Delicate Post 3

Today I've been crying.  I watched a video on Facebook and bawled my eyes out.  Then I started prepping my mp3 player with Christmas songs and I heard Silent Night.  And the tears started AGAIN!  I don't like to cry.  I spent way too much time as a teenager and in my twenties crying.  I cried over everything.  Commercials.  Happy days. Sad days.  Everytime I had to speak in public (yes, that includes school presentations). At parties.  By myself.  At church.  At home.  At grandparents houses.  I just cried.  It's amazing, actually, that my skin didn't mold.  I guess that is why tears are salty - it lessens the chance of mildew growth on pillows, friends shoulders, faces, etc.

Then, when I was about twenty seven, I discovered these magical things called anti-depressant meds.  And the tears stopped.  Completely. For a while, I couldn't cry at funerals, at sad movies, any where or for any reason.  I stopped getting chills during a spiritual talk.  I literally stopped feeling.  I was numb.  I don't think my spirit was numb - there was just a problem with the relay system between my brain and my spirit and my heart.

Although I didn't miss being a soggy mess all the time and having to wear waterproof mascara every single day, I did miss feeling emotion.  I felt I was becoming hardened.

In a way, I am still somewhat numb.  I've been on the meds for over ten years now.  And by far, the benefits have outweighed the side effects.  I am not a completely crazy mom who is an emotional wreck all the time.  I can speak in public (and have discovered that I LOVE it).  I can go outside in the summer without being completely terrified that a grasshopper will land on me. I can go to the grocery store (or anywhere) without someone else. The medicine has allowed me to be who I always wanted to be without the paralyzing anxiety and depression.

The key now is for me to balance my somewhat "toughened" emotional state with the "delicate" spiritual state that I need to be in.  And so, I embrace the days that I cry at videos, when Silent Night seems to penetrate my very being, and when I shed tears for the pain of a friend.  That means that there is still a delicate part of my spirit.  I don't want to become the emotional mess that I was - I can do without that.  I long for there to be a balance.  I can't do it by myself (another thing I am learning during this process) - I will need to ask Heavenly Father to help me.  I want to fit the description in the Book of Mormon when Jacob is teaching his people (Jacob 2:7 - 9) where it says: "before your wives and children, many of whose feelings are exceedingly tender and chaste and delicate before God, which thing is pleasing unto God..."

Delicate Post 2

The Princess and the Pea and Me

Delicate.  All princesses are delicate, right?  As I looked through the worldly definitions of delicate, this is what I found:
1 - fine in texture, quality, construction, etc
2 - fragile, easily damaged
3 - frail or sickly
4 - fine or precise in action or execution
5 - requiring or showing great care, caution or tact
6 - keenly sensitive

Scriptural definition - see tender.

My mind went to the fairy tale of The Princess and the Pea.  Allow me to refresh your memory. A prince needed to find a  princess and naturally, hundreds of young ladies applied for the position.  His mother, being wise as all mothers are, knew that only a TRUE princess would be delicate enough to feel a tiny pea placed under a stack of mattresses. Soooooo.... The princess interview process began.  Some of the "princesses" were beautiful, others were funny, others were good, others were smart. But on the night that they spent at the palace in the royal guest chambers, upon the high stack of feather mattresses, the queen would sneak a green pea under the bottom mattress.  And each morning, when the girls would come down, refreshed from their wonderful night's sleep, the queen would shake her head at her husband and her son, and they would sigh and have the young lady escorted out.  Finally, one girl passed the test.  She was delicate enough, sensitive enough to feel the miniscule lump under the stack of a hundred mattresses.  The queen nodded to her husband, who nodded to their son who proposed on the spot and they lived happily ever after.

Believe it or not, I am a princess.  My spirit was born to a royal King and Queen and I have a Prince as my Elder Brother.  My spiritual lineage is as pure as it can be.  Would I pass this test of a tiny pea being placed in a stack of mattresses?  Am I delicate enough that I would toss and turn, getting more uncomfortable by the second?  Or would I carry on, not noticing anything and enjoy a night of blissful slumber?

The test that Heavenly Father gives me doesn't have anything to do with a pea, or mattresses or a good night's sleep.  The type of "delicate" that He is searching for in me is spiritual.  Am I still the spiritual princess that He created me to be?

In a movie, does a scene that implies sexual actions make me squirm?  Does a scene of brief nudity make me want to leave the theater?  Do I change the channel when a TV show's writing contains nothing but lewd comments?  Do I cringe when I hear the name of my Father or my Elder Brother used in vain?  Do I blush at the commercials that stretch decency to the limit? Do I turn off the radio when the lyrics aren't suitable for my children (or me) to listen to? Or are those just small peas that don't bother me anymore because they are covered up by the mattresses of popularity, laughs, fear of being embarrassed. or other excuses?

Those are the questions I need to explore as I study the attribute of being "delicate". 

Delicate

Time for a new attribute to study.  This choice has been very difficult for me.  I've really struggled in what to choose this month - which is why it is now the 7th and I'm just barely doing this post.  I finally settled on DELICATE.

I have never seen myself as delicate.  I don't know that anyone else has either.  :)  The only time I can remember feeling delicate was in college.  A big group of us were outside in 2 feet of snow and all our puffy marshmallow snow coats playing football.  Tackle football.  I had the ball, and one guy picked me up and moved me out of bounds rather than tackle me.  I was shocked!  When I asked him why he hadn't just tackled me, he replied that he thought I would break.  That was pretty much the only time I thought I was delicate.

I am tall.  I am a bit on the fluffy/big boned side.  All the haircuts that say - for delicate pixie like faces - I can pretty much disregard.  I have worked for years to prove that I can do anything. I've hung drywall.  I've tiled floors and shower surrounds.  I've helped put in wiring in a house. I paint walls. I've helped install chain link fencing, built shelves, put in a sprinkling system. I take mice out of the traps.  I take care of disposing of dead animals. I know how to start fires. I love shooting guns and bows and arrows.  I have no problem watching a deer being gutted or seeing blood. My favorite shows are crime type dramas. I mow the lawn regularly and do most of the yard work. I just passed my driving test on our 34 foot fire engine at the department and learned how to handle the hoses and water cannon (which is so fun!).  I can work a chain saw.  I move furniture.  And if I want something done, I will usually do it myself.  I have worked very hard to be "tough" and "strong" and fiercely independent. 

To me being delicate is being a "girly girl"  who calls her husband to kill spiders, refuses to take out the trash, faints at the sight of anything gory, only watches home and garden tv and looks like a porcelain doll.  SO NOT ME!

So I am wrestling with the whole concept of being delicate.  The thought makes me cringe. That is why I decided to work on this attribute. Let the learning begin!

Recap of Gracious

It is almost time to begin learning about another attribute. But I wanted to remind myself of what I learned about being gracious.

1st - Being gracious has nothing to do with being a good hostess or Julie Andrews.

2nd - Being gracious is truly a God-like quality.  It is because of His graciousness that we are given everything in this life AND allowed to return to His presence in the next, after all we can do.

3rd - Being gracious is a lot easier with a total stranger than it is with a family member.

4th - Being gracious is a lot easier when everything is going right in my life - when I am not hungry or tired or stressed or surrounded by a dirty house or looking at a long to-do list.

5th - Being gracious is very hard when you are being screamed at and hit by your tired, hungry and stressed child.

6th - Being gracious with myself is a constant battle but even if I cut myself slack on one thing per day, I am doing better at it than I was before.

7th - Being gracious is not something I can achieve in a months time.  I will have to keep working at it, probably every hour of every day. 

I started with "gracious" thinking that it might be one of the easier parts of my spirit to remember.  Now I am thinking that I just may have started with one of the hardest.  Gracious seems to encompass many different things.  But I had to start somewhere!  And maybe with graciousness as my base, some of the others will come a bit more easily!

I'd love to hear what you learned about being gracious - either as a comment here or you can email me at artichokeproject47@gmail.com