greaterthansparrows

 This is our new little ladybug, on day one.....  ... and getting ready to go home.  Mother and baby are doing fine, nursing is going well, and Grammy has happily been laundry lady and baby-burper today.  New big brother madly bounced balls with me yesterday, and had no interest today, but he has decided that he knows who I am and it's good. Isn't she a cutie?  I think she looks like her mother.  They change so fast, we will have to watch and see.  She will most of all be herself, of course.  Welcome to the world, little one.

Once upon a time, there was a kind master gardener who offered us a little baby apple tree for the front yard.  It was planted and tended, and we anticipated delicious apples , knowing that it would have to grow at least a year or two before it could bear fruit. Then one day in its second season, a foolish boy from down the block decided to play Jack-be-nimble with our treasured little tree.  Leaping as tall as he could, he utterly failed to clear the top of it; in fact he broke it in two, leaving the upper portion, which included every tender branch it had, dangling by a thin strip to the ground.  The householder was very angry, and almost breathed out fire when he returned home that night and discovered what had been done.  This little tree had been a gift, and its apples would be truly used for pies, cakes, and applesauce through the years to come.  Now it was destroyed through a childish, thoughtless impulse. However, on careful inspection, th...

Meet Alex with us at the temple, after we were done yesterday.  We had such a blessed day!  The Spirit was truly with Alex and each of us from the ward who were able to come on a Wednesday afternoon.  My husband and I have had the privilege for more than five years now to teach those who are preparing for that sacred opportunity, to go to the House of the Lord, to be instructed and covenant with Him to so live that they may receive all the blessings of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and be worthy to return to our Father in Heaven.  He has promised that we may gain all that He has if we will be His people and follow Him to be our God. Alex had come several times to the temple to do baptisms on behalf of the dead, and felt the spirit there, and the spirit of the work.  He has anxiously awaited the opportunity to, as he put it, "go upstairs," to the "whole temple" for the full ordinances, and he was rejoicing that the day had come.  He said to me at the end t...

I didn't get anything posted yesterday, I think I was in a mental state of decompression from giving a fireside Sunday night for the youth.  They requested the subject of the Last Days, such a simple subject (not!) and the bishop requested us.  Then there was the phone call earlier in the weekend...I am taking off! Unexpectedly, I am going to be able to go be with my daughter to help out, now that the doctor has decided to induce delivery of her little girl on Thursday.  I will leave on Saturday and stay for a little over a week.  There were some seats available still sorta cheap, because BYU graduation is done, and public school isn't out yet, so there was a lull in demand and suddenly having a set date worked out. Before I go, I have to teach a major topic Wednesday, clean out the fridge so that my beloved won't go looking for dinner and find things that aren't food anymore, go to the temple with a dear brother who is going for his first time, see the chiropr...

My mother's parents were a big part of our lives growing up, because they were nearby.  As a U.S. senator, my grandfather was in Washington, D.C. when the Congress was in session, and in Utah when it was in recess. They had a very nice apartment in Washington for the time, not large by present standards but in a very good building.  They lived in the Berkshire Apartments on Massachusetts Avenue, on the 3rd floor. When they were in town, we had Sunday dinners with them.  Now, as an adult, I imagine we missed some weeks (obviously if anyone was sick), but that was the normal plan in my memory.  We lived in the Silver Spring Ward and they were in Chevy Chase, so we would not see them at church, until 1962.  Then we returned home from our road trip to the Seattle World's Fair and moved into our new house just in time for me to start the 4th grade.  (My parents lived in that house for 44 years, until they gave it up for a Salt Lake City condo.)  That move...

Our unique understanding of the fall of Adam and Eve is looked at here .  If Adam and Eve were actual people, and the Garden of Eden an actual place, then what difference does it make whether this is the 'real' plan or the fallback plan?  Does it really matter to our lives? I submit that it does.  If Adam and Eve ruined the bliss that God intended for us, then we are a continuing disappointment to Him.  Every one of us is born into a condition which should have been a better one.  If that were the case, maybe we would ask why he didn't decide to start over, and pick someone else.  When all the people on the earth were so wicked that he saved only one family from the flood, couldn't he have taken that kind of action at the very beginning and given the human race another try at paradise? If the hope and plan of God was that we would live peaceably in this perfect-forever place, then we would have had all we needed.  We would have been all we could be...

The first decision of my life that I really, seriously prayed over was where I should go to college.  I was not planning on going to BYU.  We had 40 students from our ward at BYU the year I didn't go there, from freshmen to graduate students,and I had never planned on being one of them.  I wasn't going to school to get married, I was going to get an education. (All of you who know how that turned out, I can hear you snickering.)  I knew that wasn't totally fair, but BYU just didn't grab me. I realized that this decision could set the course of my future life.  I would have a good experience, or not, I would potentially meet someone to marry--I did hope to get married, honest, but figured it would be a while--I would place myself in a good pathway for my future, or it could be a disaster.  Who could predict for sure?  Only the Lord knew what might lie ahead, and I was confident that he would guide me. My mother graduated from Wellesley in Massachus...

Sometimes you just luck out. Making plans to go off to college, I learned about something called the CLEP test, from the people who bring you the SAT's.  Those initials stand for College Level Examination Program, and the idea is to get credit by examination for what you already know.  The University of Utah accepted and gave credit for scores on that test, so it seemed a great idea. My high school had an honors track, but it was not a formal AP program or anything else that would be instantly recognized outside of the school district--no automatic credits there.  So I signed up to take the test(s). Where I lucked out was that I signed up to take the test at a local university in August, before I left home.  The other choice was to take it in Salt Lake in October.  It turns out that the university gave credit for certain minimum scores, but deducted the credit hours you had completed or were enrolled in before the test date, making the logical assumption th...

We have very dear friends who take in medically fragile foster children.  This began after they had a child themselves with birth injuries and multiple handicaps, and were forced to become experts.  As they have brought home other people's children with medical syndromes, brain damage, and very serious conditions, the common reactions of others (me included) are: one, admiration, and two, "I could never do what you're doing." Her response?  You become able to do it because it's what you have to do.  Most things are like that. They don't live across the street anymore, or in our ward.  They live in another city a couple of hours away, and I hate the distance, but we had a chance to see them last weekend when they were in town for family business. At the moment, they have a baby in their care.  She is eight months old and has several things wrong with her, a cluster of birth defects.  She is so tiny that she looks like she's about three, at most fo...

Ellen White, the origin person for the Seventh-day Adventists said, "The relationship between God and each soul should be as distinct and as full as if that soul were the only one to share his watchcare, the only one for whom He gave His Beloved Son."  I talked about what that means in terms of our worth to him in his infinite love, here. I want to talk about what it means as a relationship between God and us as his children. Patricia Holland gave the most wonderful talk several years ago.  She said that we are supposed to not just be with God, but be like Him.  She asked, how can we be like him without spending time with him? How do we spend time with him?  There are two basic ways: through immersing ourselves in the scriptures, and through prayer.  Each is worth several sermons by itself.  The help of the Holy Ghost is our teacher and companion in both.  Reading the scriptures brings us the experiences of others as they have been given truth an...

Spring around here is sometimes not very definite.  When we moved here, I didn't think the spring and fall seasons were definitive at all compared to the east coast. This year, when the trees started to bloom and then got snowed on, was a little odd.  Some years we don't even get snow--there's always some farther north, but the bay here in Tacoma shelters the temperature and the topography runs the storm fronts in from the north, curving along the east foothills, and than sweeps them around to the south of us.  This year we have had several snowstorms. But ever since we moved into our house in 1980, Reverend Price's majestic magnolia tree across the street has been one of the great pleasures of spring.  It was probably 12 feet high, and it bloomed faithfully every spring before other trees and bushes made up their minds.  Last fall, because it was so high and spreading out so broadly that he felt it was threatening the house roof, he had someone come and cut a...

A sister in Relief Society said that she had a moment, lining out her Seminary materials last week, where she just suddenly felt like she missed her Heavenly Father so much.  We used to be with him, we are taught; but for this moment her heart was open and longing for that nearness, that presence, that she used to know.  She really knew, not as a precept, but as truth. We lived in a perfect place with such complete love and light, that we can scarce imagine it now.  Our spirit selves remember, and every so often, that feeling wells up inside us that we can't put words to.  Paul speaks of "groanings that cannot be uttered" and the footnote says the Greek is "sighings." (Romans 8:26) He is describing those moments when the Spirit draws our hearts upward to God in a state where there are no words.  Language sometimes just isn't adequate. That yearning to be with our Father again, though it may reach toward the eventual day of our return, also pulls us to b...

Our class lesson for Easter Sunday was from the teachings of President George Albert Smith on the immortality of the soul.  One portion of his testimony: When Jesus was raised from the dead He became the first fruits of the resurrection. The spirit begotten of the Father (the intelligent part of His soul) reinhabited His earthly tabernacle which had been purified, and He became a glorified celestial being, and took His place, on the right hand of the Father, as one of the Godhead. He had power to overcome death because He had complied with all the laws of His Father governing it; and having subdued death he turned the key whereby all mankind may be resurrected, and all may be glorified also by obeying His teachings, which are so simple that all may comply if they will. He taught that "we are living eternal lives" now--mortality is a part of the story arc of our progression; our eternity does not begin after this life.  We are already in the process of it, it bega...

[Ed. to correct the story--if you read this the first day, it wasn't Walter Reed, he wasn't on his way home from Europe, but almost on his way to go there. My father set it straight.] My sister Carolyn sent out a request on Wednesday for stories from all of us about the family cars and trips, and memories of them, from our childhood--we were soon burning up the ether with emails, chiming in about this time and that time, correcting each other and then determining that someone was right after all, or that no one was sure, matching up the timelines and learning what different perspectives we had at the same events because of our differing ages.  Carolyn was preparing some project for her kids, and we had a ball getting into this and going beyond.  It seems to have run its course for the moment, three days of email chains covered a lot of ground. One of the things that came up was memories of our paternal grandfather, and what times we saw him.  He died just after my you...

Ere you left your room this morning, did you think to pray?...hymn # 140 BYU shifted its semester schedule the year I started college.  I did not go to BYU, but it had an impact nonetheless because it changed the whole find-a-ride picture.  Previously, BYU's schedule had mirrored the local public schools: they started in later September, with Christmas break followed by a return for the end of term and finals, and then the second semester would get out Memorial Day.  The point is, now they were starting the end of August, with freshman orientation, class registration, and other preliminary programs earlier than that.  The school year would end by May 1.  As someone who needed to catch a ride across the country--something not hard to do with the numbers of BYU students heading out from the D.C. area--it left my folks scrambling for options when the calendar didn't match up. Because-- I was going to be a student at the University of Utah in Salt Lake, on a sc...

I was talking to a friend, who was concerned about some problems in her family; she was coming to the conclusion that she and her husband could and should step in and offer help. She gave a rueful smile and said that once, years ago, she watched as a niece, just a teenager, was being sucked into one bad situation after another, and her relationship with her mother was disintegrating into a destructive vicious cycle.  She was hanging out with a bad crowd, starting to do some drugs, that kind of thing, but she was not yet at a tipping point where the rebellion outran all her caution.  However, my friend "Jane," who had kids of her own, loved her and knew that if something didn't change, it could lead to tragedy. The girl's mother could not see past the power struggle to recognize the hurting child, and every attempt to control her daughter only drove her farther away.  Her aunt worried that if it came to the point of either being thrown out or stomping off and runni...

I was preparing a lesson in January, and the list of teacher resources included a talk by one of the General Authorities listed in CR (Conference Reports) October 1978.  Now, I know full well that CR means the following month, May for April Conference, or November for October Conference, as to the Ensign issues where the conference talks are printed.  I've been making that shift for a long time. (In my defense, I have found that if you go back far enough, some conference talks are scattered in various issues of The Improvement Era , which was the earlier Church magazine predating the Ensign ; however, those are in years that are too early to be available on lds.org, which is where I was looking.) But on this particular day, I looked at that designation on my list and called up the October Ensign, stubbornly searching for Brother Packer, who was not there.  I found an article which gave me valuable historical background and then paused to read an article called "Berlin...

The first contraction hit as we pulled out of the driveway for a drive-in movie.  Not sure, of course, if that was really what was happening, we went anyway.  It was soon clear that I was in labor, and I asked him to time the contractions.  As they became more definite, I asked him if they were getting closer together. "Am I supposed to be keeping track?"  AACK!! Yes!  Haven't you watched enough movies or TV shows to understand that's part of your job in this situation? To be fair, I had delivered the first baby without him, and they tried to induce the second, gave up, sent him home, and then called him back when I went into natural labor before morning.  So this was the third child, but the first time he had played the normal role of monitor.  I got to call the hospital from the pay phone at the theater, and then the friends who were taking the two little girls. Then we left. We never did see the end of that movie. Yesterday --Saturday-- was my...