Embrace It...Protect It...Be It

Mikayla got home Sunday from a week away from home at BYU-I.  It was a long, hard week for us--a fantastical adventure for her. She played like crazy, went on a "the best [blind] date ever", went to classes (without having to study for them) and just soaked up the environment. I think she is a little melancholy to be back. We'll have to work at keeping life interesting here for her until January. I'm afraid she's ready to fly. Don't get me wrong--I'm glad she's ready to fly--I'm so excited for her-- but it is the hardest part of motherhood! Now comes Eden's turn to "rise to the occasion" as Mikayla did when Jordan left. It's so fun to see how the oldest child at home will "fill in the gaps". I love my kids!

I took Manuzy, our chinchilla, into the the Vet at the beginning of the week and found out that he had nerve damage and a blood clot in his eye. He had lost the ability to blink the damaged eye, so they shaved away the hair and we were given antibiotic ointment that we had to administer 4 times a day so it would stay moist and told if we couldn't keep it moist it would have to be suchured shut until it could heal. The vet felt his leg and said nothing was broken, but it would probably take 2-3 weeks for him to be using it normally again. We went back in for a brief check on Friday and he said he was looking so much better, had regained the ability to blink and was starting to limp on his leg. He can't tell if he has any vision loss in his eye (it will just be a matter of time before we can tell that) but said everything else was healing quickly. I am so grateful for prayer. Now, NO MORE PETS--too much stress and anxiety for me!

It was fun to see so much family at Grant's baby blessing at Hyrum and Desi's. I'm afraid the Bloomquist's are turning into the reclusive relatives lately. We rarely see anyone or do anything together. It's certainly not like the "farm days" anymore, which makes me sad, especially for my kids, but this week will be good as we have two get-togethers. I doubt we'll actually be swimming at Marg's with this weather, but just being together is great!

Last night was a stake sponsored YSA Family Home Evening. We were asked to attend with our entire family. There were over 60 youth there and it was good to see them interact with each other in a united effort and good to be amongst them again!

I am sad that the temple here will be closing by Saturday for (we hear 6-9 months of) remodelling. I know we have taken it's closeness for granted and it's closing makes me feel a little bit "alone".

Eden is gearing up for girls camp this next week. I am not envying the packing or the camping, but I will miss the girl bonding and spiritual enlightenment. It will be her first time going on her own.

I am reading a joint biography of Charles Darwin and his wife right now, that is both fascinating and heart wrenching. Since college he has always been a fascination to me. We can take the gospel so for granted (well, at least I do). He was such an intelligent, curious man with inspired questions and insights who let "the arm of flesh" take him past the point of what I think were spiritual inspirations and discoveries of profound truth and then lead him into murky whirlpools that distracted him from continued guidance--and when he couldn't find the answers, went too far in trusting his own intellect and got a bit lost. He really was so close to truth on so many things and ended up making such wrong conclusions about our divine nature. And here are we, average human beings with average intellect (well at least mine), with ever so much more "important" knowledge than he ever had because the gospel has been restored in it's fullness and we have a living prophet, who receives continual revelation for our day, and we have been given the ability to have the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost, if we "stand in holy places". I have only just begun the book, but I find myself captivated by his questions and his theories because in the beginning you can see the light of Christ guiding his muddled thoughts and you know the answers he was searching for and then you can  gradually watch the light fading because it isn't grasped fully. You can feel the inner turmoil and conflict caused because of it. He saw the imperfections of distorted Christianity, at that time, for what they were, but instead of going to the source (like Joseph Smith did) for answers to his confusion, he was gradually led down the path of "least resistance". One of his quotes that I came upon at college has always haunted me. Maybe because I see it so clearly as an explanation of the loss of the Spirit--a loss that can happen to any of us, gradually and over many years, without us even realizing it, if we are not vigilant and steadfast.

"I have said that in one respect my mind has changed during the last twenty or thirty years. Up to the age of thirty, or beyond it, poetry of many kinds, such as the works of Milton, Gray, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley, gave me great pleasure, and even as a schoolboy I took intense delight in Shakespeare, especially in the historical plays. I have also said that formerly pictures gave me considerable, and music very great delight. But now for many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry: I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also almost lost my taste for pictures or music. Music generally sets me thinking too energetically on what I have been at work on, instead of giving me pleasure. I retain some taste for fine scenery, but it does not cause me the exquisite delight which it formerly did...This curious and lamentable loss of the higher aesthetic tastes is all the odder, as books on history, biographies, and travels (independently of any scientific facts which they may contain), and essays on all sorts of subjects interest me as much as ever they did. My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone, on which the higher tastes depend, I cannot conceive. A man with a mind more highly organised or better constituted than mine, would not, I suppose, have thus suffered; and if I had to live my life again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week; for perhaps the parts of my brain now atrophied would thus have been kept active through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature." (Charles Darwin)

How we need to embrace the truth--revel in it--treasure it--protect it--share it--live it--be it! Our testimonies can be so fragile.


EDEN'S PHOTOGRAPHY:

Planting the Garden...Finally

In the Aspen Grove (a miniature version=)

Embracing The Warm Weather

Even After All These Years...

...And So Many Trials...

...He Can Still Make My Heart Go Pitter Patter.

HIS Kids

Spring Showers

"Still"--A Rare Moment