Scripture Squiggle: Doctrine & Covenants 101:16

"Therefore, let your hearts be comforted concerning Zion; for all flesh is in mine hands; be still and know that I am God."

I can't watch the news. Too many stories break my heart and fill me with dread and worry for my family. Sometimes, especially if one or more of my children are away from home, I am so overcome with fear for them, that I almost can't function. This promise from the Lord, that He is in charge of all things, is what I rely on to ease my fears.

The Parable of the Geckos

We do our best to protect our home from the bark scorpions that lurk outside, hoping to come in and find food and shelter. But we know they are out there, so we've taught our children to be careful when they play outside, picking things up with caution in case a scorpion is hiding underneath. And we use extra caution at night, when the scorpions are roaming around, searching for bugs.

Sometimes the knowledge of this danger threatens to overwhelm us. We know the scorpions are outside, we know they are dangerous, but, although we can take steps to prevent them from coming inside, we cannot eradicate them completely.

But we also know we are not left to fight the scorpions alone. At night, the geckos appear on our outer walls. Whether they actually eat scorpions, or just the food the scorpions seek, the geckos help us keep the scorpions away. We point them out to the kids and tell them that the geckos are on our side of the fight.

Just seeing them brings us comfort. They are our reminder that the Lord's hand is in all things.

Scripture Squiggle: Hebrews 2:1

"Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip."

This scripture was part of our Sunday School reading for this week. It immediately made me think of General Conference, just over a week away. Very appropriate! We should give more earnest heed to the prophets' words--we are privileged to hear them speak twice a year! My goal the past few weeks has been to better prepare myself for conference, and I've challenged my family to do the same.

The following is an excerpt from President Dieter F. Uchtdorf's message in September's Ensign

A fine member of the Church was talking with a neighbor who was not of our faith. When the topic of discussion turned to general conference, the neighbor asked, “You say you have prophets and apostles? And twice a year in a worldwide conference they reveal the word of God?”

“Absolutely,” the member replied with confidence.

The neighbor thought about that for a moment. He seemed genuinely interested and then asked, “What did they say in the last general conference?”

At this point the good member of the Church went from feeling excited about sharing the gospel to feeling embarrassed. Try as he might, he couldn't think of the details of a single talk.

His friend found this troubling and said, “You mean to tell me that God speaks to man in our day and you can’t remember what He said?”

The brother felt humbled by this exchange. He vowed that he would do better to remember the words spoken by the Lord’s servants in general conference.

We all know how hard it is to remember every message of general conference, and I’m confident that we need not be embarrassed if we don’t remember everything. Nevertheless, there are messages in each general conference given as a gift and a blessing from heaven specifically for our personal life situations.

The Lord does have messages for each of us, and during those sessions of conference I've approached with specific prayers and questions I have heard those messages the Lord has sent for me. Read and follow President Uchdorf's counsel and you'll find General Conference can have personal, as well as global, meaning.

Scripture Squiggle: Ether 14:1

"And now there began to be a great curse upon all the land because of the iniquity of the people, in which if a man should lay his tool or his sword upon his shelf, or upon the place whither he would keep it, behold, upon the morrow, he could not find it, so great was the curse upon the land."

Sometimes I think my house in Buckeye sat on some of Jaredites' cursed land. Things disappeared pretty regularly there--and never resurfaced. The first item was the knead bar to my bread machine. The last time anyone ever saw it was in the dish drainer on the counter. Gone. My son's pacifiers were next. By the time we took his pacifier away at age three and a half, we had gone through fifteen pacifiers. They simply vanished, and no amount of searching ever uncovered them. Many other items fell victim to the curse over the eleven years we lived in that house: my daughter's stuffed pony, a swimsuit, puzzle pieces (not the small 1000 piece puzzle size, but the large, 5 piece ones designed for toddlers), jeans, t-shirts, and of course, socks. When we moved out last February, we fully expected to find the missing things. We didn't really believe the house was cursed, or that imps were running off with our possessions.

But we didn't. Not one missing item turned up when we emptied the house. Yes, we even slit the cover on the bottom of our couches to see if anything had somehow ended up inside where we couldn't see or reach. Still nothing.

The Jaredites were a numerous people. The land upon which they lived had to be vast, because my new house seems to suffer from the same curse. A few months after we moved in, my toddler's sippy cup vanished. As did my free movie tickets. And now, my oldest son's i-pod.

This house seems to have more expensive tastes.

Scripture Squiggle: Mosiah 23:21

"Nevertheless the Lord seeth fit to chasten his people; yea, he trieth their patience and their faith."

Few things try my patience the way potty training can. Especially with my youngest son. I had decided, after six kids worth of potty training experience, that the best time to start working with a child was around the time they turned three. So, I was quite content knowing I had until next May before I even had to think about potty training. Until Levi decided he was ready for potty training, shortly after he turned two.

At first I humored him, taking his diaper off every time he indicated he needed to go and plopping him on the toilet. This went on for a week. Then one day, I pulled off his diaper, sat him on the toilet with a sigh and was surprised by a tinkling sound as he actually went potty. He was rarely dry when he said he needed to go, but he began consistently going every time he told me he needed too, usually no more than a small trickle, but going nonetheless.

So when summer started, with the older kids out of school to help, we tried putting him in underwear. He of course wet every pair we put on him. After two days we ran out of clean underwear and put him back in a diaper. The only times he wanted to go potty were during Sacrament meeting, at Wal-Mart, at Grandma's house, and after we put him to bed each night.

But he was still going. I began to worry that if I didn't try to harness his desire to go potty in the toilet and actually waited until he turned three, he would be harder to train. Alas, I determined to start things again after everyone settled back into the school routine.

I bought him new Thomas the Tank Engine underwear and we began. The first day he peed regularly--in his underwear--anytime he laughed, cried, screamed or sneezed. I prayed almost constantly for patience as I cleaned up after him each time. In the morning, I dreaded the moment he would wake up and the battle would renew.

When he did wake up, though, he was dry. He gave me his usual trickle in the toilet and then stayed dry for nearly an hour. Progress. Or not. He continued to wet, continued to refuse to go when I knew he needed to, and I continued praying for more and more patience.

We tried candies. I gave him a jelly bean every time he was dry. I checked his pants each half hour, celebrated with him when he was dry, gave him the candy, and invariably changed him a few minutes later. He hardly stayed on the toilet long enough to accomplish anything, so we tried Smarties. One Smartie if he went a little, another if he would get back on and go some more. For a while, it worked, but when he tired of the Smarties, we went right back to him jumping of the toilet before he'd even started.

Patience. A week and two days after we started full fledged training, I felt inspired to place board books in all of the bathrooms in the house. The next time he went potty, I pulled out one of his favorites and was rewarded with a boy who sat long enough to finish going.

Yesterday, he actually went nearly the entire day without an accident. He still has a way to go, but we are definitely making progress.

And the Lord continues to teach me patience--now the boy demands multiple readings of multiple books before he will got off the toilet!

Hmmm. Maybe I should be careful what I pray for...

Scripture Squiggle: Ephesians 5:25

"Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it."

My father is a dragon slayer. I've seen him in action as he defends his castle, and my mother, from the fearsome beasts. Fire breathing? No. Taller than a skyscraper? No. Massive jaws and killer claws? Again, no. Hairy, six-legged and creepy? Yes! My mother's dragons are ugly, brown, two-inch cockroaches. And my father is her hero.

My brother is also a dragon slayer. As is my husband. The dragons that terrify my sister-in-law differ from those my father slays and from the ones that attack my home. Hers are spiders; mine are scorpions. While the species of dragons differ, the love and affection the slaying of those dragons show for my mother, my sister-in-law, and for me is incredibly strong--the damsel-in-distress-knight-in-shining-armor connection.

Sure, I'm a strong, capable woman. More than once a dragon has reared its ugly head when my dragon slayer hasn't been home, and I've had to kill the monster myself. But when he is home, I'm a willing damsel in distress, and in doing so, I feed his need to protect and defend me.

All husbands should be dragon slayers--protecting the women they love from the things they fear most, whether the dragon is tangible or not. And all wives should often be the damsel, giving her husband a chance to rescue her. Stories are full of the rescued falling in love with the rescuers.

I know my heart swells with greater love every time my dragon slayer defeats another beast, scoops it up in a plastic cup and disposes of it in the garbage can.

Scripture Squiggle: Proverbs 22:6

"Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it."

My mom had a unique way of slipping bits of the Gospel into the lives of her children. She liked to place uplifting quotes, pictures and Mormon-ads throughout the house in places where we could not ignore them. Like the bathroom.

Even though I have been out of the house for over seventeen years, I can still remember many of the Mormon-ads on the wall of the bathroom: "Reflect on Eternity," "Rise above the Blues," "Cutting Remarks are really Hurting." I see the picture of the girl looking into a mirror and seeing, not her reflection, but her future self with a young man standing outside the temple; the one yellow balloon climbing above the group of blue ones; a young man with knives coming out of his mouth as he speaks.

On the wall beside the bathroom door, my mom placed a handwritten copy of the final stanza of the poem by Ella Wheeler Cox entitled "Gethsemane." I never saw that poem anywhere else, never studied it in church or school, but I can still quote those closing lines.

When my mom picked me up from church activities or school games, she always had uplifting music playing. Although I would unfailingly pop her cassette out of the player and turn the volume up on my own music, lines from the songs she played would linger in my mind, often steering the course of my attitude later on.

Mom never forced spirituality on us. She never argued when we changed the music, and we always had the option of using the bathroom with our eyes closed, but she surrounded herself with goodness. And because she did, when we were with her, near her, that goodness encircled us. And her children have been blessed by it.

Scripture Squiggle Doctrine and Covenants 46:32

"And ye must give thanks unto God in the Spirit for whatsoever blessing ye are blessed with."

During an address during general conference in October of 2008, President Monson reminded us, "Our realization of what is most important in life goes hand in hand with gratitude for our blessings."

(Finding Joy in the Journey)

The Spiral Notebook

We didn't feel very thankful as November of 2009 approached. My husband and I and our seven children were living in a three bedroom trailer without hope of improved circumstances anytime soon. It seemed the complaints multiplied with each day that passed, and I was beginning to feel crushed beneath the weight of our unhappiness. "Mom, when will I have my own room?" "She never helps me clean up." "I HATE this house!" And, although I didn't voice it, I felt the same way. How can I ever keep the house clean with so little space? A dishwasher sure would be nice. Another scratch in the linoleum?

Something had to be done. Something to remind us of all the blessings Heavenly Father had given us. So I found a lightly used spiral notebook buried in a junk drawer, tore out the used pages, and decorated the cover with a few stickers and a marker: Our Book of Daily Blessings. I showed the notebook to the family and told them my idea. Each day, everyone in the family needed to write down a blessing that they were thankful for. Those who could not write, could draw a picture or have an older sibling write it for them.

I placed the book in an accessible location and stocked the area with pens, pencils and crayons. At the end of the first day, I discovered that my family was grateful for food, clothes and other basic necessities. But by the time Thanksgiving arrived, our blessings became deeper; we were far more aware of God's hand in our lives. My son, who struggled with sharing a room with three loud, energetic siblings, wrote, "God showed me how loving my family is and how to be thankful for my trials." A daughter observed, "God gave me the ability to help a student I didn't know with work and she became my friend." And my husband, perhaps the loudest of all the complainers, penned, "Heavenly Father helped me to recognize that our current lifestyle is not as bad as some people."

We enjoyed the Book of Blessings so much that we continued writing in it long after Thanksgiving passed. We became a family full of gratitude, a family that saw God and His magnificent blessings in everything around us-- thanks to a slightly tattered, wide-ruled spiral notebook.