Monthly Archives: November 2011

Find-A-Friend Friday: The Finale

Posted in Find-A-Friend Friday by

It has been so fun to get to know the wonderful women that are floating around out there in the blogosphere.  Can you believe that we’ve met over forty amazing women? I have been impressed, uplifted, and inspired as I’ve read about your families, your testimonies, and your trials.  I can sincerely say that many times, getting to know you has helped restore my faith in humanity because you are evidence that God’s work and priorities are still rolling forth even when we see headlines every day of the moral decline of our society.  That reassurance has strengthened me.  Thank you.

This will be the last week of the Find-A-Friend Friday feature here on Diapers and Divinity because even though it has been such a satisfying run, I’m just a little burnt out.  I think there may be a handful of people left who had indicated interest in participating, and I hope you can forgive me if you still had not been picked by random.org.  I’ve found myself having so much less time at home than I enjoyed during the summer months or in the years before my children started going to three different schools and I became their bus.  I’m just struggling to get everything done, so I need to let some things go.  I’ll still be around, but with the exception of General Conference Book Club, I’ll just be a lot less structured.

So, I have one last friend I want to talk about before FFF officially signs off.  In fact, he’s part of the reason I need to make more time for myself.  His name is Jesus Christ.  He’s my brother, my Savior, and my very best friend.  No one knows me better than he does, which makes it all the more miraculous how much he loves me.  You probably know him too, and that’s one of the coolest things about him– his ability to love each of us with infinite intimacy.  One of my favorite classic talks that I’ve returned to often is the first conference talk given by Elder James E. Faust when he was called into the Quorum of the Seventy.  It is called “A Personal Relationship with the Savior.”

“We should earnestly seek not just to know about the Master, but to strive, as He invited, to be one with Him (see John 17:21), to “be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man” (Eph. 3:16). We may not feel a closeness with Him because we think of Him as being far away, or our relationship may not be sanctifying because we do not think of Him as a real person.”

He then goes on to speak of five simple things that we can do to grow closer to the Savior:

First: A daily communion involving prayer.

Second: A daily selfless service to another.

Third: A daily striving for an increased obedience and perfection in our lives.

Fourth: A daily acknowledgment of His divinity.

Fifth: A daily study of the scriptures.

The common thread in each ingredient is the word “daily.” I’m ashamed to admit that in all my busy-ness, I’ve let some of these things slide, and I can feel it start to wear on me.  I need to regain the strength that comes from putting Him first, my truest friend.  President Faust declared it so beautifully:

“It is my testimony that we are facing difficult times. We must be courageously obedient. My witness is that we will be called upon to prove our spiritual stamina, for the days ahead will be filled with affliction and difficulty. But with the assuring comfort of a personal relationship with the Savior, we will be given a calming courage. . . .  I know and I testify with an absolute awareness in every fiber and innermost recess of my being that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the Divine Redeemer, and the Son of God. May we be obedient to His wish, ‘Come unto me thy Savior’ (D&C 19:41), I pray humbly in His holy and sacred name. Amen.”

I feel confident that if I can put these steps more fully into practice, I’ll never have wait for Fridays to find a friend.  This finale post is an invitation to join me in getting to know the most perfect Friend a little better every day of the week.  We all need Him.

101 reasons why I should have lost at least 10 pounds by now.

Posted in Diapers by

You may get to the end of this post and wonder if I was being a tad bit sarcastic and bitter.  Let me help you take the guesswork out of that:  Yes.  Today’s post ranks very, very low on the “Divinity” scale.

I am not now nor have I ever been obsessed with weight.  I’ve always been an advocate of Elder Holland’s advice to “please be more accepting of yourselves, including your body shape and style, with a little less longing to look like someone else.”  I am not the least bit motivated by Hollywood harlots starlets because they are not even real people.  (At least the almost always fabricated versions of them that are shoved in our faces.)

However.

Since I moved to Utah, for reasons I cannot for the life of me figure out, I all of the sudden gained 20 pounds. (Yes, I’ve had my thyroid checked and there have been no other changes in my normal health or any medications or anything like that.  I’m practically a psychic in anticipating your questions.)  I swear it’s Utah’s fault, but since I can’t really beat up Utah, I’ve got to figure out what to do about it.  It has nothing to do with wanting to compete with all the people around me who live for yoga, decorate their cars with 26.2 and Ragnar stickers, and shop for their jeans in the single-digit-number section.  I mean, despite the fact that they are probably part-alien and I kind of want to hate them, I’ve been surprised that many of them are actually really nice people.  Dangit.  So it’s not about that.  It’s just about wanting to be the normal kind of me and not a foreign-body version of myself.  Oh, and because I really want the clothes I already own to FIT me.  Is that really too much to ask??  Really?  Well, apparently it is.  I will now proceed to list the 101 reasons I should have lost at least 10 pounds by now.

  1. I have exercised at least 30 minutes a day for five days a week since school started NINE weeks ago.  I have never had that kind of discipline since my college days.
  2. I even started jogging a little bit a couple weeks ago.  As I stated in my Facebook status:  Cue the apocalypse.
  3. I created an account at myfitnesspal.com and I have tracked pretty regularly my calorie intake and exercise to try to keep it toward a healthy daily total of net calories.
  4. I switched to skim milk. That alone deserves at least a pound or two.
  5. When I’ve met up with friends for lunch or dinner, I try to order smaller and smarter.
  6. I’ve tried to make better choices for cooking dinner.
  7. Once a week, I do one-on-one dates with each of my kids and it’s usually to a cute little bakery or something.  For a while now, I’ve only ordered something for them, and I’ve just had a bite, or ordered nothing for myself, or like TODAY, my son got a sugar cookie and I ordered a half Spinach salad.
  8. During the entire week of Halloween, I only ate 6 of those little mini candies.  Okay, and one caramel apple (maybe two).  But let me tell you, that took some major restraint when sugar stuff is EVERYwhere.
  9. I started ordering green smoothies when I crave buying something sweet.  Did you get that?  Green-freakin’-smoothies.
  10. The Great Pumpkin came to our house on Halloween night.  Our kids picked out their 10 favorite pieces of candy, put the rest in a bucket in the back yard, and during the night the Great Pumpkin came and swept it away, leaving a small toy in its place.  ALL the candy gone from our house.  To clarify, the Great Pumpkin did not eat ANY of it.
  11. I have exercised rigorously enough in the last 9 weeks that at least a few days a week, I have sore muscles.
  12. Yesterday I went to an exercise class called “Boot Camp.”  I cannot, I repeat–cannot, do push ups, yet this woman made us do like 2,000 of them. And leg lifts that made my abs catch fire.  I can handle all the jumping jacks and fast running in place and such, but any exercises that actually require any muscle strength are a joke.  Last night I could not roll over in bed without pain.
  13. When I crave snacks during the day, I’m trying to eat stuff like a handful of nuts, some carrot sticks, Greek yogurt (I think it’s nasty), or whole-wheat toast.
  14. I almost never drink soda, diet or otherwise.  Maybe once a month I’ll have a root beer.  I always drink water and occasionally milk.  I should drink more water than I do, but I’m trying to do better.  (Actually, in the spirit of full disclosure, in the last week when it turned cold, I did have a couple hot chocolates.)
  15. Except for that one time at The Melting Pot like 10 years ago, when they dumped half a glass of white wine in my cheese fondue, I’ve never even tasted alcohol in my life.
  16. That’s not really 101 reasons, but whatever.

Anyway, I’m pleased really, really ticked off to announce that after almost 3 months of this kind of regimen, I have actually gained almost 4 pounds.  Don’t try to be all “Oh, that’s totally because you’ve gained muscle,” because if that’s true then why are all my clothes just as tight as they were when I started?  So basically this post is just me saying that I’m mad at the universe and I’ve been robbed.

I know you’re dying to give me advice like go Vegan, eliminate carbs, train for a marathon, drink protein shakes, put all your food in a blender with ingredients you can’t buy at normal stores or whatever.  Just to keep it real, though, I probably will not listen to you unless you are actually a nutritionist, personal trainer, or certified seer. Because, trust me, the kind of effort I’ve put in should have brought about some kind of difference.  So I’m pretty skeptical right now.

I’m not going to quit, mostly because I’m stubborn.  I just needed to vent. I just got off the phone with my sister, and I told her I’ll probably feel humiliated after I push the “Publish” button.  So be it.  This is the part where you say stuff that’s either encouraging or empathetic.  Otherwise, I remind you that I am a grumpy woman who is denying herself chocolate at the moment, and I hold the power to the delete button.

I am acutely aware that on the blessings vs. trials continuum, I am still riding very high.  My life is abundant, and I don’t face the thousands of horrible thing that many others are suffering.  I’m still giving myself permission to be bugged, though.

Ahem.  Have a nice day.