Hmmm

There seems to be some confusion about the true meaning of my words in a recent post about my son's upcoming wedding.  I happen to adore my future daughter-in-law and have mentioned that many times on this blog.  She knows that better than anyone.  I have also tried to have a relationship with her family but they are not ready for that right now.  My comment about not having ever anticipated going through something like this merely meant that life doesn't always go how we plan so we need to be open and ready for anything.  Somehow that turned into me being an anti-missionary, non-Mormon hater; both of which couldn't be further from the truth. The only thing "THIS" meant was trying to plan a wedding with people who are very, very angry with us because their daughter is now a member of our church.   I'm not sure if the people who commented on my words know me or not because they chose not to identify themselves but the people who do know me know that I am surrounded by converts to my church, my husband being one of them, and that I have never had bad feelings for someone not of my faith.  Also, my future daughter-in-law's family will be the first to tell you that all Mormons are their least favorite people right now.  I have faith that that will not always be the case but right now it certainly is.  For anyone else who might be confused by what I said, I apologize and want you to know that my primary goal in life is to love as Jesus loves and to accept all people, no matter what they believe. 

Cyber Threads - The Ties That Bind

Anyone who knows me knows that I am not very good at technology but there is one thing that I have learned how to do that really brings me joy.  I have learned how to send a text out to my whole family that they can all respond on and it is giving me untold hours of glee.  Watching them chat with each other on my phone makes it feel like they are all in the same room together, with me!  I can hear their voices in their silly sayings and I actually laugh out loud at the relationships they have with each other.  My children and their wives are very entertaining.  One of my funniest sons has a "ghetto" phone (his word) that won't let him respond even though he can read everyone else's messages and I can only imagine how much funnier these threads will be when he finally gets an upgrade and can participate in these comedy sketches.  My dear husband will chime in every now and then with his signature "#wow" and I can just hear my children laughing at him through cyber space.  I'm so glad that I live in a world where even though we can't be physically close to each other we can still be in each other's lives and stay close.  "I love technology":) (as sung in Napoleon Dynamite).

Such a Waste of Time

I have recently been thinking about how much time I waste worrying about my appearance.  I hate it!  I don't want to care what I look like or how I compare to others.  I am wayyy too old for this!  So, why do I devote so many thoughts to things that don't matter at all? On the days when I am lost in a project or in service or just super busy I am so much happier because I don't have time to worry about how others see me.  I know I'm not alone in this because I can see it in all the girls I am surrounded by.  I know we are all comparing ourselves to each other and to everyone else in the world.  It is such a waste of time!  I am positive that Heaven will not be like this so I need to start changing my thought processes or I won't be comfortable in Heaven!  That would be terrible.  The Lord has blessed each of us with a wonderful, flawed but beautiful earthly body and wishing or hoping or praying that it was different won't bring us any happiness.  If we take a reasonable amount of time to make ourselves neat and clean and healthy then we should learn to be happy and grateful for what we have.  So, why is that so hard?  "Why do we always seem to want something we don't have?  I have vowed to try my hardest to push vain, selfish thoughts out of my head as often as I can remember to. I am trying really hard to think of others instead of myself.  I'm embarrassed to say that it's harder than I thought.  I can't believe how often thoughts come into my head that are centered around my physical appearance.  I know this life is for learning and growing and I am recognizing the areas that I have the most trouble with and this is one of them.  I will not let this beat me.  I will not sacrifice the little amount of time I have on this earth worrying about things I can't change and shouldn't want to anyway.  Now, I will go for a walk, spend a reasonable amount of time getting myself neat and clean and then try my hardest to forget about myself for the rest of the day.

Payback

Pat and I were looking at our six missionary plaques on the wall and decided that they are the most valuable decorations we have in our house.  They certainly cost us the most money but aside from that they represent the ultimate payback of raising our stripling warriors.  All six of our boys served full time missions and came back full fledged men of God.  They learned that they truly believe the doctrine they taught and that we taught them.  They learned how to live on their own, how to get along with strangers and how to stand up for what they believe in a Christ-like manner.  Most importantly, they learned that they want to obey God's laws because of the blessings they get and how good they feel when they do it, not just to please Mom and Dad.  So even though the plaques themselves probably cost about $10.00, their value to us is priceless.

Bittersweet Day

Today is my darling granddaughter's first birthday.  It is also the anniversary of my best friend's passing.  I have mixed feelings going on today.  I am filled to overflowing with love for my sweet Chloe and her darling face and personality and yet I am sad that my very best friend in the world can't hold her and love her like I do.  I know Rita knows her because a year ago they were together in Heaven but I want to SEE Rita know her.  So I will spend my day smiling and crying.  Happy 1st Birthday sweet Chlo and Rita, I still miss you.

Hey, Dad

Wow!  After writing my last post I saw the date on the computer and realized that today is the  11th anniversary of the passing of my father, Gary H. Miles.  Referring to the hurricane from the last post I can honestly say that I don't know what day of the week it is let alone the date or even the year so I was kind of taken aback when I realized that this is his day.  He died of prostate cancer in the early morning hours of this date.  I got the call from my mom in the middle of the night.  They live in Utah.  I was kind of numb and didn't really break down until I got up there with my family.  He was a really good dad and I have lots of great memories of him.  I know he is super busy where he is right now but I hope he looks down every now and then and sees my wonderful crew and says "Dy, you're doin' alright:)" just like always.  I love you, Dad. 

Hi, Again:)

I know it's been centuries since I wrote on this thing but I've been conflicted of late.  I stopped writing because I felt pretentious thinking that anyone would care about anything I would have to say.  And, I knew that opening myself up to the public would also open myself up to criticism and not so nice comments and I am the world's biggest wimp when it comes to anyone feeling negatively about me so I just fell off the face of the earth for awhile.  Then, this last weekend in stake conference they kept talking about using the media to get to know people and get your views out there into the world and I felt prompted to get brave and start writing again.  I keep going back and forth with my fear so I don't know how long this will last but I'm back, for now.  Also, I realized that some of my relatives don't live close by and the only way they can know what's going on in my neck of the woods is to read this blog.  Right now, we are in the eye of a figurative hurricane.  My youngest son, Hunter, got home from his mission in Ohio on January 2nd and started school at BYU on January 6th.  He is marrying his high school sweetheart on March 1st so we are in hyper-speed wedding mode.  He comes home tomorrow from BYU to give his talk in church and to officially propose to his sweetheart as he now has a ring.  Yes, everything is happening backwards but, hey, that's how we roll.  Things are going as smoothly as can be expected since we are trying to plan a wedding with a family who wants nothing more than for our family to drop off the face of the earth:(.  We all knew this would happen though when our children started getting serious and our families belong to different churches.  They are taking everything in stride much better than I anticipated and we are all trying to just do the best we can for our children.  I never, in a million years, thought I would be going through this, though.  All of the rest of my children have married girls that were born and raised in our church.  I just assumed that my children would only be attracted to those of our faith.  Silly me!  As soon as someone more media savvy than me gets home, (obviously I'm home alone since everyone on the planet is more media savvy than me) I will try to post some really fun pictures of my crazy crew.