I love you, I do!

I love you.  I do.  Each and every one of you.  I don’t know all of the so many of you out there all over the world that read my blog but I love you still the same?  How can I possibly know that you ask?  Because every time that I look to see a post that I have written and read where all of you have read it from all over the world I smile from head to toe and I think that I might even shine a little bit.  What else could do that than love? 

            You come from here at my home in the United States, many that I know and don’t and from all over the world such as, Germany and France, Ireland and Hungary.  Russia, the Ukraine, Iraq and Kuwait, the United Kingdom and Canada, the Philippines and India, the Netherlands, Romania, South Korea and South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and a great handful more.  I wish I could call reference to you all of you but after a couple of weeks BlogSpot sadly groups you all into an area of reference, a continent rather than an actual country.  We’ve even had some very small areas that the Gibson household wasn’t quite sure where it was and of course I looked it up on the trusted internet like you do. 

I now know where Moldova is, a beautiful little country with lots of green and such beautiful architecture, right in the middle of Romania and the Ukraine.  I feel like I have been all over every beautiful little section of South America and quite frankly the rest of the world.  And all of this I have done while sitting in front of my little computer in my little bedroom googling all of you.

            Yes, I think that I love you all so very much. 

            During Stake Conference today our theme was based around that first great commandment of all, “Love One Another.”  And it has gotten me thinking all day.  Sometimes I think it is easier to love someone that you don’t know, like all of you who make me smile from so far away, than the very people who we see and interact with every day.  I need to change that.  I need to see those people with Christ’s eyes and with Christ’s heart instead of my own.  I think if I did my heart would hurt with love inside of me it would be so big.

 I had a time where I was asked to be of service for someone that I didn’t even know by someone that I only knew through professional reasons.  I gladly accepted the weekly obligation thrilled that Heavenly Father had found a place for me to serve his children.  Week after week I continued in this service that only took ten or fifteen minutes out of my week once a week to do and I felt glad, but one day I had a clarifying moment that took it to a new level for me that I had never had before.  At the last moment as I was saying goodbye until next week to those younger members of this cute family that I was able to help, my heart started pounding so fast that I thought it might burst out of my chest and tears came unbidden to my eyes and for one brief second it was as if I could feel the Savior’s love for them in my heart and His thoughts in my head.  “I love them,” He spoke.  “Thank you for loving them for me today.”

            Now, can I say that the very little, literally only a matter of a few minutes every week that has come out of my life, that I really have done near to nothing in helping that family, only the slightest bit, but God did something in return by letting me feel His love.  And it’s moments like those that He gives us, not for us to be some great help to our fellow man, though that is definitely a very important part of it, but because He wants us to have little tastes of the strength of His love for all of us so that we can strive one day to become just like Him.

            My nine year old Sam said to me the other day, “Mom, do you know what my favorite part about Christmas Eve is?”

            I instantly thought he would mention our family tradition of opening all the family presents a day before most of the rest of the world, or perhaps Papa’s house and potato soup, or even Christmas Jammies at bed that night, but it wasn’t. 

            “I love that all of the kids sleep in one room and we are all stuck together.  There’s nothing better.”

            Sometimes Sam drives his four bigger sisters completely nuts, I think Steph puts up with him better than most, but even though Sam is such a totally easy going mellow boy to get along with he is still a boy in a houseful of girls and more times than not his teasing as all little boys do tends to annoy them, but he’s right, each and every one of them loves being stuck together in the same room on Christmas Eve.

            Sometimes the traditions that you put together out of necessity and in this case sanity so Santa can sneak around without getting caught, are really the things that draw a family together and teach them all about that Christ Like Love that Heavenly Father shows us so we can become just like His Son someday.

            So now when you go about your days this week, whether you are out and about at work or nestled tightly at home working your little tooshies off, remember that I love you, I do, and that most of all Heavenly Father and His most perfect Son love you too.

What Drives Us

Sometimes Facebook is so sensational that I don’t even want to look.  Other times you are stuck for so many hours in the car with nothing to do that you can’t help but to thank your lucky stars for that great invention, well…that and Pinterest.  I’ve been getting tired of the share this and share that attitude as of late, sure there actually is some blogs and some recipes that I am so thrilled that people share, even a few of those too funny cartoons, but mostly I would much rather see what is going on in your lives…yes you…the people that I really love and care about not some crazy person that I don’t know from some place that I will never visit, well unless that crazy person is me and you don’t know me and will never visit me and somehow you have happened across my blog and in that case, most definitely read it and certainly share it all over Facebook.

That having been said I did come across the most awesome share on Facebook that led to an immediate buy and download to my Christmas playlist and I just have to share it with you.  Get passed the whole “Jimmy” part at about the five minute mark and just listen to the song.  I loved it strangely enough!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xZ3Ezl5-Lk

Then there was this that very quickly went to my playlist…much more beautiful than Joel the Lump of Coal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifCWN5pJGIE

 

So I guess when it comes to something like that…by all means share away!

For Thanksgiving our family did something amazing that we have done the past several years.  We’ve built up a following after that initial Thanksgiving with Jason and Clint Robertson but this year all usual families involved had other obligations which just left the Gibson’s in California this year…though we did drag along my amazing mom and Clint’s oldest and also amazing daughter Megan.  Jason’s brother met us there for one of the afternoons.  Can I say that it was awesome!!!!  And I only missed the turkey a very little bit.

The girls couldn't stop taking pictures of the waves.  Gotta love smart phones.

Huntington Beach Pier

We played so hard in the ocean that at night I fell into bed, as pro as I am riding the waves I was equally as pro at crashing to sleep at night.  The first day was very calm and Megan and I and Nan all saw stingrays swimming through the water.  The second day both Megan and I stepped on those stingrays to feel them slip away under our feet.  Suzy and Nan were not so lucky.  What are the chances that two of my girls within an hour of each other would get stung by rays…well they did and let me tell you they were in pain.  Suzy’s pain only climbed past her ankle, but Nan’s sting was so much deeper and sent pain all the way to her hip.  Let me tell you, I got it about six years back and the pain you feel from the poison, well let’s just say as tough as I am it almost brought me to tears.  I was so proud of Nan though.  Jason bought some solar cane (Numbing Crap) and it didn’t work, but she knew it was her last day so she pulled herself into the water, limping, tears running down her cheeks and all, so she didn’t have to miss out on one more minute of the ocean.  It made me realize just how strong my no longer so little girl really is.  When she was little she struggled in school, first with being so shy that the teachers all worried about her and then with her grades.  What did she decide to do, work her butt off and now she is my crazy, happy, so very confident and extremely outgoing and friendly A student.  What helped her decide that?  What made her take that on herself?  Because that is what she finally did, decided who she was and made the changes to be that person.  My once skinny armed can’t lift a jug of milk little girl now throws around huge pro subs like they were nothing.  I get Jenny being able to do that, she is like me and naturally really muscly, but not Nan and now look at her.  What drives that?

The last several months have been insane as we, all Americans and really the rest of the world, have waited to see what would and did transpire over the chaos and finally the grand jury decision in Ferguson Missouri.  What decided that for those people to go crazy?  Sure, what was happening around them seemed unreal and for some unjust, but what caused them to join in and start destroying the very town that they live in, the very people that support them?  I cannot begin to understand where that much hate and animalism behavior comes in.  It seems so against the very nature that God put in us.  How does something created by light become so dark?  I’ve asked myself that over and over and then I looked at my children, playing in the ocean or at the Aquarium of the Deep, laughing and giggling with each other and realized that some of what God created still is good and still is filled with light.

How do we keep that light when so much chaos and so much insanity is going on around us?  Isaiah 5:20 ²⁰ Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that count darkness as light, and light as darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!”  What do you do when so many seem to be looking for the bitter and throwing away all that is sweet?  Do we just give up and join them?  Human nature seems to point that way, so why don’t we?

We have to decide who we are and make the changes to be that person. Not saying that is easy to go against the sensationalism around us and not get caught up, after all that is our nature, that is my nature, but God made me and filled me with light and I can choose to continue to feed that light or let it burn out.  I can choose to let Ferguson Missouri and every other crazy insane wildness that continues to be the Daily News drive me and hype me or I can find the strength that my daughter found.  That quiet, sweet peace that if accessed enough can make you something greater than you ever thought, something only The Creator could ever have planned, but you have to decide it, I have to decide it, and the more of us that decide it the more it will spread and before long despite all the bitterness and all the riotness behavior catching the headlines a sweet peace will start to creep across the world.  Maybe those of us who are watching will catch this light and maybe, just maybe if we try so hard and listen so quietly we will be able to see it light within us too, because you see, that really is our choice, not matter how hard it may be, no matter how crazy everything around us may be, we ultimately decide.  We decide who we will be and we decide the kind of world we want to create and most of all we decide if we share it with the rest of all of God’s children.  It’s as simple as that…we decide.

                                              Pics of us at the Aquarium of the Deep

 

 

 

 

Us at the Tide Pools at Little Carona Beach

Sam found a hermit crab and it crawled out of it's shell.

 

 

 
 

 

And finally the Hippy Bus that a very little, very old, "Surfer Dude" told us to add our stickers too.