Listening-ish

Today, three little Sunbeam girls took turns listening and not listening to me as I talked about the Holy Ghost. Sudden whispers, stories, and songs would catch their attention, but soon they'd be off again, laying on the floor or asking for fruit snacks or running around singing, "La, la, la."

Nevertheless, I believe in the power of the innocence of little children. Their sensitivity to spiritual things is simply coupled with the hilarity of young life--for example, a story from stake conference a couple weeks ago:

Five-year-old girl talking to her mom after a friend's birthday party: "The party was fine. There was cake, but no ice cream."

The mother expresses her condolences.

"It's okay," the little girl goes on. "I prayed, and Heavenly Father sent the Spirit. But I didn't want the Spirit, I wanted ice cream!"

Sometimes we are Sunbeams, sometimes we are little kids wanting ice cream. Still, I know that just as the Spirit can guide these youngsters, He guides us as we listen and pray. There is comfort to be had, a friend to be had, when we seek for the Holy Ghost's presence. We just have to stop running around and stop fixating on ice cream! Then we will hear whispers--and then we will know that those whispers came from Him.

Mild-ish

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland's new Mormon Message has made me think.

It's made me think about how on February 22nd, 2010, I almost died. But I didn't. And, miraculously, my body has had scarce a problem since.

My mind, however, did not come away unscarred.

I think of December of that year, during Christmas break. One day, it was just there: a lethargy that came over me; a lowered spirit; a tendency to sadness or apathy. I didn't know what it was, or why I felt that way. One day it was just there.

Things got worse. At night, after I'd gone to school, seen my friends, and talked to my family, it would leap and then press upon me with a force I could not stand with only my fifteen-year-old self as a shield. Thoughts ran ruts deep into my brain; they would play on repeat without the slightest goading. You should have died. No one would have cared if you had died. No one needs you. You should have died.

I was blessed that I never got to the point where I made an attempt on my own life. But no matter what I accomplished or what I did right, I could not stop feeling shame, regret, and hopelessness. It was consuming. It was a constant shadow. It was hard. It was hard for me.

Anxiety and "mild depression," a psychologist called it.

~   ~   ~

I've been thinking about "mild."

Those of us who are "mild" feel no less broken than those who are "severe." And there is, like Elder Holland said, hope for all of us.

I never gave up on prayer. I prayed to God every day, even through the years when I didn't feel worthy to, and I didn't feel like it worked. And finally, when I got medical treatment--finally, I could see how I had been blessed. I could see that the medical treatment was a blessing. I could see that God was there all along.

And even when it's still hard, I know, I know, there is hope.

Sheep-ish

There's something about the metaphor of Christ being the Good Shepherd that just gets me. I love imagining me, a little lamb, peeking out of His side satchel; His hands patting my head, His arms holding me close.

Today I taught a lesson in church. The title of the lesson was "Feed My Sheep." The counsel came from President Ezra Taft Benson, the prophet of the Church a while back. He challenged us to shepherd those around us--to guide them to Christ's fold, love them, care for them, and feed them spiritually (and physically, if need be). I thought then of this story from another Church leader, John R. Lasater, about his experience with a shepherd in Morocco:

That's why this metaphor is so cool: because its mortal counterpart is so exact! Real shepherds do love their sheep. Real shepherds do know their sheep by name. Real shepherds never give up on their sheep, no matter how old or injured or broken they may be. For the good shepherds, each lamb is precious and priceless.

And He would die for us. He did. So He asks the same dedication and charity from us, His under-shepherds. He asks three times over, and many times more: Feed my sheep. We must be willing to answer.

Clean-ish

It was Halloween, and even though I'm twenty, I wasn't going to miss out on a chance to dress up.

My roommates and I disguised ourselves as the three girl emotions from the movie Inside Out: I was Joy and they were Sadness and Disgust. We had a great time spray-painting our hair and spreading colored eyeshadow all over our faces, making sure to gob some sparklies into our hair for effect. We had a grand old time at our ward dance party (even though the people who had never seen the movie were confused about what we were). We got home late, but reveled in the knowledge that Daylight Savings would give us another hour of sleep before 8:30 church this morning.

With that thought in our heads, we set to work de-costumizing ourselves. I took some makeup remover to my face and smiled to see my regular skin color underneath that shimmery yellow. Next was the hair, though, and my bright blonde had gone to bright blue. It was a two-person, roughly four-wash job, with me curled over the bathtub as my roommate scrubbed the back locks and I scrubbed the front ones. At the end of the whole process, I felt fresh, happy, and clean.

Because my brain thinks in comparisons and symbols (I guess I've spent too much time in English classes), I thought this was perfect:

The bad choices we make? Well, that's the paint. It covers us up and decks us out; it might seem fun at first, but then we realize it's just a mess that needs to be cleaned up. We need help to do it, too. The Lord Jesus Christ is the One who comes to scrub sin from our lives. With Him at our side, it is easier. But it still might require multiple tries, it still might take a lot of work, it still might be discouraging and frustrating and hard and disappointing when you look in the mirror and there's still blue lingering in your cowlick...

But when you're all clean? Mmm...that feeling is worth four washes and more.

Lacking-ish

There is a marvelous thing that happens twice every year called General Conference. The leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints all meet together and give discourses about what the members of the Church should do to improve themselves, their lives, and the lives of those around them.

On October third, one of the apostles challenged us to include in our prayers that night this question, posed by the rich young ruler  to the Savior in the New Testament: "What lack I yet?" The Lord, he testified, would tell us what we need to do to better ourselves. Maybe even more powerful, though, was what he added: We might need to first ask, he said, what we are doing right.

What a curious thought. But how important it can be! If we don't know what we're doing right, how will we gain the motivation to keep working on ourselves? It may be equally as challenging to try to accept our strengths and avoid pride as it is to accept our weaknesses and work on them; both challenges, however, create an opportunity for self-measurement against the Savior and thus self-growth.

What's cool about asking the Lord is that He always tells the truth. It might take more concentration, more listening, more looking and more being honest with ourselves than usual--but He will tell us what He loves about us, and what we can become. We just have to ask.

Hungry-ish

Participating in a fast is something that I really like to do. It makes me feel good, physically and emotionally, to deprive myself of things that I love and want for a higher purpose. But sometimes it's not even that hard, and sometimes I forget the point of the whole practice. That's why I decided to try something new--some awesome counsel that I received months ago, but never took until TODAY!

It's called a 24-hour fast. Some of you are thinking, Well, that's what I do every time. You guys are good. I'm not as good. So I decided to try it, 2:30 PM to 2:30 PM, all afternoon, all night, all morning.

It was hard.

Instead of being able to leave the tummy rumbles on the backest backburner of my mind, I was consistently and constantly reminded that my body was empty--and thus, the reason for its emptiness. I was consistently reminded that this was to show the Lord my sacrifice. I was constantly reminded of who I wanted to help and serve. I couldn't escape it. My throat was dry, my stomach void. I thought about the Savior because...because He was the only thing that came to mind after the thoughts of hunger or thirst.

I guess what that really does is expose my need to humble myself and think about the Savior more, but it was also a beautiful thing. It was beautiful to try to show the Lord that my spiritual well-being meant more to me than my physical well-being; to rely on Him for the ability to stand and sing and breathe and keep going when my body longed for a slice of my roommate's homemade bread and a cool drink from my holographic BYU cup.

Sacrifice brings blessings--and fasting brings blessings of the ability to go forward in life, regardless of the challenges that face us.

Proud-ish

For the past couple weeks, I have been studying a lesson that I had to give today at church. The lesson is entitled "Beware of Pride," so you can kinda guess the topic.

The good ishes that happened during these weeks were all opportunities for me to see the pride within myself and fix it. So sometimes they were more like embarrassing ishes, or oops ishes, or forcing-myself-to-ask-for-help ishes. But they all taught me something more about pride, and something more about humility--which, in turn, taught me something more about Jesus Christ, who is the greatest example of humility to ever live.

Take this ish for example: I had to teach a mini-vocabulary lesson this week in one of my classes, pretending to address a beginning French class. I was super nervous but it ended up being fine. I did my PowerPoint, I felt all teacher-y. I sat down. Then the student instructor who was evaluating us let me know: the whole time I'd taught the class the wrong article for one of the vocabulary words.

Yeah. Oops-ish.

But I was glad, because at least I learned in front of my peers and not while teaching 101 to a bunch of wide-eyed French newbies.

It was a learning experience just like most every experience in life is; in the context of the lesson, though, it became a building experience. I wasn't just learning about humility--I learned that I could be humble if I tried to be teachable. I learned that I could recognize the not-so-great things in myself and change them to pretty-great things, as long as I caught myself in the act.

And that's what good ishes do. Even if they are embarrassing oopses that force you to confront your own weakness...they teach you to be good-er.