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There is an odious character in C.S. Lewis’s book The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. He combines all the worst characteristics of childhood and even the shadow of the darkness of adult pridefulness. He is so repulsive, it makes the book difficult to read. You have to slog through his diary entries and listen to his whiny drivel in order to get to the more rewarding parts of the novel. His name is Eustace Scrubb, and his personality is worse than his name.

At one part in the story the Dawn Treader, the adventure ship of Lucy, Edmond, and the crew lands on an island. Eustace, after antagonizing everyone, goes exploring and enters a dragon’s cave. Through some magic, he becomes a dragon. When he was still a boy, he put on a gold cuff, which was still there when he grew to be a dragon, and the cuff cut into his arm painfully. The pain and humiliation of his condition changes Eustace, and in his dragon form, he is much kinder and more helpful. When the ship is ready to leave, Eustace can’t go with them. Aslan appears and offers to help. He takes Eustace the dragon to a spring which soothes his aching leg, but Aslan insists that the cure lies in being “undressed.” Eustace claws at his dragon scales and makes some progress removing the dead scaly armor from his body. Eventually Eustace turns to Aslan and asks for his help. Aslan uses his sharp claws to do the job.

The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. . . .

Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off — just as I thought I’d done it myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt — and there it was lying on the grass: only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. And there was I as smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me — I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on — and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I’d turned into a boy again. . . .

After a bit the lion took me out and dressed me . . . in new clothes.

Lewis, C.S. Voyage of the Dawn Treader

To the relief of the reader, Eustace is a changed person. By the end of the book, I even started getting used to his name. In the following books of the series, he is one of the heroes.

Yesterday I wrote about what I saw as the twin evils of our time; Trumpism and extreme Progressivism. I thought I did a great job of expressing my views of each and why I felt they were not the future of the America I envision; how each one appearing to be opposites, is really the same. I believed, and still do believe, that they pose a clear and present danger to the country I love. Looking back on my post after much reflection, my feelings toward the post are complicated. A large part of me wishes I could take it back.

The biggest danger of writing something is that you can’t take it back. It becomes its own reality once written, especially online. In choosing to express myself on here, I am taking a great risk. Everytime I tap on the publish button, I am sending off a piece of myself that I may greatly regret not just putting into words, but thinking at all. The Savior wisely taught, “It is not what goeth into a man that defileth him, but what cometh out.” Also, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”

First thing I have done is examine my own motivations. I want to be clear that I had no intention of attacking any individual. Even Trump himself is not really a person to me, but a symbol of the ruin and corruption of the Republican Party. They have lusted after Trump for his wealth and power, they have adopted his cruelty and his craving for dominance. As a person, I can have compassion on him, but as a symbol and as a leader, my hatred is fixed and my opposition unwavering. Like Thomas Jefferson, I say, “Rebellion against tyrants is obedience to God.” Any attempts to shame me for hating Trump are not effective because I know that my hatred is not of a person, but the evil I see in and around him. After sincere prayer and reflection, I can say that I have no malice toward Donald Trump the man or his supporters.

As far as Progressivism, I have never been a progressive. I have known very few progressives. As such I am unqualified to make a convincing case of the merits of the movement. So why did I speak out in my ignorance against it? Shouldn’t I avail myself of more information? In answer to that I would say, one does not need to be a geologist to see that a torrent of lava moving down a mountain is a threat to all living things in it’s path. I am not a geologist. I can’t tell you the chemical makeup of the lava, give you it’s classification, or make any predictions about the speed of it’s movement or the merits of the minerals that it brings with it that will enrich the soil in the future. I am the ignorant villager, running down the hill yelling, “Lava!! Run!!” I claim to be nothing more.

Layne and I were having an interesting discussion on Sunday on the way home from church. I was explaining some of the things I had been reading about the ideas of Carl Jung and the unconscious; how it is vast and unknowable. I compared it to outer space, theoretical physics, and the movement of galaxies across space and time.

He said, “Mom, it’s like it gets blacker and blacker. The more you know, you move out into it, and there is more you don’t know.” His skin was creased between his eyes like mine gets when my brain travels too far into the unknown.

I replied, “Yes, it does. It’s like Socrates said, ‘True wisdom is in knowing that you know nothing.'”

When I started posting my naked self on Facebook last year, I realized that I would never post perfect things. There would be mistakes. I would hurt people. Like Eve, I saw the path before me as sin and death. Living my life out loud and speaking my mind, I was destined to fail, just as she knew she would as she took the bite out of that piece of forbidden fruit. She broke the taboo. She rejected the easy path. She ate, and she was right.

Sometimes wisdom is foolishness. Sometimes doing what’s right looks very wrong. Sometimes courage and faith look evil and weak. Sometimes you have to dive into the blackness of outer space not knowing anything, certain that with your mortal understanding you never will, but that it’s okay because it’s the right thing to do. You can’t say why or how, but you know it is.

Eustace Scrubb had to let the Savior tear the scaly skin off of his body to heal him. That’s what I feel he has done to me. I used to be a Republican conservative. I had built up layers of scars and scaly armor defending myself against the evil liberal socialist/communist ideology that was of the Devil. The liberals were wrong about me and my friends. We were not racists. We were not reactionary. We were the good guys fighting the corrupting influence of creeping socialism. I saw the racists among us, but I quickly turned my eyes away. That wasn’t me. Everyone has a few weird ideas, a few cookoos in the tribe. Overall, we were the good guys. We defended the constitution that was ordained of God. That was the truth, and we were the defenders of truth.

The illusions I clung to about the righteousness of my tribe were obliterated. The rise of Donald Trump has born in my soul a devastating and painful realization that I had been closing my eyes to the reality; the real danger was not from the Democrats, liberals, and progressives, it was from my own side. We were the ones the Russians targeted. We were the weak ones who had been imbibing deeply of the lies and propaganda of talk radio. We were the ones who turned a blind eye to those among us who trafficked in conspiracy theories. We were the ones that would destroy America.

And so I began the excruciating and painful journey of rebirth; of unlearning what I thought was true and seeing reality for the first time. First I stripped myself of the Republican identity. I stood outside the party in the cold and dark, waiting for the prodigals to come to themselves. I have clung to the identity of conservative in the hope that I could keep it pure and preserve it when it was ready to be embraced again by a repentant Republican Party. Now I am gradually seeing that the term conservative no longer means what it used to mean. The Trump supporters continually accuse me on Twitter, “You are no conservative!”

This morning it seemed to all come together for me. I am not a conservative. All movements are born of ideas. At first the ideas are alive and beneficial. They grow and live until, like a fingernail, they gradually become brittle and dead. We cling to them, wishing to return to the time when they were noble and new, refusing to see the dead shell of what they have become. Conservatism as it lived in me, is dead. As Americans we must see the awful truth before it is too late. Our nation is falling. The evidence is clear and the signs are lit up in neon letters. There is only one path forward. Whether we accept it now, and avoid our doom, or we will be forced to do it later. It is excruciatingly painful and awkwardly vulnerable. We must shed dead things, like Eustace did.

I refuse all labels. My wise husband observed last night as we discussed the dangers of labels and tribes, “After the Savior came, there were no more tribes among them.”

We are in an age of labels and divisions. I choose to shed them. I have no tribe. I am not an adherent of Mormonism, conservatism, or any other -ism. I am myself, a living, breathing, child of God. I have no tribe. I own my own complicity in the evils of my time. I accept responsibility for the choices I make including owning my own ignorance. I own the words that I wrote yesterday and the consequences that have come as a result.

I am weak, I am ignorant, I am fallen. There is no comforting “us” to which I can claim a shelter. I stand before you and my Savior naked. Judge me as you will, but His judgement only will I seek. Him only will I serve. Only He can look into my soul and judge the righteous judgement.

I pray to my Savior, show unto me my sin! Reveal unto me the darkness of my hidden places! Show me the folly of mine understanding! I prostrate myself before thee and plead with thee for mercy. Forgive me my weakness. Take from me the shame that tortures my mind. Show to me that there is hope for me and the ones that I love; that my weak words and efforts to express them are sufficient to do thy will. Fill my soul to overflowing with love and compassion for all and hatred for none, I pray to thee with all my soul and might. Amen.

“Maybe the progress wasn’t as great as we wanted to tell ourselves it was. The Civil Rights movement was not as much a grassroots enlightenment as it was a top-down federally enforced policy. Racism is not going to be fixed by the government.”

That was my Twitter response to a thoughtful post written by a progressive. He was lamenting how we seem to have lost a half century of progress in racial relations. He was asking whether there was a way back to that progress; to turn the clock back to 2016. It struck me as strangely reactionary for a progressive; a strange comment for strange times.

Progressivism is an interesting movement. I don’t know anyone that doesn’t see themselves as progressive. We all want progress, we have different paths to get there and different rules we are willing to make or break, but in the end, we all have similar goals. Fair and equal treatment under the law, the chance to develop ourselves in our careers and education, the ability to earn a piece of the American dream. We want a steady, stable economy, laws that are fair and equally enforced, and respect from other countries. I think it is interesting that the political left has adopted a morally charged word like “progressive” as though deliberately trying to point out that the other side doesn’t believe in progress. It isn’t a set of policy positions is the appropriation of a value. It is a new secular religion.

One of the ironies of progressivism, as I have watched it unfold in the last decade or so, is how similar it is to the evangelical right. Although they claim to be opposites of each other, they have managed to become opposite of each other as one half of a pair of scissors is the opposite of the other.

This point of view is going to be inherently unpopular. As a staunch opponent of Trumpism, I am expected to be a reformed conservative, fully receptive of my new friends on the left who will teach me the true political faith. Unfortunately, I am as unlikely to be a progressive convert as I am to become a MAGA hat wearing, flag waving, rally attending, Trump supporter. I see as many problems on one side as I do on the other. More than that, I see the same problems. The big question for people like me becomes, is there a place for me to live? Is America big enough to fit me, or is there only room for these two faiths, so alike in so many ugly ways? Trumpism and Progressivism; America First and the Resistance; religious extremism and secular religious extremism. Two sides of the same ugly coin.

One of the hardest things to find in today’s world is a consistent definition of a value. For example racial equality used to have a consistent usage. America was not expected to create equality between the races, America was to allow equal opportunity. The statues of lady justice has a blindfold, and that was what racial equality used to be about. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream that his children would be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. Progressives have gone beyond that. Theirs is a moral crusade to tip the scales of justice in favor of the minority. The minority, in their morally zealous secular judgement, is too disadvantaged to compete in a level playing field. Instead, he or she must compete with the all powerful straight white male who has been held up as the source of all the evils in the world. White European colonialism, Native American subjugation, African slavery, Japanese internment camps, and Southern segregation are all evidence that it is time to overthrow the white overlords. The minority members deserve a leg up, a helping hand, an advocate in the government. Doubtless these vengeful revolutionaries will make life difficult for the privileged white usurpers once they are safely beneath the progressive heel.

The fracturing of America didn’t start on the right, it started on the left with the progressive movement. The hatred that has colored America in shades of darkest black began on the political left, and it’s growing. Consider for a moment, the zealousness of the progressives. They are determined to outdo the Puritans in their secular piety. Cultural appropriation is the new moral code of modesty, stringently enforced with public shaming of everyone from Kim Kardashian to Bruno Mars. According to the cultural appropriation police, Bruno Mars is only popular because his music makes black rap palatable to white listeners. In their view, only black people should be able to make a career out of African based music. Bruno Mars got so much hate, he got really down. He tried to stem the criticism with insistence that he was sufficiently grateful to the foundations of the genera of his music. It wasn’t enough, the tide of hate almost sunk Mars’s career. Thankfully, the black musicians he was accused of stealing from stood up for him as an artist who has found expression in the music they all love. Other artists with less visibility have surely been less successful in fighting this kind of prejudice.

Cultural Appropriation isn’t the only sin that progressives are into shaming for. LBGT values are huge. If you ever considered marriage as being reserved for only heterogeneous couples, forget ever having a successful political career. Look at the shaming of up and coming progressive politician Tulsi Gabbard. She is Hindu and American Somoan, so she fits the minority requirements, but at the age of seventeen, she advocated for a defense of traditional marriage amendment to the Hawaiian constitution. Her father is still actively engaged in pro-traditional marriage activism. (Cue the scandalized gasps of the secular-progressive knitting club). I don’t think anyone thinks she has a future in politics, let alone securing the Democratic nomination for President. Too bad for them. She seems like she might have a lot to offer in spite of her sins.

Consider the cases of Jeremy Kappell, a small town meteorologist who slipped up the name of a local park named for Martin Luther King Jr. He was publicly shamed when a video clip went viral on social media. He was fired within days without an opportunity to explain himself. Comedians too, it seems, are having past jokes examined for secular progressive sins. If the sins are deemed damning enough, their careers are over, even if they give the most abjectly humble apologies. There is no Savior in the progressive movement. No forgiveness. No redemption.

If things look bleak on the left, they are far worse on the right. The abandonment of the political right to anything resembling a coherent moral and policy value system has been a spectacular disaster. In a few short years, the cult of personality around Donald Trump has completely destroyed any credibility of the political right, and effectively paved the way for the progressive left to enforce their brave new world on America. They have adopted the hypocrisy and cruelty of the left and taken it to a new level. They have shown the most abhorrent use of religion to shield Donald Trump by making him out to be a repentant sinner who is now a soldier for Christ. They refuse to look honestly at the damage he is doing to trusted institutions and the way he targets his political enemies on Twitter, openly abusing his executive authority with no political or social consequences.

Surely in this awful state, we should take a good hard look at our nation. We need a baptism. We need a renewal. We need to start over and consider what our core values are. We need to strip ourselves of hypocrisy and pride. We need to bathe ourselves in the blood of Him who is Mighty to Save. The sins of the past are real. Racism, income inequality, gender discrimination, the ripple effects of slavery and segregation, drugs, gangs, police brutality, and all the rest. Those sins are real and we won’t fix this with secular religious piety coupled with government reinforcement or evengelical hypocrisy proselyted and enforced by Donald Trump.

We need a real Savior to unite us, and he isn’t going to be sporting a clever slogan and a red campaign hat. He will be meek and lowly in heart. He will care for and advocate for the disadvantaged, while refusing to force the human mind. He will lead from the front, and inspire us to be something more than the sum of our parts. He will show us what the real destiny of America will be, the nation that has always been his creation, formed for his eternal purposes. She doesn’t build walls or draw nationalistic boundary lines among people. She helps liberate the captives in foreign lands. She shows the world that leadership doesn’t equal tyranny and that wealth doesn’t equal value. She knows that there is only one who is King of this great land, and that is the true God of this World, even Him whose blood atones for all those who come unto him; Jesus Christ the King of Kings.

He is known in many lands and many religions by many names. I have been researching ancient cultures and traditions and the story of the hero who sacrifices his life for all is present universally. Human kind is instinctively aware that we are in an awful quandary. No religion of heaven or Earth can save us. We need a Savior! It is in our collective unconscious. Our modern identity of self-sufficiency is at odds with our subconscious knowledge that we are not enough. Our phones and tablets, mass transit and internet, our fast food restaurants and online universities, stock markets and bank accounts will not sustain us. We must come unto Him! We must confess our weakness and sacrifice our pride at the altar of his mercy. He is Mighty to Save! Mighty to Save!

I finished Educated on Friday. It was quite an experience and I am so glad she chose to share her story with the world. I felt resonance with so many different pieces of this book, it’s hard for me to think of one in particular that I want to focus on for this post. After thinking about the book for a couple of days, I decided that what stands out the most to me is that she wrote it.

Having shared quite a bit of my own story online, I feel a kinship with Tara Westover. In a way, what we have both done is kind of like donating your body to science, except we are still alive to watch everyone react to our most sensitive revelations about ourselves. Although she has chosen to share more of the intimate details of her family relationships than I have, I feel that we are trying to do the same thing; to find our voices and become the women that God created, not the women that society and our family would like us to become.

I know there are many people who disagree with these kinds of displays. Some call it showing your dirty laundry, or equate it with public exposure. One of the duties of upcoming generations is to reevaluate the values of the past based on present circumstances. Tara and I do that by speaking out. What benefit did Tara Westover get from keeping her family’s secrets? Nothing but abuse. By giving voice to her perspective and creating such a vivid picture of her upbringing, she allows us the benefit of her experiences. She has given us a gift; her perspective. Agree or disagree with her, in reading her book, you get to live life behind her eyes.

I’ve pondered on the ways her book has impacted her family. They didn’t choose to have a national spotlight put on them. Her writing was well done. It fleshed out each of the family members and did so without judgement, but with vivid and detailed descriptions. Just the same, each reader will judge the family members. Personally, I found myself with a large amount of compassion for each of them in spite of disagreeing strongly with some of the choices that were made. Most readers will probably not respond that way. Condemnation comes too easily to most people, and the Westovers will get loads of it. I would be very surprised if they were not getting inundated, as we speak, with piles of hate mail.

The longer I live the more I realize that families like Tara Westover’s are not uncommon. Undiagnosed mental illnesses are as plentiful as ice in the Arctic and the unfortunate children of these parents carry heavy burdens. Exposing people like Val and LaRee Westover to public scrutiny and condemnation will not encourage them to get treatment or to reevaluate the way they enabled their son’s abuse. It will likely increase their paranoia and sense of victimization and further convince them that the demonization of their daughter was justified.

Tara Westover says that she wrote the book because she felt her parents and their enablers had stronger voices than she did and they owned the narrative of her life. She decided to publish this memoir in order to show that her voice was as powerful as theirs. In this, I fear that she answered a BB Gun with a nuclear missile. Of course, she didn’t know the book would achieve such spectacular success, and she did attempt to protect people by changing their names. Still, I feel like her book likely burns a bridge that in time she may regret burning. If so, the book is largely her loss and our gain. All the money and fame in the world will not replace your parents.

At the same time, I think that if she did err in publishing this memoir, and I’m not at all sure she did, I really loved what she had to say. If each of us could take a page out of her book and be a little more real about ourselves, we would be better for it. The relationships we have with the people that we love don’t have to be a secret. If more people talked more honestly and openly about the complicated relationship they have with a sister or a parent or a brother, they would find that they are not alone, and that can be a relief. I think we are long past the time when silence is a virtue in these matters. Forcing people to see a one dimensional caricature of perfection instead of real people when they look at you and your family, is not just inaccurate, it’s unfair and dishonest. It robs the world of a soul and leaves us all poorer as a result.

Life in a fallen world is painful and difficult, but it doesn’t have to be lonely. I am grateful that Tara Westover shared her journey with me and helped me feel less alone on my own path. I hope my blog helps others in the same way. Pay it forward!

I have to stop reading, but I can’t.  It is too raw and real and familiar, but at the same time, it is inevitable that I should walk her path and learn her truth.  Finding yourself underneath the layers that others have built on top of you for their own reasons is the hardest thing to do.  That is Tara’s story, and it is my story. There are so many parallels, it feels as though she is me and I am her. Her complex emotions and relationships bring my pain to the surface. She tells my story. How can I keep reading? How can I stop?

She left the church.  She couldn’t fit.  Will I fit?  Will I lose everything like the one who sold all for the pearl of great price, the one thing that is indispensable, my own soul?  How can I?  How can I do otherwise?

Life in a fallen world is a cycle of birth and death.  The caterpillar is constantly growing and shedding old skins.  What was once new and alive becomes dead and confining.  The future is unknown to the small creeping thing until one day the chrysalis opens and it flies to its destiny among the clouds.

I am a babe upon my Savior’s knee.  Who am I to say what my destiny is and where he will set my feet?  If he tells me to go, as Abraham went, to seek a better way, to find him anew, I will go.  Still, I feel as though I am stepping into a dark void.  The darkness surrounds me like an inky blanket, my brain groping for certainty like a mountain climber in a free fall. 

Marvelous are the ways of my God!  He will not fail to give me support.  He searches for me in the darkness of my afflictions.  The lamb cries out and the shepherd will come without fail.  He has engraven me upon the palms of his hands and he will not forget.  The one who takes note of the sparrow’s fall will not leave me comfortless.  Oh Lord guide my steps and those of my sisters who walk my path in these troubled days.  We are of more worth than many sparrows.  Thou that seeth the value of all things knoweth the worth of the souls of thy daughters, and thy heart is moved with compassion at our tears.  Our prayers are not lost to the void, but do rise to the height of thy halls and echo within thy chambers.  Let thy mighty hand be made bare!  Let thy daughters rise up and put on their beautiful garments.  Let not our oppressors know victory, but let them taste defeat!  Let them know that there is a God in Israel and he has the power to save!

I started a new audiobook today. I listened to first few hours of Educated by Tara Westover, a book several of my friends recommended to me. It is about a girl from Idaho that was raised in an extremist religious home on a junkyard. She grew up to achieve postgraduate degrees and this is her memoir of her journey. It took me a while to decide to read the book. I think subconsciously I worried that she would look down on her family and her roots.

I’m from Idaho, and I have very sacred fond memories of running wild and free across our land. We didn’t have a lot of land compared to some of our neighbors, but there were few fences, and most of them barbed wire. I learned from a young age how to get through a barbed wire fence without getting hurt- at least not very badly. I remember waking in the morning with a rush of excitement in my consciousness. I would slip on my swimming suit, which was all I wore during the summers, and go out exploring with my little brother tagging along behind me. We spent days in the sun, tramping through weeds, riding bikes, swimming in irrigation ditches, and going on “hikes.”

“Hikes” were magical. With a little bit of imagination and bravery, you could find anything on a hike. You could catch grasshoppers, or if you were lucky, little yellow butterflies. You might see wild rose bushes, smell some sage brush, or find the occasional tree growing next to the irrigation ditch. Once I found a dead robin covered in ants. There were adventures to discover, treasure maps to draw, buried treasure to find, and sometimes a life and death drama, like when our cat, Midnight, first climbed to the top of the power pole.

I remember how sad I was when we moved to the city. It was like I left a part of myself on those acres of scrubby grass, weeds, and dirt. There is a connection to the land living in the country. Something in the air and the water that teaches you that you are only a part of the world, you don’t own it. That you rely on the land, and the land sustains you. It sustains everyone. I learned that what we reaped we sowed, and if we made a mess, it waited until we cleaned it up. If you didn’t know how to do something, you taught yourself how. Living in the country teaches you self-reliance. It isn’t a skill, it’s life.

I could tell all kinds of stories that would curl my city friends’ hair! Stories about jumping off porches into snow banks, dropping pebbles into our pump well, and even an open sewage pit in our backyard….We had to fix our own plumbing problems, and for a while we had to dig up our septic system to fix it. Yes, some kids went swimming in it, and they got in big trouble.

Looking back on my childhood, there is light and there is shadow. I’ve spent a good chunk of my adult life sorting out that and confronting the shadow. Shadows are a part of life in a fallen world. They aren’t bad, they just are. Everyone has one and the brighter and more piercing the light, the darker the shadow. One thing you learn pretty quickly as an artist, is that shadows are very important. The more art I do the more I come back to that simple fact. Shadows can make or break your artwork. They add interest and dimension. They define a shape. They create texture. Rich deep shadows are just as vital to art as light and color. As an artist, you learn to look at them without judgement. In looking at our past, that is harder to do.

We want to look at the good things only, and skip over the shadow. We want to put a rosy glow over everything and distort the image. Our consciousness slips past the complicated and messy places of our lives. We lie to ourselves about who we are. We tell ourselves that what we think we see, is what is real. That’s how non-artistic people see the world. Everything is in stick figures, tables have four legs and so do chairs. Nothing is shown in three dimensions. No shadows are drawn in. It isn’t real, and everyone, including the non-artist knows it. The problem isn’t in their hands, it’s in their minds. My art teacher used to say, “Draw what you see, not what you think you see.”

My Savior says, “Tell me what you are, not what you wish you were. Tell me your sins. Show me your shadow. I know you have one, and it doesn’t make you worthless. It’s part of you, and I love you. I love your shadow and I’ll show you how I can take you, and your shadow, and make a masterpiece out of you. Do not be ashamed, only believe!”

Educated isn’t what I feared it would be. I see myself in little Tara, the ragged girl who looked up to the Indian Princess in the mountain for comfort. She describes the land she grew up on in loving detail, and describes the light as well as the shadow of her past. It’s a beautiful book, and better, very honest. She hasn’t simple-mindedly rejected her past and her family, she has embraced them as part of her history and part of what has made her who she is today. She is not embittered at her difficult childhood, although it was difficult by almost anyone’s measure.

The story is a strange one that reads like “Little House on the Prairie,” except Michael Landon plays a man with severe bipolar disorder, undiagnosed and untreated. And there is a strange juxtaposition of modernity, symbolized by “the feds,” and the simple life of isolation, enforced by stockpiling weapons and food. The story has no clear “bad guy,” just a man at war with himself, trying to manage a disorder that is far too big for him. He turns to more and more extreme ideas to manage the chaos within, but in doing so, he cripples his family’s connections to a healthy network. His inability to confront and accept his own shadow creates a yawning chasm in his life that makes lasting intimate relationships with his children impossible. His insistence on self-reliance at the expense of connection, cuts him off from all the sources of support that could help him deal with his demons, which he refuses to acknowledge. It would be a tragic story, except that there are clear signs that several of his children have managed to rise above the darkness. Of course, I haven’t yet finished the book, so I can’t be sure.

I hope this turns out to be a story of hope for those families plagued by mental illness. God is merciful to all his children and he will not allow any wounds that he lacks the power to bind up. Homes and families that suffer are not left alone. The Master is ever watchful over his little ones. Miracles happen, and blessings come in unexpected places. Blessed be the name of the Lord!

I have had a recurring dream that I had again three nights ago.  It takes place in various settings, but all of them rather grand halls.  One in particular had the look of a football stadium it was so large, but also ornate and very fine.  I am supposed to put on some performance.  Usually it is with a choir, but sometimes it is in a play.  If it is a choir performance, I have spent the whole day obsessing over preparations for the event only to forget my choir dress, or to have brought the wrong one.  I have traveled some distance, and there is no way of correcting the error.  Sometimes the dress is something like bright yellow, which would be very conspicuous.  If it is a play, I have forgotten my part, or never knew it in the first place, and my costume is incomplete, or missing entirely.  I’m not naked, but not wearing the expected costume.

The key emotional aspects of the dream are the inevitability of what will happen.  From the beginning of the dream and my obsessive preparations, I know I am going to come up short, then when I do, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.  There is the stress, the embarrassment, and the complete lack of options other than letting everyone down and failing completely to contribute to the performance.  The stew of emotions has become so familiar I can readily bring up the memory of them.

What is a costume or a choir dress to me?  It is a mask, a role, or my non-shadow self that I present to the world.  The choir dress is significant in the uniformity of it.  I am not allowed to stand out or differ from the other members.  The costume in the play is significant because I am not allowed to be myself, but to conform to a role, a part that I am playing.  For whatever reason, I am unable to meet the demands of the society I am in.  I can’t play the part, wear the mask, or conform to the expectation. 

In the last three years, I have found myself in several of these kind of binds in my conscious life.  First, with my own family.  I have felt that the person that I have become is vastly different than the person my parents wished I would grow up to be.  In some ways, I see myself as disappointment to them, but in other ways, I am defiantly defensive; angry that they don’t see the very positive aspects of myself the same way I do, as essential parts of my core person that I am determined to nurture although they are undesirable to them.  In the end I feel exposed and self-conscious, as though wearing a bright yellow dress in a field of navy blue singers; isolated and out of place.  My husband’s family likewise is disappointed in my unwillingness to conform in my ideas and perceptions. 

My church is in a climate of change right now, which is good for me, because I am also in the midst of great transformations.  It is as though I have constructed a chrysalis and my insides are being melted down into something completely different than I was before.  Perhaps something that can fly?  I am becoming something I was always meant to be, but something much different that I was before, which is scary for everyone.  What will become of my relationship with the church of my childhood?  Will it be big enough and welcoming enough to accommodate my new wings?  I see many encouraging signs, but the future will take time to reveal itself.

Lastly, and perhaps most dramatically, I have parted ways with my old party, the GOP.  Unlike the other groups I have mentioned, this one has not been due to my transformation, but the transformation of others.  The party that used to exist in 2016 is no more.  Of course, I am not the same person politically as I was three years ago, but I still hold most of the same core values as I used to.  On the other hand, the GOP has become infected with a severe case of populist nationalism that has made it entirely incompatible with my value system.  I seem to recall one version of my dream when I came to the concert dressed in an old choir dress and everyone else had on a new one.  That is how I feel about the GOP.  I no longer fit and there is no solution but to leave the concert.    

What is my subconscious mind telling me?  The stew of dream emotions is familiar to me in conscious life.  It forms the backbone of so much of my suffering.  It is evidence of the dreaded double bind.  There is no easy path, and most of all, no path that involves comfortable companionship.  I am alone in my yellow dress.  What of the concerts?  What of the play?  Should I go out on stage and proudly perform, pretending to be what I am not?  Should I exit the affair and find another production?  Should I give up the stage and become an accountant? 

One of the things you learn in plays or choir concerts, you are part of a team.  There is no maverick on the stage.  It is a brutal place where you will be seen and judged by hundreds of people.  This binds performers together in a way that few other things can.  It isn’t fair to your team to stand out and ruin it for everyone, but what if conforming is impossible while also being true to yourself?  What if you know in your soul that the show won’t be right without you?  That the hole is too big to justify leaving the stage entirely?

This analysis leaves out the part of my own fallibility.  Usually the dream involves my own absent mindedness, not a principled choice to rebel.  But in a way, owning my shadow side, the absent minded side, is the whole point of the dream.  My principled decision to accept my own fallibility and embrace my whole self, including the person who lets down her friends and fellow performers, is the conflict represented by the dream.  How can I accept her though?  She is not able to play the part.  Perhaps the answer is that she needs to ask for help?  Perhaps in asking her community for help, they will see the conflict and come to the rescue?  Perhaps they will see that the old dress is preferable and change their own costumes?  Perhaps the solution lies with the group and not with me alone?  That’s an uncomfortable situation as I have so little power over others. 

Whatever the group decides, I have to embrace my own self, including the shadow side regardless of how much difficulty it causes the people I love.  Hopefully there will be room for me on the stage.  Hopefully a solution will be found that makes it possible for me to contribute in spite of my flaws.  Vulnerability is the key.  And asking for help.  And having a little bit of faith that God will provide a way, just as he did for the Israelites through the Red Sea.  All things are possible to Him who knows all things.  In his mighty hand, I will place my trust.

The spirit was electric in sacrament meeting today. The theme was charity and I felt my heart swell with it as I sang the songs and listened to the sister missionaries give their talks. Refrain from judgment. Take the time to nurture others by really understanding them and their needs. Have more faith! Let God work miracles through you. Bring his sheep to Him!

The spirit works on me in interesting ways in this stage of life. In sacrament meeting one moment, I am singing, the next Austin pulls my face away to look at something or knocks the hymnal from my hand. One moment I am making connections and feeling inspired, then I am pulling a device away from an older child. It is fragmented and frustrating and sometimes I wonder why I bother to come at all. Then today as I wrestled my grumpy baby, Devin turned to me and said, “Can I take him out for you Mom?” So my big thirteen year old carried my baby out for ten minutes to get his wiggles out. As I watched them go I thought of how blessed I am to have these children in my life. It is worth it to bring them and teach them to listen, to teach, and to serve.

The Lord has blessed me so richly these last few months. I have seen his hand in so many ways. I still have depression and anxiety. I am still finding myself and exploring my purpose on the Earth and how best to follow my Lord. I have acted with courage these past months. I have become comfortable with being uncomfortable online. That openness has bled over to my personal relationships in the real world. As I looked around the chapel today I saw many friends that I know on a deeper level now. Because I took off my protective armor, because I have dared to be real and vulnerable, I have found a deeper intimacy with those around me. Giving myself permission to live and feel without fear has made everything in my life better.

Now I am starting to feel comfortable with my life. What took courage and effort before isn’t so difficult. That means it is time to reach a little higher. I have so much desire to bless others and alleviate suffering. There are people the Lord has for me to bless this year and I’m going to find them. I refuse to listen to the fear and doubts that hold me back. I have been spinning my wheels for long enough, and now it is time for me to act and let the miracles start!

First, I want to adopt some grandparents. We have a couple of assisted living centers close by and my boys might be a real blessing to some lonely people we can visit a couple of times a month. One of the biggest flaw I see in our society is our lack of connection between the generations. Children and the elderly need one another, especially in a world where paychecks too often define the value of a human being.

Second, I want to mentor a refugee family. I haven’t been involved with the Refugees of North Texas for a few years. The election of Donald Trump and the rise in xenophobia among my friends and family has discouraged me. I have allowed despair to prevent me from acting in faith in behalf of the suffering, but no more.

Third, I plan to become more involved with politics. I’m not sure exactly what that will look like, but probably attending town halls and actively campaigning for candidates advocating changes to the trend of political polarization whatever party they belong to.

After I wrote this I started having panic problems.  I have a hard time trying to run faster than I have strength…..I don’t need to rush right back into my depression!  Maybe for now, I can just be comfortable.  At least for another day…..

My spirit is willing, but my flesh is weak.  My heart is bigger than my body can support sometimes.  Through the mercy of my Lord and Savior, my poor efforts will be enough.  Blessed be the name of the Lord!

THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated. 

The Crisis, by Thomas Paine

This Mythic America series has been a lot harder to write than I thought it would be. It isn’t that I don’t know what I want to say, it’s how I want to say it. I’ve had so many ideas bouncing around in my head. I wrote the War Vector chapter, but I don’t like it. I’m trying write it so that everyone doesn’t end up hating every word, but it isn’t working. The message I have is not going to be popular. The Savior wisely said that men don’t like new wine, they prefer the old. I am definitely cooking up a vat of new wine. Cheers!

I’ve been reading Modern Man in Search of a Soul by Carl Jung and that has spurred a thousand thoughts. I’ve been watching Donald Trump’s Twitter feed growing increasingly erratic. I thought it was bad before, but he has taken it to a whole new level. Watching my country slowly bleeding to death from self inflicted wounds has sparked a desperation inside of me to figure out how we got to this place and how to get us out. How did Russia, our old cold war nemesis, manage to rise from the ashes like a phoenix and strike us with such astonishingly powerful venom? How can we have become so vulnerable to the overtures of a tyrant? How can we unite again as a nation and throw off the despot’s yoke? Will the Republican Party survive their treachery? If not, will another party rise up in its place? Will the Democratic Party take advantage of the power vacuum and create a one party nation? It is already vastly powerful, but with no serious competition how long will it be before it is odiously corrupt?

These are not political questions. These are not even national questions. Quite literally, these are global concerns with relevance to future generations yet unborn. We are at war with forces we scarcely understand and our choices today have consequences far beyond the present moment.

First off, I want to communicate something that I never realized until this year. The Democrats and the Republicans need one another to be strong and healthy. I always thought that politics was a zero sum game where one side’s loss was the other side’s gain. In electing Donald Trump, we cut off our nose to spite our face. Now we are bashing our head into the wall, slitting our wrists, and drinking copious amounts of poison. The left is thinking that it’s going to be okay because all the wounds are on the right side of the body. They think the right side of the body will die and they will survive, but the trouble is, if one side dies so does the other. The Republican Party’s fall to authoritarian seduction will kill the Republic one way or the other.

Abraham Lincoln understood this concept of symbiotic dependence. He didn’t demonize the South like other Northerners did. He understood that a healthy, well functioning union would require all of the states, not just the Northern ones. After the war he and his successors did not seek to subvert and enslave the South, but to rebuild it. If there is ever to be a truly United States again post Trump, we need to put aside our differences and come together on principles that we can all agree on. That is going to take some humility and some soul searching on both sides of the political aisle. I can hear the left screaming on Twitter that I am being unfair, that Trump is not their fault. I would say that children talk about fault and blame. We need to rise above childish things and talk about solutions. We are going to have to do difficult things and have uncomfortable conversations. We will need to question long held views and shed simple answers to complex issues. Most of all, we need to stop demonizing one another. That is what Putin wants. Today he sides with Trump, tomorrow, he will find someone worse. He will not relent until the free world goes up in flames and all men are under his heel or the heel of someone like him that he can relate to and control.

Perhaps you think these difficult things are not necessary. You feel that you can continue to live in freedom and prosperity while the fabric of our nation unravels around you. Perhaps you believe that the system will hold, that Trump is not so dangerous, that the Democratic Party will save us, or the Republican Party (Trump Party) will be able to force the country to accept authoritarian rule. I don’t see that happening. I see the nose of the plane is pointed at the ground and if someone doesn’t change the course, we will crash and die together along with the hopes of the entire world. God expects us to do what we can to preserve the blessings he has given us, rather than watch impotently as they disappear depriving our children and grandchildren of life in a free Republic. The stakes could not be higher, and no one is going to like what I have to say about what we need to do about it. No one.

Still, as I read Thomas Paine’s ingenious essay, I felt a spark of hope. Perhaps there is a way out of this quagmire. America has had dark days in the past. We have struggled with disunity and disloyalty to freedom’s principles in the past. We have endured dark times and perhaps we will rise above this panic. Time will tell.

Yet panics, in some cases, have their uses; they produce as much good as hurt. Their duration is always short; the mind soon grows through them, and acquires a firmer habit than before. But their peculiar advantage is, that they are the touchstones of sincerity and hypocrisy, and bring things and men to light, which might otherwise have lain forever undiscovered. In fact, they have the same effect on secret traitors, which an imaginary apparition would have upon a private murderer. They sift out the hidden thoughts of man, and hold them up in public to the world.

The Crisis by Thomas Paine

This morning started early for me, as it has every Christmas morning since I had kids. The energy in the air was electric as my boys rushed to sort the gifts. Austin had already opened two before we were able to force some kind of orderly pattern on the occasion. There was still torn paper and cardboard everywhere, scissors passed around to release stubborn toys, and Nerf darts flying all the while.

Having worked with children, my own and in the schools, for decades now, I still marvel at the difference between children and adults. Children think ten times more, they move ten times more, and they believe ten times more than adults do. They trust and they feel and they have faith as easily as they breath. It is no wonder that the Master said that we have to become as little children to enter the kingdom of God.

I had two gifts this Christmas from my Savior, both very old and very precious. The first was the story of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. I got a copy long ago with the most gorgeous illustrations I’ve ever seen. This year we sat down as a family and looked at the pictures. I retold the story along with a few of my favorite pages, told with the appropriate overdramatic flare that those who know me well have seen. 🙂 The boys paid attention remarkably well as I took way to long to explain the characters in loving detail, and compared the transformation of Ebenezeer Scrooge as a kind of rebirth.

As a young boy, Ebenezer Scrooge sat in the cold lonely schoolhouse with only his books and his imagination. Even though his life was far from ideal, he had his imaginary friends and fanciful stories to provide comfort and companionship. His heart could love and feel the full range of emotion. Later in life he became old and cynical and even with all the money and resources in the world, he could not have been more miserable and poor. His heart was cold and unfeeling which gave him power in the adult world that is often cruel to those who dare to feel. The ghostly visitors and their messages wrought a mighty change in him, a change of heart. He saw the truth, that only as we peel back the protective layers of cynicism and fear, only as we face the reality that the intangible things of this world are of far more significance and value than what man tends to prize, that we become as little children, able to treasure the glorious possibilities of a life filled with hope and faith. We are reborn! With the wisdom and experience of age is added the energy and enthusiasm of childhood. A truly reborn soul, fresh with the enabling power of Christ newly flowing through his veins is a veritable force of nature! Nothing is impossible to such a soul, and as hard as Satan tries to crush him, he only becomes stronger and more resolute.

The other gift from my Savior was a very old song, made new again to me with the movie that I watched of the same name. Silent Night. It was done by BYUtv so I didn’t know if it would be any good or not. Low budget Christmas films can be disappointing, but I took a chance and I’m so glad I did. I spent most of the film bawling. I thought to myself, “I’m more of a baby than Austin is.” And I was. Perhaps I was being reborn! I don’t know how much of the story was artistic invention and how much was based in fact. I don’t care! It was the story of my life and it spoke to my soul on a primal level.

Joseph Mohr, a young German priest resists his superior, Father Noestler, and insists on preaching sermons in German instead of in Latin, insisting that his congregation needed to not only hear the gospel of Jesus Christ, but also understand it. He goes about in his youthful enthusiasm recruiting for his church choir from the local tavern where he picks out the best voices from the drunken singers. He packs his Catholic church with sinners whom he loves and serves. Father Noestler decides to transfer him because he can’t stand the growth and life that the young priest brings to his calling. He has become old and cynical and confesses at one pivotal moment in the film that he used to be like young Joseph, but had long since found that his efforts were not worth it; that people don’t change.

In response to a series of tragic events, Joseph Mohr, and his sometime friend and collaborator Franz Gruber, write the song Silent Night and in defiance of the cynical Father, sing it on Christmas Eve with their checkered choir. Joseph Mohr is transferred, but the congregation sings his song far and wide and its beautiful simplicity has rendered it immortal.

Two truths came into focus for me in watching this movie, one is the fear that is created in the world when something is born again. When someone taps into the power of the atonement, and the message of the Savior, the world gets turned upside down. Death and decay are miserable, but they are expected. Jesus Christ brings life! It is scary and unpredictable and full of energy, like a class full of first graders in the throws of the delight of learning. There is paper and glue and messes and noise. There are arguments and tears. Ideas pop around like a popcorn popper without a lid. Nothing is impossible or off limits. That’s scary to an adult world used to slow death and dying; the predictable melancholy of cynicism. A fourteen year old boy might get a vision and start a new church! A young mother might start a blog and write about depression and anxiety! Revelations might happen. Anything might happen. That’s scary, but I can get comfortable with fear. That’s what courage is for.

The other truth is that if I decide that I will not relent; that I will continue to have faith and hope as a little child, that my Savior will provide for me, just as he did for Joseph Mohr. Just as he did for Ebenezer Scrooge. There is value in what I do, even if it seems that the world is collapsing around me. Maybe especially then. It occurred to me that there is plenty of dead religion in the world. Plenty of crusty old wine bottles. Plenty of pews full of judgmental sinners who think they can work their way to heaven while denying the need for the atonement in their own lives. There isn’t enough of the pure religion; that charity which never faileth. That is what I want. That is what He wants for me and for all of us.

My Master loves me. He gives me good gifts at Christmas time. As is his custom, he gives gifts to me on his birthday. When I should give to him, he gives to me, and my cup runneth over. I will continue in faith and in love. I will keep telling my story and giving my witness. He lives! Children love Him for they are innocent and alive, just like we can be, if we are reborn in Him. His path is a path of life, and though death and decay are certain, the resurrection is also certain. He has overcome the grave!

Silent night, holy night!
Son of God, love’s pure light
Radiant beams from Thy holy face
With the dawn of redeeming grace
Jesus Lord, at Thy birth
Jesus Lord, at Thy birth

I was saving the world, one tweet at a time. Of course, Twitter activism is more effective when there is actual hope and enthusiasm for the cause. The many Kurdish Twitter accounts I had hunted down and added to my followers had heartrending messages, pictures, videos and pleas for America to #donotabandonRojava and #donotabandontheKurds. Once U.S. soldiers are gone, the Turks will come to slaughter them, but their cries have very little attention. Apparently the Kurds have been too busy fighting ISIS to build a healthy international online presence because their tweets have dismally few likes and retweets. In contrast Donald Trump’s tweet relating his cozy conversation with the butcher Erodagan of Turkey and calmly explaining their treachery against the Kurds has 45,000 likes in only four hours. He loves it when he can talk to someone on his own level of evil and apparently his faithful followers feel the same kinship. I found a few hopeful cable news clips of regional experts insisting that this pull out would have catastrophic effects, and honorable men that have resigned in protest, but as cable news is mostly entertainment, and doomed people that got the worst Christmas present from 45 ever make for poor entertainment, I imagine that the news cycle will soon move on. The Kurds are doomed and Americans will open their Christmas gifts on Christmas morning without a thought for them.

It was two o’clock in the morning, and I couldn’t shut my brain off. I laid in the dark thinking about singing in sacrament meeting the next day. I hadn’t sung this arrangement before and I was going to run through it the next morning with my accompanist, Andrew Barbosa. Then I would sing it in front of the whole ward. “Why didn’t I practice more?” I lectured myself. I could not get the Kurds out of my head. I had read everything I could find about them and the more I read, the more real they felt to me.

I always wondered how the world could have let the holocaust happen. Now I know. We turn away our faces, just as Isaiah said we would do to the Savior. “We hid, as it were, our faces from him.” Some things are too horrible to comprehend, like the millions of Kurds that have been murdered over the last century because they want to have Kurdish spoken in their children’s schools, they want to sing songs out loud in Kurdish, and they want to worship God the way they want to. Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran have relentlessly persecuted them in the most atrocious ways. From time to time the United Nations and human rights groups have had pity on them, but in the end, man’s inhumanity to man always seems to fall upon them.

In this country there was another group a couple hundred years ago. They were driven from place to place because they were different. They believed that God and Jesus Christ had called a prophet that was publishing new words from Him to his chosen people. They were gathering Israel again and their numbers were growing. Fear, suspicion, and hatred combined against them. They were the Mormons, and my ancestors were among them. They crossed the wilderness in wagons and with handcarts, burying babies and husbands and wives along the trail. They found a place in the mountains where they could live unmolested; a desert land in nestled in the mountains. We should have died there slowly of starvation, but the Lord was merciful. A vast wilderness separated us from the people who hated us. By the time that wilderness was populated, the hatred had cooled, and the Mormon people are able to worship as we choose to this day. What would have happened to us if we had lived in the heart of the Middle East as the Kurds do?

Does God love the Mormon people more than the Kurdish? No. He is no respecter of persons. They are his children. He loves them, and so do I. I prayed in my anguish that God would have mercy on the Kurds. The Savior commanded us to love and serve the least among us. Surely the Kurds are the least. They have no nation and no rights. They are hated and persecuted and betrayed by the powerful who use them and cast them aside. I refuse to turn my face away from them, but I cannot bare the sorrow myself. I drank my fill and then I prayed in anguish of my soul.

“My Savior, I love thee and seek to be thy handmaid. Please have mercy upon the Kurdish people. Their skin, religion, and customs are not mine, but I love them as though they were my brothers and sisters. Have mercy upon them as thou hast had mercy upon me. Let their lives be precious in thy sight as my life and the lives of my boys are precious in thy sight. Let thy angels surround them in their mountain home as thou hast protected my people. Let them have the rights I take for granted to live and sing praises to thee in their tongue and according to their traditions. Let not their enemies destroy them! Show them that the Savior is the Savior of all men, and those rejected and despised are valued by thee. For the Lord taketh the weak things of the world to work his mighty miracles. The first shall be last and the last shall be first. The wisdom of the wise is turned to foolishness and weak things are made strong.”

He was despised. Despised and rejected. For he was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. We are kin in suffering. The blood of the sorrowful cries out unto thee for we know that thou didst descend below them all. Thy mercy is always over thy children and thou art mighty to save. If ever I was thy handmaid, and if thou hearest my voice, let thy mighty hand be made bare to the nations! Let the nations of the Earth witness that there is a God in Israel!

His voice came to me, “Peace be unto thy soul. Even as Joseph’s heart yearned after Benjamin, so your heart yearns after his seed. I the Lord will remember my covenant people, the seed of my servant Abraham. In my wisdom and my mercy have I spread his seed unto all nations and I will not forget my people Israel.”

He is Mighty to Save! His hand will be made bare before the nations of the world for he will not abandon his people Israel! His omnipotent hand will snatch the prey from the mighty and deliver his people. Someday perhaps I will meet them in their mountain home and rejoice with them in their deliverance. Their sister who loved them and prayed for them in the darkness of the night.

This morning Devin had a migraine and couldn’t find his pants. Wesley drug his bare feet to the bitter end. I arrived twenty minutes late to practice. I ran through my solo along with the two numbers the choir was singing. During announcements Austin knocked off my fake eyelashes. Two minutes before I was supposed to come up and sing, I ran to the bathroom and miraculously put them back on just in time to walk up to the pulpit as though nothing had happened! I prayed that my tired voice would carry the message to his people in church today. It was my Christmas gift to them. I have had so many loving, encouraging friends in my ward. The tender mercies of the Lord have been poured out upon me without measure. Although I don’t deserve them, I take them gladly. My little Tedford children were on the second row, all four of them! Their neon sweatshirts and black cornrows made the ward Christmas scene complete. William sweetly wished me a Merry Christmas. I can’t tell you how much it meant to me that they were there to hear my testimony of our Lord and Savior. He is Mighty to Save! He was born in Bethlehem to a virgin who did conceive of the Holy Ghost, a baby, even the only begotten son of the Father.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.” John 3:5

Truly He taught us to love one another;
His law is Love and His gospel is Peace;
Chains shall he break, for the slave is our brother,
And in his name all oppression shall cease,
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful Chorus raise we;
Let all within us praise his Holy name!

O Holy Night!! Blessed day of our redemption when God’s son came into the world to bring us life and light! O Holy, Holy Night! My heart is comforted for I know that he will deliver his people, Israel. And men shall marvel for he is Mighty to Save! Blessed be the name of the Most High God!