Can You Hear It?

Be still, and know that I am God.

 Psalm 46:10 

     As some of you know, this is a subject I feel  very passionately about. I think that in today's world people have a hard time being still, and quiet, so they can really listen. Listen to others, listen to themselves, and most importantly to listen to God. 

    Elijah in the Old Testament tells us: 

...and behold the word of the Lord came to him.... And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the Lord. 

And, behold the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind: 

and after the wind and earthquake,; but the Lord was not in the earthquake: 

And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice. 

1 Kings 19: 9, 11-12

     So we learn from Elijah, that there's a lot of noise out in the world, but the Lord isn't in any of them. The Lord is a still small voice. Dare I say that when you take time to listen to all the voices around you, not only is it hard to hear the voice of the Lord, it's often really difficult to hear your own voice too. 

  Nephi, in the Book of Mormon,  tells us that even if we have great spiritual experiences in the past, if we allow ourselves to, we can drown out the voice of the Lord in our lives: 

...Ye have seen an angels, and he spake unto you; yea,ye have heard his voice from time to time; and he hath spoken to you in a still small voice, but ye were past feeling,that ye could not feel his words. 

1 Nephi 17: 45

   So what can we do to make sure we aren't getting to the point where we are past feeling? How do we ensure that we are able to hear that still small voice in our lives? 

     

      You need to be quiet. You need to tell everything and everyone else in your life to be quiet, just for awhile so you can listen. This means turning off the computer, tv, cell phone, mp3 player, and (IMO) anything considered 'technology' these days. Find a quiet spot in your home, or near work, or wherever you can go (sometimes I take a walk without the iPod and the phone on airplane mode). Start small, 5 minutes a day or an hour on the weekends. And quiet everything that may distract you and meditate, or read the scriptures, or write in your journal. 

      You will never hear the Lord's voice if you do not give Him opportunity to be heard. Sometimes it may take awhile for you to start hearing the voice of the Lord. Especially if you are used to loud commercials, loud blaring music, the chime of a text message, etc.  For some of you who already take time to have daily prayer and scripture study, this will be an easy transition, just add a few minutes to that time to be still and listen. 

      Which brings me to my final point, and one I'm bit cautious about sharing. Every Sunday you are given the opportunity to unplug, be still, and listen to the voice of the Lord. It's called church. The Lord blesses you with all of the abundance you have, the least you can do is give Him the time it takes to attend your church meetings.

        Leave the phone in the car, turn off the wifi on you iPad or Kindle. Better yet bring actual hard copies of the scriptures with you to eliminate the 'I need to have it with me because my scriptures are on it' excuse. Yes, excuse. I know people who say that and then spend all of sacrament meeting checking email, Facebook, and making dinner plans via text. 

     Those things can wait. The Lord cannot. 

     

P.S. I found these guys on Facebook, if you are the type that taking a public pledge is a goal keeping strategy that works for you: Tech Timeout

Busy Busy Busy

I have a lot of blog post ideas kicking around in my head lately, but am a bit overwhelmed with school right now. I thought I'd drop you all a line and let you know that there will be some (hopefully) good stuff showing up here soon.

This weekend, I think I might be doing a Pinterest activity, I'll take pictures and make a post out of it for you all. ;)

Fall Planting, A New Experience

I'm a Utah girl. And, as a Utah girl, this time of year is when you break out the sweaters, scarves, and hats because the first snow is a few weeks away.

But, I don't live in Utah anymore.

So, this time of year you are thinking about maybe getting the sweaters out. Maybe. But the biggest adjustment for me is that here you are doing your Fall Planting for your winter crops.

What?! Winter crops?! (at least that's what the snow bound Utah girl says in my head)

Yep. I've spent the past few days getting the garden at the preschool pulled up. No more tomatoes, tomatillos, peppers, cucumbers, etc. And today we started our fall planting. We planted lettuce today.

Over the weekend, I very creatively and carefully got some new soil for my container garden. (I'm still experimenting on getting the right type of soil for my container garden, the Spring choice was bad. My peas died... and I only got 2 tomatoes and 2 peppers.) I transplanted some broccoli and spinach, and planted some spinach seeds in the optimistic hope that I'll be able to have a staggered harvest of spinach since I love it so much (but only raw... whoever cooks spinach is really doing themselves a disservice).

I'm going to plant some lettuce too... If I'm lucky and can get a couple more containers on sale. I'd love to get a deep one for carrots. We've planted carrots in containers at the preschool and they did great!

So, here's to a new experience for this Utah girl! I'll keep you updated on how the container garden goes ;) Maybe you can learn some from my trial and error with it!

A Little Better Day by Day

Do not expect to become perfect all at once. If you do, you will be disappointed. Be better today than you were yesterday, and be better tomorrow than you are today. 

We cannot become perfect at once, but we can be a little better day by day. 

-Lorenzo Snow

I've been having one of those months, you know what they are like. And I found this among my piles of papers that I'm trying to get through during this process of moving and organizing. It was something that I really needed at this time in my life. We can't change yesterday, but we can change today. We can do one little thing better, and slowly we will move toward that person that we want to be, and the person that God wants us to be. 

Following Mom's Advice Can Land You in the ER

With a lot of changes happening here in my life, I've been trying to focus on some aspects of my life that I would like to be better at, and really making an effort to progress in them. Writing here on the blog is one of them. However I often run into Writers Block when it comes to the blog so when I had a moment in the past week where I thought to myself "This is one of those moments that the Yarn Harlot would write about".

My life has been pretty hectic, with grad school, two jobs, a new husband, and all the daily dilemmas, I sometimes feel a bit overwhelmed. Unfortunately, when the stress piles up my body has recently decided to react very badly. As I sought relief my mum gave me advice she has always given me, "Exercise."

Only this time mum was a little more specific in her advice, "Sweat. Really sweat. Like dripping off you, people slipping on it cause it's puddled up on the floor." Gross. I hate sweat. I hate sweating. I know I should exercise and would do it more if it didn't involve sweating.  Well, I was getting desperate for some relief from feeling so sick, really really desperate.

My husband cycles. I have a bike, and I'd been meaning to start cycling but had not had enough motivation to do so. As I came to the conclusion to follow my mum's advice and sweat, really sweat, I though I might start cycling. I set a date and set a goal for how far I would bike, according to the 'start cycling' article I read online.

I got up early-ish. Did some yoga and then set out for the Greenway with my bike. It's a great bike, a vintage Panasonic in pink.

It rattles, but it does ride pretty nicely, and I love it anyway. I started out with my little program running on my phone to track my ride. I had read that a beginner ride would be 5-8 miles long, so I decided to do at least 5 miles. I've run this particular Greenway several times, once in a race, so I had a good idea of where I needed to go to reach my 5 mile goal, and was confident I could do it on my bike.

Well, a little over halfway through this first training ride ever, I had what we called a duster on the ranch. This duster was quite the duster. I crashed.

I remember as it was happening thinking to myself, "You've gone over 3 miles, you can't give up now. Just jump back on the bike, like you would a horse, and finish the ride." I jumped up, took note of the scrape on my leg and palm of my hand. After that, I noted that my wrist might be broken. After rolling it around, and moving all of my fingers, I decided that although a little scraped up, I was fine and could finish my ride.

Another rider, I'm not sure if he actually saw me crash, or just heard it (I'd like to think he didn't actually see it) asked if I was okay, to which I replied I was fine and jumped on my bike. It took me a minute to realize the chain was off, but that was an easy fix. As I continued on my ride, I noticed a stinging on my shoulder and pulled my shirt up to find a huge, bleeding scrape on my shoulder. Ok, no problem. Just some scrapes and a really pretty bruise on my thigh.

It wasn't until a few hours later when I started to realize that my arm hurt. REALLY hurt. I couldn't straighten it, or fully bend it. After much debate and consulting with some friends and family, I decided to visit the ER after doing dishes brought me to tears. (From pain, not because it was dishes.)

Me: I think my arm is broken. 

ER Nurse: Were you wearing a helmet?

Me: I think I broke my arm. 

ER Doctor: Were you wearing a helmet?

While I appreciate that people are advocating for wearing helmets (Which I do wear ALWAYS), I had a hard time understanding the connection between my arm hurting and whether I was wearing a helmet or not.

All said, the ER decided that there was too much swelling and fluid in my elbow to determine if it was broken. They gave me an ace bandage, a painkiller prescription , and instructions to ice and rest it. The nurse told me, "If it hurts to do it, don't do it." I went on my merry way, and after some minor difficulty was able to schedule a follow up appointment with the sports med folks at the student health center.

After getting follow up x-rays, the doctor walked into the room and announced, "Your arm is broken, it's really cool."

She then showed me my x-ray. Basically, the bone got dented. Technically broken, but not broken enough to need surgery or even a cast. So I'm 0 for 3, 3 broken bones and still no casts.

The bone at the top? It's supposed to be straight across, not have that dip/dent in it... 

PS: One kindergartener was disappointed that I didn't get to have my hot pink cast.

This summer was a summer of marriages for my family. I had two cousins get married, I got married, and my little brother got married.

When I called my mum and sister to ask if my idea for a wedding gift for my brother and sister was a good idea, they both said the same thing.

"Yeah, she's like you she's always cold. It would be perfect."

So, I went and stash dove into my fabrics. I asked Sarah what her favorite colors were. Thinking I might luck out since I had a red and white quilt partially done, and I could just finish that one off for them. Sarah told me her least favorite color was red... dangit.

Thankfully I had some blues, grays, and purples on hand. (Blues and grays are my go to colors, I love them.) Armed with my quilting book, I chose a quilt I liked and embarked on my first quilting for someone else without their input adventure.

I lucked out and found a local quilter who said she
could get it quilted in time for the wedding for me. She even made a label for me to put on it.  Unfortunately, I had to pick it up during my honeymoon. I called my friend who was kind enough to go pick it up for me. I then worked like a crazy lady to get the binding done.

I could hardly wait to give it to them. At this point my brother knew what the gift was, he just hadn't seen it, and it made me nervous because he was acting excited about it but you never really know...


So, here they are with their new quilt. It's only throw size because I didn't have the fabric (or time) to do a bigger one. They seem to like it ;)

Maybe I can keep up this stash dive quilt for a special person/purpose/occasion up.

At the very least I can keep up the stash diving part. That stash is getting out of control...

(I usually try to give credit on where I get these from, but pinterest linked this to some weird iTunes app... if you know where this originally came from let me know so I can give them credit!)