Thoughts and stories, by Pal

This article is totally encouraging and wise!  I really love Darla Isackson's writings.  Elder Jeffrey R. Holland even quoted her in a conference talk!  My dear mother, Ruth Allen Miles, used to say "This too shall change, (or pass away)!"  That applies to both sad and happy times. But new happy times will come also, and it is exciting to see where our lives lead us.   "Life is what happens while you're planning for something else!" One Prayer That God Never Answers By Darla Isackson  · January 24, 2018 In an article in  Guidepost  magazine, author Elizabeth Sherrill told of the difficulty of moving out of the home she had loved for fifty years. Sorting through and wanting to hang onto the accumulation of a lifetime, she contemplated the myriad changes she and her husband had experienced and the big one they were about to make. This sentence from her article is my theme today: “One prayer God never answers is fo...

This is a lovely article about how the Holy Ghost is truly a comforter. Accessing the Gift of the Holy Ghost By Joni Hilton  · January 17, 2018 I love to attend baptisms. I have yet to witness one where I didn’t feel the Spirit, and I can see the moist eyes of others experiencing the same thing. Recently I watched an eight-year-old girl in my ward enter into the waters of baptism, after her grandmother gave a beautiful talk about the Holy Ghost. The grandmother showed a quilt of her great-grandfather’s, truly a comforter, which is how the Holy Ghost is often identified. Of course we all know he is a member of the Godhead, and does much more than comfort. He also testifies of truth, he enlightens our minds, he prompts and inspires us to take righteous and charitable actions, he helps us make decisions, he warns us of danger, on and on. But we call him   The Comforter.  We don’t call him the Enlightener, or the Teacher, the Prompter, or the...

This is a very insightful article!  First I want to mention some wonderful things about today!  I received my 18th great grandchild, a beautiful baby boy, Avery Scott DeSantis!  And in adding the grandchildren of spouses two of my children have married, we now have 30 great grandchildren!   I also did a couple of things in my life -- First I signed up for a year's membership in a local Recreation Center, where I will do exercising in classes 3 to 4 times a week, and I also signed a burial plan for myself!  Talk about variation!  A birth, exercise to help me live longer and healthier, and also a plan to save a lot of stress with my children when I pass on!  Isn't life interesting?  ! How Can I Receive Heavenly Guidance? By Wallace Goddard  · January 22, 2018 GOur friend John wondered why there were so few crickets. They used to make a racket every summer evening. Now they were almost silent. What was the ...

I began this blog in November, 2013, and blog # 4, on Nov. 16th, 2013, was my private story about my "nervous breakdown", which had occurred in the 1970's.  I have included it at the bottom of this entry.   I called it:  Thoughts on Achieving Balance in Life. THIS IS SO IMPORTANT, TO TAKE CARE OF OURSELVES, AND NOT RUN RASTER THAN WE HAVE STRENGTH!    4 Easy Ways to Avoid Burnout: Why Self-Care Is Anything but Selfish by Kari Monet  | Jan. 17, 2018 Mormon Life Comments Have you ever been surprised and frustrated by people whose phones go dead right in the middle of the day?  It seems like such a basic thing to plug it in at night.  But sometimes finding your charger is just  too much  at 11 p.m., or maybe you have an older phone that won’t hold a charge.  Lucky for us lesser mortals, there’s power save, which rations power by cutting nonessential functions.  S...

None of us want to suffer, but if we look back on times in our lives in which we endured some type of suffering, we realize how much we learned from them.  It helps us be able to understand others who are also going through pain now, and to have charity and compassion for them. Why Suffering Is Good for Us and How It Can Make Us Happy by Dr. Taylor Halverson  | Jan. 17, 2018 Makes You Think Comments We all have difficult, challenging, painful experiences in life. Though never pleasant, these experiences can teach us perspective, love, humility, endurance, patience, and ultimately, how to be more like God. Consider the story of Abraham and Sarah. These two faithful individuals endured what seemed like never-ending setbacks and suffering. God sent Abraham away from his homeland to a new promised land. What was the result? Abraham and Sarah discovered a land languishing in famine. Abraham and Sarah moved on to Egypt, on...

These are great thoughts, and very wise! Are We Ever Released from the Responsibilities of Parenting? By Julie de Azevedo Hanks  · January 16, 2018 We’ve heard phrases like “parenting is a calling from which you are never released [i] , [ii] ” over the pulpit many times, but rarely do we actually reflect on what this means. When taken literally, that it’s a parent’s job to continue to be their child’s caretaker throughout their lives, this belief can create enmeshed families with weak boundaries that undermine the adult child’s agency. Here are some ideas to consider about the danger of parents who are overly involved with their adult children and adult children who don’t fully transition into an adult role. Intrusive Parents   Too often, this belief of eternal parenthood is used to justify a parent giving constant (often unsolicited) input or criticism into an adult child’s life decisions. Does never being released from parenthood mea...