important than doctrine on both sides-- we are seeing huge pendulum swings in LDS culture and I am struggling within myself to find a compromise with what I was taught all my life and some of the new ideas espoused by members which are easy to hear. I am trying to discern and weed out those precepts of men backed by selective interpretation of scripture while remembering my lessons in Christ's Grace over the last couple of years. 

     It always made me mad as a kid when I would finally get around to being brave enough to misbehave in ways I saw the popular kids acting out, only to get in trouble while they seemed to get the best outcome. Now I know that those in authority became alarmed when I got around to doing it. If shy little, unassuming Jill was doing it, things were mighty bad. They'd let things get lax for too long. It's the same concept here. If the Daughters of Zion are embracing the world (and not just embracing, because that's a cuddle-- this is when they are fully in a relationship with the world-- sneaking out in the night to make out, making it Facebook official, rings are exchanged), things are very, very bad. 

     Looking back to those same years as we would pour over National Geographic magazines and gasp in horror at what some cultures claimed as beauty, it would have been impossible to believe that such things would ever come back.  Yet they have.

     I love the next chapter of Isaiah. All is never lost. We know the outcome of this world. 

2 In that day shall the branch of the Lord be beautiful and glorious; the fruit of the earth excellent and comely to them that are escaped of Israel.

3 And it shall come to pass, they that are left in Zion and remain in Jerusalem shall be called holy, every one that is written among the living in Jerusalem—

4 When the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion, and shall have purged the blood of Jerusalem from the midst thereof by the spirit of judgment and by the spirit of burning.

5 And the Lord will create upon every dwelling-place of mount Zion, and upon her assemblies, a cloud and smoke by day and the shining of a flaming fire by night; for upon all the glory of Zion shall be a defence.

6 And there shall be a tabernacle for a shadow in the daytime from the heat, and for a place of refuge, and a covert from storm and from rain.

     One of my favorite hymns contains the verse, "How great, how glorious, how complete Redemption's grand design where justice, love, and mercy meet in harmony divine." Eliza R Snow

It will be okay

I haven't written in here for a long, long time. So much was happening in my world for the last year and a half. Too much. It threatened to overcome and spill out, which it couldn't do. So I stopped writing from my heart so much. I found that this particular trauma led to more understanding, less judging, and a softer heart. It also led to tremendous amounts of anxiety. I ended up in the emergency room one night with a panic attack. Now that I know I'm not dying when my chest hurts, I guess I'm fine.  The anxiety comes and goes in powerful waves. It's spilling into my children and hurting them. Even though I don't speak my pain out loud to them, I can see it in the way one daughter was trying her hardest to miss the bus this morning so she could find a flashlight in case the power goes out in school. It was a valid concern since the storm of the century is bearing down on us but she has stopped feeling safe when she is away from us.
I have recognized what this is doing to me. To us.
So I prayed. It's not like I haven't been praying or calling on my Heavenly Father whenever I feel my chest tighten. Yesterday morning A was scheduled to get her cast off. In my mind I was planning how much time it would take to get to the office right around the corner. Not much time. My mind's eye suddenly had a vision of a different office. The correct office, one town over. I hurried and got the girl into the van and we made it there with no red lights and two minutes to spare. I immediately knew that it was a tender mercy from God. We thanked Him.
On my own yesterday, I spent some time explaining my feelings to Him and asked if the burden of anxiety would be lifted. Last night, that same, almost nonchalant feeling swept over me. Whatever is in the future of our family started that day. Yesterday. Peace and trust.
We are going to be okay. I still don't know what the future looks like or where we will be. As much as I know that the last two years have been orchestrated by a Mighty Hand I know that we will continue to be guided and cared for in life's storms. It will be okay.

Longing For Home

For midwinter break, I have been thinking about taking the girls to my parents' house.  No matter where we are or how old I get, it will always be home.
Unfortunately, it is February out there in the world.  Just because the month tends to throw out glorious days here in WA (67 degrees on Tuesday!), that doesn't mean anywhere else will put on a spring dress.  There are a few mountain passes between me and my home.  Still wearing their snow pants and wool socks.
Doubly unfortunately, Leroy Maximus, the trusty white Suburban is not feeling so trustworthy these days.  He has a serious case of the palsy.  We've put off taking him in; alas he is in need of some mechanical doctoring.
That all combines to make my longing for home even worse.
As I was thinking about it, I realized that it is that same longing that keeps me on the strait and narrow.  I want to go home to Heavenly Father some day.  There is one way and I know that way, so I'm going that way. Life storms come and go.  Life breaks down. The price for living on earth goes up and down.  Some days seem like forever and some fly by.  It doesn't matter.  I'm going home and that is my goal.    

Dreams

Yesterday I was called as a Gospel Doctrine Teacher in my ward.  Yikes!  I've got to up my game!
We're studying the Book of Mormon, so that's happiness right there.
My first goldmine lesson is on the vision of the Tree of Life from Nephi and Lehi.  As I read the scriptures about other visions from scriptures, something occurred to me.
I know that as members of His church, we don't have a sole claim on God's love, attention, or blessings.  I know that, but so often I forget it.  The scripture stories I looked up are King Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel, Pharaoh and Joseph, Peter and Cornelius.  I thought of other visions and dreams.  Amulek and Alma.  Saul/Paul and Ananias.  It doesn't always happen this way, but in these instances, a dream or vision is had and another provides the interpretation or the reason for the dream.  Peter received an enigmatic vision of a group of animals that were previously unclean for food standing on large sheet.  He was commanded to eat the animals.  He refused, but was rebuked and told that what the Lord deemed clean was clean.  He was confused about the dream until the next day when a gentile by the name of Cornelius sent three men to ask Peter to come and teach him.  Ah ha!  It made sense.  The gospel could be preached outside of the Jewish nation.
As I thought about this I realized that often times the vision comes to one we would consider unworthy.  Nebuchadnezzar was about to kill his priests because they couldn't guess what his dream was about.  Pharaoh killed servants on a whim.  Saul was pretty foul to the Christian Jews.  None of them was a prophet.  Why did they receive the dream/vision?
I think it is because they were in a position to move things forward on a grand scale.  Daniel says something quite remarkable to Nebuchadnezzar.  "Thou, O king, art a king of kings:  for the God of heaven hath given thee a kingdom, power, and strength, and glory.  And wheresoever the children of men dwell, the beasts of the field and the fowls of the heaven hath he given into thine hand, and hath made thee ruler over them all." (Daniel 2:37-38)
The Lord giveth and taketh away.  Do we understand the breadth of that statement?  I didn't think that it meant even those who aren't the greatest leaders in the world.  (What they do with it is a different story and they are accountable for that.)
I'm not saying it would happen, but what if President Obama received a vision about our country?  I have my own feelings about how he would handle that, but maybe I need to be a little more humble.  Maybe he would seek out his helpers and wizards that peep and moan.  Then, maybe he would go where he needed to.  Who would have believed it of Saul?  Who would have believed it of Pharaoh?
It's my food for thought for this week as I look into the symbolism of the parts of the Tree of Life.

Become like a Child

I wrote this a little bit ago.  It's not very Thanksgiving-y, but it will do.

After I went to the very informational fireside done by Kristen Jenson on porn proofing our kids, thoughts have been rattling around in my head.  Her presentation was amazing because it delved into the science of why children and pornography are such a dangerous combination.  Her message was basically this:  children have undeveloped brains that are in two main parts-- the thinking brain and the survival brain.  The thinking brain develops last-- cognitive thinking-- and in a normal, functioning person that finishes around 26 years old.  It is the reasoning center and helps a person make judgments.  The rest of the brain keeps the body going-- survival, pleasure, emotion. When a child's brain is exposed to images or ideas that are pornographic, the non thinking part of the brain does it's job. Unfortunately, their cognitive thinking isn't there to help them make judicial decisions about what they are seeing.  My older brother was in a terrible accident when he was 17.  It damaged his frontal lobe.  He could learn the difference between right and wrong all day long, but when faced with a decision, he routinely chose wrong.  Why?  Because he lost his ability to reason through things.  Now he is a fully grown man with the reasoning skills of an 11 year old.
All this got me to thinking.
Why did God destroy (or command/allow to be destroyed) the people at the time of Noah, Sodom and Gomorrah, Jaredites, Nephites, and the peoples that the Israelites were supposed to clear out of their Promised Land?  Why did massive and great cultures like Greece, Rome, Babylon, Aztec, and Mayan fail?  I'm not foolish enough to think that they fell because of a solitary reason, but most of these civilizations embraced immorality to a consuming degree.  How does a civilization get to this point?
It's all about the children.
Everyone is born with the light of Christ.  Everyone.  God said it.  That can be trusted.  It puts all of us on equal footing as we pass through the earthly gate into mortality.  Humanity can and does lose the ability to access the light of Christ.  The two great sins are sexual impurity and murder.  I've always understood the reasoning behind this is because it is mocking God's power to create and end life.  As I've done some minute research here and there on the subjects it has become clear to me that the acts of sex and (we're going to boil it down to) anger, change the brain.  The science behind Kristen Jenson's presentation was phenomenal.  We become addicted to these things because we are human.  It is in our very nature to want sex so that our gene pool survives.  It is in our nature to be angry when things go wrong or when someone hurts us-- it also enables our survival in a very basic way.  There's this idea that only certain people are "natural" addicts.  I don't think so.  We are all a few sprays of dopamine away from a behavior that starts as a habit and moves towards full blown addiction.
It's bad enough when these things hit adults who have a developed frontal cortex, but what about when it starts affecting children?  What then?  Well, then we have a generation of people who never learned to control themselves who now have addictions.  When those addictions are sexual or violent in nature, and especially when they are mixed, there is a generation without hope of self redemption.  But we know we can repent!  Ah, but who will help them if there is no one left to help?  When Abraham spoke with the Lord about Sodom and Gomorrah (as recorded in Genesis 18), he begged the Lord to spare the city for 50 righteous men, then 45, then 30, then 20, and then 10.  If there had been 10 righteous people in the two cities, they would not have been destroyed.  Yes, it was the depth of their sin, but it was destroyed because that society could only perpetuate the sin.  There was no one to teach the children otherwise and the light of Christ born in each child could not overcome their very natures when they went so far awry.
It is the same story in the time of Noah in Genesis 6.
5 ¶And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

 11 The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.

 12 And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.  

The cycle of violence was the downfall of the Jaredites, the Nephites, and the two South American superpowers.  It affected the Greeks, the Romans, and the Babylonians.  The Greeks and the Romans (at least-- I haven't read up on the other civilizations) also fell full on into sexual sin.  They embraced homosexuality, pedophylia and had an overall pretty loose definition of moral conduct.  

That's why this is all about the children.  That's why we can't (as adults) be okay with immoral behavior because it doesn't affect us personally.  It does.  It creates a world where immorality becomes the norm.  Who will teach the children if there is no one left?  Who will help them to make the decisions that they are not prepared to make, before they follow a path which will not lead to happiness and will lead to destruction.
Our prophets have counseled us to be kind to one another and to keep ourselves pure.  That's not a good idea or even a great idea.  It is essential.  We have to overcome the natural man.  He is an angry guy who loves feeling good in the moment.  If we want to save our children and the future generations, we need to be educated on what happens when violence and sexual sin enter children's lives.  

Mothers

2 Nephi 25:26
And we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ, and we write according to our prophecies, that our children my know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins.

Alma 56:47-48
.....yea, they had been taught by their mothers, that if they did not doubt, God would deliver them.
And they rehearsed unto me the words of their mothers, saying:  We do not doubt our mothers knew it.

Being a mother on the best of days is not an easy task. Being a mother when a family's world is being broken down around them is a herculean feat.

Long ago, before I had kids, I determined that fail as a parent however I would, I would never inflict my children with my own doubts about the gospel.  As I read 1 Nephi I wondered if Sariah's murmuring was part of the reason Laman and Lemuel had such a hard time.  **Note.  I am not blaming their choices on their mother.  That would take away their agency and would blame her for their failings while ignoring her efforts in raising four other wonderful and obedient sons.**

If you know me, you know that I tend to be a complainer.  If something is wrong, I'm going to talk about it.  Mostly.  I do enjoy (much to my chagrin because I begin to sound like my own mother) a good list of what currently hurts.  Depending on the day, the list is long or short.

But I do not bring my doubts as complaints to my children.  If I am concerned about something, I just suck it up, knowing I can and will figure it out with study and prayer.  Just like we should never gossip to others about the failings of our spouse, because we usually don't come back and correct those impressions we leave in the heat of the moment, we should not bring up our doubts to our children whose testimonies are fragile and tender.

Three women come to my mind when I think about this.  Three recent conversations.  In each, these mothers have had children who fell away from the Church.  ****Not blaming them.  That's not where we are going with this.****   These children all have a common thread.  When life gets hard, they call their moms to pray for them.  They DO NOT DOUBT that their mother's know the source to whence they can look. I hope in their despair, the mothers see the power that they hold.  No matter what else happens in life, their children know that there is safety in their mother, that even if they don't feel comfortable or credulous, their mother knows.

We have to share our moments of doubt.  Sometimes talking through and reasoning with another sound individual whose testimony is grounded and trusted is a good way to work through things ourselves.  That's okay.  I have doubted a lot lately, and it's not even for any of the current doubtable reasons du jour.  I have gotten angry.  I have stumbled around in a darkness I allowed to creep in.  Right at this moment of time, I am back to a good place.  I know I don't know all the whys and wherefores.  I am learning to be grateful for the blessings we receive even if they don't look like the blessings I want and envision.  I am learning that life is out of my control and I can either let it spiral away or place it in the hands of He who is the source of my faith.  I'm not there by a long shot, but I am learning.

These lessons are the ones I want my children to learn from me.  Not how to complain.  Not how to doubt.  Not how to get angry.  Not how to lash out.  I want my kids to see me struggle and to watch me bear down as I reach to my faith and rise up better than I was.

I wonder what Sariah's journal looked like.  I know what her sons' looked like and know that they knew where to look because of her.  I hope that she knows her invaluable worth in their lives and those of countless others who have embraced the truths that her sons recorded.

It Wasn't the Cheese

I have gone on record before saying this year will never be my favorite.  I am here today to confirm that.
In the midst of the turmoil yesterday, a sweet friend brought us over some Tillamook cheese, because I had blogged about our family's love of it and how we had to wait until it was on sale before we could buy it.  There was a great sale and she thought of us, bringing over two 2 lb bricks and a smile.
While the cheese in my fridge is a wonderful gift, the bigger was that she thought of us, not even knowing that yesterday may have been the worst day of our lives so far.
So when you get that prompting to do something like bring a couple of bricks of cheese to someone, know it is not about the cheese.