Rebekah's Happy Plan

Golden Anniversary 50 Years Together!

Cobgratulations to my amazing parents, Connie and Keith Clayton, on their Golden Wedding Anniversary--fifty years together!

We celebrated dining together at Tucanos Brazilian Grill together. 

Thanksgiving Thought on Gratitude

"May we be found among those who give our thanks to our Heavenly Father. If ingratitude be numbered among the serious sins, then gratitude takes its place among the noblest of virtues."

—Thomas S. Monson, "Finding Joy in the Journey"

Our Purpose

The purpose of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is to help all of the children of God understand their potential and achieve their highest destiny. This church exists to provide the sons and daughters of God with the means of entrance into and exaltation in the celestial kingdom. This is a family-centered church in doctrine and practices. Our understanding of the nature and purpose of God the Eternal Father explains our destiny and our relationship in his eternal family. Our theology begins with heavenly parents. Our highest aspiration is to be like them. Under the merciful plan of the Father, all of this is possible through the atonement of the Only Begotten of the Father, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. As earthly parents we participate in the gospel plan by providing mortal bodies for the spirit children of God. The fulness of eternal salvation is a family matter.

It is the reality of these glorious possibilities that causes us to proclaim our message of restored Christianity to all people, even to good practicing Christians with other beliefs. This is why we build temples. This is the faith that gives us strength and joy to confront the challenges of mortal life. We offer these truths and opportunities to all people and testify to their truthfulness in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Elder Dallin H. Oaks, April 1995 "Apostasy and Restoration"

First Snow Fall!

I am NOT ready for Winter but cannot complain about this Fall's weather.  Snow flurries began this morning and stuck to the ground and so the children decided it was time for some snow fun and later hot coca with marshmallows!

For Whom the Bell Tolls

John Donne: Poems

For Whom the Bell Tolls  (No man is an island) by John Donne
		No man is an island, Entire of itself. Each is a piece of the continent, A part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less. As well as if a promontory were. As well as if a manor of thine own Or of thine friend's were. Each man's death diminishes me, For I am involved in mankind. Therefore, send not to know For whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee.

UPDATE: Missing Provo teen found, later dies

Kurt Hanson Daily Herald

Jenna Ivins. Photo courtesy of Instagram.

44 minutes ago  •  Kurt Hanson Daily Herald

PROVO — A 14-year-old girl who was missing for 24 hours before being found Tuesday morning has now died.
Jenna Ivins went missing at about 8:30 a.m. Monday morning in the neighborhood behind the Walmart Neighborhood Market in Provo and was found in a canal near her home Tuesday.
Ivins never made it back from school, according to Detective Chris Chambers.  A post on Instagram says she also has Asperger’s. Chambers said the police believed she was a runaway child.
But she was found at about 10:45 a.m. Tuesday morning. Police reports state she was very cold when found. A member of the family reported she died shortly after.
More information will come as it is made available.

Kurt Hanson is the Breaking News and Courts reporter for the Daily Herald. He can be reached at (801) 344-2560 or khanson@heraldextra.com. Follow him on Twitter: @kthehanson.

Hannah called around noon.  "Mom, have you been listening to the news?"  I hadn't as preschool was just over and I was sitting down to lunch with Liam and Eva.
"Did you hear about the Provo High Student?  The one that went missing.  She's dead."  "I have seen her."  "I have treated her in the Sport's Room.  I never knew her name."  "She looked sad."

Isn't it interesting how little we think we impact other's lives, until we die? 
Maybe this will be a point of change for us.
We can look out for, smile, and get to know other's names and perhaps share some of another person's pain while traveling through this life journey together.

Later this evening while talking to Hannah who had had a long day she said, "I just want to forget it! (Jenna's death?)"  While we may feel that way when someone else dies and in the beginning we are shocked and then mourn and then want to move on with "our life" to do so, to do nothing, means that the person who died means nothing and that the grieving loved ones mean "nothing" to.

I was talking to a neighbor, Anne, about a lesson she learned after my brother Michael passed away two years ago.  She said, "I learned something visiting your parents with Clark and Colleen.  They were there to support Keith and Connie...to listen if they felt like talking or to be still if they did not,  to give a hug, and simply BE THERE for them."  How sweet!  Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could simply BE THERE for another in his/her grief!?  DO something.  Anything!  
I wonder often what is the right thing to do or say in a given circumstance?

A strong impression came to me today that if we act on Spiritual promptings to do something to share someone else' pain, we are uplifted and share in Christ' suffering and compassion.  in contrast, if we choose to do nothing, we are somewhat diminished because we did not act on the light and knowledge that came and now we are less likely to respond to a promt should it come again.  We do not share in mankind's burden.

How I wish in my life I would have know the comfort of someone just being there  for me.  Through late miscarriages, child accidents, brother/sister passings, cancer of a loved one, etc. the fact that someone was "praying" for me, or sent a card, or gave me a hug, or brought me flowers would have made a huge difference in helping me feel the love that Heavenly Father has for me/us but is difficult to find when a loved one dies.  Life goes on.  That can be one of the hardest things to deal with.  Life goes on (without ______).

We pray for the Ivins family and also to know what might bring any comfort at this tragic time.  We did not know them personally but our heart breaks for their pain.

Sink Baths

Sink baths have changed with this little one. Now HE decides when ( and it is usually a surprise for mama when she is the most busy), how (fully clothed with shoes?) and where!  This is the Preschool Bathroom and it was all fun and games until Liam had to waddle around wet for a little while and decided that was No Fun!

Cheerleading!

When I was growing up, my mother enrolled me and my siblings in many things: ballet, Jazz, swimming, gymnastics, tumbling, singing, watercolor, cross country, tap, clogging, etc.  We did not become the next Jackson 5.  I was not the next Olympic Gymnast prodigy to rival Russia's Nadia Comaneci.  Some things stuck and other things taught me valuable lessons (that I totally missed at the time because of the embarrassment, awkwardness, or immaturity of my age.)

One thing I thought I wanted was to be a high school cheerleader.  (I was naturally shy, afraid of tumbling, rather pudgy, and not a naturally enthusiastic/bubbly/effervescent type of girl).  I admired all that a cheerleader seemed to represent and had a crush on a football player--so why not attend try-outs and go for it?!

Try outs came and went and so did the list of those girls selected.  I was not on the list.  I came home dejected and sulked in my room.  My mother was fed-up (overwhelmed, over worked?) and had no patience to listen to my lost hopes and dreams.  Ridiculous--me being a cheerleader?  Yes, at the time I was about as suited to cheer leading as a walrus to the Sahara.  Little did I know that God had cheer leading in mind for me--just years later, when I would become a mother and would cheer on baby steps, drive the "team bus" to soccer meets, practices, sports and dance stores, parent meetings, concerts, games, meets, or volunteer and cheer at Track and Field Days and SHOW UP--each and every day!  I love being a cheerleader!  (I just didn't know then I would have to wait several years, marry, acquire a team, adjust several waist sizes larger,  to find myself rooting for the right team!)

Journal Writing

Recently, I bought a copy of the book Spots by Judy Brummer.  When I went to pick up a copy, Judy graciously lead me into her beach bungalow themed home and excitedly told me, "this book came about because of YOU and a lesson you gave in Relief Society (Church) on Journal writing!  Do you remember? (The lesson was 10-13 years previous).  She autographed my book,"February 2014 1st Edition

Arthur Henry King on Journal Writing

Posted on January 28, 2014 by annlaemmlenlewis

Today in my Family History Class we talked about Journals and personal record keeping.  I read a chapter once in a book by Arthur Henry King that profoundly influenced what and how I write.  I shared this advice today with my class members.  Here are some of his thoughts on the subject:
The important thing to remember when writing a personal history or keeping a journal is that our descendants will be interested in the kinds of things that most interest us in the personal histories or journals of others.  What kinds of things are these?  First of all, the details of everyday life–details like our kitchen procedures and the way we treat our young children–because these things change so very much over the years.  We are writing for posterity, and that posterity may extend for hundreds of years, and we can be sure that in one or two hundred years’ time those details will be very different indeed.  Our descendants will also be interested in the fundamental things–the truly fundamental things–birth, death, and marriage.  So we also need to leave them true accounts of the most important things that happen to us.
Our descendants will want to know what seems old and ridiculous to us, what seems new and interesting, what surprises us, what distresses us, what bores us, but above all, what interests us.  They will want to know about our reactions to events, people, situations.
Our descendants will be interested in our genuine reactions, opinions, and feelings, not our conventional ones. . . When we write we need to be ourselves.  We should not be misled by any teaching or cultural message we have received about being artificially cheerful or artificially anything.  And we should not dismiss unpleasant matters from our minds.  They must be faced, and our own responsibility for them must be assessed.  Our responsibility is to tell the truth.  We may need to reflect on how to put it down, but we should never reflect on how it will strike others, including our descendants.  It is not for us to judge what we think will be good for them to read and what we think will not be good for them to read.  The ways of salvation are not the ways of persuasion, but the ways of conviction.  If we try to be truthful (and this is one of the few things we should try to be), then we are likely to convince.  If we try to convince, we are less likely to be truthful.  It is for us to set down the truth as we know it and think it; and for our descendants, not for us, to judge.  Humility and honesty are two names for the same thing in writing.  Try, therefore, humbly and honestly to assess your experience.  Don’t try to make your experiences into more or less than they were, and above all, don’t think of your audience and try to appeal to them.
We need to keep in mind in writing, the style in which Joseph Smith presented his own experiences.  His manner is matter-of-fact and cool.  He doesn’t try to persuade us or work up out feelings.  He may make us feel as a result of what he tells us, but he doesn’t make an effort to make us feel.  He does not attempt to do other than describe what happened, including how he felt.  There is an important difference between expressing one’s feelings and describing one’s feelings.  When we attempt to express our feelings, we nearly always find ourselves, instead, expressing the feelings we ought to have had or should like to have had or exaggerating the feelings that we really did have.  The attempt is enough to cancel out our chance of success.  But if we try simply to describe our feelings we don’t fall into these errors.
Abstract statements about our feelings are boring and don’t really communicate.  But a plain account may communicate a great deal.  If we write down faithfully what happens to us, our feelings will come through, and they will be felt indirectly and therefore truly.  So rather than say how we felt on our marriage day, we should try to describe what happened to us on that marriage day.  Our feelings will come through much better than if we just say how we felt.  We are more likely to be able to convey to our descendants something of what we really were if we try to set down the truth about what happens to us, and the more concrete and more detailed it is the better, and the less abstract it is the better.  It is a mark of genius to single out the little details that make everything come alive; and very often that happens, not because one seeks to do it, but because one is in the right frame of mind and has taken one’s experience in the right way.  Notice in the Joseph Smith story details like his leaning up against the mantlepiece when he gets home and the humorous remark he makes to his mother on that occasion.
. . . . A personal history always needs to be revised, because what we think is most important in our lives changes as our lives go on.  Certain experiences become less important, more profound.  Were we here simply to have certain experiences , life would soon be over for us.  But we are here to live so that those experiences–for example the experience of temple marriage–may broaden and deepen and become richer as we grow older.  Though we may think we understand the significance of eternal marriage, at the time we are married, we may understand it much more deeply later.  In fact, we may spend a lifetime realizing or beginning to realize what the real significance of an eternal marriage is.  So just as we should go back constantly to the scriptures and to other great books, we should go back to the most important experiences of our lives. . . . The greatest experiences of our lives need to be remembered and cultivated and thought of day after day.  We don’t want to tuck them underground.  They are there for us to keep, treasure, observe, know and live with. . . . The most important experiences of our lives shape our lives–they are our lives.
http://mormonscholarstestify.org/3164/arthur-henry-king

So What is "Real Love"?

Rachel Walsh Jensen

"REAL love is not pink and fluffy and rose-y and butterflies. Real love is not shiny and whole and smiling serenely. Real love is not holding hands while running through fields of sunflowers or gazing over chardonnay while wearing sexy dresses and opening boxes of diamonds. It’s just not. That stuff is something else. That stuff is something that can be packaged and sold, which is why we see a lot of it this time of year.

Real love is tough as nails. Real love is busted up and scuffed and a little jagged and exhausted. Real love is a nightmare at 1 am and a fever at 3 am and everybody else up at 6 and work at 9. Real love is ten band aids when there’s not a scrape to be seen. Real love is losing your temper seven times and apologizing eight times. Real love is overwhelmed and exhausted and just DONE at the end of each day. Real love is ADHD and autism and hurt feelings and sucky report cards and cancer and daddy’s gone and listen, babies- this is life- this is brutiful life- and there is still much beauty to be found. Let’s find it together. Real love is knowing that tears of exhaustion are not signs that you’re on the wrong track- tears of exhaustion are confirmation that you are pouring out every bit of your heart and soul and body and mind and energy in service to your people. And that means, perhaps, that you are on the right track. That you are living out a mission worthy of you."
- momastery.com