In times past, however, a lot of things have been said about me and to me. Sadly, the things that have been said to me are worse than the things said about me. Well, that’s life among the imperfect.

On 7/21/2017, I had come home early from work because Barbara told me that our daughter Melissa and the triplets were coming over and I wanted to help make dinner for them. I baked some biscuits and then kept part of the dough to make wiener wraps for them. I got the biscuits done and […]

Art and creation is a process and nearly always an opportunity for growth and development. Quite often, creating anything though is bound to get messy. 45 people like this post. Like Unlike

In 1947, the song writing team of Lerner and Loewe created a musical called “Brigadoon.” It’s a fantasy that takes place in the highlands of Scotland in a village that only appears once every 100 years. One of the songs that I’ve always loved and always brings tears to my eyes is called “There But […]

I grew up in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) and knew that genealogy was an important thing. When I was very little, I didn’t know why, but my mother was into it, my aunts were into it, and my grandmother was really into it. She lived in a trailer behind my […]

The First Vision isn’t just a piece of history for us. It is a pattern for how we learn truth. Yes, we believe that The Bible is the word of God. We also believe that the Book of Mormon is the word of God. We have other scriptures too, but we do not use them as the sole guides for the decisions of our daily lives. For the more personal things, our spiritual practice is to pray about them and ask God what we should do.

Somehow, I think that everything God asks me to do is supposed to somehow be comfortable. If there’s hardship, I start thinking I made a mistake. I’m stubborn about it, because I always find that there was a greater purpose in choosing the uncomfortable ways.

I would bet that every person reading this has felt the frustration of having something to say and everyone else too focused on their own thoughts to really listen. Yet, even though we’ve all felt the sting of being misunderstood, very few of us make the effort to understand before we give our opinions.

I wish I knew how to create an environment where young people with dark thoughts feel like they can talk them over with people who can help them. How much violence could we prevent is we were more open and young people felt they could trust us? How much pain could we soothe if young people who have experienced abuse felt they could tell us about it?

Matthew’s death was sad and unexpected and it caused in me some deep reflection. He isn’t the first friend or family member I’ve known to have died. As I’ve prayed for his family and spent time in the temple over the last couple of weeks I’ve found comfort and peace.

That’s the problem with these platitude-laden verses. They just sound so true, so inspiring, and yet, they leave out God. In fact, upon close examination, it dismisses God and declares him to be irrelevant, useless, and inferior to the individual.

I know that there was a time in my life when my course was leading to death. It’s not that I was going to die any time soon, but there were very few healthy places that my behavior was heading. I didn’t want to go there.

…I don’t really get depressed much. I like life, even with its bad memories. I think in that moment, it was just a realization that I was getting too old to really have the kind of Christmas excitement I had when I was a child.

In my adulthood, I’ve only grown more prone to crying at emotional stuff. A talk in church, a television commercial or show, a movie, all can make me cry. It’s a little embarrassing, but I’m glad I’m that way.

The glass of water analogy falls apart for me because whether you look at is half full or half empty, it still contains water and air, and we need both. I’m addicted to both. Can’t seem to get enough of either.