Micro Miracles

 Yesterday as I got up I put my AirPods in my PJ pocket and went to the business of getting my boys off to school. I remember the thought coming to my mind that I should probably put them in a safer place since my pj pants pockets are loose and things can easily fall out of them. I ignored the thought. 

Then last night I remembered the thought and decided to go find my AirPods. I went to my closet and pulled out my pj pants. The AirPods were not in the pocket. I looked all around where I had taken them off and around and in the basket where I keep my pjs. No luck. I turned on my find my device app. It couldn't connect to the AirPods. I thought maybe they fell out in the car when I took Noble to school. No luck finding them there. 

I searched under and around my bed, the kitchen, the laundry room, the music room, upstairs, downstairs my closet several times, the bathrooms. I just couldn't find them. I prayed and looked and still nothing. I was fairly certain they were somewhere in the house or my car so I decided I should just go to bed. 

This morning when I woke up they were the first thing I thought about. I really hate losing things. So I got on my knees and prayed and in that prayer again I asked that I could find the AirPods. I went to closet and again took out my pj pants. I put my hands in the basket I keep them in and right there was the case. First place I looked.

Now many people would discount this as luck or a coincidence. But I saw it as a micro miracle. God cares about the details of our lives that maybe aren't huge in the grand scheme of things but they are big to us in that moment. I have had numerous similar micro miracles where I have been able to find lost things with the prayer and searching.

I know that God cares about lost things. What's more, I know God cares about lost people. He is mindful of each and every one of His children. We are never too lost for Him to guide someone to find us. The only real question is, are we ready to be found?

iOS 16 Flaw - Gap in Parental Controls Fix

 I am taking a break from my spiritual thoughts to bring a PSA to parents with kids who have Apple phones and use their screen time restrictions for parental controls.

I have toggled off Safari and Siri use for my teenage son's phone. I basically want him to only have a flip phone but as I have an extra Apple phone laying around while his sister is on a mission, that is what he is using. I have been pretty happy with Apple's ability for me to go in and take off all the apps I don't think he needs (which is most of them.) 

A couple of days ago he updated the operating system to iOS16 (as did most of his friends.) A couple hours later he told me there was a problem with the new update. While I had taken Internet searching totally off his phone, this new update put a search button on the home screen that brought up pictures from the internet of whatever he put in the search field. 

My husband spent an hour on the phone with Apple trying to find a fix or roll the software back to the old software. They were able to remove the search button from the home screen (that is under Settings - Home Screen - then toggle off the search button on home screen option.) But the function of being able to search and have web images still came up when using the spotlight search (when you pull down from the middle of the home screen and there is a search bar. In the old iOS this is a great way to find an app or contact or other info on your phone. In the new it also was bringing up web images related to any word put in.)

I called Apple later that night and spent 90 minutes on the phone going over every single option under the screen time parental controls. Nothing worked to stop the web images from showing up. Finally my call got sent up to a supervisor named Casey. (The first guy was great but we just couldn't figure it out.)

Casey was like, "I think you have found a major gap in our software." I was like "ya think?" We finally did find a fix but it was not intuitive or easy to find. So I thought I'd share it here for anyone else in my boat.

First you have to go into the screen time content and privacy restriction to allowed apps and toggle on Safari and Siri. Then you have to go to the main Setting pager to Siri and Search. Then you go down to the Safari app in this and turn off the show in search button" (I am not an Apple Genius, so I am hoping I am remembering this correctly!) None of this part is secured by a parent passcode. So first check to make sure web images no longer come up when you search for ... flowers? If only photos of flowers come up from your photos you are good. If web images of flowers come up - call Apple support? If no web images come up then you need to go back to screen time content and privacy restrictions and to allowed apps and toggle safari and/or siri off again. That should remove the Safari app icon from Search and Siri menu on the main setting page if you just toggle off safari. If you toggle both off it should remove the search and siri button from the main setting page all together so your kid can't get in and turn it back on. 

Ok I am not sure if that was clear enough to help. Let me know in the comments if you need more info. I guess I could take pictures or do a video?

By the way, Casey thanked me for calling. He said very few people do call in and that he would be escalating my issue to the engineers. He said it would likely be fixed (maybe in the next update?) and that it would be because of my phone call. Kudos to my son for pointing it out.

Spiritual thought of the day - we are living in a time of insidious spiritual warfare. Put on the whole armor of God everyday. Always put the first things first and make sure you (and your kids) are well acquainted with the shield of Faith and the Sword of the Spirit.  These are your most critical tools to defend against and defeat the enemy.

Prayer

 This mornings thought came from a spiritual impression I had last night. I was thinking about how I had taught my children to say their prayers but the question that came into my mind was "do they know how to really pray?"

We pray in our family regularly. We probably need to do it more than we do. We don't often eat together and so often we forget to pray individually before we eat. But we are pretty consistent on morning and nightly family prayers and praying before a family meal. And I remind my children to pray in the morning when I wake them and at night when they go to bed. 

We have taught them the basic structure of a prayer - Dear Heavenly Father, We thank thee for ....., We ask the for ....,  in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. We have also talked about how important the gratitude part is and what is appropriate and not appropriate to ask for. 

But have we taught them to really TALK to their Father? Like when they are feeling down or have a question, have I taught my children to get on their knees and spend time there praying, like PRAYING. 

So this morning, on the way to school I talked to the boys about how important it is to really pray to the Father, not just simply say your prayers. We talked about how we can talk to Him and listen for answers in our thoughts, feelings and impressions. We talked about Enos and how he prayed for a whole day and wrestled with the Lord. 

Our Father is always there. Wherever we are, we can always turn to Him. He will listen when we are sad or confused or scared, or lonely. And if we keep praying when we are down till we can find just a pinprick of hope and light, He will flood our souls with the peace and light the Savior offers us. 

After Camille died, this was a truth I learned. If you dive into the darkness, praying doesn't help to bring you out of that until you can find a pinprick of hope. It just needs to be a tread light tendril of hope reaching down into the darkness of despair. The Lord will send it down, but we have to watch for it and when we feel or see or become aware of the thought of hope, that tiny faint thread, we must grab onto it.

It is only through grabbing on to the thought of hope, the tiny thread of light in the blackness, that we can be brought up to find peace in Christ.

It is only by bravely coming before the Father and forming the words in our minds to ask forgiveness that we can find cleansing from our scarlet sins. 

Both of these kinds of prayer are much more intensely feeling acts that the simple prayers we commonly say night and morning. I do not mean to detract from those prayers for I have felt their power too. But I hope my children will also turn to their Father with their deepest innermost thoughts, feelings, and doubts with faith that they will be heard and answered.

This is where I turned in the pre Google age of my youth and young adulthood and I received then and still receive today powerful answers and teachings from my Father about questions I have, things I don't understand, and guidance I will need.  No answer is to any question is every more powerfully felt or deeply understood than when it is answered spiritually by our God straight to our souls.

May we all take time to truly commune with Him today. 

Desire

 I was just reading in 3 Nephi 28. This the chapter were the 12 disciples Jesus chose to minister and teach the people of the Nephites/Lamanites are basically each granted a wish. "What is it that ye desire of me?" is the question Jesus asks them. Later in the chapter, Mormon writes about how the Lord explained that a change was made in the 3 who desired to continue bringing souls to Christ until he came again. 

Our bodies and our minds and feelings are constantly undergoing changes. Cells die and new cells form. We learn and our ideas and perceptions about life and people and the world around us alter based on our life experiences. Our feelings can alter vastly in a matter of moments and can ebb and flow like the ocean tide. 

But all these changes are guided in their direction based on our desires and our commitment to those desires. We all have desires we don't see happening. I desire to lose 30 pounds. But I also desire to eat ice cream. So while I am working on the weight by working out and trying to eat healthy, it is not coming off too quickly because... well ice cream (and other treats I also desire to eat.)

When life experiences happen to us, it is only through aligning our will with the Father's, that we can truly change to become like our Savior. When our will (our desires) are in line with the Father's, we learn in His light. We seek to perceive in His views. And our desires for things of the world fall away.

The problem is that it is hard to live in the world and maintain our spiritual desires to be on par with the Father's. That whole physics law of everything going to chaos - entropy - it is real. It takes constant effort to maintain our spiritual desires. We don't live in heaven any more. We don't have the Savior living among us. But we have been given the gift of the Holy Ghost if we will receive it.

This is why the little daily things of praying and reading scriptures and serving others etc are so important. These little things help us feed and grow in our spiritual desires. They help us feel the Spirit. They help us align our will with the Fathers. And as we feed and grow in our desires, change will come. We will become a bit more like our Savior, little by little. Change will come. It will start by honing our desires.

Difficulty Writing

 This morning as I took Harrison to school, I began sharing my prepared spiritual thought for today. (It was about why the Lord commanded Mormon not to write down all that Jesus taught the Nephites including his "expounding" of the scriptures from the beginning of time. I mean that would be helpful information to my learning right? But I guess He wants us to seek and knock and ask so we can hear Him expound the scriptures to us straight from the source.)

Anyway, as Harrison and I were talking, he brought up that it must have been hard writing all that stuff down. I told him about how they had to engrave it on metal and they did it to be obedient even when it was hard and they didn't always understand why. (Like Nephi retelling his family history even though it was already written down in his fathers history.) I have always been grateful for the efforts of the prophets of old in this respect.

 Then later I was reading 3 Nephi 22 with my neighbor, which is where the Savior is quoting Isaiah. My last blog post was about this chapter. But readying it again today, I got new layers of meaning out of it and saw more profoundly the depth and masterpiece of poetry that is found in it. I saw how it is applicable for the time of Christ and the latter days, and Isaiah's day and for me in my life today. 

Then I thought of the effort it takes to write a masterful blog article. Most of the time, I just get on here and write whatever pops into my head. But a few times, I have crafted a piece that I have worked on and prayed over. I do know what it takes to craft language to suit my purposes. And yet, I am not Shakespeare. I am not Isaiah. I'm no Neal A. Maxwell. Today I am grateful for their work in crafting language with their time and talents and efforts to create literary, and in Maxwell and Isaiah's case, spiritual works of art. I am sure that was even more difficult than engraving words on metal. 

It also made me think about how I need to not be lazy and keep up my own record. I need to put in the effort to get down my humble writings so my children and children's children can know of my steadfast faith in Christ. In this way, I can better fulfill my purpose of being an arrow that points them to the Source of joy and healing and connection and everlasting life, even Jesus Christ.

The Heirtage of His Servants

 Today's spiritual thought comes from 3 Nephi 22, which ends with saying "This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is of me."

I am learning more about Isaiah as I am studying the Book of Isaiah in the Old Testament and am seeing it as poetry more this time than in previous readings. In the Book of Mormon, after Christ preaches about repentance and baptism and the baptism of fire by receiving the Holy Ghost and after He teaches about taking the sacrament, he quotes Isaiah. He is quoting poetry to the people.

I love poetry. I am often heard to quote a line or two of a favorite poem or a bit of Shakespeare when something comes up where the poem or sonnet describes the situation more eloquently than I can. And so here the Savior uses poetry to speak words of comfort to these choice people he is teaching. 

These people had been through incredibly hard things. They had experienced unprecedented destruction and the death of entire populations of cities. We don't know exactly how much time had passed since this great and terrible day of storms when cities were burned and others swallowed up in the sea and others buried under mountains of earth. But it was said it changed the whole face of the land. And you can believe it was terrifying and devastating both nationally and personally for each of these people. I bet they felt forsaken.

So when Christ tells them in Isaiah's poetic words, "for a small moment have I forsaken thee, but with great mercies will I gather thee," I think they could feel His "everlasting" kindness. He is teaching these choice people that the covenants He has just taught them (baptism, confirmation of the Holy Ghost, the sacrament) are the anchors of peace to their soul. 

"10 For the mountains shall depart and the hills be removed, but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee." 

He does NOT promise an easy way. He is saying the opposite. Life is going to be hard. Trials are guaranteed to come. And we are not always going to be able to feel that comfort of the Comforter. "11 O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted!" Some storms must be suffered. 

But the heritage of his servants is that through these storms, His covenants will be anchors of peace because they anchor us to the Prince of Peace. 

"16 Behold, I have created the smith that blowers the coals in the fire, and that bringeth forth an instrument for his work; and I have created the waster to destroy."

When we are being refined in the refiners fire, let us remember the covenants that tie us to promised peace to come and His everlasting kindness and mercy that will fill with overwhelming joy the cavities of sorrow personal devastation carves into our souls. May we hold true to those covenants and be fit instruments for His work allowing the fires of affliction to destroy the waste within us.

Turning Over A New Leaf - Go Before/Rearward

 It has been a long time since I last blogged. I kinda gave up blogging when I started doing Instagram. Also, as my kids got older, It became more important for me to keep their stories more private. In any case, I have been away. 

This morning I was walking with my neighbor/friend Veronica. When we walk we almost always read a chapter from the Book of Mormon together. It just gives us a good start to the day physically and spiritually and we talk about what we read. After we read, I told Veronica that I have been trying to give a daily devotional or spiritual thought to my kids each day in addition to our family prayers and scripture study. She misheard me and thought I said I was blogging it and asked if I was blogging it on my blog. 

LIGHTBULB MOMENT

WHY AM I NOT?? So, I am back! I am going to be blogging me daily spiritual thoughts that I am doing with my kids so that they can be recorded for my posterity. And y'all are welcome to them too. Feel free to add any of your thoughts or questions in the comments. As always, I just ask that you keep it positive and sincere. I won't publish comments that are spam or hurtful/negative. 

So, here is today's thought:

GO BEFORE; REARWARD

This morning we read 3 Nephi 21. The last verse repeats a phrase I had noticed a couple of there times in Chapter 20 and 21. In Chapter 20, Jesus says, "for the Lord will go before you, and the God of Israel shall be your rearward." And in Chapter 21 Jesus says, "for I will go before them, saith the Father, and I will be their rearward." 

In both these verses, reading them this time, I took them to mean that God the Father is going before us, and Jesus Christ - the God of Israel - the God of the Old Testament, is our rearward. 

God created a plan for us. He created a world for us to live on and sent us to Earth to parents of some sort or another. He placed our spirits into these mortal bodies knowing in advance the trials and tests and blessings and helps we would be given. He is mindful of each and every one of His children and has prepared the way before us. He sends prophets, scriptures, earthly ministering angels, divine peace, the light of Christ, and ultimately He sent His Only Begotten who did nothing save the Father commanded Him, to show us the Way and make it possible to return HOME again someday. 

He has prepared the Way, he has gone before us. 

But He knew we would screw up. That is an inevitable part of living in this mortal world. We would be hurt through no fault of our own and we would hurt others unintentionally and we would just make bad choices that we would come to regret. And thus He prepared The Way, Jesus Christ, to be our Rearward.

Jesus Christ has our back. We need to stick close to Him. It is He who can clean up after our mortal messes. It is He that we can lean back on when we are hurting and need rest. He will not keep everything bad from happening to us. All of that is part of living a mortal life. But He will have our back when we need His help to strengthen us, put our broken pieces back together, make our sins white, and aid those we have injured along the way. 

May we live this day tied to the Savior in our thoughts and actions, knowing wherever the day takes us, the Lord has gone before us and the God of Israel is our rearward. We are not alone.

Sunshine in my Soul

 This morning I walked into church just after the opening song had started up. I hate being late but sometimes mornings getting kids out the door don't go as smoothly as we would like. I immediately recognized the hymn and it brought a smile to my face. It was "There is Sunshine in my Soul." I don't really believe it was a coincidence that the music director choose that song for today, the day before Camille's birthday. To me it was just a little sign from Heaven, a wave hello if you will. 

Right after Camille died, I just didn't see how I was going to make it day after day. I was filled with so much sorrow and needed.... NEEDED some little bit of joy and light to break through the grief and pain and give me hope. So when we were choosing songs to sing at her funeral, I told everyone I couldn't do sad songs. I wouldn't be able to make it through if the music was going to tap into the bottomless pit of despair inside me. 

So we choose to sign one of the most uplifting and happy songs in our hymn book... "There is Sunshine in my Soul." Some may think it an odd choice but we found it fitting. Camille was a ray of sunlight in our lives. I couldn't sing for a long time after Camille died. I would just cry every time I tried. So the line about Jesus listening could hear the songs I could not sing spoke to me personally. And both Jonathan and I felt the 4th verse was a perfect embodiment of how we felt in our most humble, accepting the will of the Lord, moments. It is also how I feel today. 

There is Sunshine in my Soul

1. There is sunshine in my soul today,
   More glorious and bright
   Than glows in any earthly sky,
   For Jesus is my light.
   • Refrain:
     Oh, there’s sunshine, blessed sunshine,
     When the peaceful, happy moments roll;
     When Jesus shows His smiling face,
     There is sunshine in my soul.
2. There is music in my soul today,
   A carol to my King;
   And Jesus, listening, can hear
   The songs I cannot sing.
3. There is springtime in my soul today,
   For, when the Lord is near,
   The dove of peace sings in my heart,
   The flow’rs of grace appear.
4. There is gladness in my soul today,
   And hope and praise and love,
   For blessings which He gives me now,
   For joys laid up above.

Cami Kindness Week - 14th Birthday Coming Up.

 Every year this gets a little more awkward to post about. Every year I feel a little more alone in my celebration of Camille's life. I understand that. Life has a way of piling grief on grief and eventually the griefs further down the pile are forgotten or overshadowed by those more recent or closer to us. 

Yet, I continue to invite others to celebrate with us because I want to continue spreading goodness into this grief filled world. It is my hope that in this of all years, we can focus on being grateful for the time we have been privileged to enjoy with our loved ones in years gone by rather than aching for the time we have missed more recently. 

I have come to have a greater appreciation of the absolutely essential nature of opposition to our happiness. We truly cannot have true happiness without sorrow. We cannot have true joy without the aching of wanting and waiting. Food always tastes so much better after fasting. 

So this year, after a year of so much wanting and waiting, will you join me in taking a break from all that wanting and waiting and focus a bit on being grateful and paying that gratitude forward in kindness?

Happy birthday week my sweet girl. I hope you are busy helping others from your side of things while those who remember you are working to help others from our side.

Standing as A Witness

Integrity #5

I am an attorney. I have experience working with witnesses and preparing them to take the witness stand. So my perspective on "Standing as a witness of God at all times and in all things, and in all places" has a bit of a different taste. Sometimes being a witness is scary. Often, the credibility of a witness will be an issue if they have not lived an honest life. Often there is an opposition waiting to tear a witness apart. But the job of witness is critical to bring about justice.

As a witness for God, I must share my testimony with others. I do this both verbally and in my actions. I must live an honest life and develop a reputation for being truthful. I try not to exaggerate or embellish my feelings or my stories. I want people to believe me when I share my experiences.

Witnesses also share their personal accounts, not the accounts of others. So if I want to be a witness, I need to be striving to have personal spiritual experiences of which I can witness. I need to always be deepening and widening my testimony by study, faith, prayer, and experimentation upon the Word of God. I need to be striving to live more close to the Spirit.

And I need to take every opportunity to share my experiences and testimony with others so that they may know He lives. He is our Father. He loves us. He loves us so much He sent His perfect Son to live among us to show us how to live and He let bad men torture and kill that Son. He let that perfect Son suffer for the sins and pains of all the rest of us so that it would be possible for us to return HOME to Him. This church is His Son's church. I belong to the Church of Jesus Christ. He has restored His power on earth to make covenants that will be bound in Heaven through His prophets in His church. He restored this power to Joseph Smith and it continues today. We have a living prophet who leads and guides our church under the direction of the Savior. Of these things I testify in the name of my Savior and Redeemer.

Integrity #4

What does Integrity mean to me? I think of the integrity of a bridge. If a bridge has integrity it will stay strong and firm and do what it was built to do. People can pass over it with faith and confidence that it will be there to hold them up over the divide.

The Savior is our ultimate example of integrity. He came to the Earth and did what He was sent to do.  We can have faith in Him to hold us up and get us back to our Heavenly Father. We can feel safe stepping onto his supportive trusses and following His example as we walk the covenant path.

I want to be like the Savior. So if I want integrity, I need to do what I was meant to do. What was I meant to do? Learn, Grow, and Return Home. So I need to be working on doing that and I need to have Faith in the Savior and follow the Covenant path living my beliefs and trusting in the Saviors atoning power to make even one as flawed as I worthy to be in the presence of our Father once more.

I will do what I was made to do.

Improving my Integrity

Integrity #2

I took a self assessment and the way I can improve my integrity is to live my beliefs more fully in my home. I know how I need to be a better parent. I need to be less quick to raise my voice and more quick to get up and just do rather than ask another to do for me. I will be living with more integrity if I live according to that knowledge. I am working on it. It's gonna be a long process. I am not going to be perfect at it but I am looking to see progress.

My habit to form is to control my tone of voice to always be kind even if it needs to be firm.

Live the Standards in For the Strength of the Youth

Integrity #1

I live most of these anyway but the media one is a bit harder. I know when I live the standards in for the Strength of the Youth, my thoughts are cleaner. I have felt that this month. I feel closer to the Spirit and more able to focus on what is important.

Serve a Family Member

Good Works #5
I feel more connected to the family member I served. I feel a great love between us as our relationship is stronger and closer. Sometimes it is easy to take for granted the people in our family that we love and who love us but pointedly serving them has helped me have a more intentionally present connection with them.

Dear Evan Hansen

Knowledge #3

I was in NYC a couple weeks ago with my sister's in law and we saw the musical Dear Evan Hansen. While it did have some language in it, I loved the message so much. The theme of it was that every life matters and we all need to be heard and connected and loved. I loved the music and the acting was on point. It only had 9 cast members but they sang beautifully and made the production feel larger than it was.

As it relates to Article 13 - There was a lot of virtue in the play. The messages of being loved and feeling valued are some of the most important virtues out there. The music was lovely. The acting was of good report and praiseworthy. Overall I think this musical fits the bill of being in line with the 13th article of faith, despite the language.

Why Knowledge?

Knowledge #1

I often hear from my children complaints about the usefulness of the math skills they are learning. Why is this knowledge important? When will I ever use it?

Maybe some knowledge you gain you won't ever use. But gaining knowledge is a divine gift that makes us happy. It is good to learn. When we aren't learning we can get a feeling of discontent. It is important to use your mind and learn your whole life through.

I have found the knowledge I have gained gives me confidence, wisdom and more opportunities in life. I am a better wife and mother with every bit of knowledge I aquire.

Family Matters

Divine Nature #3
For the past few weeks I have been making efforts to improve my relationships with certain family members. Rather than share my observations directly with those family members, I share them here.

A big part of having smooth family relationships involves forgiveness. When you live with people you get to see all sides of them. Not everything they say or do is edited. You get the raw uncut version and there are lots of times when the people you live with can say or do things that are hurtful, rude, offensive or just downright annoying. That is a fact of life.

There is no changing that. So I have found that it is best to forgive and let go of these offenses as quickly as possible. I have become less bothered by little things over the years, which helps. But I also have to not think too deeply or to hard about really hurtful things people say or do. Instead, I have found that if I just point out that it is not acceptable to speak to me that way or say "that was hurtful" I can let the person know they need to do better without having to let the barb sink deep into the flesh of my soul and wound me too deeply.

It is easier to make those efforts to strengthen relationships when you forgive quickly and can serve a person in genuine love.

Guided By The Holy Ghost

Virtue #2

When we keep our covenants we are promised the blessing of the Gift of the Holy Ghost who can act as a guide and warning voice to us in our lives. The journaling part asks me to write an entry of a time I felt guided by the Holy Ghost. I have written that for another entry. I think for this one, I will write about a time I was specifically NOT guided.

I feel like I am fairly aware of my standing with the Lord on a daily basis. I am pretty good at sensing when I am close to Him and when I am further away. While this varies hour by hour to some degree, I don't stray too far from a general vicinity. I can feel it when I do something that offends the Spirit and it withdraws. I am so used to feeling the Spirit as my companion, even if only subtly in the background, that I am sensitive to it's withdrawl. It is a terrible feeling to me.

So I know that back in the summer of 2008 I was not too far from the Spirit to not hear Him warn me. I had felt His warning promptings about things in powerful ways not long before that fateful day in June. And yet THAT day - the day my daughter drowned. There was no warning voice. It wasn't that the Spirit withdrew from me. It was just a silence from the heavens.

I sometimes have dreams that later happen. I had a dream the night before that Camille drowned. But I totally forgot the dream that day. It didn't come into my consciousness until I saw her floating in the hot tub. In that moment the dream from the previous night came rushing back. The details were different but the drowning the same.

I guess I choose to share this because knowing that, while I wasn't living perfectly, I was close enough to Spirit to be warned, and feeling a total SILENCE and a blockage of my memory of dream until after I found Camille, well that helped me. It helped me to cope with the guilt because it helped me believe that this was all part of some greater plan I could not see.

I won't lie. There is still a lingering sense of ... I am not sure what to call it. It isn't exactly guilt and remorse isn't really the right word. All I know if that when I think of what I would say if I were to see Camille again the very first thing that comes to mind is "I'm so sorry." But not I'm sorry for what I did to you kind of sorry. It's the I'm sorry you had to go through that and that I wasn't there to save you or be with you or that I failed to sufficiently protect you. I'm sorry you didn't get to grow up and I didn't get to watch you grow up. I'm sorry we had to be seperated. I'm just ... sorry.

So knowing that I was worthy and NOT guided to do something that would have prevented that tragedy helps me cope. I hope always to live closely enough to the Holy Ghost to be warned and so I may know if I am unwarned about a trial, it must be one of those necessary for my development.

Comfort Others

Good Works #3

Some ways we can comfort others are to pray for them, reach out to them, express love, and listen. I have been on both ends of this. Perhaps the greatest comfort I have ever been given in a time of need has come in the form of prayers of others. When we pour our whole soul out to God on behalf of another, we are truly remembering Christ and taking His name on us. We are becoming like him.

And when others are praying like that for us, they feel a bit of what we feel and somehow that makes what we are feeling a little easier to bear. There is serious power in those kinds of prayers. I have felt them. Those are the kind of prayers that prompt the Lord's hand to manifest itself more plainly in the lives of those being prayed for. And nothing is more comforting than God's love and feeling His presence with you.

Life Plan

Individual Worth #4

Write a life plan - write your hopes and dreams for the future including education, home family, etc.

Ha! This is a very different task at 44 than it was at 14! But considering I still have about half of my life to live, it is still relevant.

Education: I really like school. I am not sure I will ever go to school again. I went to a lot of school. But I do like continuting to learn. I guess my goal then, it to keep learning. I want to further my spiritual and secular knowledge. I have been working a bit and that does help me learn. I also have taken on some new challenges in volunteer organizations that will help me keep learning. I guess I just want to be like my mom who always has pushed herself, and still does, to learn new things and do scary things becuase they help you grow. Never stop growing. That's the goal.

Family: My goal here is to do all in my power to ensure my children come unto and know Christ. There are lots of other things I would like from my family. I would love to have a kid who is a brilliant doctor or married to one. I would love grandchildren someday and good marriages for my kids and financial successes etc. But really those things are not MY goals. I have no control over those things. And in the end the only thing that REALLY matters to me is that they Come unto Christ. My goal as a mother is to point them to Him because I will not always be here but He will and He can help them through things I can not. And He is the only way we can return Home again. I can't control if they will turn to Him, but I can be a good arrow to point the way. That is my goal.

Things I want to accomplish in my life: I want to serve a mission with my spouse if possible. I want to be a productive contributing member of my ward and community be that through working or volunteering. I have a secret sometimes wish to write a historical proper romance novel. :) I want to raise all my children to be independent and self sufficient financially, spiritaully, and emotionally - but I still want them to love me enough to keep close. I'd like to be a fun Grandma someday that really knows her grandkids and makes them feel unconditionally and unreservedly loved. I want to become the kind of person that makes people feel loved as soon as they meet me.

That's it.