Hey my gorgeous sweet sisterhood of the traveling elastics around the bottom of the skirt with the bike helmet flying in the wind!  Will you tell that cute Grandma with the hats and glasses that I want to be her neighbor in heaven?  Tell Santa Claus we want him to be our other side neighbor. That is one of the most darling  pictures I have ever seen.  I LOVE THE CHERRY BLOSSOMS!  They have a cherry blossom festival in Washington DC..and it is what I imagine heaven to be.  How is the girl doing you bore your testimony to in the park?  I wish I could have heard you sing “I like to look for Rainbows”.  I love you how you see joy and happiness and fun in everything.  You are truly a light to the world! You embody that quote by Marion G. Romney “Preach the Gospel all the time, if necessary use words”.   You ARE the gospel! 

            You leave such an empty place, but it’s funny how it is filled with your faith and your witness. When we look for you and think of you, we feel your faith  filling that empty space. Thank you SO MUCH for your example for the boys, for the testimonies coming through letters every week. 

            Things are SO LOONY around here. We are excited that Coy is going on choir tour this week. I do his hair every morning, what is he going to do ? I hope he will be okay.  He has opened a bee business, got a 30 on the ACT, went to prom, and tried out for madrigals. He’ll tell you more, but he is so darling. He is such a sweet kind precious boy. I didn’t get this finished and sent so now I’m finishing the story.  He is on choir tour now, and it is WEIRD to have him so far away. It sounds like he’s having fun. We get to pick him up tonight.

We had a sad thing happen with Mckay. He was doing so well in track, he was so excited to be asked to be on the varsity team and be part of the 4 x 4 race, and compete in the 400, then he had a sudden and horrible pain while running and we had him in for an MRI yesterday.  I remember you advising me to help encourage the boys to be involved in more than one thing, and I’m so glad they are.  He’s running for highschool SBO in the morning.  Okay, so now, his MRI revealed a torn hamstring which takes 2-3 months to fully heal, he has to be super careful.  He didn’t get SBO, it turned into a big horrible thing because half of the kids didn’t follow the guidelines, no friends no videos, so the other half of the parents freaked out and it went all the way to the district.  Anyway, he was totally fine with it.  He’s been “fro” ing his hair, brushing it until it sticks up 5 inches.  He did it first for hippy day,  and he wore a pick stuck in it all day, and then he decided to do it again the next day.  He is so fun.

For his skit he did a play on a Verion commercial.

            Angie and Evan hired Coy and Mckay to help them in their gym. They were great workers and I was so happy for them.

Spen is such a little preenager squeenager. He has an abundance of emotions.  Puberty is hitting so hard and everything bothers him, and that bothers him.  I’m so grateful for his sake that we’re only 13 once.  I’m glad he plays basketball to have a place to burn off the extra emotion.  I want to to wrap him up in my arms and pinch his little bum bum all at the same time. He’s doing great in school, but I don’t really know what is going on in his heart, and I don’t think he does either.  He’s changing a lot.  He’s an interesting mix.  He does not like reading, but loves being read to.

Joseph…so fun as Tin Man.  I know I’m his mother, but whatever that thing is that makes people believable on stage, he’s got it. He paused in all the right places, sang with vibrato, perfect eye contact, played to the audience. I must do everything in my power to help him plant his feet on gospel ground because wherever he goes people will follow him.  He’s fun. He has saved his own money and bought a Chinese looking  sword,  and a bow and arrow, and track shoes. He’s earning his own money to join the county track program this summer.  Now he wants a pet Pegrine falcon to train. 

Annie is a sweet heart, she is so so so funny.  She is beautiful and sweet, and I have this feeling that this very intelligent, very eternal eyes are watching me, seeing everything, seeing right through me.  We put up our greenhouse this year and she loves that.  She said she wanted voice lessons and we tried it and she just giggled straight for 20 minutes.  She was Auntie Em and a lullaby league and a munchkin in the Wizard of Oz.

Seth..our yummy, I laugh until the tears run. He is someone new every day right now. If he were 27, we may consider some time in a special jacket in a special cell.   He decided he wanted to be boy, then Superboy, and he made a book with everything about Superboy, and the whole family had to draw pictures of everything Superboy did and he showed it to everyone, then he turned into Super inja, and he had a costume exactly designed in his mind where everything was black except for his eyes showing.  Everything that happens every day, everything is the most exciting thing that ever happened.  He’ll just walk in the kitchen in Dad’s cowboy boots and his underwear with a big long exciting story to tell. He always repeats the last part then says “ it is!” or “It’s not!”   I feel I’ve neglected you, but one of the many things I’ve been working on is writing a script for my theater group. I couldn’t find anything that gave everyone a chance to sing and shine, so I’ve probably spent 30 hours on it. Anyway, at one part they sing a song from the new Muppet movie, “am I a man or am I a muppet?” We’re changing it to “am I a man or am I a monster” sung by the beast about himself, sung by Belle about Gaston, etc. etc.  and sung by the Genie, “am I a man or am I just magic” . Seth has been helping me write the play, and he has the funniest suggestions all the time.  He woke up in the middle of the night and said “Mom, mom,  who is that girl with the hood?  Mom: Little Red Riding Hood.  Seth: You could say “am I a girl or am I ghost?” Mom: yes Seth.  Seth:  Mom, you could do Jesus!  You could say, am I  a man, or am I (he paused and thought) your BEST FRIEND!”  I was overcome. I thought that was one of the cutest things I had ever heard in my life.  When Evan and I were up working on the ceiling, gluing carpet on,  he and Hyrum would come to visit us. It was so fun. They are so funny. Seth would be pretending something and Hyrum was so into it, but we couldn’t understand what he was saying, but they were both so passionate about their play. So precious.  He said Jesus died and camed alive again. He was such a cute munchkin in the play.  One night after he finished his part he said “Mom, I did it! Can I have my treat now?”  Another night “Mom! I can’t find my lollipop!”

Oh, I long to see your face and talk to you, but I’m so grateful we can write letters. I pray that I may be blessed to be able to articulate the feelings I so long to share.  I feel like there is a pretty major renovation project going on in my cottage to castle program. I don’t know how to articulate it, because it may sound cliché, but to me, my world has opened up to more joy and light and LOVE.   I read an article by Brad Wilcox called “His Grace is Sufficient”.  A girl visited him in and said “I know I do my best and the Lord does the rest, but I’m not even doing my best! Who makes up the difference between all the stuff I can do but don’t?”  He drew a line signifying the gap between us and perfection and ask her to mark on the line where her part meets the Savior.  She went for the middle, but because he’d been testifying about grace she moved it down close to the bottom. Brad said “wrong!” She said, “I knew it! I knew it was higher, and I need to do more. I know what I need to do, I just don’t do everything right all the time. She went on to describe all the things she should do and wasn’t, and all she shouldn’t do and was. 

He erased her line and said “You don’t understand,  there is no line.  You are already saved through his grace. He has paid your ENTIRE debt to justice, and now HE is your creditor with His own terms of mercy and rescue.  We are not working on OUR PORTION of our debt to justice. It has been paid in full. 

            Tell me if you want the whole article, I would love to mail it to you. Studying this and working through these concepts, I feel safer in the atonement than I ever have. I did worry about doing my part, which I always felt was a substantial because I have been so over blessed and where much is given much is required.  He has purchased for us a safe place, already rescued, ransomed, bought and paid for, where we can learn and grow without the hopeless despair of our mistakes keeping us from ever returning.  Covenants are the evidence of our new contract with Him as our creditor. The instant we are baptized and make those promises, we are saved.  Additional covenants allow us closer and closer to Christ in the heavenly realms, but all are saved, all are saved, all are saved, unless they deny Him and are unwilling to allow Him to pay their debt.

I have been through some of the most profound agony of change, the burning of the refining fires, I could write 3.7 books right now about just the last month or two of my life.

            To day, sweet sister,  my heart is drawn out in prayer, the deep and longing prayer of repentance, pleading for forgiveness, for EVER SEEING THIS GOSPEL AS A BURDEN, AND MODELING THAT FOR MY CHILDREN.  I have let the lists of all we are SUPPOSED TO AND SHOULD do overshadow the pure joy of the most unspeakably loving rescue in all time and eternity.  For this sin I have writhed in agony on my knees, pleading for forgiveness and expressing such heartfelt pain that I have not taken the opportunity to love and celebrate the most perfect love ever manifested.  I think some of the worst things I’ve ever done is in effect plugged my children’s noses and shoved the duty of the gospel, the list, the have to’s down their throat, in perfect imitation of the Pharisees and sudducee, missing the point that the Lord is right there.  They looked into His eyes and didn’t know Him.  What about me, I have his gospel, and I have allowed myself  to actually feel STRESS about conforming to the requirements, even let this MAKE ME SAD in my inability to do so, even in the burden of trying.  I think this is one of the worst sins I’ve ever committed and I am relying so heavily on his grace to compensate for this message in the lives of my children. Love is what matters, His love for us, our love for each other. My sin is not feeling the joy of His love, and letting that fill my soul instead of breaking myself, beating myself up against expectations and commandments, sobbing in my inability to comply to the same, and feeling frustrated that the whole plan doesn’t seem to be working for me. IT ALREADY HAS!  I am pleading for HIM to forgive me for not seeing it clearly before, not that I have never felt the joy of His rescue, but I want to repent for when I have not. 

            He has not given up on me! I have been such a piece of work, and he has not given up on me!  He is still willing to work with me even though I have not understood.  There is so much joy in my soul. I just keep singing Amazing Grace, and When I Survey the Wondrous Cross, and My Kindness Shall Not Depart From Thee, and repeating beautiful scriptures of love in my mind.  I am trying to repent for placing expectations, judgment, even condemnation for non-compliance on my husband who is broken and in one of the worst places He has ever been in his life. My kids are being hard on each other, and it is my voice that comes out their mouth when they do so. 

            One of the gifts of this incredible experience, 3 years on June 18 without a job, is to realize how precious life is every every minute, how sacred, how wonderful it is just to be alive.  We are saved, we are safe.  I just feel freed to find the joy in every second of living without the panic and fear of not being or doing enough.  The commandments are part of that joy.  Heavenly Father, and the Savior, and the Holy Ghost have been working with me so much.  I can not even begin to express my gratitude.  It was whispered to me the other morning, God sent not His son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. The commandments are a set of requriements that I can not live perfectly.   In agony recently I cried “am I sufficiently broken?”  A sweet and loving feeling came over me, and the Spirit taught me that broken is exactly where we all are. We are all broken and completely reliant on the Savior as our only hope.  We have the law to teach us that we cannot fulfill the law, thus bringing us to Him.

            I know you are light years ahead of me on this one, because you already live in constant joy, but for me, I feel like a dark place, a fear of not being good enough, a panic  has been illuminated in light and bathed in his love.  I love Him, I love Him, I love Him. 

            I want a guitar string for my birthday so I can sing my ballads of hope and love, of joy, of rescue, of forgiveness, of perfect atoning grace, of the most beautiful friendship  ever offered.  Some of the most wonderful things ever have come from some of the hardest things.

I LOVE YOU! Thank you for sharing this message of love and hope and joy, and thank you for being patient with me.   Life is incredibly intense right now, and I sometimes I feel like only my eyeballs are above water and I’m trying to breathe through my eyes, but I testify, too that I have felt the sustaining power of the Lord so clearly I can not deny it.

,

Boys working for Angie and Evan..

Spen b-ball constantly…what should we do?

My heart aches to share Easter with them…