Pause

Today was a busy Sunday, after a busy week. I wouldn't necessarily call the week a downer, but it kind of wasn't an upper (apparently I'm not alone). I had a lot to do for work, and not a lot of down time in the evenings, or the weekend. There was a tutoring session with my bishop's 7th grad daughter, a book club in Draper that I almost didn't go to because I was so busy (but I'm really glad I went), a young women activity that was my first time to begin getting involved in my new calling as the ward YW camp director, a math teaching conference up in Bountiful. Because of all these extra things, I spent the week feeling sort of frazzled and scattered.

And then Sunday came and I was hosting family dinner and I'd planned a very time-intensive menu (stuffed pumpkins and homemade rolls), and I had agreed to let my visiting teachers come over right smack in the middle of my preparation time, and my apartment was in a state of disorder and not fit for company, and I just didn't feel like I was going to be ready for Monday and for doing everything I needed to do before the break.

But this is the part of the story where things suddenly just worked. I don't mean the part where I got my dinner made and my house cleaned (which I did). I mean the part where my visiting teachers came and suddenly, finally, I was able to remove myself from this week and find my perspective.

When my visiting teachers started talking today, I didn't even really know what I needed to hear. In fact, I don't think I even knew I needed to hear anything. But as we talked, the questions they asked and the stories they shared slowly drew out my own testimony of the Lord's hand in my life, and I felt a sort of calm descending on some unsettled feelings that I hadn't even recognized as being unsettled. It was a moment of clarity and renewal that I wasn't able to get from my scripture reading this week, or my personal prayers, or my journal-writing, or sitting and listening through 3 hours of church, or even going to the temple, and I didn't care that the rolls still needed to be shaped and that the kitchen was a disaster and that the visit was taking longer than I'd really anticipated. In the moment, it was just as long as I needed it to be.

We talk a lot in the Church about taking time to ponder and pray and let things be quiet so that we can feel the Spirit, and I think that this is important. Hugely important. But I also think that we're not always so good at quieting our lives, or even quieting ourselves when we do manage to quiet our lives, and that often it takes other people for the Lord to be able to poke through the chaos.

It made me want to do better at being in places where I can be that person.

But then as I thought about it, I realized that a lot of the things that kept vying for my attention this week were just that. All that personal time I didn't have, the personal time that in almost every case I would rather have had until the moment I actually got where I was going, was sacrificed to be in places where I could be that person if I needed to be. And really, now that the week is over, it feels like what I gained in being in those places is far more important than what I felt like I was going to lose at the time. I'm still tired, but it kind of changes my perspective on the things that made me tired. I'm grateful for that perspective change.


P.S. For interested parties, I was really, really pleased with how the stuffed pumpkins turned out. I made one according to the recipe but added pine nuts, and one with sausage (instead of bacon) and apple and toasted pecans, and I liked them both. The bacon one was most popular with my family, but I think the sausage was my favorite, and there's all sorts of room for experimentation. It really is time intensive, but if you have the time and inclination, you should try it (here's the recipe link again if you missed it the first time). But quickly, before all the pumpkins disappear from the grocery stores.