Wasted Fruit

by Jewel Leann Williams

I have a hard-working peach tree in my backyard. It isn’t big enough for the kids to climb in yet, and it is still producing smallish, but oh-so-sweet fruit. Every year when it blooms, my heart gets happy and I start anticipating juicy heaven.

All the birds in Arizona start spreading get the word, too.

Now there are nets you can put up to keep the birds out of the tree and away from most of the fruit. Our tree is too big now. I’ve seen the shiny hanging deterrents. My brother suggested hanging plastic balls that resembled the fruit to try and help them lose interest in our fruit. The thing is, every year we get very busy in the spring and don’t ever do all those things to bird-proof.

Usually, the birds exact their “bird tax” and there is plenty left for us. Not so much this year. This is what it looked like:

Can you see all of the peaches in various states of bird-eaten desiccation?

This picture, you can't see that all of those peaches are bird-pecked, or completely eaten right on the branch--all of the usable peaches have already been picked from this part. 

All that fruit, ruined. Wasted. It's maddening.

There are a few things go we could have done to prevent this. They don’t matter at this point, and the reasons why we didn’t don’t matter either. When I look at my tree, and all of those peaches that could have blessed my family, my friends, my tastebuds.... the reasons don't matter.

We will either learn from this and take the necessary steps to prevent it next year, or we won’t and will lament the pillaging around May 2018 too.

How often is it like this in life? We have so many blessing--some are things that we've worked hard for, others are just things that Heavenly Father has ordained for our good, waiting there for the taking.

We also have the "birds" of our lives--people, circumstances, whatever--that hover around, waiting for opportunities to ruin those blessings or at least prevent us from accessing them.

There are steps we can take to prevent this from happening, fully or partially depending on the circumstance. We understand that life, just by its nature, is going to ruin some of our "fruit," but whether or not needless waste occurs is largely up to our efforts.

Then, knowing that without action on our part, our blessings will be squandered, we do--nothing. Or not enough. Or not the right things.

What it is that we need to do is different for everyone, every circumstance. The reasons why we don't do what we know we should--those reasons don't matter when you come to a realization of what could have been had you only been diligent.

Just a couple of months ago, President Thomas S. Monson gave us this challenge with a promise of blessings:

My dear associates in the work of the Lord, I implore each of us to prayerfully study and ponder the Book of Mormon each day. As we do so, we will be in a position to hear the voice of the Spirit, to resist temptation, to overcome doubt and fear, and to receive heaven’s help in our lives. 

What amazing blessings we are being promised here:

• We will be in a position to hear the voice of the Spirit
• We will be able to resist temptation
• We can overcome doubt and fear
• We can receive heaven's help in our lives

What do we need to do to safeguard that fruit?  Prayerfully study and ponder the Book of Mormon each day. 

If we want those blessings, we have to do that work. If we don't, we will see those blessings squandered, hanging on the tree waiting for us, but dried up with the waiting. 

A few other blessings (and what we need to do to "obtain the fruit") from this last General Conference:

“Your power to do good as a group of God’s daughters will depend, to a great degree on the unity and love that exist among you.” -Henry B. Eyring

“The Lord promises to direct our paths, but for Him to do that, we have to walk, trusting that he knows the way.” -L. Whitney Clayton

My beloved friends, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, if we ever find ourselves living in fear or anxiety, or if we ever find that our own words, attitudes, or actions are causing fear in others, I pray with all the strength of my soul that we may become liberated from this fear by the divinely appointed antidote to fear: the pure love of Christ, for “perfect love casteth out fear.” --President Dieter L. Uchtdorf

One more, also from President Uchtdorf: 

Our service—whether great or small—refines our spirits, opens the windows of heaven, and releases God’s blessings not only upon those we serve but upon us as well. When we reach out to others, we can know with humble confidence that God acknowledges our service with approval and approbation. He smiles upon us as we offer these heartfelt acts of compassion, especially acts that are unseen and unnoticed by others. Each time we give of ourselves to others, we take a step closer to becoming good and true disciples of the One who gave His all for us: our Savior.

By the way, although I am approaching this from a spiritual point of view, we can extrapolate my poor wasted fruit saga to writing also.  How many times could we reap some benefits, if we would just take action? We can always improve our craft, look for opportunities to expand our writing horizons, network, mentor, critique, accept critiques.... we never know what blessings may arise from taking action--or what fruit we are letting rot on the tree by standing still.

Distracted Driving (Saturday's post on Sunday)

by Jewel Leann Williams

I commute for about 45 minutes to work, down I-10, a pretty busy freeway even "against traffic" (opposite direction of the rush hours). Recently they started doing construction, the first phase of which was to close the freeway and narrow the lanes to their bare minimum width, in order to provide room for what they are doing. As I zip along these new, narrower lanes, I feel my knuckles cramping and growing white from the grip I have on my steering wheel.  The reason? The people in the lanes around me who keep swerving into my lane because they are on their cell phones (while going 75+ miles per hour, no less). Do they not think we can't see the glow of the phone as they keep glancing down?

There's just no room for error with the lanes narrowed.  People need to be paying MORE attention, not less.

Not that people should be on their phones on the freeway (or anywhere else behind the wheel, for that matter) but the stakes are higher when the slightest swerve puts you in the wrong lane and into someone else's vehicle.

Distraction can be deadly.

We just had the Saturday session of General Conference, and I was sitting with my family on our living room floor, trying to listen to the leaders of the church. Lately I've felt like it is supremely important to listen to what is being said--not that it's hasn't always been important--just with the way the world is spinning, it feels more important now. The lanes are narrowing--the "way" is getting narrower, so to speak, and the stakes are getting higher for swerving.

So I'm trying to listen, and the kids are spinning on their behinds on the floor, or fighting over a pillow, or a blanket, or a spot on the couch, or I'm having to bark at someone to wake up and pay attention. Meanwhile, I keep turning to my husband with, "What'd he just say?"

Distractions. Ugh.  I wish I could've listened better, absorbed the feeling of the talks more, instead of only kinda sorta hearing it, and then reading it later. Thank goodness for the conference videos!!

But that got me thinking.... how often do we go through life, distracted? I mean, not just the social media, the OTHER media, the everything going on that keeps us only halfway living life.

I mean, distracted from our covenants so that we are only halfway living them, swerving back and forth, dangerously close to crossing into inactivity, or complacency, or rebellion....

Distracted from the true nature of the Gospel, marching in lockstep with rules and social norms without remembering the Atonement and the plan of happiness and the true "work and glory" of the Father....

Distracted from raising sons and daughters of God, instead worrying about raising kids who star on soccer teams, or who excel at (insert thing here)....

Distracted from revelation
Distracted from the power of the priesthood
Distracted from who we are
Distracted FROM a million things that really matter, by the BILLIONS of things that really, in the eternities, don't matter at all.

Distraction can be deadly.

How grateful I am for General Conference, and for weekly meetings and for great friends, for the scriptures and for daily personal prayer, all of these things to keep us in the lines--in the Way. Let's do our best to regain our focus and not get distracted!

Choices

by Kasey Tross

Yesterday morning before the Sunday Morning Session of the semi-annual General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints began, I took a few moments to write down some questions I hoped to find the answers to during conference that day. 

One of my questions was this: "How can I stay motivated to continue writing and finish my novel?" 

Imagine my surprise and humble gratitude when my question was answered during the first thirty seconds of the first talk by the first speaker- who happened to be the prophet, President Thomas S. Monson, no less. 

He said, 

"It has been said that the door of history turns on small hinges, and so do people’s lives. The choices we make determine our destiny." 

For some reason, the thought of a big, heavy door, and those small hinges, and the choices I make each day suddenly opened my eyes. I make a thousand tiny decisions each day, and how many of them impact my writing? How many times do I choose to hop on Facebook rather than work on my writing? Or watch TV at night instead of write? Or do ANYTHING to put off writing? 

Choices are small. They are simple. And as we know, "by small and simple things are great things brought to pass." Entire books are written. Or, in my case, not written.

At the end of the day I got even more added encouragement from Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, who told me, 

"Keep trying. Keep trusting. Keep believing. Keep growing. Heaven is cheering you on today, tomorrow, and forever."

He told me I don't have to be perfect, I just have to keep trying. Even if I don't succeed, trying still counts.

But if I'm not trying- well, to paraphrase a movie I watched the other day, you'll always miss the shots you never even take, right?

So today I'm going to commit to oiling my hinges and making sure that door of my destiny is pushed wide open by the choices I make every day. 

Care to join me? Let's meet back up here tonight for a writing sprint. I need all the motivation I can get. 9pm EST- that's 7pm for you Utahns. ;-)

Let's go! Heaven is cheering us on!

I Heart General Conference

By Lacey Gunter

This is one of my favorite weekends of the year.  For those not of the LDS faith, this is the weekend we, Mormons, get to sit at the knees of apostles and a prophet and drink deeply from the cup of their spiritual wisdom, insight and inspiration. It is something I treasure and look forward to all year long.

Often times when members of the LDS faith tell people about the blessings and joys of being able to hear from the prophet or apostles of the Lord their questions is "Well, what are they saying?" Coming to conference is sometimes like drinking from a firehouse. There are so many amazing and inspired messages that it is difficult to take it all in. But with some preparation, each of us will hear the messages we need to hear individually. So while my neighbor may say the prophet or apostles are saying one thing, I may have need to focus on a different portion of the message. This is not to say everyone is interpreting these messages in wildly different ways. But, rather, that each of us is facing different trials and has different weaknesses we are trying to overcome. In the wide array of messages we get to hear, we can each gain individual inspiration to know how to best deal with our particular trial or weakness.

Here are a couple of the messages that spoke to my heart today:

1.  Don't delay offering help to someone who is calling out in need, simply because you don't have a good game plan on how to help. When help is needed, step up now and trust the Lord will direct your efforts in the way they are needed. Take action and effort and inspiration will come.

2. Forgiveness does not overwrite justice. Our choosing to forgive someone who has hurt or trespassed us, will not remove the demands of justice and consequences for their actions. It will simply help us to be free from being a victim over and over again and will open the doors for grace to act in our lives.

3. I am a daughter of God. While my earthly situation is often not ideal, my spiritual DNA is perfect.  I can face trials with confidence when I remember who I am and where I came from.

I hope each of you who listened to conference today felt personally inspired by the messages that were important for you. I encourage those who did not partake or who have never partaken, to come and taste the sweet joy that is felt when the spirit speaks to your heart through a prophet of God and lets you know of God's great love and caring for you, his child.

Start Where You Are

by Jewel Leann Williams

In General Conference this past October, President Dieter Uchtdorf shared a profound truth, and guidance for those of us who struggle (which is ALL of us, in some way): 

Start where you are

He said:

Sometimes we feel discouraged because we are not “more” of something—more spiritual, respected, intelligent, healthy, rich, friendly, or capable. Naturally, there is nothing wrong with wanting to improve. God created us to grow and progress. But remember, our weaknesses can help us to be humble and turn us to Christ, who will “make weak things become strong.”⁴Satan, on the other hand, uses our weaknesses to the point that we are discouraged from even trying.
I learned in my life that we don’t need to be “more” of anything to start to become the person God intended us to become.
God will take you as you are at this very moment and begin to work with you. All you need is a willing heart, a desire to believe, and trust in the Lord.

So, there you have it. I love the simplicity of this idea, that Satan tells us that we are not good enough; we'll never be good enough; give up.  GOD, on the other hand, tells us that we are good enough, simply because we are His; but, if we will just take his hand and let him lead, we will become even more. Learning our weak points doesn't have to be negative, if we realize that those weaknesses are given to us to help us to come to our Savior.

In life, this is true.

As writers, or sculptors or pianists or football players or dish-washers, mothers, fathers--any venture that is worthwhile, I can hear the Spirit whisper:

Start where you are.

Perfection is the goal. It's not expected until we have journeyed long and hard, and learned.

Any failure isn't one, as long as we dust ourselves off, and start where we are.

We only fail when we sit in the dirt and refuse to start again.

Righteous Traditions

by Becky Porter

I love traditions.

{cue Tevya passionately singing in Fiddler on the Roof}

One of the joys of parenting is providing anchors for our children.  Traditions make great anchors.  They give our children memories, bond family members closer together, and teach what is important to us.

The best are righteous traditions, centered around our religious holidays and observances.  When we have the opportunity to meld the wholly fun moments with the simply holy, we give our children a priceless gift to treasure.

At the Porter house, watching General Conference for two full days every six months is one of our favorite traditions.  It is fun to remember how this--like all good family traditions--has evolved over the years with the growth and changes of our family.  Believe me, listening to General Conference as newlyweds is lightyears different from watching it with toddlers and preschoolers.

Like a gift with many layers, good traditions often have sub-traditions attached to them.  Thus it is for us.  Here are some of the favorite sub-traditions we associate with General Conference weekend.

1.  Making goody baskets for the ladies I Visit Teach. I've been doing this for 5 1/2 years now, and I've done it many different ways, from quite elaborate to very simple to I-just-plain-forgot-to-do-it.  I've used baskets, bags, and buckets.  Pinterest, of course, has a gajillion ideas if you want to incorporate this tradition into your life. 

{the first ones I ever made}

2.  General Conference packets.  This weekend's conference is the first one where I did not kill a thousand trees by printing reams of paper for my kids!  Now that more of my kids are 9+ than otherwise, I don't need as many coloring pages and bingo sheets, etc. to keep them busy, but they sure came in handy when they were all little!  Of course, there have been sessions where I have used the packets myself since I love to take notes and doodle. :-)

{my oldest, five years ago}

{my notes from a couple years back}

3.  Pictures of the prophets and apostles. We want our children to recognize the speakers and be familiar with Heavenly Father's latter-day servants.  We also have used Conference as an opportunity to review all the Latter-Day prophets.  We have done this many different ways, including a Prophet Matching Game I made when they were little.  Currently, we love to hang an 8x10 picture of each of the First Presidency and Quorum of the 12 on the wall, and add sticky notes (each person in the family) to their picture as they speak.

{made this matching game using the Latter-day Prophet posters} 

{fuzzy Instagram shot of our fave new tradition with the sticky notes}

4.  Candy.  Kids always like it when traditions involve candy.  OK, who am I kidding?  I love chocolate!  So, we always eat M&Ms on conference weekend.  They started out as markers for the bingo games in their packets.  Then, we realized we could eat chocolate without having an excuse. Haha!

5.  Spending time together.  No matter what else happens, General Conference weekend is always an opportunity to be together as a family.  Little kids might be crawling around, dogs might be barking at something across the street, older kids might get in a heated argument...but we're together.  And when the prophet of the Lord speaks, we all get quiet for a few minutes.

Tradition...{cue the music. Fade out}

#LDSconf #ShareGoodness

Conference and Poetry

By Lacey Gunter

April is a wonderful month. The start of Spring and the celebration of Easter and the resurrection are a few of the reasons. But for Mormon mommy writers there are at least two other reasons to look forward to April.

April is always General Conference month for Mormons. This is a time we gather together to listen to apostles and prophets teach us the things God wants us to know in our day and age. It is inspiring, uplifting and uniting. I always end the weekend with a desire to become a better person and having gained a better understanding of how to do that.  What is more exciting, is knowing that millions of people all around the world are doing the same thing. What a powerful force for good we can become; and it all starts today!

April is also National Poetry Month. In our household, rhyming is practically a pastime. My kids think nearly anything can be made more fun by putting it to verse. So what better way to celebrate, than to combine these two April favorites. So, here is my Conference weekend  limerick.

 There once was a girl from West Valley
Who wanted her family to rally
Where virtues are taught
And spirits are wrought
For their part in the grand finale.

Have a great weekend and a most lovely April!

Moments

My computer moves at a snail's pace. By the time the "New Post" page appears so I can start typing, I've forgotten what I was going to say.

Where was I?

I'm probably not alone in this, but I've found that the less writing I get done the more um, shall we say creative, my dreams get.

Like the hypnosis-zombie apocalypse dream.

Or the I'm-in-a-friend's-wedding-and-hate-my-dress dream.

I've been working a lot. Last week I clocked over 50 hours. This week wasn't as bad, but I still squeezed a double shift in on Tuesday. That's not my favorite thing by a long shot, but you do what you have to do, right?

My writing is suffering and it frustrates me. I had planned to write a book in September. Now I'm looking at the dwindling days left in the month and drastically reshaping my schedule. Right now I hate having an outside job. I hate anything that drags me away from my writing. And, most of all, I hate being so tired all the time that even when I am home I have no energy or my back hurts too much to sit in the chair.

And even those start to feel like excuses after a while. Even when the pain is so bad I can't even stand up straight.

Can I express how much I'm looking forward to General Conference? Probably not. I've missed a few Sundays of church because of work, and I really don't want to miss that weekend. I need the recharge. I need that overwhelming infusion of the spirit.

My husband just took a job that will mean a significant pay cut, even though it's closer to home and he'll be spending much less in gas commuting to and from work. So it really doesn't look like I'm going to be able to quit my job any time soon.

I keep telling myself that if writing is so important to me, I will FIND the time to get my projects done. I will MAKE the time.

Right now I'm just struggling to make time to get dressed and go to the grocery store before work. :/