His work and glory

This past Sunday I had something hit me through the Spirit.  I can't remember what it was exactly, whether it was during Sacrament or during the bearing of testimonies but I feel that it's an important insight for me (and that a lot of parents have probably come this insight at some point in their lives).  The scripture Moses 1:39 says "For behold, this is my ^awork and my ^bglory—to bring to pass the ^cimmortality and ^deternal ^elife of man. "  Ok, so my thoughts might ramble a bit.  I'm not sure how to share this insight but I hope that it will make sense.

Before I became a mother I always thought that having a baby would be kind of boring.  Not that wouldn't be hard but just having a human being that can do nothing for itself seemed a little boring.  Luckily I have been very wrong.  Having Little Girl has been an amazing experience.  Not only because she's such a happy girl and is so fun to be with, but because every single accomplishment she has had has NOT been boring or small.  I have watched her from being a newborn to lifting her head up, to being able to sit up with a pillow, to sitting up on her own, to standing while holding onto something, to pulling herself up to a standing position, to crawling, etc.  Each of these milestones has been such an accomplishment not only for her but for me.

I recently read a blog about what do stay at home mothers do all and also a book called "From Pampered to Productive" where both of them talk about the endless work a mother has.  And where most of it goes by unnoticed.  No pat on the back, no recognition, nothing.  Which is what most mothers know will happen before becoming a mother.  For the most part it's not that big of a deal, but there are days where you have tried your best and you want someone to say "Hey! Look at what you did!"  Mothers work tirelessly to help their children to learn and grow.  To help them sit, crawl, stand. How to eat solid foods, how to read, how to tie their shoe.  How to treat others, how to love, how to say I'm sorry.  How to play an instrument, how to make dinner, how to make a budget.  How to learn from their actions by putting them in time out even when it hurts mothers probably more than their screaming kid at the time.  Why?  Why on earth do they do this for someone else? For many someone elses? Because they love them and they want the best for them.  And I have realized my true payment for being a mother and my true glory for being a mom is to see how far they come from where they begin.  To watch a newborn go from being pretty much stranded in her little body to being able to crawl and stand in 8 short months.  To see her success (and sheer happiness) at being able to do something she hasn't done before. It's an amazing feeling to see this progress in someone you love so much.

This is what I believe the scripture above means.  God loves us so much.  And he wants us to be everything we can be.  He knows our true potential.  Just as a mother knows her child will be able to walk and talk and learn, he knows we can grow and overcome.  And his glory is that we, through his guidance, will grow to our true potential.  A mother's greatest glory is seeing her child become a good and intelligent adult who makes good choices and is able to love and serve.  To see that her mistakes in parenting didn't harm them, but hopefully helped them.  For God his glory is for man to come unto him and to become perfected through him.

I'm not sure if this ramble of thoughts made sense to you, but as I have been a mother I have felt like I understand more what it's like for God. He sees us grow, fall, learn, and go through tests.  Sometimes we reach for him as a little child reaches for their mom as they're learning to stand, other times we allow ourselves to fall before reaching out.  I understand now why he allows bad things to happen to us.  How else would we learn?  How else would my little girl learn to walk if I carried her all the time?  Just like she needs to test out her legs and balance, we need to be tested and tried.  Because it is then that we truly progress and become closer to God, and eventually bring about his work and glory. 

Slap in the face

Today has been a great and hard day.  I feel like all of my church meetings had been tailored to me and what I need to be doing right now.  It was hard, yet uplifting.

Here's a little back info to understand today's slap:
I have lately been struggling with how to go about fulfilling my calling.  I am the VT coordinator in Relief Society.  And it has been such a struggle to get my supervisors to report to me in a decent time frame since I have started this calling.  Honestly I am lucky so far if I get one supervisor to report within the first 3 days after the month has ended.  This has caused much frustration, annoyance, judgmental thoughts, and ranting to Sam about how I can't get anything done without them doing their calling.  It seriously has baffled me.  I know callings can be hard, but seriously ... I literally feel like I have nagged a few of these girls to death asking them if they have their report for me.  One of them I literally have not heard from in two months ... Don't get me wrong though.  Not all of them are like this.  I am pleased that there are a few that have been awesome and I am so grateful for that.

Anyways, today in Sacrament it was fast and testimony meeting.  I can't really remember a lot of what was said but the general spirit there was definitely testifying to me of many things.  One was about love of the Savior, the work and the glory of the Lord (this specific thought will have a blog post at another point), and many other things.

Sunday school was about the prophet and his calling, but it was the end that really hit me.  Love.  Love people, serve people, treat them with Christlike feelings.  Do you get where I'm going with this?

Relief society: the lesson was on callings.  HA!  The sister started off talking about what are good attributes of a leader and then went on to talk about why fulfilling callings were so important. And of course being the awful person I am my first thought was "I sure hope my supervisors are listening" and a split second after that was "Erin I sure hope YOU'RE listening!"

Well that was really my slap.  The rest was really uplifting words and spiritual feelings that I needed.  It got me thinking though about I maybe I need to be approaching my calling differently.  I need to love these sisters.  They are probably thinking every time they get a text or email from me "oh my heck seriously?".  So my challenge this week is to figure out how to love my sisters that I'm over.  How on earth can I do that?  Well before this Sunday I had been planning on holding a meeting with all of them together.  I may not love them the way Christ does but I do sincerely want to help them succeed (and I do hope eventually I will feel that love for them). I want them to understand that when I say over and over that if they need help to let me know I mean it.  I want them to know I won't judge them if they completely forgot to get their report to me, or that they lost their sisters; information.  That I will still help them and still love them, but that I NEED to know this information or I get incredibly exasperated not necessarily with them but with the situation of feeling stuck.  This feeling that I need to be doing this didn't come to me today, it's actually been brewing for the past couple of weeks (especially after conference), but today it just really hit me how important this is.  How important it is for these girls to feel loved and to know being perfect isn't necessary to fulfill this calling.

On another note:  I have felt that I need to post more uplifting things.  Not that my mod podge creations aren't uplifting but I would love to share some thoughts/messages that I have had or come across.  The Prophet (and the Lord) have asked us to be better missionaries and to share the gospel. My bishop has asked us in our ward to reach out to each other.  I feel that this is probably one way I can approach this task.  So my goal is to post one uplifting once a week (or more) and share it on Facebook. Gasp! yes I shall be sharing my blog.  Which actually really scares me.  I have kind of been using this more as a spot to share things that I assume people really aren't going to read.  But I do hope that people will read and will share their own thoughts and opinions (as long as it's appropriate and uplifting.  I will take down or block anything that is rude, disrespectful or creating a hateful spirit).

PS I also changed my blog name! I finally decided on something I thought was appropriate.  It also has special meaning because it reminds me of my younger sister.  When we were younger and would participate in family scripture reading she always wanted to read even though she couldn't really read.  So we would give her the scriptures and she would "read" them and she used this phrase all the time.  I find it appropriate to use and hope that my life shall also come to pass in righteousness.

Mod Podge mirror

Here is my mirror I Mod Podged! I think it actually looks pretty good :) 

Sam found it on the curb a few weeks after my other one had been knocked over by our cat, Willis, and broke.  To do this I bought some wrapping paper from Honk's, our local dollar store.  I just cut out little sections and glued it on with the Mod Podge and then went over it again with Mod Podge.  My first attempt I tried to do the whole lengths, but that was a disaster! I couldn't get it to lay flat to save my life.  I admit I ripped it off in frustration and decided that it would be better to do smaller sections of paper. That worked out a lot better!  It still has a few cosmetic issues but overall it looks good.

For the corners I had originally mod podged a kind of gray paper to it that was in the shape of squares but I hated it.  So then I painted the squares gold and still wasn't liking it so I ended up cutting out more wrapping paper and making the squares into triangles.  Much better!

Here are some pictures of the different steps in no particular order.

Not very good ones.  I need to get better at taking step pictures :/  anyways that's my latest project finished!  This week I need to work on Halloween costumes!

Mod podging the world one project at a time

Here is my latest project.  Newly painted dresser with fabric mod podged to the drawers.  We found this dresser for a dollar at a garage sale. We had been looking for one for a little while for Little Girl's room because what we have now (a small entertainment center) isn't working for all the clothes she has.  So we thought a dresser would be better.  Other than a few things that need to be fixed I think it's a good dresser and a great find!

I completely forgot to take a before picture.  But the drawer above that isn't painted is the original color of the dresser. 

Overall I think it turned out well.  I'm a little disappointed because some of the fabric that I Mod podged frayed and the brush I used dragged it on to the fabric so there's little black things now glued to it.  I'm deciding if I can hide them with paint or not.  I don't want to paint it and have it look worse.  So we'll see.



Also I have been wanting to post about my wreath!  I decided I wanted to make a wreath but I don't want a million of them so I'm making decorations for each season that will go with one wreath.  Here are my fall and Halloween decorations.  That's all I have so far.

 Here's kind of how I made it. Instead of buying a foam wreath I just took cardboard and cut out several different sized circles and glued them together.  (the picture is a little farther down.  I'm too lazy to try and figure out how to get the pictures to be ordered right)

I decided the BOO that I made out of cardboard is a little too homemade looking so I want to make one with wood.  Anyways, those are the projects I've done so far.  There are more to come!