Look and Live

I don't know if there are any of you who have suffered from additions or emotional captivity as I have.  I am trying to find a way to share 'my message' with others in a way that is helpful.  I would value your feedback in letting me know how this hits you.
God Bless,
Pennie

8-28-11

Look and Live

It is amazing to me that the Spirit can convey a truth to my mind so fluidly in a matter of seconds.  But yet I feel it would take up a whole “fireside” to share it with others.

Today after church I had the thought that if people today would just look to the Savoir, then they would live.  The story of the Israelites flashed through my mind, how the people had but to look to the brass serpent lifted up on the staff.  But because of the easiness of it many failed to follow the simple instructions.

I thought o fall the pain I see in the world today.  Why don’t they just look?

Then my mind went to a scene of a concentration camp prison type situation where many suffered pains of slavery.  I have before thought that if people in their situation of captivity would just look, then they would live.  Victor Frankl said that the last human freedom that no man can ever take away is the thought we choose to have.  The parents of the stripling warriors in the Book of Mormon did this in their early days of conversion and they KNEW that God would deliver them.  Not only would He (as in future tense) but that He was the only one that COULD.  No other power could lift them up out of their bed of affliction.  They were in fact delivered first spiritually, so that they could not feel their burdens upon their backs.  Then they, after having proven their submission to the Lord, were delivered physically.  Having the Savior’s teachings and promises burned into their hearts, they knew He would deliver them.  Their faith was firm, fixed and riveted.  They did not doubt.  They held their minds firm on the hope of deliverance.  I’m sure at times by sheer will power alone.  They gave their hearts to His will.  They the fruits of their faith were rewarded after they watched and waited as Joshua did for the walls of Jericho.  A friend of mind said that she noticed this pattern about faith:  Mind + Heart + Will = Faith.  When we see it in our mind, feel it in our heart, and doubt not then we have faith to bring forth the miracle.  Perfection may not be possible as mortals in this lifetime but perfect faith IS.

Then my mind flashed to another scene at the bar of God where we will report the actions of our lives.  I thought of how painful it would be to see my sins in the visual presence of my Perfect Redeemer and my Heavenly Father who anxiously awaited my return.  I know he wants so much to be proud of me, and yet I see my sins.  Then the Holy Ghost spoke to my mind reiterating all the training and practice that it took to look and live through all my trials.  Could it be so simple?   Is that what all that pain was for?  To get me to look to my Savoir and learn to trust in the power of His redeeming blood to wash all my sins white as snow?  IS that what I must do now is trust Him?  Trust that He CAN do all that He says He will do?  I believe it is that simple.  We have trials and pains in this life: to mold us, to temper us, and to teach us to trust and to have faith.  The Savoir wants us to come to Him so He can deliver us, to lift our burdens and bring us our to our pit so we can sing a new song of redeeming love.  His invitation is still available to you and to me.  Will you?  Will I choose in the moment of pain to look and live?

Often times clarifying moments like these make the path clear.  But when that moment of choice comes we must again be tested as we walk through the fog.  I had a thought the other day that Lehi’s dream must have been like that for Him.  Often time in my dreams everything is clear and makes sense, but when I wake up and try to explain my dream to someone else it doesn’t seem to make any sense at all.

When Nephi saw Lehi’s dream I’m sure the parable was perfectly clear.  In our world today, it doesn’t seem to be so clear.  It’s almost as if this image were like a double exposed picture where one image lays on top of the other one.  In order to gain understanding of this perfect picture that animates our world today, that we must keep it in our minds as we walk through the days.  If we pray as Nephi to understand what Lehi saw, we too can see with clarity.  This journey of spiritual discernment is available to all who are willing to pay their ‘last farthing’ (Robin Hood) – that which is most sincere and deep – our true hearts and a commitment to use what we get; to obey what we learn.

Will we desire this path?  Will we look and live?  Is our pain desperate enough or have we exhausted all other possibilities to realize that there truly is no other way?  Are we willing to give our last penny to the Lord and pay the price necessary to allow Him to lift us out of our pit?

How far will the road lead before we decide we will try it His way?

I love this little clip on Mormon Messages!  I hope you do too.
http://lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?autoplay=true&index=1&locale=0&sourceId=b54655c9566ec210VgnVCM100000176f620a____&vgnextoid=bd163ca6e9aa3210VgnVCM1000003a94610aRCRD

Web Site and discussion board

I am doing some research to learn about setting up a website.  Does anyone have any recommendations they trust and/or like for a web hosting or website set up sites?

This morning I looked at 2createawesite.com   It looked pretty good.  She had some recommendations.  Has anyone ever used her?

I gotta tell you this is SO cool!  I had always thought in the past that it would take too much for me to be able to set up a website, but this morning some light hit me and it all seems do-able.

Let me know your recommendations, it would be a HUGE help!  Thank you!!~

Stew of Truth

8-25-11

I often imagine that learning truth from the Spirit is like tasting the many flavors in a stew together.  When I think about what is swirling around in the pot in my mind and heart, and it all comes together to teach me a lesson.  Here is an example:

This Spirit is leading me to learn a lesson I don’t feel I’m quite ready to learn…

In the pot of stew:

Song from this morning: “I will Follow God’s plan for me”

Study from this morning: “Cast Not” Elder Holland

Concerns for Home school coming up for the year

Learning Vision and Faith to overcome

In my 12 step program I am overcoming anger so that I can create a spirit of light in my home so that my children feel loved and safe to learn.  This is my mission to create this environment, not because this is what I’m good at now but because this is what the Lord’s plan is for me.  It encompasses all of my weak points I need to strengthen, my joys in helping others and learning with and from them, and the vision I want to create.  All of the pieces fit.  It was what I was born to do to fill in my part of the puzzle that God orchestrates with His all seeing eyes. 

I have many OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) tendencies.  I know I have been over controlling for too many years.  My children have been limited in their ability to learn in my home because I try to keep everything clean all the time.  In the seminar last week Jonelle Hughes said home school changed for them when they took it from the floor to the table.  A friend of mine also told me that she learned at a seminar she went to last week that Kirk Duncan said you have to learn to allow the chaos to get to the vision.  I’m not sure what it is, but I have this voice in the back of my mind that says everything needs to be where it belongs.  The problem is that my OCD-ness thinks it has to STAY that way.  So if everything has to STAY on the shelves in it’s home, how it is that the children would ever learn from it, and what is the point in having it if all it ever does is stay in its home.  It is of no use unless it is used! 

My whole point is that this is such an incredible process that the more I learn the more I realize that this would be possible in no other way.  I often try to think of how I can share these lessons with others, but they will only learn for themselves by internalizing it through the Spirit of truth.  This process requires the Spirit to translate, but I certainly cannot explain to your understanding all that I think and feel.  I do believe that you can see it for yourself when you learn from the same Source. 

I am I DON QUIXOITE !

8-24-11

Just want to give a ‘shout out’ to all my new Pillar of Light friends.  I can’t sufficiently say how much you have made a difference in my life.  I hope to show you as I break through my mountains of doubt in the next 9 months to write my book and start giving seminars- to live my impossible dream.  You have truly changed my life.  Thank you for your wide arms of love and support.  It is just what I needed to be able to do this.  I love you.

“I am I Don Quixote” !

I just went to an amazing seminar by Jonelle Hughes.  She was great, but even more amazing was how she taught us to find answers within ourselves though journal writing.  I knew it was powerful before, but she said what I had believed.  She said many of the things I had been collecting in my heart to share with people, but she did something about it.  She had the faith to trust that her inspirations would be a source of strength for others.  She has truly inspired me and I am going to find a way to go vertical and overcome my mountains of fear through faith. 

One of the greatest lessons I learned from Don Quixote, that we didn’t even really get to talk about at the seminar, was in the way we see others.  It all has to do with the way we see our self importance and the way we value others because we know our own value within.  I love the line in the movie, Man of La Mancha when they play-write is introducing the role for the fiancé of the niece.  He says about this man that he “holds his own importance as if it’s going to break.”  That makes me laugh, because I think at one time or another we all do that.  I can laugh because I see it in myself, maybe more past than present.  Anyway, I wondered “Why do we do this?  How do we let go of it?  If the greatest commandment is to love God above all else and love our neighbor as myself, then how does that apply here?”

It was very ironic that we should study the lesson of “Pursuing a dream in the face of ridicule” because I have felt this my whole life.  I felt like I lacked the power to do what my inner voice tells me to do and live my dream because I felt the lack of support from others.  This is a victim mentality that keeps me waiting; keeps me from action and doing.  You need to understand that I feel there are holes in my ‘love bucket’.  Sometimes my focusing on the problem keeps me from seeing the ways others are supporting me.  Instead I see the ways I think or feel they should support me.  My conscious mind knows that this is an unreasonable expectation.  I am trying now to learn to see the ways others are supporting me (especially my husband) through their frame of reference, and to let go of wanting (or expecting him) to speak my love language.  I believe my perspective can change everything.  The morning before the seminar I saw in my husband that I wanted him to be happy for me to go to a seminar, or happily or volunteer to watch the children.  That is my unreasonable expectation.  By the time I came home that evening either he had had a change of heart, or I had come to see him differently- because he was very different to me.  Still I am working to find the things he IS doing to support me, so I wrote a list: 

Helped me clean the house yesterday

Cooks almost all of the meals in our home

Fills my van with gas (he sees this as his role)

Works to support our family

Sometimes does laundry and dishes when I get behind or overwhelmed

Did laundry and dishes for the most part by himself for the first 7-ish years of our marriage while I was learning to put family first and get my priorities straight. 

I want to learn to accept him whole-heartedly for what he IS now, and stop expecting him to be something else.  So you may be asking, “What does this have to do with Don Quixote and how we see others?”.  This is the lesson that I am learning:  Don Quixote didn’t see people as they are in the here and now.  He didn’t see with his natural eyes, he saw with spiritual eyes.  In fact, he blatantly ignored what his squire said was real.  He saw things and people for something more than what others did.  His squire, Sancho the realist, saw a windmill; he saw an evil giant with 5 arms.  Sancho saw an Inn.  He saw a castle.  He spoke his high expectations of what he believed in, but accepted the behaviors of people as temporary.  My favorite is the kitchen maid, El Donza.  The very first moment Don Quixote sees her he puts her in the role in his mind of his High Born Lady who he does great deeds for.  He does not see that she is a whore.  He sees with his spiritual eyes her heart.  He loves her deeply and from a distance  despite her coldness, and holds her in high esteem regardless of her actions.  She is his Dolcenea.  He saw in her what she had lost hope to see in herself long ago.  He wants nothing from her as every other man does.  He only wants to do great deeds in her honor and be allowed to serve her.  He does not expect her to do anything for him in return.  To me Don Quixote is a type of Jesus Christ.  I agree with the reality that Don Quixote "selects from life the reality he chooses to see".

The world sees only what can be seen.  They take no effort to look deeper and learn the truth. When we see someone’s unlikable behavior in today, it is easiest to write it off with a judgment.  Like the guys that follow El Donza around.  They act like dirty rats so it is easy to write it off and say that that is all they are and all they ever will be: rats and thieves.  The label and our belief in that label keeps them there.  Don Quixote did not see them as his enemy until they threatened his Dolcenea.  He did not see them as worthless, but making a bad choice.  Choices can change and people can too.    He said it was his knightly duty to go bandage up their wounds.  He still loved them, even though he just beat them to a pulp.

If I am to live as a Don Quixote, I will believe in others when the world says they are worthless, fight those who would choose evil, and dauntlessly pursue a worthy dream in the face of any ridicule.  Being a Don Quixote to me means that I have this belief in my others, and more importantly in myself.  Even if the world does think I am crazy, it matters not because God sees greatness in each of us and it does not matter what anyone else thinks because He is the Greatest of us all. 

 

From Man of La Mancha

“Oh the trumpets of Corinn have called me to rise, Yes the trumpets are calling to me.

And where ever I ride my staunch at my side, my Squire and my Lady will be.

I am I Don Quixote, the Man of La Mancha!  Our destiny calls and we go.

And the wild winds of fortune will carry us onward, Wither so ever they blow.

Wither so ever they blow.UTube version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMH7qkgViVs&feature=related