Category Archives: Deep Thoughts

Lesson 4: The Atonement of Jesus Christ

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I have procrastinated preparing this lesson, quite simply because I don’t see how I can possibly help four 12-year-olds gain an appreciation for the Atonement of Jesus Christ in 30 minutes. I feel this is the most important lesson in the book, and I don’t know where to begin.

Obviously, testimony is the most crucial aspect of any lesson: I know I can bear my testimony.

I guess the best place to begin is where we left off in last week’s lesson.

Because Adam and Eve transgressed in the Garden of Eden, they gained knowledge of good and evil. Physical death entered the world, which meant that our bodies and spirits would be separated. Adam’s transgression also allowed spiritual death to enter the world (Doctrine and Covenants 29:40-41).

We believe that men will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam’s transgression. –Article of Faith 2

That’s good news: Adam’s transgression doesn’t automatically mean we’re all punished. But the problem is that we all will sin. Sin makes us unclean, and “no unclean thing can dwell with God” (1 Nephi 10:21).

Here’s the good news for all of us:

We believe that through the Atonement of Christ, all mankind may be saved, by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel. –Article of Faith 3

Without a Savior, we’d be dead twice: physically and spiritually. Physically, our bodies would not be united with our spirits. Spiritually, we’d be denied the presence of God because we are unclean. Jesus Christ was chosen to be the Savior. His resurrection makes it possible for each of us to be resurrected and thus overcome physical death. Also, because He willingly gave his life for each of us and paid the price for our sins, we can each be forgiven for the sins we commit so that we can become clean again. We can dwell with God again.

The plan of Heavenly Father required justice: the sins must be paid for. A Savior provides mercy: we have a chance to return to our Heavenly Father. The law of justice is met because the price for the sin is paid, and the law of mercy is met because Christ has mercy on each of us, who are imperfect.

The Mediator

The mediator in this film (the debtor’s friend) said that he would pay the debt and become the debtors new creditor. The debtor would have to repay the debt on the creditors terms.

Similarly, in our lives, the Savior gives us clear instructions on what we must do to receive the blessings of the Atonement in our lives.

Everyone who has or will come to earth will receive the blessing of resurrection and thus be saved from physical death. But to be saved from spiritual death, we must rely on the Mediator to pay the price for our sins. Then, if we do not meet the creditor’s terms, that is, if we do not repent, we will have to suffer for our own sins (Doctrine and Covenants 19:17-18) because that is how justice will be met.

I know Christ did suffer so that we might be saved. We must believe in Christ, follow and obey Him, and repent of our sins. How grateful I am to have a Mediator, who will pay my debt!

Lesson 4 of 45

Lesson 3: The Fall of Adam and Eve

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Sometimes I think it would be nice to live in a world with no sickness, no sorrow, and no pain. What would such a world be like?

I’ll begin with the trivial: I wouldn’t be uncomfortably hot during the summer. Now, on hot days, I hope for a short summer and early autumn. Of course, I wouldn’t have any uncomfortably cold wintery days either. But, without the extreme weather, I wouldn’t appreciate spring and autumn weather. By eliminating unpleasant weather, pleasant weather gets very boring.

Then I think about a world void of sicknesses and pain. I’ve always been healthy and lacked major health problems. That has changed in the past four months. (Having a baby helps your body fall apart, I guess.) I would love to eliminate pain and sickness from my life! Ironically, though, it is only now that I’ve regularly experienced ill health that I recognize what a blessing it was to have had good health. Every day that I am not ill is a very good day (there still are plenty of those), and some days I feel great! By being ill, I appreciate so much more being well. (However, I really do look forward to not being ill on a regular basis.)

It might sound nice initially, but a world without sickness, sorrow, pain, and sin would lack all enjoyment as well.

In the beginning, Adam and Eve lived in such a world.

When they were first placed there, they were given two commandments:

  1. Multiply and replenish the earth (Genesis 1:28)
  2. Don’t partake of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:16-17)

And here lies the most complex irony: because the garden was a place of innocence, Adam and Eve couldn’t fulfill the first commandment without breaking the second.

When Adam and Eve did choose to partake of the fruit, they committed a transgression, not a sin. Because there was nothing inherently wrong with partaking of the fruit, it was not a sin to partake of it, even though it was a commandment not to.

I like this comparison: A parent tells a child to never cross the street. Does the parent have a reason for the rule? Yes. But is it inherently wrong to cross the street? No. At some point in his life, the child needs to cross the street.

Eve had a dilemma. She had to choose to sacrifice her painless world of innocence in order to gain experience and to bear children. She did not know what the experience would be because she’d never before experienced it. No human had experienced it. It’s hard to choose to experience the unknown. And yet, she wanted to gain experience and she wanted to raise children.

I feel close to her dilemma. A little more than three months ago, I went through incredible pains to bring a child into the world. It was horrible. I thought I was going to die. I wanted the pain to stop. I wanted to give up. Why can’t we have children without the pain?

Well, that’s not the plan, and I’m not talking about the lack of drugs. (I imagine childbirth is still quite painful with drugs.) There is much pain in raising a child, beyond childbirth. The plan of our Heavenly Father is to learn from experience. Experience sometimes entails fear and pain, but it also includes incredible happiness. There is supposed to be opposition as we experience the good.

Eve could only bear children by giving up innocence. I can’t speak for Eve, but because I went through that painful experience of childbirth:

  • I have the most beautiful, perfect little boy to raise.
  • I learned a lot about my abilities to do what I have to do.
  • I gained an incredible spiritual closeness to my Heavenly Father.
  • I am learning every day from my child.

I think childbirth is an incredible miracle. But it required going through a very challenging experience. It required that I not live in a perfect world, void of pain and sorrow.

Adam [and Eve] fell that man [and woman] might be, and men [and women] are that they might have joy. 2 Nephi 2:25

I’m grateful for the Fall of Adam and Eve. It meant I could come to earth. It meant I can bear children. It meant that I can have my joy multiplied as I Experience. And truly, my family is my greatest joy.

Lesson 3 of 45

The Mind of a Genius

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Even at his death, Albert Einstein was regarded as someone with an incredible brain: the pathologist performing the autopsy decided, without asking permission, to embalm Einstein’s brain. For years, he kept the brain and drove around the United States touring with it. A few studies were done on the brain to try to determine what made Einstein a genius, but little has been proven scientifically. Eventually, in the late 1990s, Einstein’s brain was returned to the Einstein family (see Epilogue, p 544-551).

In reading Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson, I’ve likewise been intrigued by Einstein’s genius. Why is it we equate “Einstein” with “genius”? What made him so smart? It seems clear to me that, as Isaacson opines in his conclusion, Einsteins genius was in his mind and not necessarily his brain.

Albert Einstein was a very bright student. He excelled in elementary school classes and consistently got top grades as he grew up. However, he had contempt for authority, which led to leaving high school early — it is uncertain whether he left of his own accord or was encouraged to leave. Regardless, he was a high school dropout (p 23). He tutored himself to be able to enter the academy (p 24). Then, once he entered the Zurich Polytechnic, he again acted impudently. For example, he felt the mathematics professor was disappointing. He didn’t hide his disdain and he often missed classes (p 34). Einstein was fourth in his graduating class of five (p 48), partially due to his poor attendance in his classes.

Ironically, because of his contempt for authority, he may have been better prepared for his “thought experiments.” Because he thought things through on his own so much (outside of a teacher’s structured lectures), he was able to see the world in a different way than had been accepted by the scientific community. Also, because his poor performance and poor recommendations hindered his job prospects, he was working in a patent office and brainstorming theoretical physics during his free time; had he been working as a professor, he may have been forced to tame his ideas to fit the temper of the university at which he was working. Einstein’s young impudence provided him with a setting in which to question the world.

His former mathematics professor later said to him, “You’re a very clever boy. But you have one great fault: you’ll never let yourself be told anything” (p 34). While youthful insolence certainly is not enviable, the ability to freshly question others and the world certainly aided Einstein to greatness.

When the already-famous Einstein visited the United States in 1921, Thomas Edison was an old man. Edison was a practical man, and he believed colleges were too theoretical. He had produced a 150 question test as a job application, which contained questions such as How is leather tanned? and What country consumes the most tea? (p 299).

When Einstein arrived in New York, a reporter presented him with a question from Edison’s test: What is the speed of sound? Einstein, of course, could easily understand the speed of sound. His response to the test, however, was that he did not “carry such information in my mind since it is readily available in books.” Einstein recognized that genius was not “the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think” (p 299). He didn’t spend his time memorizing things he could look up: he spent his time thinking. His willingness to think led him to his observations of the world that opened up new branches in science.

Why did this make him famous? When Einstein’s son Eduard was young, he asked his father just that.

“When a blind beetle crawls over the surface of a curved branch, it doesn’t notice that the track it has covered is indeed curved,” Einstein replied. “I was lucky enough to notice what the beetle didn’t notice” (p 196).

Einstein’s response simplifies the concept that gravity curves the fabric of our world, a concept for which he was famous. However, it is also a good explanation of what made him a genius: he was able to comprehend concepts that had never been contemplated before. He was able to ponder concepts that challenge our understanding of the very nature of the universe, laws of nature that had been accepted widely since Newton.

I imagine that studying his brain further will not have revealed much difference from other human brains. In reading about his life and learning about the science he put voice to (much of which I still don’t quite understand), I believe that his physical brain was probably nothing special. What made Albert Einstein a genius was his unwillingness to simply accept what was given him (his resistance), his willingness to think rather than simply memorize, and his ability to comprehend new concepts. Indeed, an open mind created his greatness.

It’s not often that observations by one person change our understanding of the world, as Einstein’s observations changed physics. However, I believe that as others emulate Einstein’s open mind, they too may find their genius.

Surely, there is, to some extent, genius within each of us as well.

Further reading for me:

  • Abraham, Carolyn. Possessing Genius.
  • Aczel, Amir. God’s Equation: Einstein, Relativity, and the Expanding Universe.
  • Hawking, Stephen. A Brief History of Time.
  • Paterniti, Michael. Driving Mr. Albert.

Good, Better, and Best

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For my visiting teaching lesson Wednesday, I presented Elder Oaks’ talk from General Conference: Good, Better, Best.

(Note of explanation: Since we get the Ensign at the end of the month, I’ve been told that we should present the message from the previous month’s Ensign. I didn’t know that last month and presented the December message I got from the internet. This month, since I’d already done the December message, I thought I’d go back and do the November conference message.)

This talk stood out to me because it is something we all need. I guess I should speak for myself: it’s something I need. As an adult, I don’t often face blatant good versus evil choices: for example, my friends don’t tempt me to smoke a cigarette and I have to decide whether or not to “just say no.” Life is no longer black and white: I often must make choices between good and good or good and better. Striving to better ourselves by making the best choices seemed an appropriate focus for the beginning of the year.

Here is something that stood out to me as I read it:

To our hundreds of thousands of home teachers and visiting teachers, I suggest that it is good to visit our assigned families; it is better to have a brief visit in which we teach doctrine and principle; and it is best of all to make a difference in the lives of some of those we visit.

I have not been a very good visiting teacher: before we moved, I didn’t do it very often. Then, I didn’t have an assignment from May until December. But now I have an assignment again, and I want to do a better job. No, I want to do the best job I can.

I do teach the bishop’s wife so this seems to me to be quite a challenge.

Here is my question for you: Have you had a visiting teacher that made a “difference” in your life? What did they do? I want to be the best kind of visiting teacher, and I don’t think simply visiting and sharing a message is quite enough. I’d be interested in your thoughts.

Lesson 2: Agency: The Power to Choose

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My son’s face relaxes as his mouth grabs hold of the pacifier. He begins to suck and his mouth almost smiles. He stops squirming and his eyes close. I feel his body go partially limp in my arms. I know he likes that pacifier!

Then I watch his right hand begin its move toward his face. He likes to have his hand near his face. It’s a comfort to him. But I know what is coming. Sure enough, his long little fingers reach the pacifier and loop through the ring on the end of it.

“Paul, don’t do it!” I warn him. “If you move your hand back then you’ll pull the pacifier out of your mouth.”

His eyes twitch, but his lids remain shut. He continues sucking.

A door slams somewhere and Paul’s body starts. He jerks his right hand away from his face. Sure enough, just as I warned, the pacifier now remains in his right hand, a full three inches from his mouth.

His eyes open wide and he stares at me. His look is part shock and part betrayal. How could you? He seems to say. Then his bottom lip begins to jut out and his whole face begins its contortion. Here comes a cry!

You did it! I want to say. You pulled the pacifier out of your own mouth! You can control that arm; you can control that hand! You can choose to put the pacifier back in your mouth! Just move your hand.

But I know he is still too little to recognize his own power: he has agency and he doesn’t even realize it.

Being a mother is helping me see how Heavenly Father views us. Just as I want to help Paul understand how his tiny choices affect his life, Heavenly Father likewise wants me to understand how my more significant choices affect my life — and my eternal progression. Paul is not yet making any choices of eternal consequence: he is still unaccountable. But as the days and years go by, he will gain the ability to choose between right and wrong. He will learn.

When we lived with God in the premortal world, we understood that we could make choices. Heavenly Father provided an opportunity for each of us to come to the earth. We would choose how we would live. We knew we’d make mistakes. And Heavenly Father promised a Savior, who would pay for our sins, so that we could return to live with Him again.

Heavenly Father’s plan includes these principles of agency (See 2 Nephi 2:26-29).

  1. A law. He provides commandments to follow that enable us to return to Him.
  2. Knowledge of the law. He gives us these commandments through prophets and scriptures. As we grow on the earth, we learn the commandments.
  3. Opposition: good and evil. We sometimes have to choose between good and evil; we have to choose between obeying the commandments and doing other things we might want to do. The Spirit will help us discern which choices are right.
  4. Freedom of choice. Heavenly Father will not force us to choose right. We have complete freedom as to whether we will choose right or wrong. We make our own choices!
  5. Responsibility for choices. This is the hard part: we can’t choose the consequence of our choices. If we choose right, we will be blessed. If we choose wrong, we are cut off from our Heavenly Father, unless we rely on Christ’s atonement, which is another choice. Thus, in Heavenly Father’s plan, some people will not return to Heavenly Father again.

In that premortal realm, we know that Satan wanted the glory as the Savior (See Moses 4:1-4 and Abraham 3:24-28). He wanted to save everyone, by making them choose right all the time. He wanted to eliminate principle — the freedom to choose. It sounds like a nice idea: we’d all be saved. There is pain in choosing wrong and some people won’t make it back. Wouldn’t it be great if all made it back?

In watching my son, I realize what a tragedy it would be if he couldn’t learn to control his own body. What if I forced him to move in a set way? He wouldn’t be able to move his arm toward his mouth if the result would be the pacifier coming out: he’d be forced to stay in one position. He would not be able to jolt in surprise when a door slammed. He’d sleep between set hours every day so he wouldn’t be uncomfortably tired ever. He would never choose again.

What a tragedy that would be! What would be the point of his existence? In watching him, I see how important it is that we are able to choose what we do. His choices are small and insignificant now, but as he grows, they will increase in significance. Yes, he will make wrong choices. But he will choose!

There is a reason we experience negative consequences: it is how we learn. It may be hard to anticipate negative consequences for our own choices. But looking on, I can anticipate my infant son’s dismay when he removes his own pacifier. He will be sad, and he is. I know that as he grows, his life will be full of such moments, most of them of much more significance. It will be sad to see wrong consequences. But he will eventually learn how to control his arms and hands. I know that as he gains control and accountability, he will begin to recognize how his actions are related to the consequences, and he’ll learn to make different actions.

Because we did accept Heavenly Father’s plan, we have the freedom to choose. I look on and anticipate the consequences of Paul’s choices, and Heavenly Father likewise looks on and anticipates the consequences of our choices. Heavenly Father has provided guidance for us so we can avoid the painful mistakes. By listening to the Spirit, by obeying to the prophet, and by reading the scriptures, we should recognize what the consequences of our choices are and what right is.

As I listen to my son’s crying, I recognize what a great blessing this gift of agency is! He can choose and therefore he can learn. We all can.

Lesson 2 of 45

The Taste of Exotic Green

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As I circle around, peeling off the thin layer of brown carpet ugliness, the tangy green flesh shows through, taunting me with its juicy shimmer. I finish and put down the vegetable peeler: the kiwi fruit sits before me in its nakedness.I get out a knife and set the fruit on the cutting board. One quick cut reveals the juicy insides, the black seeds radiating out from the pure white center. “No early tastes!” I tell myself, as I hurry to slice the fruit. Soon semi-circles of green, with miniscule black spots, fill a small bowl. I sit down at the table. I place the first piece in my mouth.

I see a dark blue ocean before me: I sit on a tropical beach. Exotic greenness dances on my tongue as the flesh swims: cool, refreshing goodness.

I love an afternoon snack.

Lesson 1: A Loving Father, An Eternal Plan

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The Plan of Salvation is summarized in a chart in my Sunday school lesson manual:

plan-of-salvation.jpg

But in reviewing the Plan of Salvation chart and the scriptures on it, I began wondering “What is a basic definition of the plan of salvation? Does it really consist of circles and lines? That can’t be it. Is it really defined by Moses 1:39?”

I felt foolish asking that. I’ve been a member of this church my entire life. I’ve read the Book of Mormon a dozen times in my life. How can I not know what the plan of salvation is? Why can’t I simply state what it is?

My first thought was to consult the Gospel Principles manual. To my surprise, it had no chapter dedicated to the subject. Isn’t that something that is taught to new members? My next idea was to consult LDS.org in a basic search. “Plan of Salvation” led to more than 1,500 hits, and I hadn’t even included “plan of happiness” or any of the other names for it. Where do I begin?

I found that LDS.org has a gospel topic library that provided the best explanation for me:

The plan of salvation is the fulness of the gospel.

Well, that encompasses everything! That would explain why there isn’t a chapter dedicated to it in the Gospel Principles manual: the entire manual is the plan of salvation. That’s the whole point of the gospel and of course new members need to learn it. But it isn’t a one-week lesson.

My next question was this: Why does the manual focus on the chart in the first place, then?

The explanation continues:

As we come to understand the plan, we find answers to questions asked by so many: Where did we come from? Why are we here? Where do we go after this life?

I see now that the chart is simply a device to illustrate it. I understand now why this is only the first lesson of an entire year of Sunday school lessons. We get to discuss the answers to those three questions over the course of the year. We get to discuss our purpose over the course of the entire year.

Moses 1:39 is the focusing scripture in this lesson. I decided to put it in context. As I read the rest of Moses 1, I see other things that hint of the miraculous plan of our Father in Heaven.

From the beginning of the chapter, we learn that God has a body. Moses speaks to Him “face to face” (v2). We learn that Moses is the son of God (v4) and that God has a special plan for Moses (v6). I believe we can extend that to all of us — we all are children of God and God has a plan for each of us. I know that is true. God does have a plan for us, as we’ll see in verse 39.

Moses learns that “man is nothing” compared to the glory of God (v10). Because he has had this incredible vision of God’s power, when the adversary comes to tempt him, he recognizes the difference between the adversary and God. He notices that the adversary does not have the same glory that God had had: “Where is thy glory?” (v14). True, Moses is very scared during his encounter with the devil (v20), but ultimately, he knows to call upon God, and he receives strength to command the adversary to depart (v20-21).

Because he has demonstrated his faith in God during such a tremendously difficult encounter, he is filled with the Holy Ghost and again beholds the glory of God (v24-25). It is in this subsequent vision, again when he is “face to face,” that he learns so much more about the plan of salvation. It is in this context that God provides an explanation of his purpose:

For behold, this I my work and my glory: to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.

Immortality, of course, is the ability to live forever, to be resurrected. Everyone will enjoy that blessing. Eternal life is living with Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father again. Achieving eternal life is up to us. Our decisions in this life determine whether or not we will live with God again. It is through the atonement of Christ that we are able to be clean in order to return to God again. This is why an understanding of the plan is so important. If we know what we have to do to gain eternal life, it will be easier to do it.

Moses was the chosen one to write of the plan of the Father at that time. I believe that would be the biblical record we have. But the Father promises that when the “children of men shall esteem my words as naught” and take the truths out of Moses writings, then He would send another. That promise was fulfilled in our dispensation with the Book of Mormon and with modern prophets. In the Book of Mormon, then, we can find the fullness of the plan of salvation, the plan of happiness. We can find answers to the burning questions we have in our life: Where did we come from? Why are we here? Where are we going?

I think that knowledge of the plan does make the difference. Just as recognizing the difference between the power of God and the non-power of adversary made a difference for Moses when he was confronted, knowing the purpose of God in our lives can help us when we are confronted by the adversary.

This is lesson 1 of 45 in how we can prepare for exaltation. I have a feeling that even after 45 lessons there will be so much more to learn!

Preparing for Exaltation

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I teach course 12-13 in Sunday school, which follows a different manual than the regular gospel doctrine course. Thus, last year I taught from The Presidents of the Church manual. I began my calling in August, so I only started with President George Albert Smith. I’ve really enjoyed the overview of the prophets’ lives and teachings. I found myself eager to begin anew with Joseph Smith in 2008.

Last week, the Sunday school president told me I wasn’t to teach from that manual in 2008. I was disappointed, until I took a look at the manual I am to teach from: Preparing for Exaltation. It is an excellent manual.

The first two months talk about the various aspects of the plan of salvation (i.e., premortal life, earth life, the spirit world, and the three degrees of glory). Then the remainder of the year discusses various aspects of the gospel that can help us return to live with our Father in Heaven again.

This manual is a wonderful return to basic gospel principles that seems very appropriate for youth just about to embark on their teenage years. I look forward to building my testimony of the basics this year.

Question for you: Do you think 12-13 year olds would want a CD of primary songs? Are they too “cool” for primary songs? I keep thinking of the following songs and how appropriate they would be on a “theme CD” for the entire year:

  • I Am a Child of God
  • I Lived in Heaven
  • I Know My Father Lives
  • A Child’s Prayer
  • I Pray in Faith
  • He Sent His Son
  • Did Jesus Really Live Again?
  • The Church of Jesus Christ
  • I’m Trying to Be Like Jesus
  • When He Comes Again
  • The Golden Plates
  • I Love to See the Temple
  • Faith
  • Search, Ponder and Pray
  • Keep the Commandments
  • Dare to Do Right
  • I Will Follow God’s Plan
  • Teach Me to Walk in the Light
  • Families Can Be Together Forever
  • Love is Spoken Here
  • My Heavenly Father Loves Me

Am I missing any songs?

Super-Easy Pork Chops

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I had a Pork Chops with Mango Sauce recipe I was going to try the other day, until I realized that the limes I was going to use were completely moldy. Eww! I need to clean out the fridge more often (maybe before I go out of town). The mango sauce wouldn’t work so well without the lime juice and lime zest. (The only other ingredients in the sauce were chopped mint leaves, a cubbed mango, and half a red onion.)

I was feeling very uncreative in terms of what to do with the pork chops. We just wanted something quick to eat: that’s why I was going to fall back on the mango sauce. It looked so easy. I didn’t want to agonize over what to cook, but I find pork chops incredibly boring when they are just sauteed–they really need something on them. What could I do?

A quick internet search provided an easy recipe. I thought I’d share.

We had some blackberry jam in the fridge so I mixed two tablespoons of that with two tablespoons of Dijon mustard. After I browned both sides of the pork, I put a dollop of the mixture on the top of each piece of pork, covered the pan, and sauteed them until they were cooked through.

While the pork cooked, I heated some frozen vegetables and my husband made some potatoes. The whole meal was easy and super-tasty. I’ll add more mustard next time because it was incredibly subtle. But it was good as it was–you can barely taste it so if you don’t like mustard, it won’t overwhelm you.

  • Ingredients: 3 (pork, jam, mustard–plus butter for sauteeing and salt and pepper, but those don’t count)
  • Preparation: 1-2 minutes
  • Cooking time: 15-20 minutes

I cooked four of the seven chops that way. Yesterday, we cooked the other three chops. I bought limes and mixed together the mango sauce. (We omitted the red onion because apparently we didn’t have that.) My husband grilled the pork chops. Then we spooned the mango sauce over the pork.

Again, it was very tasty!

  • Ingredients: 4 (pork chops, mango, lime juice and zest, mint–plus vegetable oil for grilling and salt and pepper, but those don’t count)
  • Preparation: 10 minutes (it takes me a while to cut a mango; I’m sure my husband would have cut it faster)
  • Grilling time: 10 minutes, plus grill preparation

I love easy, tasty food!

Why I Blog and Elder Ballard’s Challenge to Bloggers

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A year ago, approximately, my sister started “blogging.” I wrote in my journal:

[My sister] has taken to writing a blog online every couple days. I’ve been logging on for the past few weeks. I think it’s the kind of thing that will fizzle out and die eventually.

Umm…OK, so I was wrong? I laughed when I reread that the other day.

I have always been a compulsive journal writer. At one point during college, I wrote in my journal every single morning for an entire semester. I got up at 5 or 6 a.m., before my five roommates even stirred, and wrote a few paragraphs. I wrote about what I did the day before. I wrote about my classes. I wrote about what I was reading in the scriptures. I wrote about my personal feelings and relationships.

Then I started working full time, and life, I guess, was boring. I decided my journals were boring, so I wouldn’t write every day. Well, it’s very easy to go from every day to never, or, at least, rarely.

A year and a half ago, I started grad school because I wanted to write again. I wanted a forum in which to share my thoughts and develop my writing talent and improve myself. After one course (and $1,800), I realized a school setting was not what I wanted. I thought I wanted someone to tell me to write and to read what I wrote. But I didn’t want the format of school. I wasn’t ready for the homework. I wasn’t ready for a teacher telling how much to read and write each week. It’s too much fun to not be in school. What did I really want?

That is the setting in which I was critiquing the blogging movement. I guess I don’t think I had any idea then how addicting it is to write for an audience and to feel like I have a place to share my thoughts.

I was being silly to critique it because just three months later, in March, when my husband and I decided to move to Australia, I changed our webpage (previously a page with our wedding pictures) into a “blog.” I did that because we were about to leave the country (I didn’t know it would still be four months) and I wanted a format to easily communicate with my family and share pictures and thoughts.

When I started my webpage, I really felt certain that it should not be a blog. I thought a blog implied revealing too many personal things. By definition, a blog doesn’t really imply any of that. However, I still think a blog should not replace a journal. There are things I write in my personal journal that I’d never write for the world to see. I want to guard my personal problems. They’re personal for a reason.

Also, along a similar line, I have wanted to keep this page in the family. There are weirdos out there. I don’t want strangers finding pictures of my son or stalking our family. I am blessed with a very common name, so I’m only one of many people named Rebecca Reid on the web (try to find me — go on, I dare you!). I have no intention of hiding behind fake names if I do make my page public. But as of now, my page is not searchable by internet searches, like Google. The only way someone gets here is if they know the webpage to begin with, or they link to it. That’s also why I require a person to login before commenting. I just feel safer that way.

Elder Ballard recently made a statement about blogs. (Yes, he’s nearly 80 and he is aware of these things!) Here is part of what he said (emphasis added):

The Internet allows everyone to be a publisher, to have their voice heard, and it is revolutionizing society. …. The emergence of New Media is facilitating a world-wide conversation on almost every subject including religion, and nearly everyone can participate … There are conversations going on about the Church constantly. Those conversations will continue whether or not we choose to participate in them. But we cannot stand on the sidelines while others, including our critics, attempt to define what the Church teaches. … [M]ay I ask that you join the conversation by participating on the Internet, particularly the New Media, to share the gospel and to explain in simple and clear terms the message of the Restoration. Most of you already know that if you have access to the Internet you can start a blog in minutes and begin sharing what you know to be true.

After Paul was born, I started thinking that I didn’t need my own page — I’ll just use Paul’s Page to discuss all family news. But then I started thinking about what I could write about on my page, and I found myself writing pages of outlines of things I’m interested in writing about.

I realized that I need my own outlet to write and expand on my hobbies and dreams. That is my way of continuing to develop myself. After reading Elder Ballard’s talk, I feel that I also need to discuss my testimony and publish it for the world to see. He said,

How will you use these marvelous inventions? More to the point, how will you use them to further the work of the Lord?

As a New Year’s goal, here are some things I plan on discussing on my page in the coming months:

Hobbies

  • Cooking (What I’m learning)
  • Family history (Yes, I will do it again at some point!)
  • Reading (Book reviews as I read)
  • Photography (Pictures I’ve taken of my travels and what I’m learning about photography)

Spirituality

  • Conference talks (requires me to read them)
  • Scriptures I’m reading (requires me to read them)
  • My Sunday school lessons (requires me to prepare before Sunday morning!)

My life

  • What I’ve been writing about all along

Elder Ballard’s talk is a great talk. Read it. If you have a blog, I challenge you to respond to his challenge in a post of your own, telling what you are going to do to answer it. Make it a part of a New Year’s resolution.

As for comments to this post, I’m interested in your thoughts. If I do write about the things I described above,

  1. Will you be bored to death? (I am not sure that I care if you are; ‘m still going to write about them, but I thought I’d ask.)
  2. Should I make my page searchable through a web browser?
  3. If I make it searchable, how do I protect my family from the weirdos?
  4. If I don’t make it searchable, how am I fulfilling Elder Ballard’s challenge? Do you all count as part of the conversation, too?

If you don’t like the “log in to comment” requirement, send me an email. I’m interested to know if that stops people from commenting.

Thank you in advance for your thoughts.