In defense of domesticity

I'm sorry I totally forgot to write last week. I thought Thursday was Friday all day long and thus didn't do my usual Thursday things, like blog and forget to clean the bathroom. But I'm back!

I just finished re-reading Pride and Prejudice this morning. It's such a fantastic book that it deserves re-reading often. It reminds me of my freshman year of college when two of my roommates and I would ignore homework in favor of bonding over the BBC adaption (we would yell a lot and I would keep score between Elizabeth and Darcy--she wins by a landslide) and microwave popcorn. I suppose we connected with it so well then because we were all in some form of pursuit of our own Mr. Darcy. It was so easy to relate to Elizabeth's frustrations and problems since we were right there with her. I'm happy to say we all ended up with loving husbands, although none of them came with ten thousand pounds and an estate in Derbyshire. Alas.

One character I never quite understood was Charlotte Lucas. I mean, I can't even imagine being in the same room as Mr. Collins without wanting to run away screaming, much less marry the guy. But her desire to have her own establishment and the ability to run it the way she wants? After living with roommates for five years, I totally get that. My standard response during my single years to the inevitable "Why do you want to get married?" question was "I get my own kitchen." Love and companionship and the celestial kingdom were way farther down the list. I was talking to my grandma this week while doing the dishes and she asked, "So, after two years, are you still glad you have your own kitchen?" YES. Unequivocally YES. It's my favorite room in the house, despite all the time I spend doing dishes (life without a dishwasher is rough, man). It's my own little kingdom. I know exactly where everything is and it's all precisely where I want it (the husband, on the other hand, is often known to rummage around for some time looking for the tool he wants and then exclaim "Do I even live here?" when he can't find it). Even when everything else in life is going crazy, I know that in the kitchen, I rule absolutely.

It's also the place where I most consistently create things. President Uchtdorf said:

"The desire to create is one of the deepest yearnings of the human soul. No matter our talents, education, backgrounds, or abilities, we each have an inherent wish to create something that did not exist before.

Everyone can create. You don’t need money, position, or influence in order to create something of substance or beauty. 

Creation brings deep satisfaction and fulfillment. We develop ourselves and others when we take unorganized matter into our hands and mold it into something of beauty."

I like cooking. I like taking unorganized matter and making it into something new (and tasty). It gives me deep satisfaction to create a good meal or a beautiful dessert. Sure, it takes time and creates a lot of mess, but it's worth it for more than just the food. It makes me happy. It makes me feel independent and competent. It helps me contribute to my little family's welfare in a very tangible way. It helps steady me when life is sometimes unsteady. 

In a time and climate when simple domesticity is often undervalued or overshadowed by excessively photoshopped ideals in magazines, I want to defend it. I want to embrace it. No, I don't have a career. No, my house is not Pinterest perfect. No, I don't have a food blog, and no, I don't cook to be a "foodie" (I'm 98% sure I violate the basic foodie credo with my passionate love for nacho cheese). Yes, I'm just a housewife. But I find great satisfaction in that. It's comfortable and comforting to order my own life, to provide a safe and lovely place in a world that is frankly terrifying and often brutal. I'm doing something important. I'm doing something that blesses lives. 

And the ability to make brownies any time I want is pretty nice, too.

Autumn

I'm convinced that humans have a "harvest everything" gene that is triggered by the onset of cooler weather. When we got back from traipsing around the West the cooler weather followed us home and now the days are GORGEOUS and the nights downright chilly. I'm enjoying the coolness after the sweltering summer (but not enjoying the return of the perpetually frozen extremities--my feet won't warm up until March). I'm also suddenly motivated to cook and bake and clean and organize like a crazy person. I think there's some leftover instinct that says "Winter is coming! Get ready to hunker down and hibernate!" Well, if it involves apples by the pound and homemade spice cookies, I don't mind if I do.

I love autumn. I love the crispness of the air and the honey-golden light and the sense of harvest and plenty. I love the anticipation of the holidays. I love the food. I love watching the leaves change colors. Autumn is even more fun now that I'm no longer in school and trying to figure out if I will survive midterms so I can make it to Thanksgiving break. I can sit back and enjoy it. I can go on walks just for the sake of being outside and not dissolve into a sticky puddle of sweat. I can actually take the time to bake all those spice cookies and apple pies I want to eat.

But mostly, autumn is beautiful. Every time I go outside I'm amazed by it. I mean, seasonal transitions don't have to be beautiful. Things could just wither up and die in the face of colder weather. But instead, we get golden light and blazing leaves and so many many colors. I love that. I love that God engineered it that way. The beauty and majesty of nature have always been a testimony to me that God is real. I can't imagine that such brilliant and amazing diversity and wonder could have come about by random chance--there has to be some organizing force behind it. As Alma says in The Book of Mormon, "...all things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator." I'm so glad our Supreme Creator is an artist.

photo cribbed shamelessly from Google

Family, zombies, and chicken pot pie

Sorry I missed a week, but I was away from a real computer and there ain't no way I was blogging from my tiny phone screen. Texting is enough of a challenge.

The reason I skipped out on writing is also the subject of the blog today. The husband and I went off to the West for a week and a half, him to go to a conference and me to go party with my grandparents. While he spent the days learning about how to efficiently clean buildings, I reupholstered benches and sewed and dug up pumpkin vines (which is a little like picking up an alien--you pick up the roots and start walking away toward the compost pile while 30+ feet of tentacle-like vines come dragging after you from all directions). Once the conference was over, the husband and I met up with his brother and sister-in-law and all trouped up to his parents' house to spend the weekend and celebrate his mom's birthday.

It was a great vacation, full of family and fun and good food. We laughed, we talked, we gardened, we dressed up as zombies for a zombie race and terrorized the "survivors" (and afterwards drove around Rexburg yelling "BRAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIINS" at all and sundry), and just enjoyed being together. I don't know exactly what Heaven is going to be like, but I hope it's like that--spending time with the people we love, surrounded by family. Laughing together. Doing stupid stuff and sharing inside jokes and eating too many donuts because you're up late talking.

I've been really blessed by my family. They're all wonderful people. And I married in to a great family as well (my in-laws are better than yours. The end). I am grateful every day that I have so many wonderful people in my life, and I'm especially grateful for the sealing covenants and the knowledge I have that death is not the end--we can be together after this life is over. That is a truly beautiful thing.

The Lord of the Rings

I love books. I always have. My parents read to me regularly in my childhood and I was always hauling books home from the library and classroom book fairs. My life was filled with The Wizard of Oz and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Little House on the Prairie (and one particular book about cephalopods I checked out of the library every chance I got. Yeah, it confuses me too.) Then I was introduced to The Chronicles of Narnia and The Sword in the Stone and A Wrinkle in Time and The Hero and The Crown. I devoured everything that came my way. In junior high I spent as much time as I could in the library because junior high is wretched and I wanted to get away from it as often as possible. As E.B. White said, "A library is a good place to go when you feel unhappy, for there, in a book, you may find encouragement and comfort. A library is a good place to go when you feel bewildered or undecided, for there, in a book, you may have your question answered. Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people - people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book." Books help you learn. Books help you think. Books help you encounter views and situations that are different from your own. Books help you define and articulate your world. Books, real books, good books, make an indelible impression on your soul.

The Lord of the Rings wasn't the first book to leave a impression on my psyche, but it may have made the deepest impression. I love the beauty of the language. I love how its written. I love that it's prose written like poetry, bright and clear and bittersweet. I love the great sweeping epicness of it that all hinges on the courage of one small person. And the thing I love most is the truth in it. I believe there's truth in all good literature--that thread running through it that winds around our hearts, those moments that linger in our minds and makes clear to us something we didn't quite know before. That something that impels us to reread a passage because it touches our souls. Tolkien put a lot of truth into The Lord of the Rings. He spoke about loyalty, love, and courage; hope even in the darkest hour, nobility, sacrifice, compassion. He spoke beautifully of profound truths that are equally as applicable to this world as to Middle Earth. And this, to me, may be the most profound:

Forgiveness

My husband likes to watch sports (and then do super extra nerdy things. He's well-rounded). I'm sports apathetic, but I've absorbed a surprising amount of information about football and basketball--baseball continues to baffle me--just by being in the same room as the TV and ESPN. Lately there has been a lot of talk in the sports world about domestic violence and what should be done about it. I'm not here to weigh in on that topic or even whether or not the national sports organizations should be the ones handing out punishments. What I've been thinking about most in conjunction with these stories is what happens years from now. Players have lost jobs, they've lost face, and their reputation has been severely damaged because of what they've done. I imagine it will follow them for the rest of their lives and adversely impact whatever else they choose to do. And that makes me sad for them. Not because I in any way condone domestic violence, nor do I think they should not be held accountable for their actions and face the consequences, but because people can change. People can and do and will always change. So what happens to these people if they take these consequences to heart and vow that they will never do such a thing again and really make an effort to become a better person? What happens when they have a change of heart?

Sadly, I doubt much will change in the world's reaction. To the world, they will always have that taint. Their opportunities will be curtailed and shadowed by what they did in the past. The world--especially the media-crazed world of sports--isn't very generous with second chances, and even less generous with fresh starts and clean slates. Even if these athletes change their lives and become new and better people, the world won't see that. They will never forget. It's a sad fact that old scandals stick in our minds much better than current good behavior. We forget the good and see only the bad.

But God doesn't. In fact, He does the opposite. He forgets the bad and sees only the repentant and penitent good. Isn't that wonderful? Isn't that freeing? To know that no matter how badly you mucked up today, God will forgive and forget when you change? He is so generous with second chances (and third, and fourth, and fifth, sixth, to infinity and beyond) and has an endless supply of fresh starts and clean slates to give us if we reach for them. He forgives. He always, always wants to forgive, and He always will if we repent.

We are told in the scriptures that godly sorrow leads to repentance. That when we are truly sorry for our wrongful actions, we want to change. I know that's true. But I also know that sorrow is sometimes as much a weight as it is a prod. Sometimes we are so saddened by our actions that we get stuck in mourning and can't find a way to move beyond that. I think the other part of the journey to repentance is godly hope. The hope that God will forgive us and forget our sins. The hope of a fresh start. The hope that we can begin anew. Sorrow brings us to our knees. Hope--the hope of forgiveness, of fresh starts, of Heavenly Father's undying and unfailing love--lets us stand and walk forward once more.

Jupiter

Not the planet, the song about the planet. Although I am rather fond of the planet as well (I went through an astronomy phase as a child. And I considered taking an astronomy class in college, but gave that up when I realized it was a night class in a dark planetarium with padded, reclining seats. It was a given that I would spend 98% of every class asleep, so I decided against paying tuition for some naptime). But I am more than fond of the song.

"Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity" is part of The Planets, a seven movement orchestral work by Gustav Holst. I like the whole work (I especially like to listen to Mars when I'm feeling rampage-y) but Jupiter is far and away my favorite movement. It's been my favorite song since I was barely old enough to know what classical music actually was. It's joyous and exciting and rich and beautiful. And the french horns introduce every melodic motif, which makes it even more fun for me as a horn player. This is the song that made me fall in love with the sound of the french horn, although that love didn't manifest itself until many years down the road.

Oftentimes we think that "spiritual" music must have spiritual lyrics, but for me, this is one of the most deeply spiritual songs I know. I've turned to it in times of deep distress and overwhelming happiness because it speaks to my soul in ways that words just aren't able to. It's transcendent. I've been lucky enough to hear it performed live several times and every time it moves me to tears. This is one of the most beautiful things I've found in my life.

Beautiful Thing Thursdays

Hello again, Gentle Readers. I'm sorry I've neglected you for so long. I've been busy with life and other things (mostly washing dishes) and I've never professed to be a consistent blogger. Or possibly a consistent anything other than voracious reader and lover of chocolate--some things never change. But some things do, and hopefully this is one of them.

I'd like to introduce Beautiful Thing Thursday, wherein each Thursday I will post something that I find uplifting, lovely, or profound. This was prompted by Elder Bednar's Education Week talk "To Sweep the Earth as With a Flood" and, oddly enough, a Sunday School lesson I taught about Jonah a few weeks ago. We skipped right past the Jonah-as-whale-food portion and spent most of the time talking about sharing the Gospel instead. My main point was that we tend to have a very narrow view of what constitutes "missionary work," and if you're like me, you spend a lot of time beating yourself up about how poorly you do traditional missionary work (i.e. giving Books of Mormon to friends and neighbors and bringing them to church on Sundays). But I think we need to broaden our perception of how and where we share the Gospel. In my case, I suck at "traditional" missionary work because people are scary. I can talk to people and hold conversations and be friendly, but it takes enormous effort and leaves me exhausted. I don't take naps on Sundays because I'm sleep deprived, I take naps because I just spent three hours talking to people at church. I'm perfectly content the rest of the week to spend hours by myself and not talk to anyone for days except Mike and my mom and grandma. I don't have anyone physically nearby to share the Gospel with, and the thought of trying to find someone makes me want to run screaming from the room in panic. And believe me, panic is NOT conducive to missionary work.

But there are other ways to do it. I am useless if I try to share the Gospel in ways that are foreign to my nature, but I can find ways that work with who I am instead of against it. That was my point in Sunday School--that we can find ways to begin with who and what we are and use that to our advantage. We can bloom not only where we are planted, but how we are planted as well.

So this is my way of putting my money where my mouth is and following Elder Bednar's counsel to share goodness. Sharing things that are good and bright and beautiful and hoping that my little trickle will contribute to the flood.

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I Love the Lord

I first heard this song in a chapel in Portugal. We were there to pick my brother up from his mission and had just spent a week visiting different parts of the country. This Sunday was General Conference, and we had just gotten to the chapel where the members and missionaries were gathered to listen to it. Because of the time difference, the priesthood session was being broadcast to Portugal on Sunday morning instead of the middle of Saturday night. All the women were in the kitchen preparing a picnic lunch and the men were in the chapel, but the doors were open, and we arrived in time to sit in the hallway and hear the closing song. It was a profound experience after a week of travel and strange food and places and crazy bus adventures to listen to something that felt so still and holy. 

I went off to college a few months after that and was given a recording of this song. I listened to it often in times of trouble and distress to recapture that feeling of holiness and to gain comfort both from the tune (which is probably my favorite hymn) and the words (which are taken from the Psalm of Nephi, one of my top 5 passages of scripture). I almost always feel better after listening to it. Also, the bass line gives me goosebumps.