Monday, January 7, 2013

What will you cling to?

Yesterday at church a visiting member from Victoria BC told us of a quote he'd heard that profoundly impacted him and it really struck a chord with me too.  His eldest daughter got married last weekend and the person who sealed them in the temple ("married them" in non-church venacular) gave them some advice.  One thing he said is that your spouse is sure to hurt and offend you.  You can either cling to that hurt or you can cling to your spouse.  I think that's so true.  Figuratively and literally, you have to make conscious efforts to cling to one another rather than all the little things that bother you.  This visitor also went on to say this applies in nearly every walk of life.  In a church congregation, you are sure to be hurt and offended by others.  You can cling to that hurt or you can cling to the gospel of the church.  You often have to choose whether you are going to cling to one thing vs another, there are so many instances when you have to let go of pride to retain friendship or hurt to obtain peace and forgiveness or loneliness to obtain fulfillment.  The list goes on and on and I wish I could have put it so eloquently as our visitor.  I am glad he came to church and chose to share with us and I am glad I chose to go to church and ask Stephen to stay home with a very sick Franklin.  With Stephen and I having some heavy callings, when we have sick kids we have to sometimes call the Bishop and ask "who would you like to have at church today?"  ha ha.  I was glad to be there, I needed it.

And so we move on to a few holiday leftovers- the kids in their Christmas Eve PJs- they are posing that way to show off the "ROCK" on their legs (Ada's split chin and bandage really pull down her face here).


Franklin loves being on "sissy's" desk


 And here are too many pics of the girls in their Christmas dresses.  We all stayed home with a sick Odessa last week, so yesterday was the first day they wore them.  Flash vs natural light- makes a real difference!









And more Franklin cuteness- feel free to skip if you are not a grandparent :  )


What I wished I had on tape was the night when Stephen yawned while reading the words and Franklin copied the yawn right along with it.  Now THAT was cute.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for letting me see this. I don't often get to see your blog because I don't know how to use a blog. Nancy needs to help me more often. Nana

Kim Dewey said...

Great message, I'm glad you passed it along. It is so true. As RS Pres you meet countless people who decide to cling to misery rather than get over some little offense that happened ages ago. I had a similar experience to yours when a lady in our ward told me that we choose whether or not to be happy (of course she said it much more eloquently) and it really struck a cord.

And I am with you on the sick kid dilemma. Both of my kids, on different occasions, have had to sit in quarantine in the corner of the primary room because they came down with their symptoms Sunday morning and neither of us could stay home with them! The best we could do was try to keep the germs away from everyone else. Ah, the sacrifices our kids have to make so we can serve!

Chadwick and Julie said...

Your girls are getting so big and beautiful! Glad you had a good Christmas. =)

Nicole and Scott Kesten said...

Love this. And i surprisingly made it through the entire post.. GO ME and my short attention span..

your kiddies are adorable!

Alyssa said...

Good night baby - how cute!