Our Works

Corey had the kitchen in lockdown yesterday. He had a nice meal prepared and wanted kids to be hungry for it, so he warned the kids at breakfast that after church there would be no lunch and no snacking. Corey and I were fasting with Sophi because she was receiving her patriarchal blessing at 3:30. No one ate after church until 4pm when our dinner guests arrived. Junior and his parents Jovan and Ani came over. We weren't back when they came but it was ok. I stayed up in our bedroom for most of the afternoon blogging, and when we left for Sophi's blessing, I had two more posts to complete to finish June 2025. After our dinner guests left, I worked some more and I finished blogging June 2025 at 10:45 pm, yayyyyy. I put that academic planner on the shelf, and I am finished. 

Today was a good day of cleaning and blogging some more. The kids were all home from school, so it was nice to not have the morning routine again. A bit of a lazy day, but I did clean some in the basement, but mostly I tried to catch up on the blog. I'm almost done with July '25. Lily was working on an online class all day and then asked if I could take her to a friend's house out by Skyline around 3. We didn't get there until 3:30, and then conveniently Corey was done with some lab testing and he was able to join me. We were able to do some toprope together before I needed to pick her back up. We listened to the Follow Him podcast with John Hilton III while we climbed, and I really liked this one idea they shared of how when we are judged by our works, it's like us being judged according to our creative works - like our life's art exhibit!

Yale School of Art

Starting in Part 1 at minute 28 with Dr. John Hilton III: 

I think that that’s part of the creation process. Separating the light from the darkness, figuring out, okay, I have a limited time. Where’s God calling me to put my priorities? One of the places for all of us that he’s gonna call us to put priorities is in creating something. As I read Genesis one, I can almost feel God’s joy in creation. From verse 21, God created every living thing God saw it was good. God blessed them. I can just picture God blessing all of the creations. Verse 31, God saw all that he had made and it was very good. President Dieter F. Uchtdorf said, creating contributes to our heavenly Father’s perfect happiness (Happiness, Your Heritage). You don’t need money, position, or influence in order to create something of beauty. Our birthright is to seek and experience eternal happiness. One of the ways we find this is by creating things. I just love that for me, I’ve been picked up the guitar as a recent hobby. I will never be a professional guitarist. I will almost certainly never put anything on Spotify, but I can have fun experiencing the joy of creation and playing a little song. I hope for all of us we can experience this. President Uchtdorf finishes the quote, he says, what you create doesn’t have to be perfect. Don’t let the voice of critics paralyze you. Whether that voice comes from the outside or the inside, we can just experience joy in creation.

Hank Smith: Occasionally, when I read that God will judge all men according to their works, you could think of the word works there as like works of art. I will judge them based on their artistic creations.

John Bytheway: Their gallery.

Hank Smith: Yeah, their gallery, their works.

Hank Smith: I like the idea that God instead of "let’s look at the right and wrongs of your life", "let’s look at everything you made. Let’s look at all that you created." John Bytheway likes to say everybody has a book in ’em, at least one book John says.

So I really liked all of that. I was an artist way back in the day. I looked forward to participating in the PTA Reflections contests and I enjoyed art classes in high school and college. I've wanted to create art for the past few years but haven't done it. Hopefully I can get our house in order enough that I can create some works of art this year. And it could be cool to make works of art that reflect my life's works - my kids, my marriage, and our experiences together as a family. I guess this blog is one of my "works". I still have a goal to someday submit an artwork to the LDS Church's International Art Competition. 

For FHE tonight we played spoons, ate Krispy Kreme donuts that Corey picked up on the way home, and watched Nate Bargatze "Tennessee Kid" together. Spoons was fun, cause when people would grab spoons, and someone would not have one, Katharine would say "I'll go get one!" and she'd run over to the silverware drawer and give it to them. They'd take it, thank her, then we'd hide it for the next round, repeat when someone wouldn't have a spoon on the next turn. She's cute and likes to keep everyone happy. Of course she was not allowed to be the one not to get a spoon, that would make her cry. I was sitting by her and had to make sure to push one to her first before I grabbed mine. It was funny. We watched a different Nate Bargatze special than I had planned, but we hadn't seen that one either so it was all good. We'll watch "Your Friend Nate Bargatze" next week! (before we cancel Netflix (got it Jan 1 to watch KPop Demon Hunters with Wes) :)