Lemonade stand: Oh the Difference You Make

After reading about my nephew's "Out of This World" lemonade stand for his school and trying to prepare a family home evening lesson during nap time, I was inspired to revisit this draft of a blog post. Some of my ideas may sound repetitive if you've been following me a while, but I won't apologize. Sometimes it takes a few tries for the lessons God gives me to stick with me enough to change me. And I'm sure I'm not the only one ;-)

"May I point out something obvious? Life rarely goes exactly according to plan for anyone...It is still important to understand and teach the Lord’s pattern and strive for the realization of that pattern the best we can." 1

This lesson has really been brought home to me as of late. I am grateful for supportive friends and family who make such lessons less painful for me to learn. (In case you didn't know, my biggest pet peeve in life is when things don't go according to planned.) Sometimes I think if I can just square my shoulders and think positively I can get through ___. Like a kidney stone, this too shall pass. But as my favorite quote from the movie Letters to Juliet goes, "Life is the messy bits."

About a year ago I was feeling rather frustrated by a recurring problem. I thought was doing everything I could to live my ideals and things just weren't working out. I wanted the Lord's confirmation that I should keep trying, even and especially when what I was doing didn't seem to make a difference. I wanted to be able to better enjoy life's messy bits; I felt inspired to write this poem about a successful attempt of mine to make lemonade out of life's lemons. I don't think I've ever shared it publicly til now.

That sour moment when
Life hands you a lemon.
That tense moment when
You do your best to be nice and just try anyway.

That moment of relief when
A friend pitches in to help.
That satisfying moment when
You realize you've just made
Lemonade.

I leave you with this invitation to choose to turn sour moments sweet. Whether it's choosing not to pass judgement after a brief glimpse at a stranger's worst moment or smiling and making cheerful small talk while you wait in the longest grocery store line of your life, these are some of the small ways that each of us can make a great impact whose far reaching effects may surprise you. "So go and do something today!"

Finding Balance Through Christ's Atonement

Last night I studied Elder L. Whitney Clayton's April 2015 Conference talk, "Choose to Believe", and in it I found reassurance and encouragement as well as solutions to my seemingly unrelated problems. For example, as a parent and babysitter I seek to respect the agency of the young children entrusted to my care; I err on the side of compulsion to do what is right, most especially when it is I who must pay the price for their bad behavior. Due to a recent challenge I find myself reevaluating many things but most especially my parenting methods. I pray I will learn quickly to discipline more like the Lord and not feel conflicted between loving tolerance and a permissive lack of rule enforcement. I am certain that I am not the only one who struggles with this balance and I pray my studies and testimony will encourage more than just myself today. (This conundrum of finding balance between two good ways to follow the Lord which both turn bad when taken too far is beautifully discussed in a book I highly recommend: Extremes: How to Keep Your Virtues From Becoming Vices.)
              "God does not compel us to believe any more than He compels us to keep any commandments,
               despite His perfect desire to bless us. Yet His call to us to believe in Him—to exercise
               that particle of faith and to give place for His words—remains in effect today."

Right and wrong are not negotiable and at some point we will feel the pressing debt to justice of delayed consequences. God's commandments apply equally to everyone. And yet there is the atonement. I'll come back to this thought in a moment.

As I reread passages of this inspired message looking for the quotes I could not mark during my study last night, I was struck by this little sentence: "Sailor could not know at first if what she was doing as she pushed her way through the underbrush would actually work." If you are unfamiliar with the story to which he is referencing, please go read the first part of his talk at least! He continues,"She was lost and injured; it was dark and cold. But she left the crash site and ventured out in hope of rescue, crawling and scraping her way forward until she saw a light in the distance. Once she had seen it, she did her best to move toward it, remembering what she had seen." While most of us will never face such dramatic, traumatic experiences as this little girl, I will still attempt to draw parallels. Think of the last time you felt hopeless and then answer the following questions:

1. Have you ever felt lost and injured, surrounded by darkness and cold? You may have been surrounded by people and yet still been alone in a sense.
2. Have you ever been asked to move on or move forward, to pick yourself up from a hardship and continue on as though you're unhampered by the injuries you've sustained?
3. Have you ever in the midst of trial, discovered glimmers of goodness and glimpses of light, evidences of the love of an ever mindful Father in Heaven? Have you noticed that sometimes such experiences are easily forgotten and swallowed up in our personal anguish if we do not cling to them and seek out the Lord in a desperate plea for more.

Sometimes we may get discouraged by our imperfect attempts to do what is right. To quote a hymn, "the day dawn is breaking, hailing a future of freedom and light."  But sometimes my future doesn't feel very bright. In these moments of painful realization it is easy for me to wonder if what I am doing is actually making a difference. Yet "the Spirit whispers this to me and tells me it is true[:]" just like in the parable of the prodigal son, my stumbling attempts to return home to my Father in Heaven are met with the running footsteps of someone coming to greet me, embrace me, and welcome me home. Because of the eternal sacrifice of my Savior and yours, I can be made whole. I can repent from my mistakes and heal from the mistakes of others. I can find strength to persevere in my enduring to the end. Because I know that my God is waiting to help me cross the finish line. 

Elder Clayton testified that "[s]ometimes progress in spiritual things can seem slow or intermittent. Sometimes we may feel that we have lost ground, that we have made mistakes, or that our best efforts to find the Savior are not working. If you feel this way, please do not give up—ever. Go right on believing in Him and in His gospel and His Church. Align your actions with that belief." I add my witness and that of the Book of Mormon prophet Alma's that "if [we] can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you,even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of [the Savior’s] words.” That is what conversion is. That is how the atonement of Jesus Christ can begin to work in our lives daily, to change us and "to make us new creatures in Christ." 2 Cor. 5:17.

So I will move forward, acknowledging my weakness: "'Twas I, but 'tis not I." I don't have to repeat mistakes, and when I do I don't have to be doomed to continue repeating them and forever be marked as a sinner. I will keep on trying! My character as a daughter of God can be molded into what He wants me to be, through the love and teachings of my family and my Savior, Jesus Christ.