This is your morning wake-up call!

Feeling tired is a facet of my being.

I see myself coming and going some days and wonder why that tired, harried looking woman doesn't get a nap.

This morning is no exception to that rule thanks to a 3 a.m. wake-up call from Daddy. He doesn't mean to do it, but when he gets his days and nights confused or looks at a clock that no longer really makes sense, he calls.

So 3 a.m. it is...

He is sorry he called. He thought it was three in the afternoon and wanted to know where I was.

I assure him that it is indeed the middle of the night and that he can go back to bed. Deferring that explanation to another time, he is more concerned about his new cell phone being charged up and getting the phone book restored in it. Ostensibly, this is so that he can use it to wake OTHER people. I digress...

After convincing him it REALLY is 3 in the blessed a.m., he hangs up and I attempt to go back to bed. It doesn't happen. Rather than keeping Rick from any sleep, I go to the guest room to struggle out the rest of the time until the alarm sounds.

As per usual, I go to make Daddy his breakfast, he's only two blocks from me and for right now, that is a good thing. Were Daddy to be in residence here, things would likely get ugly. Between Jared's sleeplessness and Daddy's, someone would always be running on empty and I'm reasonably certain that the phrase 'walking dead' would take on a whole new meaning.

When I let myself in, there sits Daddy, fully dressed and chipper and raring to go. Yeah. Having already cooked himself some grits (enough for three people - he only at some of them), he declines to have me make his usual breakfast tray.

We spent our morning time sorting out his phone and correcting phone numbers that need to be either deleted from the memory bank or edited to reflect changes. I realize now I forgot to change Thomas' cell phone number, but that may be for the best. No college student who is working, going to school and trying to sort out married life needs to lose even more sleep than they already do.

I'm not sure what it is about Daddy's dementia that brings on the odd periods of daytime and nighttime confusion. Nor do I understand about Jared's condition creating the same alternate reality of wakefulness. What I am sure about is that when it happens, there are days that BOTH of them are off track and it makes for some pretty exhausting days for me. They don't seem to mind.

Oh well. I guess this just means I have more time to get the laundry done and contemplate whether to make the oatmeal raisin cookies for the Relief Society meeting tomorrow. I know if I lie down the phone will begin to ring... Murphy's Law dictates that to be true.

Daddy once told me that Murphy was an optimist. Based on  how my life runs sometimes, I'm fairly certain that is true. Murphy also apparently didn't believe in sleep because sure as God made little green apples, I will get 3 a.m. wake up calls so long as Daddy is able to grab a phone and reach out and touch someone.

Thanks for Friends

The most valuable things in life are not measured in monetary terms. The really important things are not houses and lands, stocks and bonds, automobiles and real state, but friendships, trust, confidence, empathy, mercy, love and faith. --- Bertrand Russell V. Delong ---

It has been my blessing through my life to have many people with whom I have exchanged friendliness. Some have come for relatively short stretches of time and others have, like the fragrant blossom of the magnolia, lingered around gently and light throughout my life thus far.

While it is truthfully said that our immediate family are those to whom we look as we find our first friends, those others who hold a special place within our hearts that we gather as chosen blossoms become as family.

When I review the passing of the years in the gathering lines of age on my once youthful countenance, I count more valuable the people in my life who are the cause of the laugh lines that have carried me through the hardships of life and who have made possible the remembrances of all the joys that have been mine.

From family and the laughter and love shared through that closely knit and gently cared for fabric of our lives to the addition of those who are woven in until you cannot distinguish blood from choice, friendship is a great blessing and privilege of mortality that extends through the veil of this mortal life through eternity. 

I cannot imagine that vast gathering of souls in God's big house with empty seats where the people who have made life worth living. It would be counter to the joy that is heaven. 

Although thanksgiving often has murmured expressions and prayers of gratitude for THINGS, I feel overwhelmed for the PEOPLE who have come into my life. Like the lyrics of the song "For Good" from the musical "Wicked", there are simply some people in life who come and place a gentle "hand-print on my heart". 

 

From them, the phone call is never to early or too late. The laughs comes easily and are genuine. Tears sometimes flow and the spirit of friendship is renewed in the simplest things. Time doesn't matter and distance doesn't count when friendship is the medium of exchange. It is the rarest blessing and the greatest happiness we can relate to on a daily basis.

Thank you to my friends. God has granted me the most gracious boon. From you, I have learned and grown and with you I have shared both the good and the bad. To you, I owe my deepest thanks, for you have endured all the facets that I am and still consider me your friend.

May God bless all of my friends and grant unto them the most sacred and righteous desires in their  hidden heart at this special season of gratitude. My friends most certainly deserve His blessings for they have enriched and blessed me. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

What is to come?

The ballots have been tallied and Obama received his second term in office.

While I am incredibly disappointed, I am NOT surprised.

Why, you may ask?

We have allowed a perverse notion to take root and flower in this nation. The idea that if you do nothing for yourself and your family even when you are perfectly able to do so that you deserve to be taken care of because you are entitled to it. We have allowed the robber barons of our government to dole out tax dollars to cheats and fraudsters without doing a thing to stop it.

So now, we see them elect their rightful king. A charlatan and poseur who says whatever they want to hear so long as someone else picks up the tab for all the toys and goodies he is dispensing.

To paraphrase Rush Limbaugh, when you have a nation of children, then Santa Claus gets elected.

Santa grants wishes and gives presents and makes promises that hardworking and tired people have to scramble to fulfill or risk the almighty displeasure of people who have no stake in the fiscal side of granting these wishes.

Santa can say "sure, you can have that!" and never be held accountable when Mom and Dad fall through on another persons promises.

Santa can say 'you've been good so you deserve it" and "you are entitled to it because the neighbors have one". Santa can tell someone that if your folks don't pony up, it's because they are scrooges who don't really care about your interests.

It's hard for me to get behind that kind of cosmically warped thinking simply because I'm one of those trying to be responsible parent types who has to face the reality that we cannot afford every single thing that we see. In fact, we cannot afford even half of everything that we see. Any time that a politician promises you ANYTHING, you can rest assured it didn't come from HIS salary. It came from yours.

Santa Claus is a jolly fellow because he never has to actually be in every one's home when the bills come due and the fun is over and hard decisions have to, of necessity, be made. Santa is always pictured as smiling and happy because Santa doesn't have to explain why we are on a fiscal cliff, both as individual families (in many cases) and absolutely as a nation.

Our nation is awash in Chinese red. The ink is indelible. We have allowed our elected representatives to go on for FOUR YEARS without passing a single budget to detail why they are spending like there is a honey pot of money that is bottomless. Now, we have elected Santa Claus for 4 more years of endless spending without any responsibility.

Who picks up the check? It will be multiple generations worth of Americans, if America even exists by the time we are discussing full payoff. And with the growing mentality of "you owe me", that time of payoff will never come because the bill will continue to be passed until NO ONE will want to buy up any of our debt because we are like the mooch who never remembers our wallet but always reminds you how much you have in yours.

I am not bitter. I am sad and frustrated that the entitlement generations of our nation have become so large, so vocal and so powerful that their angry demanding voices can drown out truth.

I will share with you a painful truth that is coming: when the number of people taking completely exceeds the number working to pay for the "free stuff" that isn't really free at all, our nation will collapse like a house of cards in a gale. 
 
And it is not just fiscal issues. The moral turpitude that is becoming "no big deal' is horrifying. People are not perfect. I get that. But giving in to our baser selves and calling it "a lifestyle choice" is not God's will. Not in any measure. When we start to say some sins are just fine, where do we draw the line? Our entire judicial system is based on the Judeo-Christian principles that built our framework of laws. We have elements of the Ten Commandments, the Code of Hammurabi and the English Law that came from our Mother country.

So how do we decide which of our laws can be trampled next? Which of God's commandments no longer matter? I fear for the legacy we are establishing in our nation and which we leave to those generations who will come after us.

They will not be as free, nor will they be as Godly. They will have been raised to believe that the problems will be remedied by 'someone else'.

I pray for our nation and its leaders. But more, I pray for what we will all be compelled to endure together. I pray that we will have the moral fiber to endure the fire that is to come. And I pray that we will not rejoice in the sufferings of others, even when they have brought it upon themselves through unrighteous and unwise choices.


May God have mercy on us if it is right that He should show us any mercy at all.

The Unemployment Line

Our family has officially joined the ranks of those countless millions who are looking for work. Not a happy thought with bills to pay and a mortgage that comes due each month. Kinda have concerns about feeding ourselves a bit as well.

Due to government cutbacks in defense spending thanks to President Korihor, aka Obama, the QinetiQ company did a reduction in force to meet the contract money obligations. And just like that we are unemployed.

Nice. NOT.

The military is the blood and guts that pay the literal price for our freedom. And Obama wants to cut it down to the nub. Ostensibly, his motivation is 'saving taxpayer money'. What he is really doing is killing jobs... not just defense jobs and military enrollment, but all the collateral jobs along the way.

It also gives us a very weak posture in the world where lots of our enemies, some of whom Obama has give money to - cough Muslim Brotherhood cough - are delirious with glee at the prospect of an eventual takeover of our nation. 

We are not earning brownie points for knowing all the words to "Kum Bah Yah" and "I'd Like To Teach the World To Sing" in a world that not only has no desire to join hands and sing with us, but would rather see us destroyed. Instead we are garnering the disdain and mistrust of our longtime allies, their bitter disappointment at our broken promises, the violation of their trust which has been abused and the hearty and wicked laugh filled derision of our enemies, both foreign and domestic, who are completely thrilled at the prospect that our nation can become the delightful socialist/communist/fascist paradisaical utopia they think exists between the leaves of the Lenin and Stalin playbook. Plus, if they can get rid of the world conscience that speaks for, sues for, then bleeds and dies for peace, not just for our nation, but for all nations, then the evil of the world wins.

Unfortunately for them, what sounds good on paper hasn't worked so hot in real life for those many nations compelled to wade through that drama over the last hundred years. Socialism only creates poorer rich and poorer poor. It doesn't make everyone equal, it makes everyone enemies to everyone else. There is not any equality in that playbook - unless you count suffering. There will always be class-ism under the banner of the hammer and sickle. There will always be someone who still manages to have all they want while even more have less than what they need.

Yet Obama and his policies are driving as hard and fast toward that ideology as he can muster. He sees nothing wrong in his plan because his arrogance and narcissism overshadow all else. That every single socialistic nation on the planet is awash in red ink, gasping for air and dying on the vine is no lesson for the man who knows everything and isn't afraid to tell you he does. He also harbors the deep misunderstanding that when a new world order is ushered in, that he will have a place in that order. 

Lacking understanding, he fails to see that no traitor is ever honored by those to whom he sells out. Ever. They are not trusted. They can't be. After all, they have ALREADY proven they will sell their soul for a mess of pottage. So how can they be believed?

Funny thing is that when his arrogance doesn't work out so well, like in the glaring example of Benghazi, Libya, Obama manages to obfuscate, hide, skate figure 8's around the truth, blame others and throw people under the bus of his personal power and charisma all while smiling like he knows so much more than we mere mortals will ever comprehend. And that smile is oily, unctuous and evil.

When I read the scriptures about leaders who are only there for power, it never ends well. From King Nebuchadnezzar to the aforementioned Korihor, those who are self-seeking in their ambitions bring many down to suffering, hardship and sorrow while seemingly never being touched by all the damage that is caused around them.

I also see that when the time of God's judgment comes upon them, the fall is terrible to behold. All who place their trust in the arm of flesh, the mortal arm so fallible and so imperfect, are doomed to fall with the "leader" who has led them far from the safety of the sheepfold and far from the True Shepherd who only sought for their safety in Him.

Knowing that God has a plan and a purpose for all of us, I trust and I pray. Learning through trials IS part of the plan because there are lessons that we must endure in order to become acquainted with God through what we suffer so that we can come to appreciate the Atonement in a way that would otherwise escape our understanding.

The scary truth is that none of us, from those plagued by personal disaster to those most recently harmed by the fury of Hurricane Sandy, is immune to the pain of being mortal. Yet only through these trials can we know what the next step is supposed to be.

Patrick Overton once opined: "When we walk to the edge of all the light we have and take the step into the darkness of the unknown, we must believe that one of two things will happen. There will be something solid for us to stand on or we will be taught to fly."

The issue here before our family is learning that trust in God isn't circumstantial, but preferential. We have to know, not just trust by going beyond faith to a sure knowledge; to learn to see reason as God reasons and to develop the understanding that all of this is for our experience and for our good in His plan and His timing.

The unemployment line is long and stretches through cities and towns across our nation. However, the line I am interested in right now is the line of communication between my Father in Heaven and our little family. We desire to know what the next step is and whether we will land on solid ground, or if we are to fly in a way we never dreamed possible.

All will be explained. I trust this. In the due time of the Lord...