A Fresh Perspective

In the spirit of not being such a control freak and letting my children learn how to express themselves and explore the world around them, I let Kimball take over my camera a few times on our recent road trip. (Sadly, I do have to make the conscious choice to not be a control freak!) Here are some of his shots:


For the pictures of the temple, he laid down on the ground! People were walking around him and chuckling at the young photographer, willing to do whatever it took for the right shot:)

Not bad for a 10 year old. I should let him take over more often.

No Slacking!

If you read my other blog, you already know that on Friday I was feeling burned out, tired, and moody. Thankfully, I was able to spend much of the weekend rejuvenating my spirit (plus I figured out that some of the aforementioned emotional state was probably PMS.) Friday evening, Myrna Mom (my MIL) let us go on a spur-of-the-moment temple date. (LDS temples are not used for Sunday worship. They are a special place where we make covenants and have the privelige of helping our ancestors receive the blessings of the gospel. Read more about it here.)

It was so nice to go and I really felt my spirits lift as we drove up onto Temple Hill. The sun was just setting and it felt like we were entering a magical world. We spotted three does grazing and a flock of wild turkeys and geese. Jared & I walked for few minutes under the oaks with my camera, trying to catch a good shot of the turkeys, before we went into the temple. No luck on the turkeys, but I did get a shot of the temple with the gorgeous oak out front. I am so infatuated with oak trees. Each one has so much character and is so beautiful and majestic.

As always, I left the temple feeling renewed and with my perspective back in place. Then, Saturday night we had the opportunity to attend a meeting at Church just for the adult members who live in our city (called stake conference if you want to know the lingo.) The talks all focused on strengthening families, building up a righteous posterity, etc. Again, I was uplifted, inspired, and we came home with things to talk about regarding ways that we want to improve in our family.

One quote really stuck out to me, especially because of the burnout that I'd been struggling with. It's from the Doctrine & Covenants, which are scripture revealed to Joseph Smith, Jr. I've read it and heard it many times before, but this was the first time that it occurred to me that the scripture applies to motherhood.

Wherefore, be not weary in well doing, for ye are laying the foundation of a great work. And out of small things proceedeth that which is great. (D&C 64:33)

I cannot allow myself to get burned out on doing the things that are most important in my life and to my family. Naturally, we all get tired sometimes, and it was okay for me to take the kids to the park instead of get in one more math lesson last week. But when it comes to the most important things, including: daily scripture study, personal & family prayer, Family Home Evening, temple attendance, serving where needed, showing love to my husband and children; in these things, I cannot afford to get burned out. They are the things that not only rejuvenate me, but are also "laying the foundation of a great work"--my family. What we do as parents today, tomorrow, and every day of our children's youth will have an immense impact on the people that they become. As a mother, and in teaching my children who they are and why they are here, I am doing the Lord's work. And he hasn't given me permission to slack off. What he has offered is lots of help to do His work.

I feel so blessed to have the kind of counsel and wisdom available to me through the scriptures and the words of God's servants on the earth. Heavenly Father knew what I needed to hear this weekend and touched my heart so that I would hear it.

Catching the Bug

You may not know it, but Latter-Day Saints (also known as Mormons) are big into genealogy. We believe that families are an eternal unit that can continue on after we die through temple ordinances. So, one of the many responsibilities we have is learn about our ancestors and make sure that their "temple work" is done. In all honesty, many of us are slackers when it comes to this. Everyone has one or two people in their extended family that are dutiful at doing their family history and the rest of us breathe a sigh of relief that someone else is doing it; we may feel a twinge of guilt now and then when a lesson is taught on Sunday about seeking out our kindred dead, but it doesn't get us very far. I am one of those people who figures I'll eventually get around do doing some family history, but since some of my family lines have been traced all the way back (once you can tap into a royal line, you've pretty much got a green light all the way to Adam and Eve) and I have an aunt on one side and an uncle the other side who are both vigilant, I figure that I have enough to do without jumping into family history.
I do know from experience that many genealogists are passionate about the work that they do. They get caught up in the lives and stories of the people they are studying. Ask someone who loves genealogy to give a class about it and they will ramble on and on about how exciting it is. Generally, it is hard for me to catch that vision.
But yesterday for some reason I started thinking about my ancestors. Pioneer Day is later this month, a day when we celebrate the arrival of the first Mormon Pioneers in the Salt Lake Valley. We talk about their courage and their sacrifice and the legacy they left us. I have pioneer ancestors in both my maternal and paternal lines and have always known this. Yesterday I mused that maybe in honor of Pioneer Day I should learn more about them. So I went to FamilySearch.org and plugged in my grandfather's name and the year that he died to see what came up. There he was, so I clicked on pedigree and started reading some of the names and dates and birthplaces. Most of the names were familiar. Like any good Mormon girl, I've filled out a dozen four generation tables in my life (generally the way you get started with genealogy). But six generations back from me, a woman caught my eye. Tamma Durfee, born in 1813 in New York and buried in Springville, UT in 1885. Obviously, she crossed the plains. I clicked on her name and she began to be a real person to me. I saw that she had been married three times, widowed twice. I saw that she had 10 children with her first husband, two of whom died as babies. They lived in Kirtland and Nauvoo and her husband died before the crossed the plains. I saw that she had remarried a widower in Salt Lake City two years later and had six children by that husband, one of whom died as a baby. She then married her stepson (he was only seven years younger), who had three other wives (living, one of them was Tamma's oldest daughter), a marriage which I imagine was more for convenience and support than anything else, although she had one child by him.
I wanted to know more. I wanted to hear her voice and know what it was like to be her. So I googled her name and learned many other details about her life. I found this picture (the resolution isn't great); I also learned that she wrote her own personal history, so I emailed my aunt who is the keeper of all things family history related and asked her if we had it. It turns out we do! She's sending me a copy.
In the meantime, I keep thinking about Tamma Durfee. Having all those babies, moving from settlement to settlement as their homes were burned and trashed by mobs, losing children, husbands, crossing the plains alone with 8 children (I don't even take four kids to the grocery store alone voluntarily!). I want to know more. And I feel my heart fill up with love and gratitude for the sacrifices that she made so that her posterity could be a part of this marvelous church, the work of God. I can't wait for her history to come.
And somehow, I think I've caught the bug. I don't think that this will stop with Tamma Durfee. Because now that she has come alive to me, I see hundreds of other names that yesterday were only names--but today they are real people with stories to tell. I can't wait to learn about them. I guess that this generation needed to have an aunt who was into family history. Maybe that will be me!
Will you catch the bug?