Nothing earth shattering today, but a big help is the fact that our car passed safety inspection with no problem.
The car is 22 years old, has 244,000 miles, and does not come with a car payment. We’ve never had it not pass safety inspection in all the time we have owned it! Two of our boys have crashed the doors, but those were inexpensive fixes and no one got hurt. We love our old clunker, and it looks like we’ve got another year with it!
English: Jacob Hamblin home in Santa Clara, Utah.
Photograph of Jacob Hamblin (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Yesterday we visited the restored home of pioneer/explorer/Indian negotiator Jacob Hamblin. We learned some of his history, and he had several miracles that happened in his life. One story made me think a little, so here is the editorialized version.
When Jacob was a teen, he and his father went “out West,” to what would become Wisconsin, to clear some land and claim a homestead. After the land was cleared, his father went back to gather the rest of the family while Jacob stayed with the land. First off, today’s teens probably don’t have the work ethic to clear the land in the first place, but secondly, the parents would be declared unfit parents if they left the teen for months unattended without a proper home, running water, food, school, or adult supervision. To make things worse, Jacob did have an accident while he was alone. He almost chopped his leg off with an axe. He had no 911, no emergency rooms, no health insurance, no other person in the area. He was able to stop the bleeding, but as it started to heal it developed a severe infection. He became worried enough that he was able to ride to the next closest neighbor and ask for advice. The neighbors warned him that the infection was bad, and that to prevent it spreading and to save his life, he would need to have the leg amputated at the knee.
Now here is a teenaged boy, all alone, needing to make a decision about amputating his leg to save his life. He had no cell phone to call his parents, no medical plan, no disability insurance, no hospital. I see some definite advantages to modern society. On the flip side, how would modern society deal with that situation? Today we would throw the parents in jail for gross negligence and put the boy in foster care on disability and welfare for the remainder of his life. Back then they didn’t pay high enough taxes or have large enough government to pay for the court fees, lawyers, foster care system, or prison space, so they did nothing.
Instead Jacob turned to his only real source of aid. He prayed. He prayed fervently that he would know what to do. He felt a great peace, but still was not sure what to do. An hour later a woman wandered up to where he was staying. She told him that she was not sure why she was there, but she felt that he may need some help. Jacob showed her his leg and the woman immediately went out and found some plants and herbs to draw out the infection. The leg went on to heal completely and Jacob became one of the greatest trailblazers and explorers of Utah and Arizona. Additionally Jacob learned about prayer, and grew in faith in God.
I think God is plenty capable of helping us even in our modern society of conveniences, but it does make me wonder how many times we rob ourselves of the opportunities to learn to really rely on God. How much harder must it be to learn to trust in Him when we have practically instant access to every convenience and a large government with seemingly bottomless pockets to bail us out, and to mitigate disasters. How many of our youth don’t know to turn to prayer for answers, simply because they have never needed to? How many of us fit in that category? I think we are all still given the opportunities to call on our Father in prayer for help, but I think those opportunities are harder and harder to recognize. I think they are being more and more often rationalized away, and more often dismissed as proof that there is no God, rather than as the opportunity for a miracle.
One of the things I have always wondered about, is how do you know if something is chance, luck, or answer to prayer.
Pres. Thomas S. Monson answered this so very clearly in Conference this last Sunday. A few quotes from his talk included “was it chance that our paths crossed . . . I do not for one moment believe so . . .I believe it was an answer to . . . prayer” and “The Lord is in the details of our lives.” “Like many other things in our lives, it seemed to be something that just worked out.” “Luck, I don’t think so.” If you have an extra 20 minutes, the entire talk can be watched below. To listen to just the final story you can start at about 15 minutes in.
http://www.lds.org/general-conference/watch/2012/10?lang=eng&vid=1884883632001&cid=11
Re-posting an old joke. So appropriate to how miracles happen in my life.
Seems a college professor one day got up in front of the class and announced that God did not exist and that he would prove it. He then proceeded to look up and loudly proclaim “God, if you’re real, strike me down, or else everyone here will know you’re not real.”
The class went silent as all watched him. Nothing happened.
Again, he made his declaration, and again nothing happened.
He did this four times with no response from the heavens, and the class remained silent as they all watched him.
Just then, one of the students, a Marine, got up, walked up to where the professor stood, and with one swift punch, knocked him out. He then returned to his seat. A couple of minutes went by and the professor came back to his senses with a groan. He sat up, looked around, and then asked the Marine “Why did you punch me?”
The Marine answered “God was busy, so He sent me instead.”
Ever wondered about those lists that have people’s names who are owed money? Someone actually did due diligence to track our family down to tell us that we had a credit with them! I am more impressed at their integrity, because it was for an overpayment of co-pays – and it can’t be more than $3-$5! We actually left the area before our son was a year old, and now 12 years later someone tracked us down and let us know about the credit.
My husband and I have been reading a book called “It Worked For Me” by Colin Powell. In his first chapter he shared some pieces of advice that he has lived by. One of the pieces of advice was: Don’t take counsel of your fears or naysayers. Thought today I’d share an example of how I would have been better off to have heeded that advice.
Last Saturday my 6 & 10 year old daughters, my husband, and I spent a day upgrading our chicken coop. We have lost a number of young chicks to the local hawk population and we were adding a better run area with a roof and more protection. When we finished we were hot and tired, but very pleased with the results. As we stepped back and observed our work, I realized that the coop now looked almost EXACTLY like I had originally planned the coop out.
I built the original coop a little over a year and a half ago. I had done a bunch of research, checked out what was already in the garage, and come up with a workable plan. My husband was very ill, so I built it with my 15 year old son. At 15 years old he already was better at “construction” and using power tools than I was, so I relied heavily on his suggestions. We ended up with a good, solid coop, but an inadequate run area. We had disagreements over the run area that resulted in his pulling out everything I had done, and leaving a halfhearted effort where there should have been a run. The door only sort of worked, but rather than finding a fix, he changed everything, and it has not worked at all since.
I shouldn’t have listened to my naysayer, even if he was family, and the “expert.” I was the one who had done all the research, and come up with the plans. I find it amazing that after all this time we came back around to where we should have started off. A quote from the book seems all too appropriate.
“Each of us must work to become a hardheaded realist, or else we risk wasting our time and energy pursuing impossible dreams. Yet constant naysayers pursue no less impossible dreams. Their fear and cynicism move nothing forward. They kill progress. How many cynics built empires, great cities, or powerful corporations?”
I have been prompted to wonder how often the Lord has great and miraculous things in store for us, but we instead are too cynical or fearful to pursue them. How often do we lose years of our life, only to come back to where we started? A few chickens short. I think Powell hit the nail on the head. It is our fear and our cynicism that are most likely to stop us. It is not God, and not an inability to work miracles.
Today’s miracle is that my children are not limited to my gifts and talents, but they are born with gifts I never had, and probably never will. They seem to have all of my talents, plus all of their father’s as well. Maybe I’m slightly prejudiced, but they all are so awesome. Even had trouble doing my 5th grader’s spelling homework. I could spell the words, but the “creative” homework took too much brainpower. (I need to do more 2 page word searches w/o lists of what I’m looking for!) Thought I’d post some of Katie’s art today. For it to make sense you need to understand that even my stick people are kind of pathetic looking.
We have had a lot of extra rain this month, and with that somewhat lower temperatures. A fun side effect is that my lilac bush bloomed again yesterday! No big deal for most places, but we are so hot and dry here that it usually can only bloom for 1 week in the spring. I have NEVER seen it bloom in the fall. I love lilacs. My 6 year old thinks that the really amazing part is that it bloomed in our yard. (I have 2 black thumbs.) Anyhow, I’m enjoying it.
I’ve spent the entire week dealing with a six-year-old’s temper tantrums on the way in to school. Yelling, crying, clinging, sobbing, hiding, etc. Not wanting to go to school. Teacher interventions, counselor interventions, nothing worked. She actually loves school and we couldn’t figure out what was up.
Last night Dad came home from an out of town work trip. He took her to school. All better. Tantrums are over. I think she missed Dad (and Shanna and Andrew) and it was just a little too much. One thing I could never be is a single mom.
SEEing Miracles 