Sharing your gift

By Lacey Gunter

As the Thanksgiving holiday wanes and the Christmas holiday begins to wax, I seek to bridge both wonderful holidays with some brief thoughts on gifts and thanks.

On what is traditionally considered the first Thanksgiving, the Native Americans living on the North East coast of America had a gift, the gift of knowledge and skills.  In a true act of humanity, these wonderful humans shared their gift with a group of immigrant settlers who would greatly benefit from it. I am confident those settlers were truly grateful for the acts of generosity from their Native American neighbors.

At this time and season in my life, as I reflect on the things I am grateful for, the obvious things emerge; family, friends, the gospel, the means to provide for ourselves, and the talents and knowledge we have been blessed with.  Love is of course a key part of that list.  But recently I have found myself being just as grateful for the abilities of others, as for those Heavenly Father has blessed me with. How grateful I am for the beautiful gifts of talent, knowledge and insight Heavenly Father has given to those who have been willing to work to perfect those gifts and have freely shared them with others. These gifts truly edify and enrich my life. They fill me with joy, peace and understanding.

As I reflect on those gifts, I am left to ponder over what gifts Heavenly Father has given to me that he desires I should cultivate and share with others.  How can I edify and uplift those within my sphere of influence.

It is not always easy to discover what these are.  While I am still not entirely confident what they are or should be for me, I am entirely confident on one thing.  As I seek to discover and perfect these talents, my desire should be to benefit those around me, rather than to benefit myself.  With this frame of mind, we truly find how we can make a lasting and valuable contribution to the world around us. It seems ironic, but by giving greater value to the welfare of others, we end up discovering our own infinite value.

I encourage each of you to recognize and give thanks for the gifts of others that have made your life better and then, in turn, seek out and share the special gifts you have uniquely been given to help and benefit others.  My gratitude to all of you lovely Mormon Mommy Writers, you help me to see the world in new way.  I will strive my best to do the same for you. God bless all in this lovely season.

Share The Gift

I love Christmas.

Christmas is all the beauty and joy and anticipation and love and goodness of life, wrapped into one gorgeous, month-long package.

Except, of course, when it's not.

Because we're imperfect beings, so we let it turn into chaos and stress and feeling grumpy in long lines and spending more money than we have and rushing to a million different activities and having the perfect Instagram shot of our perfectly decorated tree and lots of noise and lots of expectations and...bah humbug!

Wow.  Did you hunch your shoulder defensively and furrow your brow and sigh deeply?  Does this sound like someone you know?  Does it sound like you?

Sometimes it sounds like me.

President Thomas S. Monson states, "Finding the real joy of Christmas comes not in the hurrying and scurrying to get more done.  We find the real joy of Christmas when we make the Savior the real focus of the season."

Sometimes I need a reminder to slow down and just be.

Find that quiet place inside of you and let all the Grinchness melt away.  Picture a clear, breezy night. . .the stars are shining brightly. Breathe in deeply.  There is a hush in the air; let it seep into your bones.  Everything is still, still, still. . . .

Picture a stable.  Picture a new mother, exhausted but radiant and her humble, awed husband, hovering nearby.

Then, imagine a sweet, new baby, perfect in every detail.

Can you keep from smiling?  Can you help but feel the Spirit whisper peace and hope and glad tidings of great joy to your soul?

This is Christmas.

And it is a gift, the loveliest gift ever given.

We decorate our homes to remind us of all the beauty our Heavenly Father gave us. We put up lights to remind us of our Savior who is the light of the world.  We can't help but sing songs of praise as did the heavenly hosts who proclaimed the birth long ago to shepherds on the hill.  We give gifts to help us remember the wise men who honored Jesus, and even more importantly, to help us remember His great gift of sacrifice and love.

We speak sweeter and smile more.  We reach out to those who are lonely and have less.  We serve.  We think of our loved ones.  We do all these things, because our great Exemplar did them first.

I love Christmas, because I love Christ.

He is my friend and my Redeemer.  He is my guide through this crazy world.  He is the Prince of Peace.

He is all the beauty and joy and anticipation and love and goodness of life, wrapped into one sweet bundle of swaddling clothes on a night over 2,000 years ago.  He lives now and His gift is eternal.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has put together a lovely video and website to help us discover, embrace, and share the true gift of Christmas.  You can go to mormon.org/christmas to see the video and learn more.

#ShareTheGift

Defining Success as a Writer

by Katy White

My husband and I have recently put in our papers to adopt a second child.  I'm thrilled at the prospect of another child entering our hearts and home, and I pray for our birth parents every day, that they'll have the support they need to make the decision that the Lord knows is best for their child--our child.  As a part of the process with the agency we use, we get to write a letter to prospective birth parents and answer a lot of getting to know you questions (in addition to an unbelievable amount of other questions about our parents, siblings, experiences with parenting, thoughts about the moon landing, etc.  It gets pretty crazy.).

As I've completed all of this over the last couple of months, I've been particularly grateful that I'm a writer. I find myself thanking Heavenly Father for this gift almost daily.  Because the truth is, just filling out this much paperwork is hard and emotional and time-consuming, and if I didn't love to write, I can see myself being so daunted that I'd procrastinate this to a ridiculous, unacceptable degree (I tend to that when I'm overwhelmed, even when I want something desperately).  

As it is, though, I've...enjoyed the process.  Mostly.  My favorite parts are where I get to explain how quirky and awesome our little family is.  It's fun thinking about how to sum our personalities up by our favorite movies (I'm a mix of Pitch Perfect, Moonrise Kingdom, and Sharknado) or sharing why Cormac McCarthy's novel, The Road, rocked my husband's world.  It's neat to pull away all the noise from our lives and personalities and distill who we are down to our beautiful, kooky core.  

I am blunt and unapologetic about who we are: foodies, pop culture junkies, bibliophiles, BYU fanatics, world travelers, a nerdist (me), and a (thankfully very smart) jock (my husband).  We don't hike or waterski or snowboard.  We know nothing about horses.  We hate University of Utah (though not the people, of course).  I love threading our identities through each answer, because I love the idea of our birth mom finding us because she is also obsessed with Chinese-Mexican-Jamaican fusion.  I love the idea of her clicking with us because she knows us.  

As writers, it's easy for us to measure our success by whether or not we publish a book.  After all, that's all anyone asks us about, isn't it?

Well, that's rubbish.  

If the only writing "success" I ever achieve is that our birth families find us through what I've written, I'll consider myself the most successful writer of all time. 

How about you?  What is your greatest writing success to date?  Why is it important to you?

Some Unexpected Gifts

By Lacey Gunter

These past three weeks I have undertaken the goal to complete a service marathon. When I started this adventure I assumed I was going to be the one doing the giving.  But I think I finally learned what Christ means in the scriptures when he says:

..and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it 

(Matthew 10:25)

I thought I was trying to make others feel happy, instead the gifts seemed to flow back to me.

The gift of love:  The world would have you think that joy is found when others love you.  But this equation is all wrong, No matter how hard we break our backs trying to get others to love us, it is out of our hands. We cannot make another love us, it is theirs to give.  True joy comes when we choose to love others. This is something we can control. We can fill our whole soul up with love, love we radiate and give to others, rather than love we take.

The gift of gratitude: Opening my eyes to find people in need and help them has actually attuned my vision to see the innumerable ways I am being watched over, blessed and helped. By learning to serve as Christ does, we start to see what Christ has actually done for us. I truly stand all amazed! As if those blessing weren't enough, this gratitude itself is a gift. It makes everything in life a little sweeter. It is like rose colored glasses.

The gift of peace: When life became stressful and chaotic, or the world seemed more terrible, doing service for others brought me peace.  You would think that adding one more to-do on an already backlogged list would just lead to frustration and exhaustion. But when I took the time to stop and really let myself get immersed in even just a simple act of service it really felt more like a reprieve.


I am so grateful I have taken this journey! And I wish you all peace, love and gratitude in your lives.