Clear As Mud?

The Atonement: After All We Can Do

There needs to be many many more talks like this given.  This is one of the few talks I have ever heard about the atonement where I don't end up feeling inadequate, undeserving, unworthy, and generally like a screw-up.  Sometimes I feel that there are huge amounts of pressure put on us to be perfect BEFORE we turn to Christ for help.  To do all we can do, and only THEN do we receive grace.  Bradley Wilcox points out some of the mixed messages that are frequently sent.  Example: we sing the hymn "I Need Thee Every Hour" (one of my personal favorites), and then we hear a talk given on how we can't have access to the atonement until we repent and better ourselves.  Once we do that, we will receive the grace we need to get back to Heavenly Father.  Brother Wilcox states that grace is given to us before we better ourselves, because we can't better ourselves without it.  And I like that.  It makes a lot more sense.  It seems like so much emphasis is put on our works, what we are and are not doing, whether we are doing good enough to be worthy of the blessings we have, let alone the blessings we want/need.  Home teaching and visiting teaching numbers are kept track of, with the goal of reaching 100%, and reaching that goal is pushed pushed pushed.  Then we are told that the numbers aren't important, but.....  I have been told in lessons that blessings are withheld by not serving others, not using my talents, by doing this, and not doing that.  Then I'm told that Heavenly Father loves me no matter what and will bless me when I need it.  Missions keep track of how many baptisms are made each month and by which missionaries, making it a contest to see how many people can be dunked, instead of making the focus on finding those people who are truly ready to be baptized.  If the numbers aren't important, than why are the numbers focused on?

Anyway, rant over.  I know that the intentions of our leaders, both locally and worldwide, are to get out the message that Christ loves us, and He wants us to return to Him, and that He will help us get there, and that we won't be perfected, no matter how hard we try, until we get there.  That we CAN'T be perfected on our own works.  I also know that they are as human as I am, and that makes them pretty imperfect, and maybe they have a hard time getting that message out while at the same time, doing their job of saying that we still need to do good works, and better ourselves, not because we have a debt to pay back to Christ, but because that's how you learn and grow.  And I love them for trying.  They are certainly doing the best they can to do what they feel they are being told to do.

Also, Brother Wilcox explains it much better than I just did.  So listen!

60 Days of Bloggerness in One!

Name a talent of yours you want to cultivate more.


Uh, really?  


Let's see.....


My singing.  That's always on my mind.  I miss being able to take singing lessons, and I can tell that I'm not as good as I was before.  I was always proud of my voice, but I haven't been able to do anything with it for years, except for church choir which is not something that I've really been able to get into, even though I kinda of want to.  


Your Mother (or mother figure in your life--the woman who raised you). Share a picture of her here, if you can--try and get a photo of her when she is around your current age. If you know any interesting facts or traits and stories about her, maybe explore her past a little, before she was your Mom, who was she?


I won't be sharing a picture of my mom, per my non-people-pictures policy.  She's an artist and is constantly decorating her house.  She tries to be nice to everybody, and I rarely hear her say a flat-out bad thing about anyone.  She's a really strong Mormon and is really involved in a lot of what goes along with that.  I don't feel I actually know that much about her before she was a mom.  She doesn't really talk about her past much, or else I don't ask about it.  One of the two.  We don't have a very good relationship, which sometimes makes me sad.  But I'm so used to it, that I don't really think about it anymore.  We've never been close that I can remember.  

Life is Hard for a Control Freak

When is this going to end?  My poor husband has hurt his back 3 times at work in the last 3 weeks and we are suspecting a herniated disc.  Today, he is going to the med center because he hurt it in a crisis situation dealing with a client.  On top of this, he is beyond stressed from the ridiculous workload that his company expects one person to do.  So stressed, that he can't even really relax.  He's been seriously looking for a new job for almost a year now, but he's getting nothing.  And what can we do about it?  He doesn't really have any skills except for in the field he is currently in, which he does NOT want to do anymore.  We have no money for him to go to school to get more, and he doesn't want to go anyway.  He wouldn't even know what to study.  And he's the money-earner, so he can't take just any job.  I could go get a job, if I had a car, and if I knew that I would get paid more than enough to cover daycare.  But I can't earn that much, since I have no marketable skills either.  And it's not right for our family to do that anyway.  We've been praying every night for so long for him to get a new job, for some kind of relief to come along, and we are getting silence.  While I believe that there is some reason for that silence, it is still so extremely frustrating to see him shouldering this burden, and seeming to get no help, no lightening of the load.  Something is going to break, and I'm so afraid that it's going to be him.  Something needs to be done, something needs to change, but there is nothing that either of us can do to change the situation.

In good news, I got a 99% in my last ever (hurrah!) anatomy and physiology class, but only because circumstances forced me to take the final as an open book.  So, while I'm a little proud of my A (some of that at least comes from a paper I had to research and type up, which I did do without cheating.  This paper is part of the reason I had no time to study for the final, resulting in the open-bookness of the final), I'm not as proud of it as I have been for my other A's.  In my mind, I give myself a C+.  Because I can't remember this stuff, even if it turned around and bit me.  I'd be all, "What?  What just bit me?  I've never seen such a creature as this my life.  It's an anatomy&physiology, you say?  I've never heard of it.  I hope it didn't give me rabies.  It seems to be foaming at the mouth a little," if it did.  So, I get a break until the 19th, when my next class starts.  I'm a little more excited for this one, because I'm getting back into the herbs and such with it.