It's feeling different here this year! I don't like stress/stressful/stress-filled pockets in my life! Hmmmm. Do I know anyone that does enjoy that overwhelming feeling? At Christmastime I want to be busy donning my kerchief and have Pa in his cap with both of us settling down-- for a long winters nap! not being a fuss budget! a nitpicker! a whiner. complainer. If the shoe fits?...figure out how to unlace it and discard it! Now!!!!
We have family coming and I want super simplified and my adorable hubby wants over the top spectacular with enough lights etc. to possibly bring down the town! He wants to work magic for little children! I'm Ms. Scrooge! By Dr.'s orders he cannot climb on ladders. At least not alone!
And my back aches!!
I'm fretting over un-mailed gifts. partially, well actually wholly, because they are not yet purchased! gift cards. how hard is that to go do? but I don't trust him alone! Even though he promises. He feels he has that little thread of krypton running through that hearty Norwegian body. Invincible!
People have kindly volunteered to help. No help needed. He enjoys the entire process (and I have also. except for right now!!)
Today the interior will be finished. I hope that he will bypass doing the outside. Hope. Hope. Hoping.
This is a time to think of the Savior. of Love. of Giving. of Gratitude. not ladders and strokes and aging and all that sort of mortal baggage.
So...to regain perspective and endeavoring to create a hallowed inner space, called my heart, that hopefully will be filled with the warmth of the Spirit, I turned to what never fails me. General Conference talks. Love them!! They are the mulled warm cider stirred with it's cinnamon stick in times of freezing cold weather. The hot cocoa in a cheery mug. They are the warmth to my frigid soul when my heart has a thin layer of black ice. Invisible but yet known to me. Hearing those talks just melts my heart. bringing a comfort of familiarity. Centers me. Strengthens my core & at the same time, it strengthens my resolve to do what is daily necessary, for fortifying my spiritual strength. Inner and private. Essential for surviving mortality.
One of the things I read, not a Conference talk but by early Church leaders, was the recently translated talk of Heber C. Kimball. Don't you love this????
Travails of First Pioneer Company
You think you have sorrow and trouble. Many of
you [are] living in wagons; [you] just came in here and [are] living in your
wagons [with] not much of anything to eat [or] of [the] comforts of life. I have
been in here with President Young, with a 140 others, and we was in our wagons,
and [had] … nothing in [the] country to eat, without it was crickets. When we
got to Green River, making our way to this land, breaking our road, [there was]
not a track [or] trace for 700 miles in wild country. [We were] strangers and it
[was] full of Indians, and when we got to [the] Platte River, one half of our
men [were] out of food. They had no provisions at all. [There was] no one in
[the] valley to bring out flour to us, [and] teams and wagons and potatoes and
cucumbers and [the] comforts of life. We had no person to extend a hand [of]
benevolence, of kindness to us. [Yet] we [didn’t] murmur. [I] never saw a man
cry once in the whole camp. We had one man that was appointed “General Murmurer”
and there was no man allowed to murmur, only that one person. You would think
you had awful trials if you could not all have [the] chance to murmur. We placed
it all upon one man, and we concluded that [if] there was two that murmured, we
appointed [the] greatest murmurer to be [the] boss. That is recorded and will
come in [to the] history by and by.
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