Pro-gress

Progress just sounds so much more awesome when you pronounce it pro-gress. Prawgress just sounds so… uncivilized.
Everyone, raise your tea cups and little finger to pro-gress!

When my alarm went off this morning, I GOT UP. I’ve had my alarm set for the same time every day for the last since-I-can-remember. But for the last few months, I’ve been waking up only long enough to shut it off (snooze button, you say? For weenies, I say). Opening my eyes was seriously difficult, and if I couldn’t open my eyes I wasn’t about to try getting up and walking around.
I’d get out of bed at 8 sometimes. 8:30 sometimes…

The past few days have been ridiculously hard on me. Why is it so hard to control my appetite for sugar? I mean, Little Debbie looks so wholesome on the box! But her food! It’s the most delicious poison on Mother Earth!
Killing me softly with it’s song!

I can say that about her, you know, because we’re such close friends. If we weren’t, she might get offended. But we’re tight. No matter now much sugar I chop out of my diet, there will always be room for her -even if it’s only once a week.

Vixen!

Monday was hard. Tuesday was a little better. Wednesday my alarm went off, and I popped out of bed. I went for a 20 minute walk! I visited with a neighbor, gave her some veggies from our garden and came home with four freshly picked JUICY peaches (you should see my pregnant belly, all covered in peach juice) and a bag of garden-grown red potatoes.
My kitchen runneth over.

On Sunday, I taught sharing time. We talked about Moses delivering the slaves out of Egypt. One 11 year old boy asked (snarkily) from the back of the room, “Why is Egypt all cool when we’re in school and then we get to church and it’s all evil.”
I looked him directly in the eye and seriously said in my best churchy voice, “Pray about it.”
And then I laughed and said, “Because in school you learn about the kings! In church we learn about the slaves! Would Egypt be cool if you were a king? Heck yes! What about if you were a slave? Yeah, not so much…”

We talked about how if the freed slaves (Israelites) did what the Lord asked them to do, he would always take care of them. He sent them manna, telling them to gather only what they needed for one day. If they gathered more, the manna would become worm-infested. Yum.

via susanbailey.org

But the manna that came before the Sabbath was different -it was still manna, but it would not become infested with worms. They could gather enough for two days so as to rest sufficiently (sans wormy manna) on the Sabbath.
They obeyed and followed Him -He took care of them. That promise is still rampantly in place today!

I prayed for help to eat better, and like manna from heaven so has healthy food been plopped on my door step -no foolin’. I’m out of food budget money, but I am not hungry. I have cantaloupe from the neighbor’s garden in my fridge (it is to DIE for -seriously, it could start it’s own religion and have a roaring following). I have peach juice on my shirt. I have potatoes.
The Lord wants us to take care of our bodies, and I’ve had to make silly, stupid sacrifices to follow and obey His instructions. So I didn’t eat a lick of cookie dough while I baked cookies for Show and Tell. So I only ate one cookie. So I didn’t take the frosting can from the cupboard, douse my finger and then lick it all off in one cavity inducing motion.
Dumb stuff. Kid’s stuff.
But guess who noticed? Heavenly Father noticed! He saw my little sacrifices, understood how BIG they actually are to me, and He’s blessed me with all kinds of health-related blessings.

Yesterday I went to my Father in Heaven with a problem, apologizing before I could even get out what the problem was because the problem was so small -so dumb -and sososo STUPID. I poured my heart out. I opened my scriptures, and throughout the rest of the day ending ONLY minutes before I closed my eyes to sleep, I was flooded with answers.
Specific answers.
Answers SO SPECIFIC to what I was dealing with that I was again completely humbled and floored… like, “Even I know in my head how ridiculous this whole ‘problem’ is… but Heavenly Father really doesn’t? There’s a hurricane blasting a multitude of his children in the South. There’s an AIDS epidemic. There’s children out there being starved and beaten. There’s wars. There’s corruption. And you mean to tell me that Heavenly Father can STILL manage to put answers into my lap about things that I WOULDN’T BOTHER MUCH WITH IF IT WERE MY CHILD AND MY OTHER CHILDREN WERE OUT STARVING AND DYING!?”

God is in the details.

I don’t pretend to be perfect. I will never be perfect on this earth. I don’t bother trying to put off that I AM perfect, that I have a perfect marriage or perfect children or a perfect home… I believe strongly that perfectionism is the shallowest plague that’s ever touched American soil.
More importantly: God doesn’t want me to wait to perfect myself before I come to Him. BECAUSE I CAN’T PERFECT MYSELF. Only He can perfect me and save me.

So instead of not bothering him with my stupid issue (because bothering him would mean I wasn’t perfect and couldn’t handle it on my own -for shame!), I bothered Him. And He wasn’t bothered a bit. He showed me two specific articles, a few specific scriptures passages, and even wrapped my day up with a phone call from a friend that began with her simply saying, “I know it’s late and I’m sorry… but are you okay?”
Not to mention the handful of texts I received at random from friends that read something like, “I like you.”

I’m humbled. I’m completely humbled. What a great lesson I’ve been taught.
My little problems really ARE little now.
As little as the brand new baby calf that greeted me on my morning walk.

Thanks to my walk, today has been thought out.
My great-great grandfather, Joseph Christian Hansen, used to sit each morning on what he called a “calculating couch.” His coined phrase was, “A day well thought out is a day half done.”

Well, I don’t have a calculating couch. I have a functional futon. That’s worth something, right? Instead, I calculated while I walked (women always were the multi-taskers), and my day is officially half done.
Here’s to a day of laundry, deep cleaning what I missed on Monday, and chopping up jalapenoes for my yearly stash of candied jalapenoes.
I’m so grateful today. My kitchen AND my heart runneth over.
Let me leave you with just one more Hansen coined phrase:

Say Hi to Grandpa on the left, and then enjoy your Wednesday.
And don’t forget to bother Heavenly Father with your stupid problems. You might just be overwhelmed with how stupid they really aren’t.