One Little Quote

“It doesn’t matter what you know, it only matters what you do.”  That thought has been going through my head all week.  We had an amazing Sacrament Meeting on Sunday and in one of the talks given by one of our missionaries he repeated three quotes that were his favorites.  One of which came from his father who would go downstairs hours after his mother asked her son to do a chore and he did not do it and tell that boy to do that chore.  The missionary would always say, “I know, I know,” like a typical teenager and his father’s reply was always, “I don’t care what you know I only care what you do.”

I know the scriptures and I know how to read them, but am I reading them and more than that am I living them?  My daughters know about modesty and purity but are they acting upon it when they are away from home and at school?  Sam knows how to be a good friend and a good student but is he doing it when I am not looking?

My niece Molly was over today and I was thinking on this when she climbed up to our big bar and sat down in between Sam and Steph.  They were having a piece of jelly roll so she wanted it too.  They were using a big fork so she wanted one too.  When she heard Suzy singing downstairs, the master of karaoke…yes, Molly wanted to play diva too.  Molly is almost two and like most two year olds she wants to do what everyone around her is doing too, including mimicking everything her brothers or cousins say, good or bad, cute or grownup.  I guess that is where the “It doesn’t matter what you know, it only matters what you do,” comes in with her. 

Let’s suppose my kids were throwing rocks through windows and calling the neighbors names when Molly was here.  You can bet your breatches that she would want to too.  Or how about something even more realistic…suppose my kids were fighting and calling each other names, not completely impossible I assure you, then what would Molly want to do?

Now Molly is only two, well almost two, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work the same way with everyone around us also.  I can say and say and say again that I have a testimony of the Savior, I can stand up at that pulpit at church during testimony meeting or preach to the youth in Young Woman’s that Jesus Christ loves me and loves them, but if I don’t behave like someone who is loved by their Savior and I don’t love them like their Savior does, then what difference does that make?  What do they know from my actions?

I guess that I need to try a little harder.  Politicians say one thing and do another.  They are the kings and queens of saying one thing and doing another.  Very few in fact live what they say and what do we do as a people?  We roll our eyes and complain to our neighbor but then we vote them right back in again.  Why do we do that?  Perhaps over the years we have learned that it is alright to say one thing but do another.  Heck isn’t that how the world is run?  So why should we expect them to be any different?  Why should we expect ourselves to be any different?

Why?  Because “It doesn’t matter what you know, or say, or claim to believe, it only matters what you do.”  The whole concept of who we are and who we are perceived as in reality is in what others see us do.  And probably the most important One of All is in what He sees us do, the Savior.  Now can you honestly say that as your children go to sleep at night do they know by your actions what you stand for?  Do they know in your actions that you love the Savior?  Do they know by your actions that their Savior loves them?  See how one little quote could get me thinking all week.  I guess that I have a lot of changing to do and a lot more of stepping up to the plate to do, so to say.

I think that I could almost see the Savior with the most tender smile but all too knowing expression on his face saying to me, “It doesn’t matter to me what you know…It only matters to me what you do.”  One to sleep on tonight, ponder tomorrow, and do better at every day thereafter.

Valentine's Day

From the time that I was a little girl I had the biggest imagination.  Living out on a farm far away from others as we did it was easy to let my mind wander and come into a great big world that didn’t exist outside my own mind.  Chores, down times, lonely times, any of them were filled with these great stories that I created around whatever I was doing.  It was easy to be in my own little world so to say, a different person entirely.  Perhaps the reason that writing comes so easily to me.  And on the times that I read, which was every spare minute that I could get I was those characters each and every one in those books. 

I’m still that way when reading is involved and when I wander around the day I still play out what I am doing in my mind as if I am writing my own story, but my alone time or work time or even my lonely times I can no longer imagine myself someone else in some amazing fantastic world.  I can still imagine the story there as if someone else’s life but no longer my own.  I’ve wondered over the years what about me has changed to make it so.  Have I grown so old that I have forgotten the magic?  No.  I’m still an insane story teller, just ask my little ones the stories that I have made up for them.  Has the hard world around me drawn me into cold reality that I have forgotten the magic?  No my life is more magical and every year more happy than the one before.  So what is it?

Revelation came to me the other day.  The light above my head lit so brightly I had to shade my eyes for a minute.  I can’t imagine my life differently, because I don’t want my life to be different or to be someone else’s.  I am so completely happy with who I am and what I am about that I don’t need to create these different worlds for myself anymore, not that I’m not still obsessed with crawling into a book and seeing someone else’s imaginary life for a while or creating them for others to read, but I am completely content with my own.

Why is that?  Because I truly have a novel or fairy tale or love story more beautiful and more filled with amazing happily ever afters than any story that could ever be written.  I realized this of course when I was at the very end of a beautiful love story that I was reading just the other day.  I found myself saying over and over, “That is exactly something Jason would have done,” or “Jason would have been so much better at that.”  The man in the story was strong, and in control, commanding and completely protective all the while gentle and kind and completely in love.  He was strong and a manly kind of man who didn’t go about life as if some game, but he was serious and the people around him respected him, but when it came to love he was a complete romantic.  The Darcys or the Edward Cullens (the book version so not the movie version…) type and I realized that even they couldn’t hold a candle to my Jason. 

One time I went to the movies years ago with my sisters and sister in laws.  Jason had known that we were going and he was more than happy to see me go with them, I believe we watched one of the first twilights and he was completely content to stay at work as did the rest of the guys.  He worked that day close by to the movie theatre and instead of going straight home when he was done, he went to the movie theatre which was up north of our little town and parked his car and waited for us.  When I came out still in the high that the movies bring, chatting with my sisters about what we had just seen, there he was leaning against our car, all six foot two of him, and his calm penetrating stare was filled with such intense love that I tingled from head to toe.  I remember at the time thinking that after all of these years of marriage he can still do that to me more than any movie or any book.  Of course he just came to say that he loved me and he wasn’t trying to interrupt our sister time together and gave me a kiss to tingle to my toes to then return me to my sisters.  He would have driven away right then not wanting to take me away from my night out, just needed a quick moment to say that he loved me, but I was still jello inside and jumped right into the car waving goodbye to the girls as we went home.

When I think of Valentine’s Day I can’t help but think of love.  The whole day is centered around it after all, and when I think of love I think of Jason and not just about how much that I love him, which is to the moon and back and beyond words I guarantee you, but I think of how he loves me.  Some of me gets a little sad because it feels as if I have it all, beyond what anyone else can comprehend and I feel as though I’ve stolen some of the glory that maybe should be spread around.  No marriage is perfect but I know that ours has something more that even the best marriages have and I don’t quite understand why I deserve that, or how I will ever completely understand it.  My heart aches it is so full and I don’t quite know how to give that to someone else, but somehow Jason found how to give that to me.

The world can change and roles can change and people around us can change but love this deep is unchanging and unmovable and unless you have it, completely undecipherable and it’s mine and it’s wonderful and my big strong, serious man has found a way to give it to me every second of every day even when we are apart for the last 21 years.  Why would I ever need to imagine another’s life as my own?  Nothing this beautiful could ever be made up in one’s own mind.

The Tree Hugger in Me

Maybe if I close my eyes tight enough I can pretend that it isn’t cold and dreary outside.  I hate winter.  Let me reiterate that…I HATE WINTER.  Every moment and every second I count down until spring.  This year has been the worst year yet because of how badly the inversion was, even drifting down to little old Nephi making my lungs feel like someone had put a vice grip on them and clamped down hard.  Ridiculous that the thought of a storm brought absolute joy to my heart, because remember I HATE WINTER…but that meant the alleviating of the inversion and the freedom of my lungs.

Now I have several thoughts on why I hate winter so much, the main one being that when I was fourteen our youth group went cross country skiing in Beaver’s mountains and got caught in a freak blizzard resulting in me nearly losing my fingers on my left hand followed by months and months of physical therapy and rubbing the dead skin off resulting in me finally getting feeling back in those said fingers about 6 months later to only be haunted by tingly fingers every day of my life henceforth not to mention since that time I shiver so hard in the cold that my back and legs charlie horse and my core temp never seems to be able to rise back up even when I get warm again.

Yes I would think that would be a very good reason for me to hate winter, but in reality I think that it’s the fact that it is so sad and gloomy when the sun doesn’t shine and the roads are black and dirty covered in salt.  And perhaps all of this I could live through if I thought that in some way winter was helping the ever present drought that seems to live and breathe and thrive in Utah.  But I can’t think that, not this year.

Why is water so important, you ask?  Other than the fact that we can’t drink it without it this summer my lawn will be very crispy and my garden will die and my kids will have no sprinklers to run through and quite frankly our poor farmers will go bankrupt resulting in less food for us and thus increasing grocery prices on produce.  Grain and hay prices will skyrocket resulting in an immense increase in the cost of meat…etc. etc. etc.  Get my point.  We need snow and lots of it.  Those mountains above me need to be floating in it and the water table below me needs to be filled to brimming.

The other day I was at a restroom in a McDonalds in Beaver.  I was taking care of my business in my own little stall listening to a mother by the sink talking to her little girl who was about two while she washed her hands.

“Make sure you wash them good, sweetie…” or something along those lines.

“I am Mommy.”

“Sing your ABC’s.  Remember?  Like I taught you.”

On comes the water.

“Abcdef…is that enough, Mommy.”

“No sing the whole song.”

Water still running.

“Abcdefghi…how bout that.  That enough, Mommy.”

“No, the whole song, gotta get those germs away.”

Water still pouring full blast.

“I gotta start again.  Can’t do it otherwise.  Abcdefghijk…what comes next, Mommy?”

Water still running.  At this point the tree hugger that Jason says I am wanted to say, “Turn off that water.  I know germs are scary and all but teach her another way to learn that song.  Slather her hands with all of the antibacterial soap in that dispenser and let her learn the ABC’s to sloshing the soap around instead of the water.  Jeez man, we are in a drought and water doesn’t grow on trees.”

But instead I just finished my business and washed my hands while I watched the little girl (cute as can be by the way) and very high maintenance mommy dry their hands.  You know what she said to her little girl as I washed my hands?  “See, watch this nice lady, I bet she knows the proper way to wash her hands so the germs won’t get her.” 

And you know what I did?  I slathered those hands with soap, no water at this point, and with exaggerated effort rubbed it between every nook and cranny, every joint and under every nail and then after an exaggerated amount of time I very quickly washed it off with as little water as possible.

Then she said, “See, look how good she did that.  No germs are going to get her.”

And I wanted to say, “It’s antibacterial soap, lady.  Your daughter is as sterile as they come.  Lay off the water all ready.”  But of course I didn’t.

At this point I would have explained the whole process of properly washing my hands that my Medical Biology teacher taught me all those years ago had those two people been my daughters, but of course I didn’t.  But this is what my girls have heard a million times.  Put the soap on first before the water coats your hands so that the water doesn’t cause a thin microscopic barrier between your skin and the soap therefore thwarting the whole process.  Then, add the water to distribute it and rinse away.  See even science says soap first, soap good, then rinse away.  Science is water conscious.

What has this got to do with anything, you ask?  I’m not real sure.  Just that twigs and berries, hippy kind of gal that Jason says I am coming out on a rant again.  Probably time for me to go dehydrate something or make yogurt in my crockpot again.  Anything to calm my tree hugger rants.

 

Chicken and Dumplings and Compliments too.

Mmmm….Chicken and Dumplings….Mmmmm.  I love to cook.  Something my mother instilled in me at a very young age.  Maybe crazy for me to feel this way, but I am so thankful that I love to cook.  Every woman needs to cook, and every man should be able to.  If it’s going to be something that I do every day for the rest of my life and right now literally for the masses(my six kids) well than I am so glad that I love to do it and what’s better yet, I’m very good at it.  Now that’s not me being cocky, that’s me being able to be honest about my talents.  How many of us are?

Do you shake your head or role your eyes or deny a talent when someone compliments you on it?  I know that I do.  It drives Jason nuts when he tells me that I’m beautiful and I tell him that I am so grateful that love has blinded him.  Why do we do that as woman?  Why can’t we take compliments?  Not that Jason is much better at it.  He always puffs out a bunch of air making that Phew sound that means…you’re crazy, whenever I compliment him.  What is wrong with us as a human race that we can’t be grateful and accepting when offered a compliment?

I’ve been troubled lately with all of the divorce and unrest in marriage that is going on around me.  What is that crazy statistic that everyone quotes?  Something like 50% of all marriages end in divorce?  I have to wonder that if maybe we offered compliments to each other more and mentioned our short comings a little less and in return if we gratefully accepted those compliments when given to us if more marriages wouldn’t stay intact.  If Jason says “You’re so beautiful,” (or hot as he really says) and I thank him and really mean it and really feel the words that he is saying to me I think that it would do a couple of things…

1.      If I really felt what he said how could my self-esteem not grow?  And when I feel good about myself I’m more inclined to feel good about other things too, like my marriage.

2.     When complimented I tend to be more likely to compliment back which helps my husband’s self-esteem grow and my kind thoughts towards him also.  When searching for a compliment to give you can’t help but see the good in others.

3.     And when we express our love to each other, well it only stands to reason that our love will grow too.

So what are we really doing then when we blow off a compliment whether from our significant other or the people around us who love us?  Making the moment awkward, taking the graciousness that they are offering away, maybe shutting off the opportunity we have to be grateful.  And how likely are they going to be to continue offering us compliments if we make it unbearable every time that they give them?  I rather enjoy good thoughts coming my way but maybe if I can’t accept them when given, well they might be less likely to think them.

Having said that now I will try to be better.  Not quite sure how.  I just can’t seem to get over the awkwardness that follows as if I’m the one complimenting myself.  God’s blessed me with an abundance of gifts and plenty of little talents here and there.  Is it showing lack of gratitude when I cannot accept them for what they are and realize the potential that is me?  I don’t know for sure, but I think that perhaps maybe it is.

 

Agi

Ever have a friend that is so like you it’s practically like looking in a mirror, except that she is shorter than you and her hair is darker than yours and well you really look nothing alike, but you could almost finish each other’s sentences because your minds are so similar?  I have a friend like that and her name is Agi.

She was born and raised in Hungary.  She’s brilliant…she mastered the Hungarian language at an incredibly young age J, speaks German and even speaks Americanized English perfectly with the sweetest little accent.  Okay, so maybe we aren’t entirely the same, but all her likes and dislikes, her amazing…brilliant…weird sense of humor, and her basic outlook on the world are right in line with mine.  And what’s even better, today is her birthday!!!!  We are literally one year apart in age because today is my birthday too!  I call her my Hungarian twin…who really cares about the year apart in age anyways or the fact that we look nothing like siblings.

So this is my tribute to an amazing woman who is brilliant and strong and funny and kind and makes me smile just to look at her.  May your day be as awesome as you are…and thank you for sharing it with me!  Hope she doesn't mind I stole pictures off of her facebook page.  I just couldn't resist...

No Pretty Titles...Just my Simple Blog

Is there anything better than listening to a little child breathe?  You know that deep relaxed breathing that only comes when they fall asleep?  I was sitting here watching something cute on YouTube with Sam.  And we were even discussing it when all of a sudden I noticed that he wasn’t talking back to me anymore and that the only sound that I could hear in my bedroom was the quiet deep strum of his breathing.  I listened for a bit, thinking that I should send him off to bed and turn the T.V. on, because…well…that’s what I do at night when Jason has a dance and it’s not one that I have to go with him to help him or play one on my own and the house is so quiet without him…I fall asleep to the T.V.  But after listening a moment more to Sam I decided that I would let his little mumbles and deep breathing in his sleep relax me and fill the quiet of an otherwise still house.

So what did I do after that, you ask?  I decided to read a new favorite blog that I have, “The Matt Walsh Blog.”  Now although we don’t completely agree on everything, after all we are individuals in ourselves, mostly his thoughts are pretty close to my own, and if nothing else he is a good, god fearing man who is trying to live honestly and righteously in a world that Satan seems to be slowly winning over to his own, or maybe quickly to his own.  What did reading Matt’s blog do?  Well it got me to thinking about just how much modern society laughs at the unchangeability of God’s laws and religious belief.  Then before long I was a little depressed and even angry that such a world is the one that I live in.  After all didn’t I deserve the general goodness of the world say 100 years ago? 

Of course that led to my agonizing over my little ones and the future world that they would be raising their kids in and how much worse that it will most likely become and before long my blood pressure was rising and my anxiety growing and I had to stop contemplating for a moment to calm down only to hear Sam in the background sigh in his sleep and mumble something completely untranslatable.

And that my dear is why there is no better thing to do than to listen to a little child breathe.  Somehow in all of their innocence everything will always be all right in the world even if in reality it is not.  Why?  I don’t know.  It’s hard to remember back to being that little, but the little glimpses of memory that I have of the me of my little girl years was filled with the absolute willingness to believe that there was some amount of good in the world and in the inhabitants of that same world.  And most of all the little bit of magic that I seemed to see in everything.  I believe God gives that to children because he knows that the adults around them need that more than anything and the adults that they will someday become need to have those ever flitting memories to draw them back to peace when the world gets too tough.

Now I can’t say that anxiety and stress run my life, maybe in years past, very many years past when I was a teenager and then for a short while as a very young wife, but to say that the world around me isn’t trying very hard to pull me down would be an outright lie.  Because it is.  That’s what the world does, because Satan lives here and his most precious desire that drives him more than anything else is to bring us down.  So why is it that over the years I have become the “Glass is half full” kind of gal?  I could relate a lot of things, but in reality it’s because I take the time to listen to my children breathe, and laugh, and sing, and tell stories, and play make believe, and share moments with me as they fall asleep in my bed.  It’s because I’ve learned how to go about with an attitude of gratitude and by choosing that first my eyes seem to find the beauty in the world all around me.  It’s because I look for Christ’s love in everything everywhere I go and the harder that I look the more that I find it.  It’s because I can find joy in the simple things and in the strength that I have to live here in this world and bring a little tranquility to it along the way. 

So now I sit here in the dark.  My mind quiet and my heart beating more slowly and I contemplate sending Sam to bed, because after all that is where he needs to end up sometime in the next few hours before Jason comes home to reclaim his side of the domain, and I thank God that he gives me these little moments so often in my life when I can find gratitude and peace in the quiet rhythms of my little child’s steady breathing.  I can only imagine what he is dreaming so sweetly…but whatever it is I know just a little bit of its magic will find its way into my dreams tonight.

Magical

All kinds of craziness are happening around here.  I’m sure all of you could have said that the last two weeks.  The holidays do that…bring craziness, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.  Lots of friends, lots of family, and lots of late nights and about the time Santa put the last treat in the last stocking all he (or she) wanted to do was fall into bed.  Fast forward far too quickly and far too few of hours later to the giggles at the top of the steps and the knocking on the door that leads to downstairs and yes, Santa and Mrs. Claus were up rise and shine long before they had any right to be.

This year was different once again as it was the last several years.  When you have older kids it’s hard to watch as you see them one by one realize that they have lost a little bit of the magic of Christmas.  First it was Luke and this year it was Jenny’s turn.  And I couldn’t help but remember back to when my first Christmas as an all too old child seemed to squelch a little bit of the magic.  It breaks a momma’s heart to see it happen, but I know a secret that Jenny doesn’t know yet, Christmas still has a lot of future magic to hold for her. 

The first Christmas when you are so poor because you’re just a youngin out of school and you share it with someone who you want to spend forever with.  Pretty magical.  The first Christmas when you have that sweet baby in your arms and even though all of the gifts under the tree are really things that that baby needs and not really that exciting because they are too small to understand anyways.  Magical.  And driving from one grandparent to the next as they ooh and awe over that little grandbaby.  Magical.  That first Christmas when finally that little guy can walk and toddle and he can’t wait to unwrap all of the gifts just for the sake of tearing through the paper.  Magical.  The first Christmas when in the middle of the night you have gone through all of the gifts for each of the kids and laid them out end to end to make sure that they look like they each got the same hall and you realize one just doesn’t add up and luckily for you your dear hubby found a Rite Aid store still open in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve and righted the horrible wrong that you almost caused and you fall asleep exhausted but completely satisfied cause all is right in the world.  Magical.  And the best one yet, that I am just dying to experience firsthand…when those sweet little chubby hands tear open the pretty wrapping you actually spent time to wrap cause finally your kids are older enough that you have a little time to do that sort of wrapping and they look up at you all giggles and eyes all wide with awe and say…”Thank you Grandma,” as they wrap their arms around your neck.  Absolutely magical.  See I know it’s all right and all of the magic will return and someday she will feel it too.

Christmas was beautiful and believe it or not full of the spirit of family and of giving and most of all of Christ and it was a wonderful day. 

Sam was in his all time pro during the holiday season and after all of the wrappings were cleaned up and toys tucked away our family took a little down time and Sam took to entertaining me.  Poor little boy thought that his mother was playing solitaire and certainly not recording him, but of course I was and I just had to share.  How can you not smile a little and brighten your day after you watch this video?  Jason cussed me later for not having my iphone turned right, but Sam would have known that I was no longer playing solitaire and I would have never caught the magic of all that is Sam.  From this moment on Sam will be known as "Gangster" as Nan calls him.  (For those of you on an Ipad you may not be able to view the video below.  Just got on mine and I couldn't.  Log in on your computer if you have time.  It's a sweet laugh.)

And then New Year’s Eve was spent as it always is on the Gibson front…playing a Holiday dance.  This year it was for both of the Stakes in our town and we got to enjoy it with our two older girls, Luke and his girlfriend Danielle and Bobby and Leigh.  We had sound set up and live camera shots of the crowd on a movie screen and I was running the photo booth!  It was awesome and the Stakes went all out feeding the kids both dinner and breakfast with a gazillion drawings…gift cards and even an ipad, a dirt bike, and a car…that’s right you read it right…a car. 

That's Jenny in the corner barely popping out from behind her photo bombing Uncle Cullen.

Nan in the top left with all of her friends.

Jason's awesome brother Bobby and his amazing wife Leigh along with Luke and his girlfriend Danielle.

And this next one is my favorite.  You can laugh.  It's totally allowed.  My crazy brother Cullen and his equally crazy wife Annalee.  If you're smart you'll blow it up and look a little closer.  Their expressions couldn't be funnier!!!

 

 And that night when it all ended our awesome friend Mitch watched our gear for us as we whipped away to the highschool football field with all of our family in tow to watch our son Luke propose to his girlfriend Danielle.  Magic!I couldn’t be happier.  She is the sweetest daughter in law any woman could ever ask for and we love her to death and she makes my son a better man.  Who knew I was that old?  Well in my defense I will only be turning 39 at the end of this month.  One more year until the big 40.

What do I have to look forward to this year?  Probably a lot more of ridiculous insanity.  My father and stepmom are coming home in April…crazy busy dance season starts in May…girl’s camp and youth conference and fourth of July and Stampede(Nephi’s rodeo) and 24^th of July(Utah’s celebration of becoming a state) in July…I could go on and on, oh and can I just add a wedding to boot.

Chaos and crazy and somehow all the same but every moment of it magical in its own way.