A Woman at Church

As a ward council we extended at least 21 invitations to attend the Self-Reliance devotional. Five people from our ward came, including me. We had enough from 3 units to have one Personal Finances group. I have given up my Sunday afternoon nap for the next 12 weeks. I saw Tom at church today. I offered him one of Trudy's brownies from the Teacher Council meeting. He declined. He and Amelia come back tomorrow. I haven't seen Amelia for three weeks, but I have met the new dog. Anna was out walking it yesterday when I drove by. I felt sad in sacrament meeting when I saw Anna's friends home from college sitting with their families. I decided it was Freudenschade, a feeling that I am happy for the joy of my friends to be with their children and sorrow that my own are not with me at church. If it's a real word in German, it may well mean something else entirely, but it felt like the inverse of Schadenfreude.

For the first time this year I forgot for a full week to post here. I wrote something elsewhere that I am copying here because I decided it counts: My cousin’s son turned 20 earlier this month. Sometime in the past 24 hours, he died. It’s a helpless feeling, imagining his parents’ feelings and knowing there is nothing that you can do to remove their suffering. Dad called Cristen tonight to tell her, since he knew she is close with our cousin. They used to love to tell people they are 20 days apart. We topped 30,000 steps today, totaling 13.67 miles. It was supposed to be a rest day in Cristen’s workout plan. Ah well. We walked to church in Cambridge, then walked to Harvard, then to the Longfellow House and Mt. Auburn Cemetery. We’re glad for all of it, but we failed to plan well for food availability. We had a snack just before the 4:00 tour at Longfellow House and then ate lunch at 7:00 p.m., sandwiches purchased from Tatte minutes before they closed. My croissant was heavenly. ...

Today we had an abbreviated sacrament meeting. The third speaker didn't make it to the meeting. The counselor in the bishopric who was conducting decided to share his testimony and then dismiss the meeting ten minutes early, moving up the entire schedule so church ended at 10:50 instead of 11. Not bad. I helped in Primary again, so I didn't make it to Relief Society. I did manage to get to church in time to copy the Self-Reliance Devotional fliers and give them to Camille and Brandon, the RS and EQ presidents. I gave out a couple to my own list of invitees, so I think I am clear for my vacation. The devotional is in two weeks, so I will be back for that. Then the fall busyness begins.

The counselor in the bishopric who conducted the meeting today spoke for several minutes about sabbath observance and then concluded, unironically, by encouraging brief testimonies. It was good. It seemed like we had a higher than average number of participants, including me. My testimony was essentially that I choose to believe that the good things in my life come from a loving God and are powered by the Atonement of Jesus Christ. I also choose not to believe that the challenges in my life mean God does not love me or that the Atonement of Jesus Christ isn't real. I feel grateful for the people around me who inspire me by their goodness to become more like Christ. I have strong confidence in the power of the love of Christ. I was thinking today about "a clean house and happy kids." It sounds great, right? All my life whenever we asked my mom what she wanted for her birthday or Mother's Day or Christmas, she would say, "a clean house and happy kids." With ...