Monday, July 22, 2013

Tatum Lesson: Listen to the Spirit

I am probably the worst at this.  I know that I have daily promptings that I ignore and think it is my crazy brain.  In reality it is help in my daily life that the spirit is trying to lend me.  I am just a VERY slow learner.  Case and point.  Saturday night Lance and I went to Walmart late and I had a feeling that I should pick up shortening.  Then I said to myself, Nope you have shortening.  Now the reason I needed shortening was because I was making cinnamon rolls for a meeting that I was having at my house for the YM/YW leaders.  Sure enough I wake up at 6am on Sunday morning to make them and I have no shortening!  I immediately knew that I had missed that golden opportunity to show my listening skills, again.  Luckily I was able to scrape enough shortening off of the sides of the can to make half of a batch, which turned out to be enough.  If I had listened to the promptings of the spirit I could have blessed other people by surprising them with cinnamon rolls.  Missed opportunity.  I will get better.  I know that some people will think why would the spirit want to guide you in something so trivial.  It was important to me and so that is what the spirit does.  Tries to help guide us in our daily lives even with things that may seem small at the time.  I know that there are no accidents or coincidence.  There is help from the other side of the veil.

Sunday night as I was planning out my day, I decided that I wanted to make dinner for a friend who has a special needs kid and her husband was going out of town.  Her little girl has been sick, so I just thought that it would be helpful.  I put it at the top of my list of things to do.  This morning when I went out for my run one of my friends texted me and met up with us.  On our way home she started talking about a little guy who had died a week ago and that his funeral was today.  She said that I should come because there would be some awesome general authority speakers.  I thought about it because I had 3 or 4 mutual friends of the family and oddly I really enjoy funerals because the veil is so thin and the spirit so strong and who doesn't want to hear an apostle speak?   Then the thought came to me that one of the mutual friends was the lady that I wanted to bring dinner to.  I felt like I should text her and see if she wanted me to watch her girls so she could attend the funeral.  I was so grateful that I followed that prompting.  It helped me to accomplish the one goal I had set for the day to bring her dinner, done  She was so happy to have attended.  I got to hold her sweet little girl and spend some time in that special spirit zone.  Hilary got to have a play date with her other little girl.  It was a win win win.  When she came home from the funeral she did tell me that Elder Holland spoke who is one of my very favorite Apostles.  But it was OK.  I was only sad for a second.  I knew that I was blessed in other ways for doing something that I really wanted to do.  How easy.

When I got home I hopped on my bike and rode down to meet Lance.  It was sooooo hot and windy.  Yuk.  I thought I would surprise him and bring some coins to buy us a cold drink.  Along the trail that we ride on there is a drink machine.  Every time I ride past it I wish that I had brought money.  I remembered and it was a perfect day because it was so hot.  I was really excited for my surprise so I didn't tell him until we got to the machine.  I told him to pull over.  Then I pulled out the money.  He did not seem nearly as excited as I thought he should be, but I carried on. I put the money in the machine and pushed my selection: Lifewater.  Then the machine read "Selection Out" and it spit my money out.  What?  I reinserted my money and selected Gatorade.  Then it said "Vending".  I was like a kid in a candy shop!  So exciting.  I went to get my drink out of the slot and it was hard because it had dropped TWO drinks!  Dilemma, is this stealing?  Then I heard my money spit back out into the slot.  It gave me two drinks, of different colors of gatorade so we had a choice and it gave me my money back.  I felt a little guilty but it is out in the middle of no where.  There was no "manager" to tell.  So I just had to enjoy our good fortune.   It sure made the rest of the ride back more enjoyable.

One of my favorite activities with Tatum was taking pictures of her.  We made the mistake of not taking a lot of pictures of Trevin while he was sick.  It has always been a regret.  We were just sure that he was going to get better, so we waited for that day to come.  We didn't really want to remember him sick.  That turned out to be almost half of his life that I don't have recorded.  I took a very different approach when Tatum got sick.   I took several pictures of Tatum almost every day.  I am so grateful.  Even though they are a little hard to look at right now because they make me miss her so much, I know that they will sustain me until I get to see her again.  It was really hard for me to think about taking pictures again after Tates died.  I know that I can't just blank the rest of the other kids lives.  It is just so hard to think that the rest of the pictures that we take, she is not a part of those memories.  That is hard with a capital H.  It makes me not want to make any more memories, but that is silly and impossible.  Well, Hilary is in a weird stage that she freaks out when I try to take her picture.  Perfect combination.  She is really making me work at something that I don't even want to be doing.  Ugh.  Here are some examples from tonight:
She kept smelling the flowers, until she realized that I was trying to take her picture.
This sums it up nicely.
Blurry trying to get away.
Candid.
 Trying to hide behind dad.
Running away.
Successfully hiding behind dad.

You get the point.  She is making this really hard.  My iphone is a little older too and so it is a little on the slow side as far as speed of taking pictures.  She usually has quite a warning before the picture is snapped.

These pictures were all taken at FHE tonight.  We went and listened to a band that one of Lance's co-workers plays in.  It was a really fun outdoor concert in the park sort of deal.  Halea had a few friends come, so we had a load of people.  It was really nice to go do something with the family.  Afterward we went and got ice cream at the Creamery on 9th.   Such a fun night.
You might think this is a lot of people and the van would be full.  You would be WRONG!  Still room for more:)
 A sneak picture of Hils enjoying her ice cream.  She was unsuspecting.


Crazy group of TEENS!
I hope that I can continue to improve my listening skills.   I know that my days and my life will be better if I but listen and pay attention to the promptings of the spirit.  I know that there are spirits that are trying to help guide us in our daily lives.  There is such a difference in your day when you are listening and doing the things that you should be.  thanks for the reminder Tater bug.

1 comment:

  1. And I am so glad you listened to the spiri but I'm sad you missed Elder Holland. You are a good friend. Thank you! Love and hugs.

    ReplyDelete