Rehabilitation

Elder Bruce Hafen described the atonement of Jesus Christ as not simply God's method for righting wrongs and satisfying the demands of justice but as a rehabilitative, miraculous power that can help us change who we are. When we genuinely repent before the Lord we are simply humbling ourselves and opening our hearts to divine assistance. Those two forces (repentance and divine assistance) have the power to permanently change our hearts and our lives, preparing us for celestial life.

The word "rehabilitative" caught my eye. The definition of rehabilitate is "to restore to a former state or capacity." We all are in need of spiritual rehab. Try as we might we do not have the power to rehabilitate ourselves. The pupose of the atonement of Christ is to restore us to Heavenly Father, to a condition of sinlessness and to fit us for eternal life. In the process we are "added upon" so that not only are we rehabilitated but we are also rennovated. We have become like our Father. I have had the experience as have many of you of asking Heavenly Father with real intent through the name of Jesus Christ to help me gain a strength I did not have or change something in myself I knew needed changing and quietly receiving an ability beyond my own to accomplish the task at hand. I do know there is a spiritual power beyond ourselves that is available to us when we sincerely seek it.

For I am thy God....

In every condition, in sickness or health,
In poverty's vale or abounding in wealth,
At home or abroad, on the land or the sea
As thy days may demand so thy succor shall be.

Fear not I am with thee, oh be not dismayed.
For I am thy God and will still give thee aid.
I'll strengthen thee, help thee and cause thee to stand
Upheld by my righteous omnipotent hand.

(From How Firm a Foundation)

First Sunday at Marjorie's

Marjorie heading out the door to church with Grandpa. How about Grandpa in that trench coat? Pretty spiffy!!


Grandma surprised everyone by getting up and dressing, but ended up having church herself while resting on the couch. Ted was the grandma sitter.

On a humorous note...

As I have been with my parents this week I have been surprised that declining years and health have only sharpened their sense of humor and ability to reply in one-liners. Perhaps it's old age conserving energy and distilling thoughts into a few words. Here are a few classics to remember.

My sister was driving with my Dad and was thinking how to begin a discussion on his thoughts about having to relocate. She said "Well....." and paused. "That's a deep thought," he interjected.

The day we moved my parents my mother had remained in bed until just before time to leave. She was very weak and we got her up and dressed. She needed to visit the bathroom. I held out my arm and said, "Mother, take my arm and we will pretend we are going to the ball." She looked up and weakly asked with humor in her voice, "Would that be a b-a-w-l or a b-a-l-l?" There was no question which one I had been attending all week long.

That night as we settled my parents into my sister's house we were explaining over and over to my Dad that this was now their new living quarters and he was working to grasp the situation, retaining bits and pieces with each explanation. "So this is our new arrangement now and that other house is done with?" he would ask. Then he would add, "Well, this is a nice retirement center here?" Later he asked my sister, "So do you and Ted own this nice retirement center?" My sister reminded him this was their home. He spent time wandering through all the rooms and said to my sister, "This is a nice building you own here?"

We decided sitting my Dad down at the paper shredder to dispose of all their old documents was a good way to keep him occupied. He has tackled it with vigor. "Is this my new job now that I have retired?" he asked my sister. She told him that yes, this would be his new job. "That's really good," he said, "I've been wondering what my new job is." Never mind he's been retired for 20 years.

The pictures are from Kimberly's wedding reception this summer.

Partings

Today my sisters and I moved my parents out of the home they have lived in for 26+ years.   Although they want to they can no longer live alone.  In their lucid moments they agree it's time for them to relocate with one of us but when the reality of it starts to set in they begin to back peddle.  Tonight we are all staying at my sister's home to settle them in.  We put their things in their new room complete with familiar pictures and objects from home.  We had a nice dinner.  My Dad then asked when we were going home.  I am sure it is the first of many like requests.  My mother told the nurse they would probably be at my sisters for just one week.  My heart aches for them because I know they most likely will never go back to their home again except for a very occasional visit for a few hours.  And maybe we will decide not to do that if it upsets the apple cart all over again.  It was a tough deal to pack them up and take them out the door knowing they didn't fully understand what we were doing.  I could have cried my eyes out.  I never supposed it would be this difficult.  Tomorrow I have an even more difficult task.  I have to leave Denver and return home to Utah.  I can't be away from my family forever.  I leave fully knowing I may never see my mother again in this life.  Between the two of them, she is the most tenuous right now.   I can hardly bear the thought.  How do you say a permanent goodbye to the one who gave you life and who has always been there for you.  I don't believe you are ever ready for it.  As my mother's friends have come to visit and told stories about her with this and that I have realized that my mother was so much more than just my mother.  It is a revelation to get to know her in another sphere as someone's friend or mentor.  They have told stories I've never heard and mentioned little qualities I did not know about.  I am seeing my mother more as an individual than I ever have before.   I find myself wishing I could have known her as a friend and a peer.  I don't know if children can ever quite see their parents as separate individuals from their roles as mothers and fathers.   

Grandma and Grandpa

My dear mother will be 93 on Feb. 12. My Dad will be 87 in May. They are quite the colorful pair. Mother was taken to the hospital last night with double pneumonia. We are praying for her. She's not used to "resting" in the hospital and is planning on getting better soon!

It was inevitable....

From the time Nathanael could walk and talk he has bled military. At first is was an obsession with knights in shining armor; then it was the civil war. We explored every possible nook and cranny of World War II. He constructed a 12 ft. trebuchet in the back yard. He made a suit of armor and chain maille. He was Captain Moroni. He took fencing. He led every kid in the neighborhood on "missions" decked out in camo and stealthing through the fields and yards after dark. His first backyard airsoft war brought the police to our residence in response to a call reporting someone in camo sneaking through the bushes with an automatic. Our neighbor Carl kept telling us Nathanael reminded him of General Patton who followed the same course as a kid.

"Am I tall enough yet?"

Nathanael & McKay protecting the neighborhood from enemy invasion. McKay is now a marine headed to Iraq and Nathanael signed with the National Guard and ROTC.

Hunting down the neighborhood stalker.

Will we ever outgrow this?

Nope, doesn't look like it.

We all knew it would happen some day....

Happy Birthday (Jan. 11) Lorien and Christian!!

When I tell people I have 11 children one of the first questions asked in reply is "Are there any twins?" I could answer yes, sort of, but that would defeat the purpose of the question. What they really means is "Did you really do 11 pregnancies?" I did do 11 pregnancies but two of those babies arrived on Jan. 11, eleven years apart.

Lorien was born shortly after noon on Jan. 11, 1981. She had a gentle, soft spirit about her and we could tell quite quickly that she was going to be a red head - the first of three! Lorien has her own shade of red however. Her hair is dark auburn like her Grandfather Leon's. As she was growing up people would ask her where she got her red hair. Once when she was three, she must have been a little tired of the question because she replied tartly and with dignity (or indignity), "My grandpa painted it and I like it." As soon as Lorien was old enough to pick up a crayon we could tell she had an abundance of artistic talent and her own personal, very vibrant flair. She drew bold, creative pictures saturated with vivid color. I was always amazed by them. Lorien's creative personality also came out in how she dressed. She had no qualms about going to school with 5 ponytails instead of one or two, wearing crazy mis-matched stripped socks or any other "intereresting" combination of clothing. She loved nature, had an obsession with Canada for a while, and then Africa. She took ballet. She played softball and basketball. She played piano and violin and later taught herself the banjo and toured eastern Europe with a performing group. She was part of Sassafrass, an all-girl bluegrass band and they recorded a great cd. Currently Lorien lives in SLC and owns Copperleaf, her landscape design business.

Lorien turned 11 the day Christian was born. I surprised myself by going into labor. We went ahead with the planned friend birthday party and after we sent the neighborhood partiers home Randy and I headed off the to hospital. Christian was a joyfully awaited baby. We had had trouble with this pregnancy and I had been put to bed for two months. Things were tenuous for a while so when he arrived healthy and sound about 9:00 pm on Jan. 11 we were so grateful and it was a joy to receive this new little baby boy into our home (of 6 girls and only 2 boys at the time.) Christian too had a soft and gentle spirit about him. Even as a baby I noticed how obedient he seemed to be. I remember at the age of six weeks he had to have a hernia operation. When the doctor was doing the extremely painful examination and Christian was crying and doubling up I got close up by his face and whispered to him that I knew it was hard but he needed to lay still so the doctor could help him and though he continued to cry he stretched out and laid still. I was amazed. The same thing happened when the nurse was prepping him for surgery and she couldn't get an iv in his tiny arm. She tried his hands and both forearms. Finally she had to ask for help. He was is great distress. I again asked him to try hard to stay still and he stopped crying and did so. I'm not sure how he understood me at the age of six weeks but there was some kind of communication.

Whenever I had a sonagram of Christian before he was born he always had his right foot up on his left knee. When he was a toddler he would often watch tv laying on his back with his right foot up on his raised left knee. It was a cute reminder that some things we have done ever since we existed.

Christian is a tall 6'1". He is thoughtful, incredibly insightful, can carry on an in depth conversation. He likes to read and write and produce movies. Film is his interest, particularly fantasy. He holds the record in our family for reading Lord of the Rings more times than you can count. Christian is good at athletics and he enjoys them but isn't much for competition. He's as avid soccer fan.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY (a little late) LORIEN AND CHRISTIAN.

Alexander Graham Bell once said, “When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.”

Beautiful tile...

I love the ambiance of this tiled area. I'm tiling my bathroom currently so I'm noticing such things. (My bathroom tile looks nothing like this by the way.)

Photo from Contempo Tile

P.S.

It's best with hot fudge sauce. Here is my favorite recipe. It's delicious, easy and fast.

1/4 c. butter melted in pan.
1 heaping Tbls. cocoa mixed into melted butter.
1 C. sugar
3/4 C. evaporated milk (not sweetened condensed)

Heat to a boil and cook for two minutes. (The recipe says one minute but I always find myself doing two to get it a little thicker. But don't overcook as it will crystallize.)

Add 1 tsp. vanilla.

Yummmmmmmmm. It's really good served hot over ice cream. I usually end up having a little ice cream with my bowl of sauce. (Not very often however as it is obvious not a health food.)

Jackpot!

I just found an entire carton of Dreyer's Limited Edition peppermint ice cream buried in the depths of the freezer. It's been there since Christmas Eve. How did that escape everyone's notice! Unheard of in this house!

Aunt Sally's "criminal" activity....

Yesterday I went to Target to return a shirt. Before Christmas I ran into a great deal on Merona t-shirts ($5.00 ea.) and I went somewhat hog-wild buying thirty or more shirts for 8 daughters. I gave them each one for Christmas and as I wasn't sure of their taste in style, color and fit I told them they could trade it out for ones I had in my stash and then get any others they would like. After we had finished sorting it all out I returned the ones no one wanted.

This was the last shirt I had to return. It was a lovely, grey shirt. The tag had been removed but luckily I had found it in the after-holiday clean-up. I had the receipt but forgot to bring it with me to the store. "No problem," I thought. At Target you can use your credit card for a receipt look-up.

Unbeknown to me, there is a little tag sewn into clothing with an item #. The girl at the return desk typed in the number on the inside of the shirt and the computer told her that the shirt did not match the tag I had brought in with it. However, the tag did show up on my credit card but the shirt # did not. (The subversive plot thickens!!!) Without asking me even one question she got on her little headset and called over the security guard. A little baffled I wondered what security had to do with return issues. Don't you usually call a manager if you run into a problem you can't solve? She explains to the guard (who looked old enough to be my son) that the tag I brought in with the shirt did not match the # inside. She gave him a receipt # from the computer. He asked me what I paid for the shirt. I told him I had bought it on a sale before Christmas for $5.00 big whopping dollars! (Actually I was very polite and left off the big whopping part.) He told me he was going to have to go and search the store videos from before Christmas to find my transaction and show that I really did buy the shirt. If he found me on the video buying the shirt he would allow me to return it. I explained that I had the receipt at home and offered to go home and get it but none-the-less being more insistent he disappeared to search the store video.

People were backing up in line behind me all watching to see if they were going to get to witness this lady being hauled off in handcuffs for not having her receipt. (They must hire adventure seeking young men to be security guards.) I asked the clerk to explain to me what the deal was. She told me that sometimes people try to return items with different tags to get more $ than they paid for them and they were checking the video to verify my transaction. I told the clerk I had bought LOTS of shirts in four different transactions. I didn't know if this particular shirt was it that particular transaction. I asked her again if I could go home and get my receipts. She gave me a funny look and said "Ahhhh." I thought to myself, "What do you mean by 'Ahhhhh?'" I realized I was only digging myself a deeper pit and that she just thought I was trying to escape. I considered taking my shirt and going but decided if I was going to get out of this with any degree of honor I had better stick around.

Fifteen more highly annoying minutes passed. FINALLY, Mr. Security Guard returned. He told the clerk that the transaction # she gave him actually took place in the American Fork store (ha, ha, ha, I did buy that particular shirt out in American Fork!) and so he couldn't view the video but he looked up the tag number and found others on video buying shirts with that tag and YES they were all lovely, grey shirts that were selling for $5.00 each and so he told the clerk, "I guess you can go ahead and return the shirt." Without saying a word she returned the shirt and gave me my well-earned $5.24. I should have insisted on interest for the time I had to wait. No apologies were offered. She still was looking at me like I was on the FBI's most wanted list. Why, may I ask, would I be returning a $10 shirt for $5.00 if I was trying to run a profitable rip-off-Target scam? Wouldn't it make a little more sense to go for the $10.00!!!

When I came home I immediately found my receipts and YES, I did have the American Fork receipt and YES the grey shirt was on the receipt. My only explanation is that the dang little tag sewn into the shirt had the WRONG # on it. I briefly considered never shopping at Target again, but darn it, it's close at hand and I know I would never stick to my vow. If I was the frivolous litigation type, or if I had $ to burn (in which case I wouldn't be shopping at Target) I could have my lawyer write them a nice little letter, but sadly I don't believe in such things. So instead, armed with my four receipts in hand, I headed over to Target today to clear the slate for my own peace of mind. There was no security guard in sight and of course there was a different girl working the return desk.

I might write Target a letter but probably won't get around to it. I'll just have to settle for the fact that there are a handful of people around town who might run into me somewhere and think, "There's that woman! Where are the handcuffs?" And actually, I was laughing to myself as I drove home at the incongruities of the situation. I've never even considered shoplifting anything. I have no desire to own something I didn't pay for. (Unless it was a gift of course!) I remember when I was barely 5 and "found" a package of gum on the floor of the grocery store that I surmised someone had "dropped." My mom made me take back a nickle to the store manager to pay for the gum (that I got out of her purse and chewed all at once - yes, all five sticks!! I still remember gagging on that huge wad of gum. It was certainly not satisfying in the least.) I learned my lesson well and have never wanted to experience that humiliation again.

I'm sure by now I've lost anyone who started reading this post. If you made it to the end kudos for you. You've done your therapeutic good turn for the day.

All better....

....my ribs that is...and almost in an instant! One night last week I couldn't sleep because they were as painful as ever and the next night I realized when I awoke that I hadn't felt them hardly at all. And they have been amazingly better ever since. Boom! I'm curious as to the reason.

My buddies, Bos and Walt

Meet Bos....

...and Walt.

I awoke Christmas morning to the most terrific gift from Santa. By my stocking in all it's construction glory stood a Bostitch Compressor and nail gun/stapler kit. I've been wanting one for years. I've borrowed my brother's for months now. It was just about as exciting as when I bought my DeWalt mitre saw. I hid him (Walt) in the garage for a few months before I admitted to my family that I just went out and bought a saw and it wasn't even Christmas or Mother's Day. (That's what happens when your husband leaves the country for a few weeks. Walt was a good deal however! I rationalized this new addition to the family by adding up how much I was saving doing the finish work on the basement myself!) I'm quite fond of that saw. I could give up many things before I'd ever let him go.

So tomorrow I get to dive in to one of my on-going remodeling projects. I'm working my through the upstairs - repainting rooms, replacing baseboard (that is what the saw and nail gun is all about) and redoing the bathroom (refinishing cabinets, re-tiling counters, floors, tub, painting etc.) I have always had this addiction, but it rose to new heights last fall when I ended up doing all the finish work and painting in our remodeled flooded basement. I added to my list of "skills" and it just fueled the fire to keep going. I'm slow but a happy handy(wo)man. I get my highs wandering around Home Depot. You know, I've always wanted one of those cool looking tool belts.....

Deliverance

And yet another quote....

"Grasping the Lord's outstretched hand for help requires reaching into the unknown for the unseen. To assist the humble seeker of Christ to bridge that gap, the Lord provided the Book of Mormon. This book presents a series of dilemmas that are types of the troubles that men and women face in all dispensations: being lost, hungry, enslaved, in danger, or possessed by such painful emotions as anger, guilt, depression, and fear -- situations from which people need deliverance."

"Deliverance from such trouble is a major theme of the Book of Mormon. A computer count shows that the words derived from deliver occur more than two hundred times in the 531 pages of the Book of Mormon, signifying the importance of the principle. The reader repeatedly learns that God will provide some deliverance from trouble if he will but turn to Him. The book of Mormon speaks to all ages, and its principles apply to all people everywhere. No one can ever have a dilemma that the Lord cannot turn into some form of deliverance."

M. Catherine Thomas - Selected Writings p. 61

"...for they were in bondage and none could deliver them except it was the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob; and he surely did deliver them in their afflictions."
(Alma 36:2)

The power of mercy....

I tried to post a quote this morning and it deleted itself three times! After that I decided to let fate take it's course and I gave up. I guess I will now try a different quote.

"May we take a long-range view, both with our erring loved ones and with ourselves, as we fall so short of all that we wish to be, keeping in our hearts this assurance of Elder Orson F. Whitney:" They have but strayed in ignorance from the Path of Right, and God is merciful to ignorance. Only the fullness of knowledge brings the fullness of accountability. Our Heavenly Father is far more merciful, infinitely more charitable, than even the best of his servants, and the Everlasting gospel is mightier in power to save than our narrow finite minds can comprehend.' "

M. Catherine Thomas - Selected Writings p. 36

January 2nd

January 2nd is always tinged with a bit of melancholy. The holiday hubbub has receded. The New Year's fun and games have retired and thankfully so. It was enjoyable but can't go on forever. The decorations are down and put away (sort of - there are all those stray items that didn't manage to get in the Christmas storage first time around that keep popping up here and there - and the residue holiday dust becomes evident as you move out decorations and try to re-establish a normal living environment.) It's cold outside and the temperature is dropping, literally as a rain-sleet-snow storm moves in. Spring is not really around the corner. Winter is just hunkering down for the duration. Family members are leaving (or have left). It takes a few weeks for the pendulum to swing back to the middle.

P.S. I know the calendar pictured is the wrong year. It was easy and at hand.