The Rest of the Story

You may be interested to know the expanded story and another miracle that stemmed from the miracle that took place in the Temple Saturday. It confirmed to me that God loves all his children and rarely is any blessing isolated to one individual. Blessings are like vines. They spread themselves far and wide getting all into so many others' lives. God definitely was the creator of logistics. Imagine trying to coordinate everything to happen at the right time, all the time?

Well, I found out Sunday that in helping with the ordinance I had been miraculously prepared to participate in I was taking the place of another worker that had come in specifically to do the part I did. When he had been asked if I could take his place he graciously agreed. Come to find out, he left a while after the ordinance started.

His wife had an emergency, I am not sure what, and he needed to go help her. If he had been doing the part I was doing it would have been, first, hard to get a hold of him and, second, it could have cause a bit of distribution and headache in the ordinance not only to switch him out, but to even find someone able to take his place.

Now, tell me that was not God's own peculiar timing! Maybe one day I will have that kind of timing when it comes to posting, but patience until then, please, because you just never know when I will post again. 

Positively Real

Dr. Caroline Leaf says, among a multitude of magnificent things, our brains are naturally wired to praise God and have hold a constant dialogue with Him. How often do the scriptures teach us to "pray always" (Luke 21:36) and "look unto [Him] in every thought" (D&C 6:36)? Through 25 years of research and study Dr. Leaf found that when we do this the activity in our brains increases and our intelligence improves. Imagine that!

In addition to Dr. Leaf there have been many other doctors, prophets, personal mentors, and other respected individuals that have helped me understand the importance of gratitude and positive thinking. As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints we even make solemn covenants to always remember Christ. That is pretty all inclusive and unmistakably clear.

Now, anyone can sit down, philosophize, theorize, and speculate on all this, but what I want to share is the reality of it. Like the dutiful human I am, I have not always tried to be positive or believe in my own goodness and the perfection of God's plan for me. However, inspired by my study of Faith in Christ and the findings of Dr. Leaf, combined with what I learned from siblings learning the same truths, I have been putting principles into practice.

Every Saturday morning I work in the Salt Lake Temple and there are many things to remember and memorize. This last Saturday was my last day there - I am going back home to Idaho this week - and I still had not finished memorizing the last major presentation I had personally made a goal to learn. Early on in the day I tried to pass it off with my trainer and made a cute mess of the whole thing. This is where my maturing positivity had to kick in; thankfully I chose to be thankful.

With a sense of gratitude I went back later to study it for an an hour or so, but I took a different approach. In my mind I kept praising God and thanking Him for being able to His work in His holy house. I thanked Him for enabling me to memorize everything. I continually told myself I already had it memorized. I reminded myself over and over that I can, I am capable, I love, I feel, I understand, etc. (that thought pattern comes from Dr. David Pesek) and any other positive thing I could tell God. My approach was to tell myself I am already where I want to be and be thankful for it.

Through the grace of God manifest in expanded capacity, miracles, and help from fellow Temple workers I passed the part I wanted to learn within a few hours of failing it and was able to use it at the end of the day. How that happened is another miracle in and of itself.

As I worked through this whole experience I was accompanied by an incredible sense of power. Whenever I drew my mind back to positive thoughts and the Savior I felt my mind and body relax. Strength, confidence, and determination would flow in like a deep river washing away the darkness of doubt and fear. The rest of the day I was filled with praise and thanksgiving to my Father in Heaven. My soul wanted to sing and let Him know how great He is (which is an interesting phenomena because of anybody He knows that better than we do, but it still the normal reaction.)

Do not wait too long to recognize the Hand of the Lord in your life. His tender mercies are showering down all around us all the time.  So count your blessings and not the minutes until the next post, because you never know when I will post again. 

Its All Connected

Leadership for Life is one of my classes at LDS Business College in this final semester. It is crazy that will be done at the college in a week. In fact today was the last class for Leadership for Life. My teacher, Melinda Woods, is one of the best I have ever had. She inspires confidence and growth and I connected with her. On this last day we had to share a graphic to symbolize our leadership style and values. This is what I shared.

There is a lot of symbolism in this for me, especially in the shapes used, the location of the phrases, and the words I picked. Creating this made me think long and hard about what is important to me. One of the things I noticed that is not written anywhere but described by the use of Celtic knots is connectedness.

Everything has to be connected to make it important. Information that does not relevantly tie into everything else has no value to me. I also made another connection while creating this. A long-time family discussion is trying to discover the definition of love, what is it. From that discussion to me love is a special connection between people, a giving connection where the other person becomes a part of your life. You see the connection between my graphic and my definition of love?

Exploding Kelty

It was a beastly early hour in the morning for galavanting on frozen asphalt, hounded at every revolution per minute by the fierce hissing wind. The night was black, blacker than black itself and just as cold, except for the halos of soft yellow dancing just before us, never too far ahead, yet never overtaken...Actually, I cannot remember exactly what that early morning ride was like, but than forgetting is one of the surest method for allowing the imagination to caper about drawing her long trains of illusions swirling after her, teasing always and never appeasing curiosity.

This night reaches back to when Seth, Betsy, and David still lived in Nebraska, the occasion was as somber as the night itself, for it was the night of separation from the bosom of my siblings that immediately preceded the twilight dawn of expanding unknown possibilities that heralded the morning of new adventures.

The guiding halos conducted us to the parking lot of the Grand Island, Nebraska Airport, and there vanished, handing us over to beckoning glow of lights in the isolated terminal standing like a lonely portal of capricious nature. For not all who entered those gapping doors returned through them, and not all exited had entered therein. This impish structure embraced our entrance and in due process of time released again the same party minus one. Where and how they went is beyond the scope of this story, our narration follows the missing member, David.

With his bodhrán in hand as a shield against melancholy he plunged into the luggage check-in portico and endured through the Transportation Security Agency's front lines. From thence he emerged unharmed but divested of his trusty Kelty, a 50 liter pack, the guardian of all the wearable necessities of life. This was all according to plan, and the expanse of time between being bereaved of all belongings until the joyful reunion also went according to plan.

The excitement begins with the nonchalant perusal of an unending swirl of luggage riding the merry-go-round that is the called baggage claim. And on this day it was more of a circus than usual for David, as a peculiar bag appeared and took its place in the pack parade. This one differed substantially from the others, and yet there was something strangely familiar about. The plastic wrap around it made it look like more of a cocoon than anything belonging in the baggage claim. A burst of colors was faintly visible under the wrapping. The butterfly was going to be a beautiful one when it emerged. That sense of familiarity though kept nagging at David. As the bag passed merrily by, he snagged it and the story became all too clear. Yes, he did know this pack, but the comedy of it all did not hit him until a little later.

Imagine the TSA agent unzipping a back pack masterfully loaded with more volume than it was designed to contain. I wished I could have taken a video; if it did not literally exploded, all the contents must have avalanched out of opening. Checking the contents would have bee simple enough, but then the real challenge, repacking. I do not know how many times the agent must have tried or what methods he used, but from the state of the bag when it came to my hands it looked like the struggle intensified over time. I can only imagine the juggling feat it must have been to keep a hold of all the clothing and the bag, when they finally tried to wrap it in plastic. How many people does it take to wrap a backpack? What I would have given to see that!

David the Post Host may be able to find a job in the packing industry...that is if you plan on never unpacking what he does. Keep a hold of your luggage because you never know when we will be off again in another post.