A Woman at Church

Today I took a Lyft to church in Georgia. I attended my brother-in-law's ward with him and his wife. They had fast and testimony meeting because they will have stake conference next week and Mother's Day is the week after that. It was a nice meeting. Kelly played the organ. When she finished postlude we went to Relief Society. The topic was Elder Callister's talk on "The Atonement of Jesus Christ."  I was glad that I had read it recently. The meeting was interesting in that there was a video screen set up. I wondered if we were going to watch a lot of the talk. We didn't, but the teacher had prepared slides that she used as an outline, mostly of quotes from the lesson. It was a useful organizing tool for her. There were quite a few comments, more than I had expected when I realized the teacher's outline was so formal. It was good commentary, but didn't rise to the level of a discussion. It was still very much the teacher's lesson. Yet I was glad ...

I had a joyful time singing songs about Jesus with the Primary children today. They are smart, insightful kids. We had a nice discussion about the tense and preposition shift in the last line of "Gethsemane" in senior Primary. I appreciated the chance to share my prints from the Carl Bloch exhibit at BYU. I also brought the watercolor of The Garden Tomb that I bought in Jerusalem. I stared at that painting all through the months of Amelia's failure to thrive as I tried to get her to feed adequately. Sacrament meeting included a great talk from someone I really like. At one point, he was talking about specific difficult parts of mortality that had been experienced by people in the room, including divorce. What he said was fine, but it made me think again about how often we talk about divorce in a misleading way. We talk about the tragedy of it, as if the tragedy were generated by the fact of the divorce. Make no mistake, the divorce process stinks. It's arduous and...

I gave the opening prayer in sacrament meeting today. I am frustrated that I got choked up and lost vocal control in the middle of a not-very-long prayer. Oh well. I have a cold and am low on resilience. People probably thought it was because of concern for my children. I was asking that anyone who had come in a spirit of fasting with a particular purpose would be comforted and directed what to do. Besides the low resilience, I was thinking about my cousin. She is in the process of divorcing and asked the extended family to fast for her family today as they prepare for a hearing on Tuesday. They had reached an agreement in mediation last August, but her husband has since decided that it is unacceptable, so the process drags on. I hope they can resolve it satisfactorily as soon as possible. It's a tough cloud to be under. Primary was fun today. I ran through "He Sent His Son" with the kids as I will be subbing for the Primary music director next week. The Primary will si...

Thank God for Sharon Eubank! I love her authenticity and total lack of pretense. I am confused about why we are still hearing that their children's activity in the church is somehow a measure of a person's worth--specifically, a mother's worth. I don't need to hear the phrase "tragic divorce" ever again, least of all at church. My divorce was not tragic. It was a stressful and difficult process that dragged on too long, but it was not tragic. My marriage was tragic. Someone should say that in General Conference. Thank God for divorce! It's awesome. Elder Holland, also awesome. I want to become more sensitive to people of diverging points of view. I don't want my future grandchildren ever to complain, "I have to make so much room for my extended family, but they won't make room for me." I am grateful for the many people in my life who make room for me. It's especially poignant for someone whose former spouse could not begin t...