Windows

Windows sales people have taken up residence in my front yard.

They have been out there for about 45 minutes, just talking in my driveway.

I was supposed to leave for work, but I don't want to leave the girls alone with weirdos in the street.

(BTW, they did approach the door.

I informed them that we are renting the property and they left...

still in the driveway, but they left the doorstep.)

Is it a sad commentary on my life when this is the most interesting thing that is happening this afternoon???

Not to mention incredibly ironic that I am watching them through my large picture window in my living room???

Perhaps I've gone a bit too far...

I always knew this day would come...

I would look around the Sunday evening dinner table and see myself as through my mother's eyes... only, the 11 year old me would be my daughter.

Tonight... it happened.

Yesterday's discovery of the lies told to a teacher came back to haunt my dear little Hailey. After reporting a proper practicing schedule to her band teacher, we came to find that she was delinquent... a lot.

I found myself thinking a lot about repentance since I discovered the problem. I wanted to teach my daughter a principle of truth, and encourage her to change her behavior. I didn't want to be mad.

Repentance is one of the first principles of the gospel and is
essential to our temporal and eternal happiness.
It is much more than just acknowledging wrongdoings.
It is a change of mind and heart that gives us a fresh view about God, about ourselves, and about the world.
It includes turning away from sin and
turning to God for forgiveness.
It is motivated by love for God
and the sincere desire to obey His commandments.

Although it hardly seems fair, a certain amount of repentance needs to take place for Hailey to become a better person. There were steps that she needed to take.

1) Acknowledge the wrong - Hailey needed to identify that she had done something wrong. She needed to feel sorrow for her choice, and a desire to fix the situation. Her lack of practicing was an issue, but more important was her bearing false witness. She lied... We needed to fix that.

2) Apologize and Ask for Forgiveness - Once she realized that we needed to fix the problem, she had to go about telling the teacher she was sorry. I sent an e-mail to the teacher, informing her that we had found the discrepancy in the practice times. I also informed Hailey that it was her responsibility to say she was sorry to her teacher.

3) Right the wrong - Hailey will now be practicing every morning: Monday-Friday at 6:30am, Saturdays at 7:30am and Sundays at 9am, so that mom can supervise proper practicing procedure. This will take place until all claimed practice time is made up. We also explained to Hailey that her grade may be affected because of the information I sent to her teacher. There are always consequences.

4) Hailey will need to go to her Heavenly Father and ask for forgiveness as well. Unfortunately, this is not something I can help her with. No amount of discipline on my part can help her see her way through this process. The best I can hope for is that she understands how much her Heavenly Father loves her, and that he wants for her to be honest. He wants her to be happy, and to tell the truth. This can only be accomplished when she understands that she has made a mistake and learns from it, and

5) Never does it again. The most vital of the repentance process, we are to change our heart so we have no more desire to perform the wrong.

As a parent, it was very hard for me to go through this process with her tonight. I'm not looking forward to the daily french horn practicing, but, as her mother, I will sit by her and support her.

DJ told me not to use the mom-ism comment "This hurts me more than it hurts you." I never really believed it until tonight, but I didn't say it. I watched my daughter weep. She felt so bad. My heart yearned to forgive her all, but I knew that it was the better part to let her go through this, and to stand by her side.

In Mosiah 4:3 it says:

And it came to pass that after they had spoken these words
the Spirit of the Lord came upon them,
and they were filled with joy,
having received a remission of their sins,
and having peace of conscience,
because of the exceeding faith
which they had in Jesus Christ...

I am so grateful for the opportunity I have to repent of my wrong-doings, and I am so blessed that the Atonement of Jesus Christ is there for my children, and for me. I know that joy can truly come when we follow the Savior.

Middle of the night...

In my experience, the times we are needed the most are most likely the times that we are most inconvenienced. Fortunately, last night was not one of those times.

My friend texted me at work asking if I could help her with her car. Seems that the lock on the door (meaning that only one door of the 5 on the car accepts a regular key to open it) was broken and the key would not turn. Adding insult to injury, the fobs (the little mechanical doo-hickeys attached to the key ring that electronically open the doors) have stopped working, even with the batteries replaced. As this is their only car, this is quite a problem. Fortunately for her, I really have nothing better to do at 11PM, immediately following a work shift, so I drove over to help her out.

I picked her up at her home, and drove her to her car, parked on a side street, in front of her husband's boss' house. Sure enough, the car won't open. I ask her if she has roadside assistance.

Digression:
Unlocking your car door if you lock the keys inside = $50.
Getting a tow truck to move your car anywhere = minimum $80 (if you are lucky).
Paying $3 a month for roadside assistance to take care of this for you = PRICELESS!!!!!

Sure enough, her warranty with her automobile's manufacturer covered just such an emergency, so we called them. They told us it was going to be an hour before they could get a tow truck to the car.

My diabetes SCREAMED at me. I needed protein. So we drove a few blocks to D'Leon's. For those of you Lincolnites who have never had D'Leons... The 24 hour fast food mexican restraunts are wonderful. For just over $4 I received a LARGE chicken burrito, of which I could only eat half. The other half will be lunch today. (I'm so excited!). We drove back over to the boss' house to wait for the tow truck, and the boss came out and asked us to park in his driveway so we didn't look like we were casing the neighborhood. (Don't I just come off as the burglary type???) We are sitting in the driveway, and I open my burrito wrapper, and some of the burrito juice dumps onto my shirt. The consistancy, color, and texture greatly resembled what I'm sure the burrito would have looked like digested in reverse, and we laughed and laughed.

Thus is the story of my facebook status....

don`t mind me... I`m just sitting in your driveway in my car at midnight wiping what appears to be puke off my shirt.

Side note - The two truck arrived, and was able to open the car door, after picking the lock with one of those long metal things. It was quite the adventure!!!

Moral of the story: If you are locked out of your car in the middle of the night, I can probably be reached to give you a warm place to sit... Just don't let me open my D'Leon's burrito without covering myself in napkins.

Righteous Women... A Call to Arms

The onslaught of e-mails has increased. Blogs tirade regularly of dissatisfaction. People, if they can find something to complain about, will.

I say - "Thumper... what did you father

tell you just this morning?"

"If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all."

Nonetheless, sometimes we find ourselves in a position where we need to stop another from affecting us negatively, and still do it positively.

I found myself in just such this situation recently. A self-professed Latter-day Saint Christian woman with whom I am associated recently sent me a mass e-mail. She does this pretty regularly, and I, typically, ignore her emails, but this time it really got to me. The first paragraph, a comment on the article she forwarded, was scathing. Among other things, she referred to the President of the United States as evil, a racist, and that he is "filled with hate." She then included a forwarded e-mail claiming to be written by an American historian. She testified that the comments were along the same lines as she was thinking.

Allow me to interject briefly... This blog is not about politics. For those of you that know me, I'm not a fan of politics, and so I'm not writing about that. I am writing to illustrate methods of communication.

I don't trust a lot of what I read in mass mailings. When I check the facts (usually at snopes.com) I find that the email is a myth, and not worth my time. I reviewed the article she forwarded and found it to be a fallacy. At this point, I knew that perhaps this individual needed to be reminded of her worth. To refer to the President as she did, and then propagate the mis-information she received, without checking her facts, frightened me.

I was afraid for her, that she could hold so much hate.

How to proceed, and still follow the credo left by Thumper's father... hmmm... I responded to her e-mail. Please, dear reader, tell me what you think of my response. My goal was to be patient, understanding, but request a bit more respect when she sends things to me.

I received your mass e-mail today, and I would like to respectfully request that unless you have verified your facts, please do not forward me political articles. If if you have verified the facts, please attach the proof to the e-mail. That being said, to further give you some light and knowledge on the e-mail you forwarded to me, I went to a website called snopes.com. The purpose of this website is to factually prove or debunk internet "rumors." I suggest you take the time to read this link I am sending you, in the hopes that you will understand why I made this request.

In the Articles of Faith it says that "We believe in being subject to kings, PRESIDENTS, rulers and magistrates in obeying, honoring and sustaining the law." Whether or not you approve of President Obama is your choice, however, to force your opinions that he is evil upon me, unsolicited, is not welcome or okay. President Obama is still a child of God, and did, in the pre-mortal world make a decision to follow the Savior, just as you and I did. If you choose not to think of him as a child of God, just remember the promises and covenants you have made, and the commandments from the Savior to “Love thy neighbor as thyself” and then remember who Christ defined as our neighbors from the parable of the Good Samaritan.

That being said, and because, by sending this e-mail you solicited my response, please consider my opinion on President Obama. I do not believe that he is evil. I believe that he is governing the country to the best of HIS ability. My concern with Mr. Obama is that he is not going to the Lord for their instruction about what should happen in this country. That does not make him evil; it just makes him not relying on the arm of the Lord. The only way he is going to change his attitudes is if we, as an American public, go to him and force the changes through the APPROPRIATE POLITICAL PROCESSES. We write letters and e-mails to our leaders about specific issues and choices, not involving character. We can’t control how they behave; we can control how they vote IN OUR BEHALF.

Please understand that I do not mean any disrespect, and that is why I share these things with you. We need to respect our leaders, and check our facts, before we go accusing people of things of which they may or may not be guilty.

President Spencer W. Kimball gave a speech in 1979, that, in recent months, I have heard quoted on many occassions. I'd like to quote part of it now.

How special it is for Latter-day Saint women to be given the lofty assignments they have been given by our Father in Heaven, especially those of you who have been privileged to be born in this part of this last dispensation. Let other women pursue heedlessly … their selfish interests. You can be a much needed force for love and truth and righteousness on this planet. …

… My dear sisters, may I suggest to you something that has not been said before or at least in quite this way. Much of the major growth that is coming to the Church in the last days will come because

Many of the good women of the world

(in whom there is often such an inner sense of spirituality)

will be drawn to the Church in large numbers.

This will happen to the degree that

the women of the Church reflect

righteousness and articulateness in their lives

and to the degree that

the women of the Church are seen as

distinct and different—in happy ways—

from the women of the world.

… Thus it will be that female exemplars of the Church will be a significant force in both the numerical and the spiritual growth of the Church in the last days. …

We love you sisters. We have confidence in you. We rejoice in your devotion. We are greatly heartened by your presence … in this portion of this dispensation wherein your talents and spiritual strength are so desperately needed.. Ensign, Nov. 1979, 103–4

President Kimball stipulated that we need to be righteous, articulate, distinct and different in happy ways. We need to stand for the good there is in this world. That will separate us from the others, and they will be drawn to us because of the difference.

Sisters, my call today is for us to be more righteous, articulate, distinct, different and happy. When the time comes for us to say something... let it be nice... let it be positive... let it be uplifting, and let us be known as a sisterhood that looks for the best, and welcomes with open arms. If changes must be made, let us please look for the way to adjust without offense, relying on the example of the Savior. We are all chidlren of our Heavenly Father, and deserve that respect. Remember...

We can not like choices that are made,
but we can still love the person.

Jesus did... and so can we.