Write at the Heart

Fall kinda stresses me out. As soon as I see those first colors make their grand appearance, I’m half happy gushing over the season and half heartbroken thinking of its end. Alas, it always does, despite my pleadings! Goodbye Fall, goodbye. But... of course I know it’s not the end. The leaves will be back. They will! You know what else comes back? Hair. Today I tried to trim side bangs & in an unfortunate series of events, I accidentally cut WAY TOO MUCH.  So now I resemble my 4th grade self.  It’s fine. 🤦‍♀️ But guess what- hair grows back! It is not the end! “Has the end come yet? Behold I say unto you, Nay; and God had not ceased to be a God of miracles.” (Mormon 9:15) Those words stood out to me this week! Whatever happens in life, we can be assured it is NOT the end. Things may look bleak for awhile. But this is the 2nd act in a 3-act play. There is always hope! Rob Gardner’s album “The Lamb of God” is so touching, and I recently listened to “Here is Hope,” meant to ...

HOW did Mormon continue on? His “heart did begin to rejoice within” for them” (Mormon 2:12) only to have “sorrow...return unto me again.” (2:15)  He saw “willful” (1:16) and “open rebellion.” (2:25)  He saw “blood and carnage spread throughout... the land.” (2:8) He saw them “curse God,” “boast in their own strength,” and “swear before the heavens.” (3:9-10)  He saw “they delighted in the shedding of blood continually” (4:11) He saw them “struggle for their lives without calling upon that Being who created them.” (5:2) He “was without hope” for them. (5:2) Oh, my heart just aches for Mormon! What more could he do for them? To know “they were once a delightsome people, and they had Christ for their shepherd” (5:17) no wonder his soul was “rent with anguish,” crying, “O ye fair ones, how could ye have rejected that Jesus, who stood with open arms to receive you!” (6:16-17) How could he continue on? How could he move forward amidst so much sorrow? How do WE do this, too? If ...

Years ago my son flushed some toys down the toilet. We called the best repairman we knew! My dad. He snaked it, plunged it, put it in the tub to flush water through it, and a ball came out! He reinstalled the toilet. But to our chagrin, it STILL wouldn’t flush! What. He removed the toilet AGAIN, repeated everything he’d just done, and even stuck a wire hanger all the way through it! Nothin’! Well, we got a new toilet. 🤷‍♀️ THEN we brought the old toilet outside and with GREAT anticipation smashed it with a hammer! And wouldn’t you know, in the S-curve was a small, seemingly insignificant plastic orange! That little clogged orange had completely destroyed the functionality of the toilet! I realize comparing the flow of a toilet to the spirit in our lives is a little weird, but they’re both pretty important, and yes, I’m going there! In Mormon 1 we read about such evil and blasphemy that the disciples were taken away, miracles and healing ceased, all spiritual gifts were gone, and “the ...

One time during the sacrament my son accidentally grabbed two pieces of bread and one of the pieces fell on the floor. Before I could stop him, he snatched up the one on the ground and ate both pieces, then whispered to me, “Now I will remember Jesus’s body EVEN MORE.” 😂 And quite possibly get a disease... I love that Christ institutes the sacrament with the Nephites! I love what he teaches about it! I love the symbolism! Like baptism, it’s one of those things you could argue- well, why do I have to do it to show I follow Him? Like, He knows my heart, so is eating a piece of bread really necessary? I have a beautiful little book called “Covenant Keepers” by Wendy Watson Nelson, the wife of our dear prophet, and it gave me SO much understanding of covenants and ordinances & why we do these things! About the sacrament, she says,  “How would our experience with the sacrament change if we imagined the Savior to be the one blessing the bread and water— just as He did for His Twelve...

A few years ago my then 5-year-old was jumping on our brand new trampoline when suddenly I heard shrieking, “I BWOKE MY ARM!” My heart froze and I ran, really scared at what I’d see. What I saw left NO doubt- his arm was definitely broken! Gently placing his floppy arm onto a pillow while he cried in pain & terror, we raced to an urgent care, who told us to head directly to the hospital cause he was gonna need surgery! He’d broken it just above his elbow ALL the way across. About the worst arm break you could get.  After a lot of screaming, crying, bruising, swelling, an artery spasm, surgery with 3 pins put in, my brave boy was on the mend. The day finally came to get his cast off and I had my doubts. I’ve never broken a bone myself, so it seemed IMPOSSIBLE that his arm could go from that grotesque, limp thing I saw to a fully functional arm.  And yet- before my eyes was his healed arm! I winced as he moved it around, sure something would snap! But no- the bone had fused ...

  The phrase “Lift up your head” has been running through my mind all week. With their faith and their very lives at stake, Nephi was “exceedingly sorrowful” and “cried mightily to the Lord” 3 Ne 1:10,12) And then, a voice: “Lift up your head and be of good cheer; for behold, the time is at hand, and on this night shall the sign be given, and on the morrow come I into the world” (13) I wish I could see Nephi’s reaction! Did he shout for joy? Did he cry with gratitude? Did his heart race at the reality that the Savior was about to be born? Did he run to reassure the believers that everything would be all right? Did he think, I’ve been waiting my whole life for this! Did he say to himself, I KNEW IT! I KNEW He would come! We’ve all looked down in sorrow. We’ve all carried heavy burdens. Maybe it’s weakness, shame, guilt. Maybe we feel unloved. Doubt. Fear. Anger. Powerless. Disappointed. Stuck. Confused. Twisted inside out in this upside down world. Darkness. So many reasons to look ...

 Last night I was talking to my baby— my 6-year-old baby— and I was noticing how much he’s grown. And I told him, “Aw, you look SO grown up! You’re not my baby, you’re a little boy! You’re so handsome!” To which he matter-of-factly replied, “Yeah, but I still pick my nose.” 😂 Well, way to remind me he’s not THAT grown up yet...  It’s good to acknowledge how far we’ve come! But it’s also good to recognize the things we need to work on. I’m really good at recognizing what I need to work on.  In fact, one small self doubt often spirals into many and soon I’m feeling like a failure at EVERYTHING. I think Satan grabs at the smallest opportunities to dig at us, like when a kid fiddles with a tiny tear in their pants and it soon turns into a giant gaping hole and you have to throw those pants away (true story). He just finds the weakest link, the tiniest flaw, and then eats at you and eats at you until that hole gets bigger and bigger and you feel like the worst person ever. I ...

Last week while camping, I was hugging my daughter and felt a little bump on her shoulder. You know what I found? A TICK! Ahh!! I had never seen one in my entire life! After some SLIGHT panicking and some quick Googling, we found some tweezers. I then proceeded to pull that thing out of my daughter’s skin. It took three tries, but I got it! Now we just have to wait and see if she develops any symptoms of Lyme disease in the next 30 days. So that’s great. I think of that tick and find it interesting my daughter didn’t even feel it. It was sucking her blood, FEEDING on her, and yet, she had NO idea. How lucky that I happened to feel it! Otherwise, it could have fed on her for up to 10 days! Reading about ticks just creeps me out. They’re incredibly resilient. And they do something called “questing,” where they basically lie in wait, clinging to leaves and grass with their back legs while stretching out their front legs, just waiting to grab onto a host! AND their saliva also has anti-inf...

We found some natural sandstone water slides during our camping trip this weekend. What an adrenaline rush! But, as they say, it’s all fun and games until someone dislocates a finger. My husband came out of the water and really freaked the kids out with his crooked, bloody finger. OH, AND ME. It was pretty grotesque. After an x-ray determined it was NOT broken (whew), the doctor took his finger and gave it a nice, big YANK. And boom, just like that, his crooked finger was made straight. What’s funny is his pain level was actually pretty tolerable BEFORE the yanking of the finger. BUT- it was inevitable... It had to be fixed. To realign the bone, to promote function, to bring healing, Great pain was required. We might think we are “okay.” The pain is manageable. Maybe we don’t even need a doctor? We can live with it. But if nothing is done, proper healing cannot take place. Sometimes fixing what is broken is an EXCRUCIATING process. But in the whole scheme of things, one excruciating mo...

I made peach freezer jam yesterday, and I gotta say, I am feeling pret-ty darn proud of myself! It turned out amazing! Just call me Suzy Homemaker! While I know freezer jam is actually kinda easy, it IS time consuming. The peeling, pitting, lots and lots of stirring, waiting, more stirring, more waiting. My 8-year-old was super excited to help me, and she did some great stirring in the beginning, but after so much she got bored and gave up. But then came the reward for my efforts- delicious jam! I think about the process it took for those peaches to become jam, and I think about Alma the Younger’s amazing conversion. His story is one of my favorites!! I love any story where someone chooses to completely change for the better. “And oh, what joy, and what marvelous light I did behold; yea, my soul was filled with joy as exceeding as was my pain! Yea, I say unto you, my son, that there could be nothing so exquisite and so bitter as were my pains. Yea, and again I say unto you, my son, tha...