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Category: Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned

Fainting While Giving a Talk is Never a Good Idea

posted on : September 6, 2018 posted by : Somethingsihavelearned 0 Comment

I have always worked hard to give good talks.  Even when I was a teenager I tried to give talks worth listening to.  People would tell me “when we see your name on the program we know it’s going to be a good meeting.”  Now, I know these people meant this as a compliment but what it really did was put pressure on me to give a perfect talk.  Each talk I gave had to be better than the previous one because I didn’t want to let anyone down.  So, I usually spent many hours researching the topic, memorized my talks and worked on the delivery.  It got so bad that I developed anxiety about speaking, thinking my talk had to be perfect.  I was sure people were listening to every word to judge me, deciding if I was competent or not.  When I was in college while I was speaking in a church meeting the pressure to perform became so great that I fainted in the middle of the talk-right there on the stand, flat-out fainted.  I got back up to finish the talk but started getting light-headed again so the bishop told me to not worry about finishing it. Fortunately I wasn’t asked to speak again in that ward!  But a few years later while I was speaking in another ward the same thing happened.  Because I had memorized the talk I kept on talking while getting light-headed hoping it would pass but all that passed was me-right there on the stand again.  This time I got up and made a joke about fainting and was able to continue with the talk.  After fainting twice while giving talks I really became anxious about speaking in pubic and this carried over to teaching lessons and even saying prayers in Sacrament Meeting.  I was so worried about doing these things perfectly but ironically when others gave talks if they didn’t word everything perfectly I didn’t think they were incompetent or lazy or foolish.  Usually I just enjoyed their talks and never thought they had to be perfect.  And so I prayed and hoped I wouldn’t be asked to give a talk or prayer.

Several years later I was asked to give the opening prayer in Sacrament Meeting and I was petrified-I didn’t want to mess up or faint.  As I stood at the pulpit and looked out at the audience the thought came to me “these people are all your friends and they would never wish you any harm” and then a complete peace settled on me.  I have no idea what I said in that prayer but I believe that because I was willing to do the prayer even though I was terrified, the Lord blessed me with this wonderful, peaceful experience.  This experience was life changing for me and just like the anxiety carried over from talks to lessons and prayers, this experience also carried over to those other areas.  The peace I felt  was amazing, so much so that now when I speak in a meeting I feel the peaceful reassurance that these people are my friends and wishing the best for me. I still work really hard to give good talks or lessons but now I am no longer worried about having to be perfect at it, in fact there’s been a couple of times I have actually enjoyed speaking.

Church,Lessons Learned

Looking For Answers

posted on : August 30, 2018 posted by : Somethingsihavelearned 2 Comments

A friend of mine told me about a Family Home Evening lesson she did. To prepare for it she inventoried her chest freezer and made a list of hard to find items.  Then she put other food items on top of those food items on her list.  For the lesson she handed out the list of things and had her kids go look for them in the freezer.  They found a couple of the easy ones but couldn’t find most of the items.   Now she knew they were there so she told them to go look again. They came back still only finding a few of the items on the list, partly because they didn’t really want to find them.  Together they went and found everything on the list.  She compared this to searching for answers to gospel questions.  She told them that some questions are easily answered while others take perseverance and a lot of digging to find the answers and sometimes help is needed from someone with a lot of gospel experience.  Just like digging for hard to find food items in a freezer we have to more than casually look for answers to our gospel questions and we need to really want to find the answers.  For most of the questions we have, we are able to find the answers with a little effort.   Some questions though take a lot of effort, pondering and prayer.  They may take years or even a life time to find the answers and some may only be answered in the next life.  But I have found that when I find answers to my questions it strengthens my faith that the harder to find answers are there and to keep searching for them, and to accept that for some I may have to wait until the next world to receive my answers.  I have also found that when I have to work really hard for an answer that I value it more, I really appreciate the answer and sometimes I even treasure it.  In some ways I think this is part of the plan.  Our Heavenly Father knows that as we look for answers our faith grows and our knowledge increases and not always just in the arena of the questions we have.  He also knows that when we have to work hard for something, we value it more. I know the answers are there if we faithfully persevere and look for them.

https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2015/10/faith-is-not-by-chance-but-by-choice?lang=eng

https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2011/04/waiting-on-the-road-to-damascus?lang=eng

Church,Lessons Learned

Ordinary People And The Good They Do

posted on : August 27, 2018 posted by : Somethingsihavelearned 0 Comment

Many years ago I read the biography of Camilla Kimball, the wife of Spencer W. Kimball who was the President and Prophet of the LDS church.  My favorite part of the book is when it describes a date that Camilla went on to a dance with a boy she didn’t want to be with.  She made an excuse, went to the bathroom and climbed out of the bathroom window and left the dance and the boy.  I loved that story because it was such a normal teenage thing to do and it left me feeling that if she could do something so normal and turn out so great that there was hope for me. She went on to bless the lives of many people and do a lot of good in the world despite being very human. Sometimes when I see people who appear to always have been perfect it’s hard to relate to them. But when I see people who have weaknesses and who have made mistakes in their lives and they are doing great things, it gives me hope that I too can do better and be better. My husband’s current calling at church is the Stake Clerk.  He gets to work closely with the Stake Presidency and I have gotten to know them a little better than other Stake Presidencies. They are good men but in interacting with them it’s very easy to see that they are also just ordinary men who desire to serve the Lord and do their best.  They are willing to give of their time and efforts to serve others but because they are normal they also make mistakes, have their own weaknesses and are not perfect.  Sometimes people look at church leaders and complain because they make mistakes and have weaknesses and decide the church can’t possibly be true because of it.  I think it’s amazing that God can take ordinary, fallible people and use them anyway to further His work here on the earth, despite their weaknesses. It gives me hope that even with all of my problems and weaknesses, He can use an ordinary person like me to do a little good in the world too.

Faith,Lessons Learned

Migraines and Spiritual Growth

posted on : August 23, 2018 posted by : Somethingsihavelearned 0 Comment

I have had migraines for over 40 years, some of them so severe I didn’t want to be alive anymore.  I have been to every kind of doctor, tried every cure and done everything that seemed reasonable and even tried some things that were unreasonable in trying to rid myself of this plague.  There have been moments when I thought that if all my life offered was pain, it would be better to die.  At times I have thought that I couldn’t stand anymore pain and felt desperate to end the pain but it continued on with nothing I could do.  In desperation I have cried out to God many times for relief, knowing that He is the ultimate source of relief.  Sometimes I have had an immediate answer on what I could do for relief.  One time as I stood trying to relax in the hot water of a shower I was begging God for help. Quietly the thought “get into bed and relax” came into my mind.  I turned off the water, got dressed and got into bed, relaxed, and as soon as I did my migraine was gone.  I have pondered about this occurrence many times. God easily could have taken away my migraine while I was standing in the shower, so why did I need to get into bed and relax?  In the bible there is the story of the captain of a Syrian army named Naaman who had leprosy.  He came to the prophet Elisha to cure his leprosy and Elisha told Naaman, through his servant, to wash himself in the river Jordan seven times.  Did the waters of Jordan have miraculous curing powers?  Elisha could have blessed Naaman or cured him some other way, but washing in the waters of the Jordan required Naaman to act, to do something. For miracles to happen there must be faith and faith requires action.  Just as Naaman had to act to be cured, I had to show my faith by acting.  God could have taken away my migraine in the shower but He wanted me to show my faith through my actions.  He already knew what I believe and how strongly I believed it but sometimes I need to be reminded, I needed to find out how strong my faith is.  That night as I laid there with a grateful heart for the relief from pain I was also grateful to know I have a loving Father in Heaven who hears my prayers and gives me experiences to help my faith grow.  I absolutely hate migraines but I am grateful for the spiritual growth I have had because of them.

Husband,Lessons Learned

A Good Man

posted on : August 20, 2018 posted by : Somethingsihavelearned 0 Comment

There’s only one time I ever semi-seriously thought about divorce from my husband.  We had been married for about 10 years and had 5 children.  My husband travels for his business several days a week and at this time it was often just me and 5 very active children, and breaks away seldom happened.   It was hard to get sitters for my kids because they were so active and they usually wore a baby sitter out.  One time I overheard a group of girls from my church talking about babysitting and heard one of them say about our family “they pay great but it isn’t worth it.” So in hope of time away I had signed up for a craft class on a Saturday afternoon which would provide a much-needed respite for me, and I was really looking forward to it.  My husband had some work to do at his office and promised to be home in time for me to get to my class.  I got ready to go and got all of my supplies packed and I was really looking forward to the project I was going to do.  The time came and went when he was supposed to be home.  I tried calling him but he didn’t answer the phone.  It was too late to try to find a willing and brave sitter.  The class started and he still didn’t come home.  I was so upset that he hadn’t come home and I had missed the class.  When he finally got home I asked him what had happened.  He had more work to do than he thought and had decided to finish it.  That was it.  Nothing urgent, or serious or even necessary.  He just stayed to finish his work which he could have done on Monday.  I was so hurt and mad, and I remember later driving down a road crying and wondering if I could stay married to him.  As I thought about it I figured out the real issue-could I stay  married to a man who didn’t value what I wanted to do just as much as what he wanted to do, who didn’t think that what I wanted was just as important as what he wanted. Later, when I had calmed down, I told him that at some point he had decided that what he was doing was more important than what I wanted to do or he would have kept his promise and been home on time.  He didn’t get it. Over the next few days I kept trying in different ways to calmly explain it to him and he still wasn’t getting it.  I remember riding with him in a car one day and trying again to tell him that at some point he decided that what he was doing was more important than what I wanted to do or he would have stopped working and been home on time.  Suddenly the light went on in his eyes and he got it.  He finally understood what I was saying.  He apologized and promised it wouldn’t happen again, and you know what?  He has diligently tried to keep that promise.  Maybe I kept trying to get him to understand because I knew he was a good man.  Since then he has been conscious of my time and has really made an effort to be aware of my interests and if I wanted to do something he has done what he can to make sure I could do it.  For me, staying calm, thinking about what the issue really was and then persistently addressing it was key. Of course it helps that he’s a good man.

Lessons Learned

A Terrible Hair Cut And What I Learned

posted on : August 16, 2018 posted by : Somethingsihavelearned 0 Comment

Many years ago I had some one new cut my hair and she cut it very short, a lot shorter than what I wanted.  I was embarrassed it was so short, was sure I looked idiotic and no longer feminine, and drove home crying.  When I got home I immediately called my husband at work (this was before cell phones).  As soon as he got on the phone I started crying and through long pauses, in which I tried to control my crying, I could barely get the words out that my hair was ruined by being cut too short. His response?  He started laughing.  It turned out he was sure that one of the kids had been hit by a car or something equally terrible and he was so relieved that it was just my hair that he started laughing.  This didn’t go over too well because I was very upset about my hair and he was laughing!  A few weeks later my hair grew out, life looked better and I began to learn about perspective.  I began to learn about what is truly important and what seems important at the time but is really unimportant in the scheme of things, like my terrible hair cut.  I have learned there are few truly important things worth getting upset over and they were usually things that really would affect my life, and often had great impact on me.  It seems that most of the things I would get upset about when I was younger actually fell in the truly unimportant area.  Things that seemed important like a messy house when someone came over unexpectedly, saying the wrong thing at the wrong time or my kids not excelling in ways I thought they should, and a whole host of other silly things.  When these kind of things happened I would sometimes stew about them for days feeling very inept.  I basically beat myself up for not being perfect, but ironically, not perfect in unimportant things.  Over time I had experiences that taught me about life and I was able to better judge what was worth getting upset over.  I learned to ask myself “will this matter in 2 years, or even 2 weeks” and the number of years varied based on what was happening.  Usually the answer was not just “no” but it was an emphatic “no.”  Most of the things that I worried about were unimportant.  This little question helped me to learn perspective and to save my energy for the important things that happen, because the important things of life usually take a lot of energy.  Now when my hair is cut too short I am able to be philosophical about it because I know it will grow out and really, in the scheme of things, a terrible hair cut is something to laugh about.

 

 

 

Children,Lessons Learned

It’s Not About The Socks Or Blanket

posted on : August 13, 2018 posted by : Somethingsihavelearned 0 Comment

When one of my children was 3 years old she struggled with having her socks just the right way on her feet.  Not only did she want to wear a certain kind of socks (just the right thickness and feel), the line across her toes had to be perfectly straight and if it wasn’t for some reason she couldn’t cope and she would have a major melt down. When we got the line straight it had to stay straight while going into her shoe and had to be straight across her foot while in her shoe.  If the sock pulled in any way she would rip the shoe off, scream and straighten the sock. Sometimes she would take the shoe off just to see if the sock line was still straight.  It was a major ordeal every time I helped her get dressed.  I might have handled it better but every time we did errands she would take her shoes off in the car and before we went into a store we would have to go through this ordeal again, and again before the next store.  I couldn’t convince her to keep her shoes on no matter what I tried and I dreaded having to do errands with her, especially because I had other things to do and other children to help.  This same daughter also had to have her blanket on her bed perfectly straight while she slept. When she woke up during the night if the blanket was not straight and smooth she would very loudly scream and since we lived in a duplex, letting her scream several times a night, every night was not an option.  I was exhausted from the constant battle between shoes and blankets and didn’t know what to do about it.  Comforting her, yelling at her, scolding her and anything else I could think of in my very tired brain during the many trips to her room each night was not effective. She still woke up screaming if her blanket was not perfectly straight.  One day, after many months of this, I switched from mom brain to therapist brain, and in thinking about it I realized that for some reason she needed her world to be orderly to cope with her life.  So I gave her a new coping mechanism.  I told her that when she woke up in the middle of the night that if her blanket was not straight to tell herself “it’s okay, mommy will straighten it for me in the morning.” I also remembered that positive reinforcement worked better than negative reinforcement, so we made a star chart together and I told her that if she slept through the night without waking up and screaming about her blanket she could put a star on her chart in the morning. The night came and went and no screaming! I went into her room in the morning to check on her and the first thing she told me was she had awakened during the night, saw her blanket messed up and told herself that it was okay and that I would straighten it in the morning, which I gladly did and then she very proudly put a star on her chart. She soon learned to straighten the blanket by herself and thankfully she eventually outgrew the sock and blanket behaviors.  I learned that life can be hard for children too and giving them the skills they need to successfully cope is important. I also learned to look beyond the behavior to understand the cause better and to think of solutions and not about my anger or ineptness as a parent.

https://www.kidsmatter.edu.au/mental-health-matters/social-and-emotional-learning/emotional-development/coping-skills-managing

https://www.kidsmatter.edu.au/families/starting-school/5-coping-skills-children

Faith,Lessons Learned

Trying Counts!

posted on : August 2, 2018 posted by : Somethingsihavelearned 0 Comment

I try to read all of the General Conference talks that are printed in the Ensign each May and November and I write the date I read the talk at the top of the page.  I say try because I am usually not successful and often feel guilty thinking that this is another area that I’m not doing great in, some other way that I’m failing and another point that says I will never fully measure up.  One day when I was feeling discouraged at my shortcomings and thinking I will never improve enough, I thought I should read a few talks in the Ensign instead of relaxing by playing a game or some other trivial thing.  I picked up the Ensign and looked through it for a talk that didn’t have a date at the top of the page.  I kept leafing through and eventually saw that every talk had a date, and surprisingly to me, that I had read them all.  I had the thought come to my mind “You’re doing better than you think.”  This tender mercy happened because I was trying to do what’s right and even though I’m far from perfect, Heavenly Father blessed me for my effort.  It’s so easy to get discourage when we think about all of the things we are supposed to be doing in our lives. Sometimes it’s overwhelming to have lessons to prepare, scriptures and Ensigns to read, topics to study, classes to prepare for by reading the assigned material, Family Home Evening lessons to get ready and occasionally talks to write. I try to do these things but sometimes fall short and then I beat myself up because I failed– again. Doctrine and Covenants 46:9 teaches me that I am blessed not only when I keep the commandments but also even when I seek to do so, so in other words, trying counts.  This concept teaches me that becoming better is a process, not an event and when I honestly try, that slowly I do better and become better.  This tender mercy from a loving Heavenly Father showed me that efforts, even small ones, add up and to give myself more credit for trying.  Maybe I am doing better than I think, and maybe you are too.

 

https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2016/04/tomorrow-the-lord-will-do-wonders-among-you?lang=eng

Children,Church,Lessons Learned

Sundays at Church with Little Kids

posted on : July 30, 2018 posted by : Somethingsihavelearned 0 Comment

Little kids and church are rough.  Kids want to play and not sit still and parents want to listen to the speakers and often these things don’t mix, which can be very frustrating for everyone.  Over time I found a few things that were helpful to make Sundays in church a little more pleasant.  One of the things was to have a bag of quiet, small toys that they could only play with at church.  By not allowing them to play with the church toys any other time it kept their interest in the toy, it wasn’t the same thing they got to play with every day.  I also had a bag of Sunday toys that I would rotate every few weeks so they wouldn’t get bored with the same toys to play with every Sunday.  I also found the Friend magazines had fun stories or activities to do for some of my kids who were a little older, and since a new one came every month it was easy to rotate them.  At one point my kids were fighting over the crayons to use with the Friend so we went to just pencils for a while.  When I let them have crayons again they did much better but if it ever became an issue I gathered up the crayons and brought out the pencils, which weren’t nearly as much fun. If my kids acted out I would take them out to the foyer but they had to sit on my lap.  I didn’t allow them to run around.  I would remind them of this while we were still siting on the bench by telling them they could sit on the bench and look at the Friend or play with the toys, or they could sit in the foyer on my lap without any freedom or things to do.  Usually they chose freedom on the bench to having to sit on my lap in the foyer.  Of course sometimes they were so worked up that I had to take them out but I kept them on my lap until they calmed down and then gave them the choice to continue to sit there or go back to freedom on the bench.  Most of the time they chose to go back into the meeting. These simple things usually worked but sometimes nothing worked and I wondered why I even went to church some Sundays just to be out in the halls or foyer.  As my kids got older I realized that it was just a short time in their lives that this occurred and that establishing the pattern of going to church, partaking of the Sacrament and showing reverence or love for our Heavenly Father far out weighed the hassles and problems of younger kids in church.  It showed my kids that despite the frustrations that church was the place to be on Sundays.

https://www.lds.org/friend/1989/11/cookie-sunday?lang=eng

https://www.lds.org/ensign/1986/08/mormon-journal/our-familys-reverence-lesson?lang=eng

Lessons Learned,Life

How Do I Know God Loves Me?

posted on : July 26, 2018 posted by : Somethingsihavelearned 0 Comment

Recently on a very hot day I had a conversation with one of my daughters in which I said “I know God loves me because of air conditioning.”  Mostly I was trying to be funny, but it got me thinking about the ways that I truly do know that God loves me.  I remember a time a few years ago when I had spent days working in my front flower garden.  It took me many hours to trim, weed, clean out the old and plant new flowers.  When I was finished I stepped back and looked at the amazing display of colors, varieties and textures as well as sizes and shapes.  I felt complete satisfaction and joy at looking at the result of my hard work and in that moment I felt my Heavenly Father’s love for me.  I realized that He didn’t have to make so many varieties of flowers and colors with different shapes and textures but that He made, through His Son Jesus Christ, a beautiful world to please His children and to give them an amazing place to live.  When I looked at those flowers I felt His love, and there are many other ways I also feel His love.  Even though I have an average sort of singing voice, whenever I sing church hymns I also feel it. There’s something about the words and the music that combine to touch me deeply and I recognize that sacred music not only allows me to feel the Spirit but also communicates His love for me.  Sometimes this is a hard concept to not only understand but to feel.  I once had a conversation with someone where we were talking about charity and how it is the pure love of Christ.  We talked about the Relief Society motto “Charity never Faileth” and he expressed the thought that sometimes charity does fail because people aren’t perfect and sometimes let him down. I explained to him that it is God’s love that never fails, not people’s love.  People make mistakes and aren’t even close to perfect but God’s love for us is perfect and it never ends.  I could see from his face that it was a new concept to him.  It doesn’t matter what we do or don’t do, He loves each of us personally and individually.  God shows His love to each of His children in different ways and if we will look for it we will see how He tells each of us individually and personally that He loves us.

https://www.lds.org/ensign/2014/01/young-adults/i-feel-gods-love-when?lang=eng