out with the old and...

on with the new!  and there I go.  4-1/2 years in YW as the Laurel teacher and now....here I come- I move to Primary!  This will be a new event for me on many levels and an interesting twist also.

The twist?  Years ago I taught Melissa in Seminary as a 14 year old.  Years later, she, now a Mother of 5!, I then teach her daughter, Maci, as her Laurel teacher for 2 years.  Maci is now at BYU-I.  Melissa is a Counselor in Primary.  In Primary I will teach another of Melissa's children.  this time a son!  So I have been teaching people in this one family since 1989!  I find that a twisty story!

Change is so good.  It's invigorating and energizing and there is inspiration and revelation and a newness on so many levels.  Our Bishopric really went all out today as the YW and the RS were entirely reorganized!  Plus 4 new teachers in Primary and a Gospel Doctrine teacher also!!  Lots of farewells and "setting aparts" and a new feeling that seems so appropriate for a New Year.

I joined the Church in 1961 and was asked to teach the Co-pilot B class.  Preparing the children for baptism.  I loved it.  I was brand new and I learned as I taught the children the basics of the Gospel.  That was for one year.  Then I was Primary Secretary a few years later and a Primary Counselor for a very short while as they called me to the Mutual program.  And that is it!!  I've always had a Church calling but in 57 years membership in the Church...never in Primary!!  I know nothing but I will soon learn!!  I am excited to experience this new adventure!!

I will teach the oldest age children.  I think they are 11 years old.  Aren't those the ones that feel Primary is for babies and they want to be 12 and leave and be all grown-up in YM/YW?  And they feel embarrased and to old for the yearly Primary program?  Seems I've heard comments over the years about...she is so glad to be out of Primary.  She could hardly wait to leave.  Well, that will be interesting if that is the case!  Whatever I find, perhaps my enthusiasm for being their teacher and being in Primary with them, and letting them know I love them already and am so glad to be with them, maybe I can turn the tide! 

I have been so excited about this coming New Year and this just adds to my anticipation of fantastic things to look forward to.

Happy New Year, tomorrow! 

Oh, boy...maybe what I heard is true!!!!  

Really?

Lights still glowing!

Admittedly...every morning I arise early and sit in the darkness of my living room.  Not totally dark though...Christmas lights still a twinkling!  Loving it!  Reluctant to bring it to a close!  and by the way...who dictates that I must bring it to a close?  The same invisible beings that tell me what is fashionable and current?  Me, rebellious me.  I will take them down next year! but not today.  It's so cold and icy out and a skiff of snow makes winter so wintry.  Enjoying and loving it.  This year when all the Christmas things are packed away, I'm not going to take the garland down over the mirror.  I'm going to leave it in place until Easter!

So how was your Christmas?  Ours was wonderful.  No stress.  No muss.  No fuss.  and....No Turkey!
Turkey was to be the centerpiece and it was thawed and ready and I decided it took up to much room in the fridge so I put it in the garage to keep chilled.  Uh-huh...you guessed it!  When I went to get the turkey it was frozen!  Again.  So...I really like those Costco frozen turkey breasts.  (the ones they only sell November-December until they are gone) You can even cook them frozen and I usually keep one in my freezer.  I got it out, brought it in, and discovered it was a Safeway one and the directions were so explicit about not even taking it out of the wrapper until totally thawed that it scared me off!  so we ended up with Zaycon deboned chicken thighs!  Browned and baked in my trusty cast iron skillet.  Delish!

A great dinner with just the two of us.  Very relaxed and comfy with hours of Christmas music from the Mormon Channel and also hours of watching A Christmas Carol.  So many available from so many years ago.  The oldest one was from 1935 (Terry's favorite one).  I watched one version of The Nutcracker.  I no longer have access to all of the different ones that I had DVD'd because we no longer have TV channels.  (we do not miss cable at all.)  I know I could have looked more and found some but we ended up enjoying a series called When Calls the Heart.  Hallmark.  you know how fairytale those productions are but it was sweet and clean and enjoyable. 

Aging has so many luxuries when you are retired and don't have the pressure of getting out and going to work.  We don't fret about weather and driving on hazardous roads.  We are warm and comfy and blessed beyond measure.  We are thankful, so grateful, for our lives and living and being an American.  We love our country and the spot that we live in.  We are thankful for so much.  We are even thankful that the Church is practically in our backyard!  and our Temple only 55 minutes away!

My heart feels happy with anticipation of a New Year and everything fresh and starting over.  A newness.  I like the thought of newness and regeneration and getting things in order.  2018.  I will welcome it gladly and embrace it and love it and live fully. 

I'm still in love with lights and these two memes caught my attention.

 

I would love for my blog, A Candlestick, to illuminate and warm my readers.  I will be more consistent in posting and hope that I can give that to you as I certainly receive that from you!  I love visiting with you and sharing my thoughts!

Christmas Eve

I love it when Christmas Eve is on Sunday!  Happening every 7 years and it is such a marvelous lead-in to Christmas Day.  7 years from now....who knows where I'll be?

Every year I wish that our Ward would do a Christmas Eve program, on Christmas Eve and invite the community.  Every 7 years I get my wish, at least in the Ward.

We had another Ward meet with us today.  Our congregation has become very small and the visitors have the same challenge so it was fun for all of us to be together.  (Their furnace is still not working.)  I wish they would meet with us all the time.  I wish we could be combined.  This post isn't about wishing.  It's about the joy of having Christmas Eve on Sunday.

So many went the extra mile to look real spiffy and Christmasy.  Lots of darling little girls in new dresses.  Lots of red and a bit of sparkles in jewelry.

A large garland across the front by the podium.  You know I love garlands.  Lights and ribbons and pine cones and shiny ornaments.  Beautiful and classy.  Made it feel so inviting.

A very simple program filled with inspiring narration and lots, and lots, of music.  Families singing and soloists and groups and violinists and a big variety.  So inspiring and comforting and uplifting.

The entire program and being with such great people, really made my mind drift to the Savior and the love I have for Him.

2 of my treasures!!

I just keep feeling thankful and grateful for this season of celebration.  I'm still enjoying my decorations that have been up for quite some time.  A sweet friend wanted to help get the outside garlands plugged in and it didn't work between cords and outlet location.  I told her I was fine with it and the nice thing is...I really am.  the garland is hung and next year is soon enough to plug it in!  I told her she can help me out in 2018!  It feels good to be satisfied with a smaller amount of decorations and not wish for more.  I'm content.

Not being bothered about superfluous things regarding decorating and gift buying has made my heart even more thankful for my family as it frees me up to think of things that are important to me.

Today I've thought about the power of family love and how important and wanted and needed, in my life...actually in our life each person is.  Our family life.

When I was a young girl I always wanted to grow up and be a Mother.  A mother to several little girls.  No boys.  All girls.  As it turns out...the way it was meant to be... I ended up with 4 boys and 1 girl!

This is about that girl.  I adore this girl and I have since the minute she was born.  She is marvelous and kind and gentle and compassionate and so good to us.  We are friends and that is so wonderful!

When I was young I got a new dolly every single Christmas and that was my absolute favorite, most looked forward to special gift, a new doll.  I was shocked when my little girl only loved the first dolly she received and never wanted another one.  She did have a little tiny doll that would fit in her hand.  That was it.

She let us know she loved FollyDolly.  Even the doll losing her remaining dab of hair and a dog chewing off her fingers of one hand and reducing Jeanee to tears until we bandaged her up, didn't diminish her love of the doll.

Over the years, and well past when girls want dolls, she would tell me she was looking forward to having a real baby someday.

We had felt for around 5 years that someone was missing from our family.  I believe that all women can identify with that feeling and longing.

The feelings became more intense as time went on.  Our family prayed and our Ward even prayed for us.  Then we had our miracle...we did get our baby but she felt he was her baby.

Although she wanted a sister, she welcomed a big 9# brother.  She was small and he was very large but she carried him and tended him and loved and adored him.  The closeness remains after all of these years and that is beautiful to me.

This is my--cry for the day picture.  My gratitude expands in my heart when I see these two and know that the love I see here, has been there since David arrived, when only a couple of days old, into our home, into our hearts, and still has that place reserved for only him.

As I said...Mom trickling tears of tenderness. 

Add caption

Big Sis with her little brother!

"I was thristy and....

ye gave me drink".

I am always aware of the importance of water.  I love a good water supply.  I'm well aware of why I feel it so strongly.  I'm familiar with hauling water down roads...running out...pipes freezing.  Having to make choices between...washing a load of clothes...bathing someone...doing dishes etc. etc.  It did not last forever but it lasted long enough, and was tough enough for me personally to deal with, that I've never stopped my love of an abundance of clean water.

There were lots of people with similar situations but they seemed to roll with it better than me.  I found it traumatic.  I'm probably the only person that sighs when shower water hits me and says a thank thee prayer.  Maybe not.  My daughter, never takes daily water for granted either.  Every once in awhile we talk about our appreciation for taps that flow.

One year for my husbands birthday I gave him one of those big blue barrels for storing water.  I think Vikings feel pioneer living is a marvelous adventure.  I thought it meant I'd sit under trees, soak up the mountain scenery, breathe the marvelous cold crisp air and write poetry while my WW bread bakes and my freshly laundered clothes flap on the clothesline.

Alaska is known for it's fantastic water except for Homer (unless things have changed.  Most likely no change as my dear friend, Joyce, has her water delivered to this day.)  Our storage tank was way to small and inadequate.  She has a gigantic one but even with that luxury...water is never wasted.

When we first moved there, I was invited to a bridal shower.  A Branch sister had her Mother in attendance.  She asked me how I was doing.  I told her I was use to a shower each evening....I missed relaxing and dreaming and sometimes crying my heart out with hot water pounding my back. I was having difficulty with adjusting to lack of water and Terry carrying it often by hand because the road was not driveable. etc. etc.  I told her I'd gone to the local hotel a couple of times and paid to use their shower.  One time I'd gone to the Spit and used one out there at a campsite just being opened.  I didn't realize that she owned the only Laundromat in town.  They lived upstairs and had washer/dryers downstairs and then....several showers that could be used, for a fee of course.  A few days later she sent me a sweet note and totally unexpected and a huge surprise.... a lot of coupons for showers!!! I have never forgot her sensitivity and kindness.  I cried tears of joy!  & thankfulness!!

I could go on and on with my love of and gratitude for running water from taps in my house but I won't.  I will share this thought...maybe you have to much stuff and so does your family and maybe you want to do something different this year for Christmas gifts.  How about the gift of water????

Compared to what these folks go through...I had nothing to whine about.

You can give a one time gift or a monthly gift.  here

(I've been thinking-- it was almost 20 years with our water problem/challenge/situation and it was only resolved, and the battle was over, when we moved!)

Young Friends

I continue to enjoy our Christmas lights and tree with ornaments and Christmas carols (lots of them!) All of the Nativities.   The only garland that is lit is the one on the piano.  the outdoor ones have no lights.  why?-- because they aren't plugged in.  It's about extension cords and and that sort of stuff.  Next year it will happen but for this year the bit of green and and pine cones are just fine.  I still want to get two live wreaths, one for outdoors and one indoors.

My mind is full and my heart is full.  My thoughts have been filled with friends this last while.  I value my friends.  Lately I've been thinking of my youngest friends.

These 3 friendships started with love and they were initiated by each friend.  It's interesting to me that they each felt drawn to me around the time they were 4 years old.  Now they are 7, 8 and 11.  One lives here.  One in Vancouver.  One in Nevada.  Brooklyn. Aleya. Lydia.

I've thought a lot about what makes a young child turn to an adult?  Talk to them.  Trust them.  Want to sit with them at Church.  Draw them pictures.  Make gifts. Want to come visit at my house.
How does that happen? 

I did not reach out and try to intentionally befriend them.  Maybe I appeared very grandmotherly or non-threatening?

Eventually I realized they each liked me to speak softly and privately to them and to listen with interest to what they had to say.

Aleya, wanted me at her baptism.  I didn't get that message and missed it.  She would drop by with her Grandmother at times.  She is very shy.  She never sat with me at Church and now they have moved.  Sometimes Aleya (her family at that time lived with MaryLynne) would join us as we talked about the Gospel and she always had a lot of questions.  Questions that seemed so mature for one so young.  Her Grandmother MaryLynne just passed away.  MaryLynne had wanted others to Grandmother her grandchildren as she knew she would pass on. I will continue to love Aleya.  (I spoke at MaryLynne's funeral and brought the hummingbird feeder that she'd given me one year for my birthday.  Aleya had come with her that day.  I gave it back to Aleya after the funeral.  She told her Daddy that I am one of her Grandmothers.)

Brooklyn, is spunky and adorable and treats me so kind.  She used to sit with me more often but she likes me to herself and our pew has sort of filled in.  She draws me pictures and makes me things and likes to visit.  She likes to know I have saved her pictures she has made me.  She is bothered, as I am, that I cannot find a flower pin she gave me.  She likes to visit.

Brooklyn will be 8 next year.  Aleya will soon be 9.  And the longest friendship is with Lydia and she will be 12 shortly.

Lydia sat with us for years and her parents and brothers right behind us.  She was so shy and so sweet.  To our dismay she moved away.  We determined to stay in touch but neither of us did real great at it.  Now we have reconnected and I'm so thankful.  We vowed early on to be BFF's and now we are back on course.

What I see now is the impact and encouragement I can have on Lydia as she moves into the YW program next week.  Today she got to participate and dance at the Cedar River Temple festivities.  I see that all those years of seemingly nothing, except sweet pleasantries laced with love, were actually laying the foundation of giving me freedom of speech, to tell her whatever I want at this point in time, regarding my feelings/thoughts on the Gospel and life in general.  There is a trust there and a love that is real.

I'm actually going to write letters.  On stationary!  Use stamps.  Old school.  I'm aiming at once a month contact.  I do hope it does not fizzle or flop or fade.  I hope it just steadily flows along.  Peaceful and certain.

IF I were a young girl, I think it would be wonderful to have someone, beyond family, that has absolutely no obligation to love or care about me and yet they do!  I'm regrouping my life and figuring out how I can light the world, this next year, while mostly being home....caring about relationships with my family/friends is one of them, if not the main one and who knows maybe my only one!  Now you know my plan for my 3 very youngest friends!

(my penmanship is atrocious and slow.  I do want to get a fountain pen but I can see I'm nowhere ready for that feat yet.  Anyone use an inkwell at school?  Remember the bottles of ink with the little well inside?  I guess I'll find out if they still make those ink bottles or do they use cartridges of some sort?  Do they still use blotters?)

Lit

5a.m. and I was staring out the window into the darkened sky, knowing if I kept a steady gaze, stars would appear.  Light by light they filled the sky.  I loved it!  Starlight and Christmas lights all remind me of the Light of the World...our Savior.  Those dibs and dabs of twinkly sprinkles, speak hope to me and peace, and make me feel all comfy inside.

That marvelous feeling of brisk winter coldness makes me want to bake bread and a vat of soup and reflect on life and memories.  Memories of the past- lovingly relived.  Memories being made by reinforcement of traditions.  Traditions are just simple things repeated.  Even an annual repetition can make for lasting memories.

Last year the decision was made that we would scale back, down-size, give away, a lot of our annual Christmas tradition trappings.  The little houses and all sorts of other things.  The goal was to have it organized so that things could quickly be decorated and not drag it out.  It worked just as planned!  I was so anxious to get Christmas around us, for our enjoyment, that the tree was up the day after Thanksgiving!

Then something so special happened.  Our darling daughter came to visit.  For the first time since she was 18 years old, a senior in high school, we decorated together.  Simplicity the theme but abundance on the joy and memories and love we felt.  She hung old ornaments we'd made as a family in 1971.  We put out the top of the tree that we'd discarded last year and used it as a small tree under the mirror. We put the garland over the mirror.  We put out the Nativities.  Strung some garlands out on the porch.  Put a garland on top of the piano.  Every item made it more inviting and comforting.

Garlands of greener;y with pine cones and lights and Christmas Trees with lights and little lights here and there just bring me joy.

One year we came into December with heartache and pain and sorrow ... trying to recover and have some stability and firm footing.  It was a family tragedy, and is now an overcome situation and a memory, so it doesn't bear repeating. That isn't the purpose of me mentioning it anyhow.  What happened was- someone who knew of our heartbreak, mentioned to me, most sincerely, What a horrible time to have this happen.  Christmas time.  

I shared.... to me it was the best of all times to have traumatic events.  Everywhere I turn I see Christmas lights.  Lights that represent the Savior and His love.  Lights that give me hope.  Lights that remind me of all things Gospel...including the plan of happiness.  Lights that are reminders of keeping the faith and that I'm not alone.  Lights that remind me that He is aware.

I appreciate every light I see at this season.  Just as I appreciate the starlight, in it's constancy throughout the year, in all seasons.

 I believe it takes darkness to truly see the Light.  The true power of even a small light, like a match, is best seen in the dark.  When life events cause us to feel in the dark, that is when we appreciate even a glimmer of light.  With the Gospel Light, personal darkness seems to fade and evaporate. The greater the darkness the brighter the light will be, IF we ask for it.


Christmas lights are precious and wonderful to me!

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Just saw this.  Love it!

Tears here

my beautiful friend....

MaryLynne



Gone but never to be forgotten.  As kind as she was gorgeous.  Filled to the brim with love for her family.  Generous and compassionate with everyone.  Ever growing in faith and knowledge of the Savior.  Believed in and lived as Christ--giving unconditional love to all that she met.  Firmness of testimony and proclaimer of her faith in the Gospel.  A true friend.  

I'm thankful I got to see her on her last day of living her mortal life.  I looked at her spent, frail, small body...her greyed long hair combed back...her pain and voice silenced by medications...her induced deep sleep and slack jaw...her pallored skin-- and I thought...she fought the good fight...she finished her race...she won the battle...she endured to the end...she will soon be released and whole again. I cannot imagine her actually going to leave.  I love her.

Although I saw all of that...what lived in my mind was the above photo of her.  My mind was also filled with...Remembering the softness of her voice...her gentle laugh...her shared confidences with the struggles of mortal life...the joyous testimony of the Gospel she treasured and always, always, her increased love and pride for her children and her precious grandchildren. 

We shared so many wonderful memories over many years.  I know I will see her in the next life but right now, I so wish for more of those long ago, long gone past days and years and time in this life, we shared as friends.  I will cherish those memories.  

We love our friends and we weep over our friends leaving us.  I weep.

Psalms 30:5 ....weeping may endure for a night, but ^bjoy cometh in the morning.