From stuck to action

I was having some questions about the direction of my life.

I felt confused.  I felt less-than.  

I was judging myself for those feelings and for not moving forward. I felt stuck.

Then, I realized that wherever I am, I got myself here.  I realized that I wanted exactly what I had at some level.

From that space, I could judge myself for not being where I thought I would be, or where others thought I should be. 

OR, I could accept reality. I could accept the present.  I could be kind to myself.  

Once I accepted and embraced the present, all of a sudden, I had ideas. I had motivation.  I knew next steps. 

Those steps weren’t what I thought they would be. 

But they got me moving. 

They were important. 

Taking some action often begets more action. 

When I told myself I was confused and behind, I felt stuck. I had a hard time doing anything. 

When I embraced and accepted where I was, I felt lighter.  I felt more open. I had more ideas and I felt ready to act on them. 

If you’re feeling stuck, you might feel like being unhappy will motivate you to action. 

It might. 

But that motivation doesn’t last long.  And it takes a lot of willpower. 

Being honest and compassionate with yourself gives you clarity, direction, and energy. 

Where are you feeling stuck, and where can you be kind to yourself? 

How will that change things? 

Part 2: Showing vs. Sharing love: sexuality

This is also true in sexuality. 

We often think of sex as a give and take, a compromise, letting our partner have some things they want sometimes and other times what we want- in terms of sex acts, frequency, etc.

 But if we think of sexuality in terms of connecting with each other, these compromises become much more than compromises.  They become love and exploration of not just bodies, but souls.  We so often consider our differences in desire to be a problem.  The reality is the way we work through our differences sexually with our  partner allows us to grow both individually and as a partnership.

  God did not intend for our sexual drives to match up.  We know that because almost no couple’s sexual desires do.  So, that must be His intention. 

Yet, God also desires our happiness and our loyalty and fidelity to Him and our partner.  So, He has a plan for us to navigate this successfully.  That doesn’t mean it will be easy. 

David Schnarch talks about the concept of differentiation- something necessary in many areas of life, but something we are pretty regularly confronted with in long term monogamous sexual relationships.  It requires us to “hold onto ourselves,” to hold onto our wants and needs, even while at the same time acknowledging and at times seeing and allowing our partner’s wants and needs.  And this can also mean considering changing ours- but not to “give in,” but with the idea that we are willing to consider things from a new or different perspective of my partner, but still with the agency to take it or leave it.  And learning how to love each other through growth and differences.

Showing love vs. sharing love

Showing love vs. sharing love.

They kind of seem the same.

But I noticed that for me, the idea of showing love has me focused on the actions, and when I’m focused on the actions, I end up being more self focused. 

“Am I doing it right?”  “What do they think of me?” I’m concerned about how my “show” is being received.

When I think of sharing love, I am more thought and feeling focused. I’m thinking about the joy and blessing that someone else is in my life and just sharing and expressing that.  I am present with them in the moment instead of in my head about what happened in the past and what will happen in the future. 

The actions come more naturally and I am more present with the person and my genuine-ness comes across. 

What do you think?

Does this create a shift for you

The lost sheep, the woman with the ointment and other parables

In the parable of the lost sheep, it talks about how Christ, the shepherd, leaves the 99 and goes after the one sheep who had gone astray.  I didn't have too much problem with that until I read the end which says, in Matthew 18:13, " And if it so be that he find it, verily I say until you , he rejoiceth more of that sheep, than of the ninety and nine which went not astray."

What? Christ rejoices more over the one who went astray and came back than the ones who stayed where they were supposed to the whole time?  That doesn't seem right or fair.  I had a hard time with this. 

Similarly is the story in Luke 7 where the woman washed Christ's feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair and she anointed His feet with ointment.  In verse 47, Christ tells Simon about her, "Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little."  In vs 41-43, He also talks about the creditor who was owed 500 pence by one person and 50 by the other.  The creditor "frankly forgave them both". And Christ asked "which of them will love him most?"  Simon answered the one to whom he forgave most. 

Also the Prodigal Son- the father rejoiced and gave a party for the son who went astray and came home.  The other son was feeling like that was unfair. 

Or the parable of where they were paid the same at the end of the day regardless of how many hours they worked.

This is difficult when I am always seeing myself as the one who is always going the right way (not astray) and who doesn't need much forgiveness--because I am not doing wrong.  Christ knows that we are always in need of repentance and growth.  When we are seeing ourselves as being the good one, that is a sign that we are not seeing places where we need Christ.  When I see myself frustrated with the woman, the prodigal son, or the ONE sheep, that is a sign that I am missing the parts in myself that need repentance, forgiveness, that need Christ, that need growth.  When I identify too much with the prideful, I am stuck. 

But, why do some of us tend to identify with the 99, with the brother of the prodigal, or Simon, who judged the woman who anointed Jesus?

I think there are two main reasons.  First, as mentioned above, is pride.  We think that we are doing well. We see ourselves as doing all the right things, as somehow above others who are making mistakes.  We feel like we should be rewarded more for our better-ness.  It is natural to want to compare ourselves.  And we want to come out favorable in the comparison.  It gives us permission to believe in our goodness if we can see the ways that we are doing better than someone else.  However, we never have all the information, so our judgment in these areas is never complete.  What does it really mean anyway?  It feels like it means something, because most of us compare.

 Second we sometimes identify with them, in some ways because of scarcity.  We believe that someone else getting something good is diminishing or taking away our ability to receive something good.  We think that good things in one place are taking good from another place.  We think it is zero sum and there’s not enough for everyone. But, Jesus doesn't work in zero sum.  This belief can be dangerous, because if we have this scarcity or zero sum belief underneath, what happens when we get something good?  Then we feel like we either don't deserve it, or that we are bad because we are taking something from someone else.  It's not a good situation. 

That ends up being a lose-lose situation.

 When we can really see what we are believing and then challenge those beliefs, see if they really make sense, this is where we have our most power and the most agency.  We can believe things intentionally.  This intentional belief often doesn't negate the unconscious beliefs right away, but as we question them with curiosity, often, with time, we can break down those beliefs that don't make sense and don't serve us, and then replace those with beliefs that make more sense and that make our lives better. 

The weight of eternal life

“That Which Was Lost,” by Yongsung Kim, https://havenlight.com/

Henry B. Eyring said, “He is making you strong enough to carry the weight of eternal life.” 

I have never heard eternal life as being “weight.”  We so often talk of eternal life as being some sort of relief from this mortal life.  That we would lose some of the “weight” we have been carrying here on earth.

We often speak of the death of loved ones as a blessing to no longer be plagued with the pains of this earth. 

Eternal life is life with God, as God lives.  

How could God be our Father and be free from reponsibiity, weight, and empathetic pain?  

In the book of Jeremiah and in Moses (in the Pearl of Great Price in Latter-day Saint scripture), it tells of God weeping.  If we care about or love others, that always comes with pain. 
God loves us and cares about us, so He has pain when we experience pain.  That likely means that in eternal life with and like God, we will experience pain as well. 

However, if we are becoming “strong enough to carry the weight of eternal life,” perhaps we experience that pain in a different way. Perhaps our capacity to experience pain is greater and allows us to experience more and to do and be more for others. 

When others hurt us or life hurls difficulties, we often feel like those things never should have happened.  

Maybe.

But how does it feel to think something never should have happened to you?

It implies that you are damaged in some way. 

You are not. You are hurt, but not damaged.

God’s plan allows for opposition.  For free agency.  And those things bring pain and hurt into the world and to each of us. But, His plan also has a Savior who heals.  And we are not only healed, but we are stronger, better, and more capable than ever before. 

Eternal life might be a “weight.”  But it is a beautiful weight that carries with it compassion, empathy, and deep love.  

And eternal life is not alone.  We are with God. 

When I come to God, His healing has the power to not only make me as good as before I was hurt, but BETTER than before I was hurt or sinned.  

We don’t have to wait to experience Christ and God.  We are building our eternal life now.  God and Christ come to us and walk with us now and show us the way. 

You’ve got to get messy to grow.

Sulfuric acid is in some strong cleaners; it can be used to clean things.  However, it can also be very destructive, and things cannot grow in it. 

If we want to grow and create, we need to be willing to be messy and dirty instead of just trying to make everything clean.  

“Clean” can feel safe and sometimes more palatable.  

But at what price? 

It can be messy to listen to and even consider the viewpoints of those that just seem plain wrong to us.  

But, what if we listen and consider?  

It feels uncomfortable.  

It can feel like we are endorsing things we feel are wrong.

But does it have to mean we endorse just because we listen? 

I am striving to be better with discomfort and messiness, because what we can create from that might be beautiful. 

“Make me more worthy”

Last Sunday, I played my violin accompanying a vocalist singing "Savior, Redeemer of My Soul."  It was a challenging part that demanded a bit of practice on my part.  As I practiced, often a phrase from the end of the piece ran through my mind,

"Make me more worthy of thy love,

And fit me for the life above."

 Over the past decade or so, the idea of worthiness has been something I have often thought of and often felt somewhat discouraged by. 

Was Christ's love conditional?  How could that be?  He loves all and expects us to do the same.  If that is true, then what does worthiness really mean? 

As I thought of the words of this song, I realized that I am not asked to be worthy on my own.  I am asking Christ to make me worthy.  I attain worthiness through relation with Christ.  Not by living a mistake-less life. 

In Isaiah 1:18, I have often heard, "though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool."

That truly is powerful.  The Atonement of Christ has the power to make our sins and mistakes as if they had never happened.  But what is often left out is so important.  In the first part of the verse, before those words, it reads, "Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord." 

In order to cleanse our sins; in order to become worthy, we must come to Christ and work together. To take advantage of the power of the Atonement, we are invited into relationship with Christ. 

In the Book of Mormon in Mormon 9:27, the end of the verse reads, "come unto the Lord with all your heart, and work out your own salvation with fear and trembling before him."

Though in our culture, we often acknowledge we don't want to come into relationships of fear, when we look at what fear means in Old Testament and Book of Mormon times, it means something more like reverence, awe, respect, and obedience.  So Mormon more likely is saying coming in relationship to God, with reverence, respect, and willing to obey. 

 I realized the song was inviting me to come to Christ as I am, willing to partake of His atonement, and by doing, I am preparing myself to be able to hold and take advantage of all the blessings of Heaven, of God. 

Worthiness is a process of me becoming the best version of myself.  It is not about a checklist of things that make me more deserving. 

It is not what I deserve.  It is what I am becoming. 

Why the repetition and exactness in prayer and religion?

In religion, we are often taught to pray using certain physical positions and prayer language. 

Perhaps the some of the importance lies less in exactly the way we are speaking and forming our bodies and more that it is the same each time and that it is set apart for prayers. 

In this way, we signal to ourselves and others (in group prayers) that we are in the mode of praying.  Perhaps our ears hearing that language set apart and our bodies in the familiar position, get into the prayer mode more quickly and deeply. 

It is said that our ideas of worship and prayer come from Protestant culture.  This is what was going on, or the culture when the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was restored.  Perhaps if the church was restored somewhere else in another time, the prayer position and language might be different.

This idea is helpful when working with other languages and cultures.  Is is the consistency and set-apart nature that is more important than the actual wording or position?

And will this help when for example someone is unable to get out of bed and kneel?  Could they create their own set-apartness?

 In the Latter-day Saint temple, there are ordinances which must be said exactly.  However, the words in the ordinances have changed a number of times over the years that I have been doing ordinances in the temple.  Does this mean we have to go back and redo every ordinance done before the changes with the new changes?  I have not heard of that happening.  If not, what does that mean about why the words must be exact? 

 Knowing what to expect and doing something apart both in word and in action helps to put us in the proper frame of mind to experience the Divine and to receive revelation.  

Can God require obedience and love us unconditionally?

Why does God ask us to do certain things?  To be obedient?

Some suggest that this means that a God who requires this is a God who loves conditionally.

I believe God loves me unconditonally, but He also asks or even demands certain things of me.  How can it be both? 

In one of our Latter-day Saint scriptures, Moses 1:39, it says, "For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.”

If I look at everything that God does is to help His children to live with him eternally, does that change what I think of His laws and ordinances? 

God sees us and cares about us individually, but there is also an element of being saved together.  The last verse of the Old Testament, Malachi 4:6 says, “And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.”  In the Latter-day Saint temples, people are bound to each other forever.  Though it begins with family units, as people marry and have children who also marry, these family units extend endlessly until ideally, all are sealed or bound together.  

We are also commanded to meet together to worship, both at church and in the temple.  We need each other.  Connection is important both right now in this life, and with those who have passed on or are yet to come.  A personal connection is important both with one another and with God and the Savior.  

Our prophet, President Nelson often speaks of our covenants as “covenant relationship.”  

Being obedient and participating in ordinances gives us the building blocks and the binds for these covenant relationships with God, the Savior, and each other.  

It is also interesting to look at the word “man” in this scripture.  It refers to “humankind”, but leaving it in a singular form, I believe it means not just humankind, but each person individually.  We each have our own journey, but it also intertwines with the journeys of others.  And God’s plan provides the healing of Christ’s Atonement for the inevitable hurt that comes.  

Obedience and ordinances provide us with the growth and capability to receive all of God’s blessings and for us to enjoy each other amid our imperfections.  Just like we don’t send a preschooler to graduate school to learn, we are not able to learn all God wants us to learn or to hold all His blessings until we have extended our capacity.  I believe this is what His laws and ordinances teach us to do.  

Thinking vs. Doing

Why is it often more effective to just clean a drawer than spend time psyching yourself up to do a deep clean of your whole room?

There is something about involving our bodies that creates evidence, belief, and motivation at a stronger or deeper level. 

I can think positively about my ability to clean my room for awhile.  But thinking less and just getting up and cleaning one small thing seems to work better. 

My mind is powerful, but combining it with the actions of my body is even more powerful.

You’re Not Stuck With Your Emotions: Neuroscience on Feeling and Choice

I was just listening to a neuroscientist saying that not all cultures experience emotions in the same way.

What does this mean for us?

It means that we experience an emotion as sensations in our body, but then we interpret those sensations. It happens so quickly that we assume that it is all the same thing.  

Some are fairly consistent.  But many others are not. 

Those sensations don’t necessarily have to mean what we’ve always assumed they mean.  We have more choice in our emotions that we might think.

Did you know that often anxiety or nervousness feel the same in our bodies as excitement?  The difference is how we interpret it. 

Wow.

But once we have those interpreted emotions, we can’t just change them around.  We still need to allow and process them through our bodies.  

After we do that, then we can use awareness to catch an emotion at an earlier place.  

Sometimes we catch emotions when we realize things aren’t happening the way we want in our lives.  Then we figure out what we’ve been doing to cause those results. 

Then, what we were feeling when we did those things.  

And we give ourselves compassion at whatever point we catch ourselves.  And when we get things early enough, it is at that point that we can decide how we want to interpret those sensations in our bodies.  

It usually takes practice and help to notice and to create believable interpretations. 

So be patient.

It’s not about how many times you lose focus

I was just doing a guided meditation.

And he kept reminding us to return to the present.

But instead of feeling badly about losing our focus, he told us to give ourselves credit every time we noticed and returned back to focus.

I love that!

I happened to lose focus more that session, but instead of feeling disappointed, I felt like I was making progress.

In life, it’s not a problem how many times you get off track. (If you never get off track, it probably means you’re not moving, or you never even got in the track)

It’s how many times you get back on track. 

If you’re off track, let’s just do whatever step to get closer to being on track.

Just choose one thing.

Just one things can add up to be a pretty great life after awhile.

Just one thing = your way to the life you want and can have.

Breaking the Rules

We have rules, regulations, expectations, and all sorts of things that try to govern the way we act and even how we think.

I think it is natural for us to rebel against that. A part of us wants to have freedom and be empowered. And sometimes there are situations where it seems these don't even make sense. And then we feel upset, sometimes used, and weakened. We often just want to fight back against all the injustice. I have felt like this many times.

So, why do we have all these rules if they just frustrate us so much?

I have discovered that there is usually a reason for all the rules. Sometimes it is because we are being manipulated. But more often, I have discovered that there were some good reasons for the rules that I didn't completely understand. Even if there were exceptions, the rules helped keep me safe and/or helped me to understand situations before I had to have difficult experiences.

At the same time, in scripture, we are often taught that eventually, we will "have no more disposition to do evil". In my thinking, I would no longer want to break commandments. I felt like at some point I would attain that perfect goodness where I would just be above temptation and no longer have that "evil" or "natural man" part of myself that wanted to do bad things.

When we were young children, most of us had a rule not to touch a hot stove. When we were young, we didn't yet understand how we would get burned if we touched the stove, but our parents kept us away and told us we couldn't touch it because we would get burned. And we may not have really understood what getting burned meant. That's why there was a rule. That's why we had parents and other responsible people looking out for us.

What if works that way for other things too? At some point, we have a much better understanding of the damage a hot stove can do if we touch it. And we no longer want to touch the stove. What if, as we follow rules and expectations, we learn more things? And as we learn, experience, and understand things better, then we have no desire to do those things that may harm us. With better knowledge and understanding, the rules aren't as necessary. We no longer want to do things that harm us. It is not because we are achieving this "godly state" unless, by a "godly state", that means we are learning and growing. And perhaps it is.

And as we have learned the reasons for the rules and better understand the risks of not following them, it is then that we can make better decisions about exceptions to rules. But often we must practice obeying rules in order to understand when they might be broken.

In his book, "Falling Upward", Richard Rohr talks about two halves of life. He says the first half is when we are practicing obedience to rules and learning how that works. It gives us the foundation and container for when we are able to see things with more nuance and start to break rules at times and see the gray areas. But, we cannot make informed decisions about the second half of life without the foundation of the first half of life and gaining an understanding of the rules. If you don't have a good idea of why the rule was made, you may want to reconsider breaking it.

Understanding this has taken away much of the frustration with the rules and expectations I have encountered in my life. When I can confidently make my decisions about the rules with knowledge, I don't have to need others to agree. I can weigh the consequences and feel good about what I have decided.

Possibilities

If you’re always thinking about how everything is available to you, you’re probably actually doing a lot of nothing.

That’s because you can’t really move towards everything.  You can’t take action in everything.

It’s a step. First, you see the endless possibilities. But you can’t just stay in possibility.  You have to choose a direction from those possibilities and keep moving. 

Choosing a direction doesn’t mean you are stuck there either. Choosing a direction and getting moving sometimes leads us to another possibility we haven’t been aware of yet. 

But too often we get stuck in possibility.  It sometimes just seems amazing. Sometimes it’s just easier than moving. Other times it’s hard to let go of possibility to choose something

Just know, it’s often a tendency. It’s a “shiny” and glamorous distraction to “live in possibility”. 

It’s also a part of it. But it’s never the end. I love the saying, “God can’t steer a parked car.”

Possibilities widen our horizons so much, but let’s not get stuck in them.

Our Joseph Opportunities

Our Joseph Opportunities

Wednesday, March 9, 2022

7:13 PM

When studying the Old Testament as I was teaching seminary, I saw how many times Joseph had overwhelmingly difficult situations.  Situations that would easily be seen as taking him down for good.  Situations that many of us wouldn't see a way out of.   The interesting thing is that after each of these situations, Joseph not only survived, he thrived.  He came out better than he came in.  And these difficult and unfair situations gave him opportunities to grow and succeed that he would not have had if he had stayed in the same situations he was in. 

Young Joseph was envied and then sold into slavery by his brothers.  And then they told their father that Joseph had been killed by an animal, so Jacob didn't even know to look for him.  They sold him for only 20 pieces of silver.  Not even the price of a full slave, because he was young. 

However, Joseph ended up being placed or sold to the captain of the guard in Egypt, Potiphar.  Joseph worked hard and "the Lord was with Joseph" and Potiphar saw that the Lord blessed everything he touched, so that Potiphar ended up entrusting almost everything to Joseph's care and control.  This seemed to impress Potiphar's wife, so she tried to seduce him.  Multiple times.  When he refused her time and time again, she ended up accusing him of the very thing she was doing and Joseph was sent to prison.  For years.  Being sent to prison could be enough to discourage almost anyone.  But Joseph didn't give up.  He worked hard and ended up impressing the man in charge of the prison who, just like Potiphar, put Joseph in charge of everything in the prison.  And during these years in prison, he interpreted dreams through the power of the Lord for some other prisoners.  One of them got out of prison, but still didn't remember Joseph.  But somehow, when Pharoah had a dream that he didn't understand, the word got to Pharoah that Joseph could interpret dreams.  Joseph still hadn't given up. He had faith in God's giving him opportunities.  Even in the hopelessness of prison.  When Joseph interpreted Pharoah's dreams, Pharoah was impressed and put Joseph as second in charge in Egypt.

 After each big disappointment, Joseph had an even bigger opportunity --opportunities that would have been difficult to predict.  Joseph continued to have faith against all odds. 

How many times might we be missing our Joseph opportunities because we are discouraged and we don't see how things could work out?  What if we believed that everything was working together for our eternal good? How might we see things?  Would more opportunities be available just because we were more open to them?  Because we are looking for them? President Nelson recently said to "expect miracles." I believe most of us have more opportunities available to us than we think.  But many times we don’t take advantage of them because we can't even see them. 

This sometimes happens because of the wealth of information and choices available to us.  For us to process all of the information and choices available each day would cause overwhelm and overload.  Often, it is just not the best use of our mental energy.  So, our brain constrains or limits our choices.  Most of the time, this is efficient and good for us.  It allows us to spend time on the things that matter more. But sometimes this isn't the best.  And we don't even realize it because our brains think that they are helping us and keeping us safe and efficient. 

But, when we feel discouraged or restless, sometimes that is just an indication that we need to look closer at what we think our choices are.  We feel like we are victims and have nothing available to us that we want.  But when we are feeling like this, if we look closer, we often find that there are choices available to us that we hadn't before considered.  Even if they seem limited.  Joseph's choices weren't to get out of slavery or out of prison right away.  But he didn't just sit there and waste away or do the bare minimum.  He did his best and thrived wherever he was.  Even in what could seem like hopeless situations, he worked and did his part and allowed the Lord to be with him and to bless and inspire him.  How often when things look rough, do we just feel resigned and try to just endure?  Parts of us just shut down.  We aren't even taking advantage of our full opportunities and choice.  In large part, because we just don't even see the choices or opportunities.  When we mentally and emotionally give up, we aren't growing.  And we feel justified in that because in some situations, there just doesn't seem to be room to grow.  Perhaps we just start where we are. We start small.  Somewhere where we do have control.  I have heard the suggestion that we just start by making our bed. Something we have control over that we can do everyday. And when we have mastered that, we start cleaning and organizing and decorating our room or our living space.  There are small ways in which we have control and agency where we can make a difference.  Even if it's just a bit to ourselves.  And as we see our control and success in these little areas, we begin to see where we have more control and success as we branch out.  But to do it right, we have to start in the center, at ourselves.  If not, we are trying to control others and situations where we don't have control and then we feel in control of nothing, which causes frustration and discouragement.  So, when feeling frustration and discouragement, it's wise to look at where you really have control and what you are actually trying to control.  When those things are different, you are setting yourself up for failure and disappointment and that 's when it's wise to look at yourself and get serious with where you do have control.  Even if it is very small. In concentration camps, those who did the best were often those prisoners who focused on the things they did have control.  Sometimes if it was only what was going on in their own heads and hearts. 

A “virtuous” woman

I heard in church on Sunday, someone talked about In KJV, Proverbs 31:10, it reads, "Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies." 

The speaker talked about how this was an example of how valued women were. 

My mind went to the idea that I was often taught that a "virtuous woman" was one who dressed modestly and who didn't have sex before marriage.  I thought about how, in some cultures, a woman that wasn't "virtuous" or "sexually pure" was thought of as worthless and dirty and was hidden away in shame or in some cases, was even maimed or killed. 

I thought of how saying there was a "price" for a woman made it feel like a woman is a possession.

But a woman was speaking in a meeting of how this was such a compliment for women. 

Then, I thought, "what is virtue or being virtuous?" In virtue ethics, it talks about doing the right thing for the right reason.  In the Collins English Dictionary, it says virtue is "thinking and doing what is right and avoiding what is wrong."

So, our sexual behavior is only one component of virtue.  It is more right to say that virtue is being aligned with the things that we know or believe are right and true.  

So, what if I then understood this scripture to mean that a virtuous woman was one who bravely acted in accordance with her beliefs of truth and right?  What if I then understood her not to be a possession with a price tag, but a being above being able to have a price? 

I believe that God loves women.  God sees the value of women.  It is no less that that of a man.  It can be different, but no less.  But the world has interpreted and misstated God's words for so long and in so many ways that we often feel that God thinks less of women.  Or we feel that God's servants and church on the earth think less of women.  God has never thought less of women.  However, His servants who run His church on the earth, have often fallen short of correctly expressing God's love and ideas on this.  Some have done this with the evil intent of putting down and controlling women.  Some have done this more with misunderstanding.  But both have done great harm to women over the years.

While we want to correct the oppression and misunderstanding, the good news is that we don't have to wait for the church and its leaders to change in order for us to change and improve our relationship with God.  We can understand our place with God and have a relationship with Him no matter what church or leaders say and do.  Our relationship with God is not monitored by anyone else.  We get to have access to our God whenever and wherever we choose Him and need Him.  We can choose to interpret God's scripture and words in a way that assumes God's love and respect for women and for all.  When I believe that God loves me without condition and I decide to look at everything He says and does with that lens, it changes things.  It changes me.  It changes my relationship to God and Christ.

I can still work on changing the narrative in the world around me.  And I see value in that.  But I don't have to wait for that to change me.

We can work on changing you. In only the ways that feel good to you.

BOTH can be TRUE

We assume so many things have to be this OR that. Black OR white. We think feeling, thinking or doing one thing eliminates us from feeling, thinking, or doing something else. There are lots of things we think cannot exist together.

I was reminded of this powerfully the other day when a saw a new mama post this, "I think it's OK not to like being a parent but still fiercely love your kids."

I would have never thought these things could go together. Isn’t it amazing that you don’t have to love parenting even most of the time to be able to love your kids. And love them fiercely.

It is just so freeing to just read that and realize BOTH CAN BE TRUE. We don't have to feel guilty. We don't have to feel like we're not enough. We are more complex than we had imagined.

I wonder what else can both be true.

Goals: progress, not perfection

Recently I’ve made some short term goals that I haven’t reached.

Sometimes I feel like that’s OK.  I am learning how to do better.  I am learning how to fail better.

But sometimes it just doesn’t feel good.  I start to wonder if I will ever be able to achieve what I want.

I started thinking how in the scriptures, Christ says “be ye therefore perfect.”  I know I will never be perfect in this mortal life.  But He still tells me that and wants me to keep trying. Even when it doesn’t feel good.

One of my exercise instructors likes to say, “progress, not perfection”. 

And perhaps the progress we make while we are reaching for perfection may be even more important than the perfection itself. 

How do you honor your progress when you fall short of perfection or your goal?

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Get headaches?

I woke up yesterday with a headache.

This happens from time to time, and I usually end up taking medication before it gets worse and it becomes difficult to function.

Since it was early, I laid in bed and just felt and allowed my headache.  

I didn’t fight it.  I didn’t wish it wasn’t there. 

I told myself I was paying attention to my pain right now, but I could take medicine at any point when I finished listening.

During this, I discovered some negative thoughts I had been thinking about myself and my life.  And as I discovered this and was just accepting of myself, I felt muscles that I didn’t even realize were tense, begin to relax.  The pain in my head started to dissipate.

I still had background pain and pressure in my head throughout the day, but it was minimal and I never felt it enough to take the medication.

This is how we start to work WITH our body.

This is how pain can work FOR us.  It is often a messenger.  

And it just screams louder when we don’t listen.

The life of your dreams

It should feel exciting to think of the life of my dreams…

But when I don’t even know what my dreams are…

It just feels confusing.

Maybe a little scary. 

And like something might be wrong with me.

When you’ve been living your life for others’ dreams for so long, dreaming feels unfamiliar and almost wrong.

It’s not.

It’s not too late.

You do have dreams.

And you get to try some out.

Figuring it out feels a little uncomfortable at first, but then so amazing and expansive. 

Working on your mindset and wisdom in your body allows this part of you that has been put aside, to come out.  

Having dreams is part of how God helps us to do our best work in this world. They are good. We don’t have to assume they are selfish,.

Welcome dreams!