Thinking All the Day

Last night I couldn't sleep. There was a lot on my mind, as always, and one of the thing was this quote that I've seen shared a lot on social media from the Come Follow Me lesson for this week: "Perhaps you know people who never seem to lose their faith, no matter what happens in their lives. They may remind you of the five wise virgins in the Savior’s parable (see  Matthew 25:1–13 ). What you may not see are their diligent efforts to strengthen their testimonies of the truth. We must all seek diligently to strengthen our testimonies because, as the foolish virgins learned, we cannot borrow conversion from anyone else." It is totally and completely true that diligent efforts to strengthen your testimony can help you not loose your faith and can strengthen your faith. I get that is what they are saying here, and I believe that is true. At the same time, this quote pulls on my heartstrings a bit because for anyone who is working their little Mormon tail off...

Those of you who I talk to often know I have had a lot of questions on the role of women in the gospel. Personally, for the most part I have never felt like men have dominated over me in the church. For the most part. I had some struggles on my mission and in some callings but it was never something that was a huge deal. However, while there are many like me who have never or rarely felt unequal in the church, there are women who have felt extremely unequal. As I have listened to their heart breaking stories I've felt a renewed determination to understand what are the doctrines from God and what are the philosophies of men when it comes to women and how they participate in the gospel and in family life. I won't go into what I've learned so far right now, but I do want to plead with those faithful and who have never had questions to please listen to your sisters. The New Testament and the Book of Mormon both make it clear that we are to mourn with those that mourn . (Rom...

I finished the Book of Mormon challenge today. Barely made it! In October our church had a big conference and our prophet who leads the church challenged all the women to read the Book of Mormon (our companion scripture to the Bible) by the end of the year. It's 531 pages. I like a good challenge so I accepted it and finished up today. (I got super behind but lucky for me my baby has been a horrible sleeper the past few weeks so it meant a lot of middle of the night reading. Yay!) Anyway, it was good. Yes there are some weird things in the Book of Mormon that I don't get (like, why do certain parts sound exactly like the same translation we have King James bible? Or what is going on with all the skin color changes or lack there of according to wickedness or righteousness? I am hoping that one was just what FAIR says-an expression like "thick skinned" or something. Not sure.) There are some pretty weird things I don't get in the Bible as well (eh hem, the bald ...

I think this is like the 20th or more blog that I've attempted. I keep trying to go with a theme, but then I trail off because my brain doesn't want to stick with a theme. It's all over the place. So this blog is just dedicated to whatever comes to my mind. I know the name is a little weird, it's the only one I could think of with the word "thinking" in it (or something like that) that wasn't taken. Maybe I'll change it one day if I can think of a catchier title. When I was a kid, writing was everything to me. I loved writing in my journal, writing stories, letters, everything. The busyness of being an adult/mom has pulled me away from my love of writing. But my anxiety is pulling me back. Somewhere I read a great way to fight anxiety and burn out is to go back to what you loved when you were a kid. So here I am. As I was gearing up to finally start this blog, I stumbled upon several of my other blogs. It's weird to read because I am in such a ...