Three Lessons I Learned From My Appliances

When Wes and I got married, my maternal grandmother gave us her old microwave oven. It was a small black cube from the early eighties, not quite large enough to put a dinner plate in it. It had no buttons. To use it, you pulled the door handle to open it, put your food inside, pushed the door closed, and turned a plastic dial to start it.

Then you could leave the room to do something else, because it wasn't a powerful piece of equipment, and you had some time to kill.

We used that little microwave for thirteen years, until we moved into our current home and decided to get a new one.

Our new microwave was dazzling in comparison.

Disclaimer: These pictures are for illustration purposes only,
 and they may not actually reflect reality. (I have never in my life cooked that many carrots.)

Among its many stunning features, this microwave had a “30 seconds” button. We wondered what use that could possibly be. It didn't take us long to find out. This microwave could indeed make things warm in just half a minute. With a whole minute we could really heat things up. I thought about my paternal grandmother, who never owned a microwave. She was a widow for the last 25 years of her long life, and when she cooked, she froze her leftovers in little tin pie pans. Later, she would take a serving out and warm it in the oven for about an hour. I wondered what she would think of an appliance that could do the same job in two or three minutes.¹

I was used to doing other work while warming leftovers or cooking a frozen burrito, but since this one was so fast, it didn't seem worth it start something.

I was wrong. Thirty to sixty seconds is more time than it might seem to be. There are many things you can do in one minute or less. Here are a few ideas:

     Wipe crumbs off the countertop
     Put a few things back in the refrigerator (or wherever they should be)
     Do a little stretching
     Clean a light switch or two
     Read the scripture you have stuck on the refrigerator
     Make a phone call you've been putting off
     Pet the dog
     Declutter a drawer

I'm not saying that every second of your life should stuffed full with productive work. I am just reminding you that you might have more time than you think you have. Life is made of a lot of little minutes, and if you you use those well, you might not miss out on the big minutes. You wouldn't want to miss a magical moment, and those moments usually cannot be predicted.

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I have written before about my wonderful washer and dryer.² I really do love them. But the washing machine has a quirk I find bothersome.

It has a digital display that shows how much time is left before the load is done. A very nice feature, I thought.

But it's not very accurate. I have sometimes looked at the display to see that it has 12 minutes left until the load is done, then I come back seven minutes later to see that is says 10 minutes left.

Okay, I admit this isn't a huge problem. When I mentioned my annoyance to my husband, he said “Well, it doesn't know how much longer it will take.”

“Yes it does!” I said. “Or it should! But if it really doesn't know, it shouldn't say it does!”

I have learned to live with this issue. But the lesson is important: Don't lie to anyone ─ especially your kids ─ even about seemingly little things. Don't make up an answer or guess if you don't know. Your children (or friends or co-workers) won't lose their faith in you if admit to your non-omniscience, and they very well might enjoy finding the answer with you. But there are things we just don't know. That's what faith is about.

But I have commanded you to bring up your children in light and truth. (D&C 93:40)

I have long admired the parenting wisdom of Dr. William Sears:

"One of the best ways for teaching honesty to kids is to create a truthful home. Just as you sense when your child is lying, children will often read their parents’ untruths. If your child sees your life littered with little white lies, he learns that this is an acceptable way to avoid consequences. Don’t tell your child something is “gone” when it really isn’t just to make it easier for you to say he can’t have anymore. Sharp little eyes often see all and you haven’t fooled your child at all. You’ve just lied to him, and he’ll know that, since he knows you so well. Just say “no more now” and expect your child to accept that."

I like to trust everyone, but it doesn't take more than a couple of lies for me to stop believing in a person. Untruths are so often revealed. It's just not worth it. As Walter Scott said, "Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.”

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I am very grateful to have a working dishwasher. Our dishwasher, like many, I suppose, has a “Clean Light”─ a light that comes on when the dishes are clean. I have felt some small satisfaction seeing that message after a long day of cleaning. But as soon you open the dishwasher door, the light goes off.

This seemed to me very much like many of my weekdays. I could spend hours working toward a clean house, but as soon as the front door opened and the kids ran in from school, the “clean light” went out. Backpacks hit the table, mud streaked the floor and after-school snack crumbs flew.

I've realized now that many of the things we do every day are things we'll do again tomorrow. Some of those things are as simple and as universal as brushing your teeth or putting clothes on. But when you have young children (or teenagers), there will always be things you do over and over. And that's okay. We aren't meant to live in a perfectly sanitary environment. A little clutter and a little dirt probably won't hurt much.

I embrace the attitude Phyllis Diller showed when she said, “Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing is like shoveling the sidewalk before it stops snowing.”

And I love this insightful thought: “A household has to be tended if it is to flourish and grow. Housework is never 'done' in the same sense that gardening is never done or that God's providential involvement in the world is never done. Housework and gardening and God's providence itself are exercises not in futility but in faithfulness – faithfulness to the work itself, to the people whose needs that work serves, and to the God whose own faithfulness invites our faithful response.” 
   (Margaret Kim Peterson, Keeping House: The Litany of Everyday Life)

Another favorite of mine:

On Judgment Day, if God should say, 
"Did you clean your house today?" 
I will say, "I did not.
I played with my kids and I forgot."
And God might say "Good for you ─
That's just what I hoped you'd do."

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These are small lessons. But I see something big in them. I see a life filled with appreciation for all things, big and small.

Be glad you have modern time-saving conveniences like these. Be grateful that you have people you love tracking dirt into the house. Be thankful to have spaces of time, short and long, that you can fill with work or service or looking out the window at the sky and the trees. Be grateful that you have truth to share, and truth still to learn.


Happy Thanksgiving!

1 To read more about my two grandmothers click here:
² To read about my washer and dryer, click here:

Give Me a Break!

During the last 21 months or so, I have broken four bones. Although all of these breaks were different, they were all caused by the same act – I fell. And while this falling and fracturing has been annoying and inconvenient, I am starting to see that there is something to learn from these mishaps.

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January 2, 2015, was my son Ben's eighteenth birthday. I made a special breakfast, and after we ate and cleaned up, I left the kitchen, swatting the light switches off as I went. As I turned to make sure I'd hit them both, I lost my balance and fell to the floor. I landed — boom — on my hip, and it broke. This adventure earned me a trip to the emergency room, surgery to put three screws in my hip, weeks of physical therapy, and a walker.

I suppose anyone (well, anyone who is kind of careless) could have fallen like I did. But not everyone who falls breaks a bone. My hip broke because my bones were weak.

O Lord, heal me; for my bones are vexed. 
(Psalms 6:2 – 4)

Yep, that's right. I have vexed bones.

Our bones – our skeletal system – are the foundation of our mortal bodies. If they are weak, we're in danger.

Likewise, if our testimony – our faith and belief in God's Plan of Happiness – is not sufficiently strong, we are in spiritual danger. We need to be sure that our life is firmly planted on the solid rock the Savior provides.

And now, my sons, remember, remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall. (Helaman 5:12)

Whosoever cometh to me, and heareth my sayings, and doeth them, I will shew you to whom he is like: He is like a man which built an house, and digged deep, and laid the foundation on a rock: and when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently upon that house, and could not shake it: for it was founded upon a rock. But he that heareth, and doeth not, is like a man that without a foundation built an house upon the earth; against which the stream did beat vehemently, and immediately it fell; and the ruin of that house was great. (Luke 6:46 - 49) 

On my last visit with my bone doctor, I asked him, “What is the very best way to strengthen your bones?”

He told me that getting calcium in your diet and taking calcium supplements can help strengthen bones, but the best way to make your bone bones strong is to use them to bear weight.

When our spirits bear weight ─ the weight of grief, pain, or heartache – we become spiritually stronger; more fit for His Kingdom.

In real life, we face actual, not imagined, hardships. There is pain—physical, emotional, and spiritual. There are heartbreaks when circumstances are very different from what we had anticipated. There is injustice when we do not seem to deserve our situation. There are disappointments when someone we trusted failed us. There are health and financial setbacks that can be disorienting. There may be times of question when a matter of doctrine or history is beyond our current understanding. (Elder Henry B. Eyring)

Each of us also carries a load. Our individual load is comprised of demands and opportunities, obligations and privileges, afflictions and blessings, and options and constraints . . . Sometimes we mistakenly may believe that happiness is the absence of a load. But bearing a load is a necessary and essential part of the plan of happiness. (Elder David A. Bednar)

Therefore, how can you and I really expect to glide naively through life, as if to say, “Lord, give me experience, but not grief, not sorrow, not pain, not opposition, not betrayal, and certainly not to be forsaken. Keep from me, Lord, all those experiences which made Thee what Thou art! Then let me come and dwell with Thee and fully share Thy joy!  (Elder Neal A. Maxwell)

If thou art called to pass through tribulation; . . . know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good. The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he? (D&C 122:5 - 8)

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Just over a year ago, on a night when I was not feeling well, I fainted and fell on the tile floor, breaking my collar bone and a bone in my face.

It wasn't pretty.

Then let mine arm fall from my shoulder blade,

 and mine arm be broken from the bone.

(Job 31:22)

If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small.

 (Proverbs 24:10)

While I am prone to sickness, I almost never faint. But I that night I was not well-hydrated or well-nourished. My blood pressure was low, and my blood sugar was low, and that is a recipe for fainting.

Of course, I had access to food and drink. But my sickly body would not accept nourishment.

I think about times in my life when my spirit was sick – was starving – but I was not willing to accept the spiritual nourishment that was available to me.

Jesus Christ is the Living Water. His word is food for our souls.

The Savior testified of this truth to the woman He met at a well in Samaria:

Jesus answered and said unto her, If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water . . . Jesus answered and said unto her, Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again: But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. (John 4:10 – 14) 

. . . every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and  without price. Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread?  and your labour for that which satisfieth not?  hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. (Isaiah 55:1-2)

O all ye that are pure in heart, lift up your heads and receive the pleasing word of God, and feast upon his love; for ye may, if your minds are firm, forever. (Jacob 3:2)

. . .  feast upon the words of Christ; for behold, the words of Christ will tell you all things what ye should do. (2 Nephi 32:3)

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My most recent fracture happened the week school started for my youngest children. I got a terrible eye infection that left me nearly completely blind. We found a eye doctor that would take me as an emergency patient, and the next day, as I headed out to the appointment, I misjudged a step and fell on the garage stairs, breaking my leg.

 This scripture from Isaiah sums it up pretty well:

We grope for the wall like the blind,

And we grope as if we had no eyes:

We stumble at noonday as in the night;

 We are in desolate places as dead men.

 I've been rolling through life in a wheelchair since then.

          

Besides the obvious lesson that people who can't see shouldn't walk down concrete stairs, I have found some scriptural parallels in the story.

But if he repent not of his sins, which are unbelief and blindness of heart, let him take heed lest he fall. (D&C 58:15)

My soul hath been redeemed from the gall of bitterness and bonds of iniquity. I was in the darkest abyss; but now I behold the marvelous light of God. My soul was racked with eternal torment; but I am snatched, and my soul is pained no more. (Mosiah 27:29)

And the mists of darkness are the temptations of the devil, which blindeth the eyes, and hardeneth the hearts of the children of men, and leadeth them away into broad roads, that they perish and are lost. (1 Nephi 12:17)

We don't need to walk in darkness, which blinds our spiritual eyes and makes us stumble and fall. We don't have to be distracted by the mocking and temptations around us. We have access to a brilliant source of light that we can look to for guidance.

I am the light, and the life, and the truth of the world. (Ether 4:12)

For, behold, it is I that speak; behold, I am the light which shineth in darkness, and by my power I give these words unto thee. (D&C 11:11)

For the word of the Lord is truth, and whatsoever is truth is light, and whatsoever is light is Spirit, even the Spirit of Jesus Christ. And the Spirit giveth light to every man that cometh into the world; and the Spirit enlighteneth every man through the world, that hearkeneth to the voice of the Spirit. (D&C 84:45–46)

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Every day we make choices that will determine whether we hold tight to the iron rod, or get lost in the mists of darkness; whether our spirit is built on a firm foundation that can weather a storm, whether we are spiritually fed or malnourished.

Wherefore, men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man.  And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself. (2 Nephi 2:27)

If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them. (John 13:17)

Verily, verily, I say unto you, I will impart unto you of my Spirit, which shall enlighten your mind, which shall fill your soul with joy; (D&C 11:13)

Keeping ourselves strong, physically, emotionally, and spiritually will keep us from wandering off the path, and will bring peace and purpose into our lives.

Then, instead of falling into pain, we can jump for joy.