7-14-11 “He did deliver me from bondage” Benjamin’s promises, p. A-24 & A-25

7-14-11  “He did deliver me from bondage”  Benjamin’s promises, p. A5- A-25

I was blessed to be able to share yesterday with someone about spiritual dyslexia and the scripture of “come unto Christ and be perfected in Him.”  It was a great visit and the Spirit filled my mouth with the words to say.  It seems she knows her addictions are a walking time bomb, but she said she procrastinates everything until she absolutely has to because she works better under pressure.  I hope she learns sooner than later so she can minimize her suffering. 

On p. A-8 she continues the results of our spiritual dyslexia and says how we tend to mis-interpret the scripture in Mosiah 4:14 that says, “And ye will not suffer your children that they go hungry or naked; neither will ye suffer that they transgress the laws of God, and fight and quarrel one with another…”

I have wondered this very thing myself.  I have done and felt exactly as she describes,

“Then, with those infamous words (that become more infamous the more kids you have) still ringing in our ears, you drive home with a van full of children who can’t make it out of the parking lot before World War III erupts.  As each discordant sound falls on your ears, this seemingly impossible mandate falls on your head like a pile driver – driving your sense of pleasing God ever further from you and you ever further from Him.  You feel confused, befuddled, discouraged, or you feel frustrated, angry, determined to force this unrighteous behavior to cease.  In confusion we are left to wonder, “Why would God give us such an impossible mandate and then call His gospel the ‘good news’?...

“When read in correct context, Mosiah 4:14 is not a mandate or a command; it is actually a promise!... The truth is that the things on the right side of our model (page A-25) are promised results that will begin to happen automatically if we are willing to put all our effort into establishing and developing the relationship outlined on the left side…  “When we put God first [in our lives] all other things fall into their proper place or drop out of our lives” President Ezra Taft Benson.”

I am observing something strange in my thinking.  As I’m going through these lists of steps along a path, I seem to be evaluating myself to see where I am.  In my mind I will recognize it as done and kind-of mentally “check it off” or I will recognize that I need to work on it, or haven’t done it yet.  I’m not sure if this is good or bad.  I know sometimes when we check something off as “done” we tend to forget about it and don’t try to work on it anymore.  My concern is that I think I’ve been trying to do this in respect to the things I do for the people in my life, and they can sense it.  For example, giving a birthday card:  I have it on a list, check it off when it’s done giving myself a victory high-five…  but in my prayer the other day I was asking for feedback to know why my relationships with the people in my life are not progressing.  He said that they feel this; that I am checking them off on a list.  That the things I do for them have, as of yet, been without true charity, and there is something more I must learn if I want to build true trusting relationships with them.  This is SO hard!!  Not only do I have to learn one “foreign  love-language” but become fluent in all the “love-languages” because these different people I’m trying to build trust with all feel love differently.  I have been trying, but in a way that makes them feel like objects instead of people.  It is painful, and hurts deeply to recognize the incongruency between what I want to create for my life and what I in reality have.  I guess that’s why we have hope in a vision, as something that we will someday be able to accomplish.  I cannot be everything to everyone; I cannot give more than I have; I cannot be more than I have ability in today.  I am what and who I am and have only learned so far what I have learned.  I need to learn to accept that as my best, and let go of the rest.

[9-18-11]  I was talking to my Mom about this afterward about the 5 love languages part and she said that possibly I was making it harder than it had to be.  She helped me see that as I do the ‘one right thing’ that the Spirit directs to do that it will be just the perfect thing for the perfect situation and it will help progress the relationship.  It is like the story of Jesus where he directs his disciples to cast their net on the other side of the ship.  When and where he says, they reap a harvest more than they can hold.  I have seen this true in my life.  He can make an minute as potent as an hour to increase our time.  He can tell us just the right thing to do, if we will but trust Him.  I want to trust Him more.

7-12-11 “He Did Deliver Me From Bondage”, Benjamin’s Promise, Appendix A-5

7-12-11                     “He Did Deliver Me From Bondage”, Benjamin’s Promise, Appendix A-5

“I wonder if…”

“May I preface my remarks, even as Benjamin did, with a disclosure of my background and a declaration of my motive and intent.”

She has such a beautiful mind!  I love the way she shows her thoughts and feelings beautifully and articulately. 

She said her two addictions were compulsive eating and perfectionism.  She has never spoken of this second one before in her story.  She said her perfectionism “drove me to the gates of insanity and spiritual death.”  I like her assumption to see her readers (or hearers in this case) as herself.  She makes assumptions which may not be always accurate but are appropriate.  I like that she assumes her readers struggle with her same problems. 

If it were me, I think I would have to include a line of disclosure on this point to say something like ‘I recognize that we are all different in many ways.  We each come to this life with our own gifts and talents, as well as our own challenges and weaknesses.  But there is one thing for certain that we all face in common and that is the opposition of life.  We are all in the struggle for our souls and desire to find peace and joy.  In my talk tonight, I recognize that your challenges may be different than mine in the sense of the details, but I invite you to ‘liken these thoughts unto yourselves’ by substituting the details in my struggle with the details in yours.  If you do this you will see the resistance of life that is yours may have a different name, but the opposition to our ability to lift that weight is in equal proportion to our own individual abilities.  Though we may have different shades of color that make us unique, we are all in the box of crayons together.’ (see May 2011 Conf talk “Remember that kindness begins with me.)

I agree with her claim of spiritual dyslexia.  Only I read the other day in “Drawing with Children” that dyslexia is a dysfunction in reading only.  It says, “Dyslexia actually means dysfunction in reading.  Dysfunction in writing is called Dysgraphia, and dysfunction in math is known as Dyscalcula.  Psychologists… lump all three of these …together.”  In this case of spiritual dyslexia she says its root is the “tendency to reverse the order of the written and spoken word of God.  Thus we “have eyes to see, and see not… ears to hear, and hear not”.

Symptoms: 

• “We find the gospel neither easy nor simple.  Instead we are frustrated and bewildered, wandering in a modern wilderness of stress, anxiety, discouragement and depression.”  (This is her assumption of specific struggles being like unto herself.)
• “We act as if they teach us that the “letter,” the outward activity, “giveth life”.  We desperately try to alleviate our disease by escalating and intensifying our performances and seeking to improve our appearances.” 

This is what Jesus was talking about (Matt 23:27) when He spoke of the Jews being whited spulchures on the outside and having filthy houses on the inside.  I once heard it described in Sunday School as having ‘public religion’ without ‘private religion’.  I imagine and liken it unto what is Seen, and what part is not seen.  Like a ball (or if you prefer you can imagine an iceberg) floating only partly above water.  A person who is aligned to God has 80% under water, and 20% or less above water.  A hypocrite who has not yet recognized his own sins is right-side-down and has the intent to show the 80% and hide the 20% or less.  His tail end is sticking up out of the water and his head is buried in self-deceit. 

“Though it plainly states “come unto Christ, and be perfected in him,” before it continues with the otherwise impossible charge to “deny yourselves of all ungodliness,” some Latter-day Saints may perceive and believe thusly: “Deny yourselves of all ungodliness and [then] come unto Christ.”  Having read it in that order, we launch off on a campaign of self-improvement, sincerely striving, knuckles white, to deny ourselves of all ungodliness.  With set jaw and a countenance that would scare a child (and often does), we set about to “clean house”, ourselves, meanwhile ignoring the gentle knock of Him who is like “a refiner’s fire, and like fuller’s soap”” (end book quote)

I agree with this claim of spiritual dyslexia because I used to have it, and maybe I still do.  As I read through A-24 I recognize some of these things I have come to know for myself; I recognize the path that is being described.  #8 got me.  I think this is what I’ve been struggling with in my repentance process in feeling a self-perfectionism, and not recognizing that God’s plan is “humility and repentance… and not perfectionism or pride.”    I think this requires me to have more faith in the atoning blood of Jesus Christ.  I know it is real, I know He did it for me, personally and individually.  But does His blood have the power to go deep enough to cover all my ugliness?  Even as I write to reveal the weed and the lie, I know the truth.  I know His power is greater than all my weakness.  I’ve been trying so hard to repent!... without trusting His power to reach all the way down to the bottom of my pit.  I’ve been trying to do it myself through perfectionism, instead of recognizing that I have to trust in the grace that I can after all I can do. 

Then, of course, #9 reveals that we must “ask with sincerity of heart.  I know I got that covered, or that at least I have done all I can do on that point. 

MY Jesus

“My Joshua”

That first day I had my break-down and realized that I needed help to overcome this, my husband became “my Joshua” because that was the first time he rescued me for my pit.  I needed help and I begged my children for their help.  Joshua sat down with the children to work out a plan.  I was harrowed up out of my pit by his rescue that day, a pit I could not have gotten out of my myself.

 

“My Jesus”

A year or so ago, about the time I was learning of the nature of God, and of His love for me, I was pondering on the Atonement.  In my intellectual mind I was trying to figure out what was undiscovered to learn how it happened.  I don’t proclaim to know what Prophets have said no man can.  This was simply revealed to me as a manifestation of the completeness, and individual personal-ness of the Atonement.

One day as I knelt beside my bed I inquired of the Lord to know or understand how Christ paid the unspeakable price of my deliverance.  It was as if I saw all time wrap together in a scroll and I stood before the judgment bar of God begging for mercy.  There was none to be found until My Savoir, My Jesus, came and stood before the Father and said, “I will pay the price for Pennie.  I will suffer for her sins.”  Then in an instant my view swept to the Garden of Gethsemane where I saw My Jesus prostrated on the ground in agony.  His pain the result of each of my sins He was bearing the weight of; His agony and torture because of His purity and spotlessness- his abhorance for sin; Each injustice I had suffered, every sin of commission or omission; He bore the full weight and paid the full price.  Now I could be reconciled to my Heavenly Father.  Now I could return Home. 

He is My Jesus.  He has bound up my wounds and is healing my broken heart.  He is healing me and making me whole.  I am learning who I am, and why I was born at this time in the history of the world.  He is always there walking beside me in joy or in pain.  He brings purpose to life.

Hilary Weeks’ song “It would never be enough” also alludes to this possibility in the third verse, “If all the ages were put an instant to worship and lift Him up…”

Even though at times my voice my sing off key, He still hears the perfect song of my heart.

7-9-11 "He did deliver me from bondage" p.42

7-9-11

“He did deliver me from bondage” suggested talk “Born of God” by Benson

http://classic.lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?hideNav=1&locale=0&sourceId=419327cd3f37b010VgnVCM1000004d82620a____&vgnextoid=2354fccf2b7db010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD

“Yes, Christ changes men, and changed men can change the world. Men changed for Christ will be captained by Christ. Like Paul they will be asking, “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” “

I feel joy in believing this truth.  It has been a long journey for me to believe that I can change the world.  When I was 12 years old I had a step-father who was abusive to my Mother and verbally abusive to the children in the home.  One of the ways as children we learned to cope with life was to make the house look like we had not even been there.  I think that became my whole mentality over then next two decades: to just fly under the radar so no one gets hurt.  It was survival mode.  I am just now learning how to get out of survival-mode, and as I do I am changed by Christ.  I am coming to believe that I can change the world.  It is a very fulfilling hope that I can be an instrument in the hand of the Lord to fulfill the measure of my creation and bring glory to God.  It is a very different place than flying under the radar.  I am now willing to stand for truth, even if I stand alone.  I am willing to go against the whole of society if society is floating downstream. 

I love the story from this talk about President McKay’s dream:

“President David O. McKay tells of a singular event that happened to him. After falling asleep, he said he “beheld in vision something infinitely sublime.” He saw a beautiful city, a great concourse of people dressed in white, and the Savior.

“The city, I understood, was his. It was the City Eternal; and the people following him were to abide there in peace and eternal happiness.

“But who were they?

“As if the Savior read my thoughts, he answered by pointing to a semicircle that then appeared above them, and on which were written in gold the words:

“These Are They Who Have Overcome the World—Who Have Truly Been Born Again!

“When I awoke, it was breaking day.” (Cherished Experiences from the Writings of President David O. McKay, comp. Clare Middlemiss, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1988, p. 102.)

When we awake and are born of God, a new day will break and Zion will be redeemed.”

I once was priviliged to receive a story from the Spirit of “Simple’s Last Journey” where she climbs a mountain and goes into a cave.  There she finds a brilliant light, and sees the Savior who takes her Home.  She found that she overcame the world, because Christ had overcome it.  It ties in beautfully with this dream. 

7-8-11 MY Jesus

MY Jesus

7-8-11

I used to always think that self-mastery is a process of submission that as we grow closer to becoming “perfected” that we are like rocks being made smooth in a flowing river.  As I was just studying my scriptures I just had an image that it is not us at all that are being made smooth- maybe it’s more like a car body repair man where he takes bondo to fill in the dents.  Or like a rock with many cracks and pits that is being covered by smooth soft mud: that as we become whole we gain the capacity through the atonement to serve.  This happens not because we are perfect, but because our basic human needs have been met; our cup has been filled; we have become whole through the atonement.  We are then made smooth through Christ as He is the mud that covers our sins to fill all our cracks and dents, and we become one with Him.

4th of July 2011- 7-5-11 & "He did deliver me from bondage" p.31-39

7-5-11                 “He did deliver me from bondage”, p. 31-39

Wow, I just read principle 2, “I Glory in MY Jesus”.  This is SO amazing!  I marvel how she has captured the journey the heart takes as we come unto Christ.  She did it.  This is what I have been going through too.  Maybe not in the same sequence but certainly with the same feelings in my heart, and she captured it on paper!  I have been struggling to find a way to share what I have been through.  This is truly incredible to me. 

I love what she said about redeeming love, “Even so, I still have a continuous struggle to not break into a rousing and unique version of Handel’s “Messiah” or song of redeeming love.  It’s always there, humming in my heart. “

I too cannot say the smallest part which I feel, but I’m so glad she can.  She has captured beautifully the journey to Christ.

In fact, it has been just this last few weeks that I feel I have come to know for myself that “in His power I can do all things”, trusting that “He will prepare the way.”  I had been relying too much on my own strength.  The journey of this life is about learning and growing, only I thought I was becoming “complete” so that I could do it on my own.  The further I go, the more I realize life is more about learning to trust God’s power more than it is about gaining our own.  Only by releasing all my need to control, I gain the grace to be patient and love my children.

Last night was a good example.  Usually when the kids aren’t in bed by “bedtime” I start to turn into a monster and get very snappy and commanding.  But last night, all the kids took an afternoon nap so they could stay up to watch the fireworks.  That alone was an act of the tender mercy of the Lord- that they all went to sleep without much struggle (four kids 16 mo t- 6 years old).  They were happy (not wining) during the fireworks show, and not crying as in years past on the way home.  We got home about 10 pm; their usual bedtime is at 7 or 8pm.  I was pleasingly surprised when it was 10:15, they were doddeling (being poky-bears) and not brushing their teeth as instructed and still I was gentle and patient.  (Which is usually not the case!)  That was 100% grace.  I felt it.  It was Him holding me up.  I would guess that maybe it’s because I am learning to rely on His power, and let go of my own.

Hilary Weeks, “It would never be enough”

7-2-11 Thoughts for Joshua

Thoughts for Joshua

Patience is a gift of God.  My patience as a Mother is supported by the hand of God from day to day.  Every day I pray for grace.  Some days that support is removed like this morning so that I can learn to ask for help and invite you into my heart. 

This morning you asked what happened.  I told you what Teren did.  Then you left.  I needed you to stay.  I needed you to listen.  What I am telling you now I need you to remember for next time this happens.

When I get stuck in this pit, I need you.  Asking for that help is one of the hardest things in the world for me to do.  I feel abandoned when you leave me to suffer alone.  Yet, having not asked for help, I can understand it.

What you see happening on the outside is a world apart from what is happening to me on the inside.  I need you to either be with me to listen, or to take care of the children so I can work it out with the Spirit.  When I am forced to try to take care of the children while feeling this pain, my capacity to love them is nil and on the verge of snapping.  I survive only and do not really provide them what they need because I do not have the capacity to love them in my pain. 

When I got angry this morning it was because of an injustice that was done to me.  I did not suffer myself to be meek.  Teren flippantly hit me in the eyes with her shirt, then she hit me because I was saying something she didn’t like.  I feel the sense of injustice because as her Mother it’s my job to help her learn the truth.  I have to help her learn what is acceptable behavior as a disciple of Christ, and what is not.  So when she hits me exerting force on me, I feel I have to correct that.  So I get angry and feel like I want to hurt her because I do not have control over my own emotions.  Thereby showing her a bad example of a disciple of Christ, and that makes me angry at myself.  Thus I get thrown in the pit and can’t figure a way out.

What is to be done?  I’m sure there are un-truths in my thinking but I cannot see them.  All I can do is throw myself at the mercy of the court of Heaven recognizing that in my hypocrisy I am totally undeserving of such help.   Yet I know there is no other source that can rescue me from this pit.

There comes a ray of hope that in time it will all turn out alright.  Teren’s ill-tempered behavior will self-correct over time if I am meek and show a good example.  I have to return good for evil and turn to the Lord in my pain, for no one but the Lord God of Israel has the power to deliver me.