If you've read Tuesdays with Morrie, you know that the young man Mitch reunites with his old college professor Morrie every Tuesday for life lessons. They call their Tuesday meetings "class" and Morrie, who is on his deathbed, gives Mitch much needed wisdom he has learned in his lifetime. Every week Mitch looks forward to these life altering Tuesday classes. I feel like Nate and I have found our own Morrie.
Tuesday nights we've both been going to Nate's New Testament class at 5pm taught by the incredible Ron Bartholomew. By the time the class starts Nate has probably been on campus for 7 hours working or in class, and I have spent 8 hours staring at a computer screen at work. But, our Tuesday night class with Brother Bartholomew is probably the hour and forty minutes we look forward to most during the work/school week. Each week professor Ron Bartholomew succeeds in his goal to "shift our paradigms," and I haven't once been able to walk away not having shed a tear. Every Tuesday I walk away from his class with so many different feelings and leaving more refined than when I walked into the class. Lately I have been getting these nudges and signs from the Lord building up and tonight Brother Bartholomew's class was the nudge of all nudges .
Professor Bartholomew, expounding upon Mathew 11,13, and Luke 7, explained so powerfully that we as a Mormon culture have strayed from focusing on loving Christ and have become obsessed with our own personal obedience, calling it the Mormon to-do list. He explains that our own performance has become our obsession instead of Christ's performance, and that it is damning to our soul to replace the atonement with our own performance.
I've always been in love with the principle of grace. I don't think there's anything that could bring more hope, gratitude, and happiness into my heart. Growing up without any form of structure and without a focus to achieve and succeed, I came into the church lacking the conditioning to succeed most Mormon* youth my age possessed. I stuck with the church not because I was strong enough to change into everything a Mormon was, but because the Savior had rescued me and pardoned me and I loved Him. I stuck with the Savior even though I couldn't even come close to "doing my part" or accomplishing the Mormon to-do list. After serving a mission, I felt conditioned and that I finally had formed habits that would allow me to be successful in doing my part, in being obedient, and in accomplishing the grand to-do list. I felt like my eyes were opened to structured living and I felt happy and proud that I finally understood how to condition myself.
However, the downside to having my eyes opened to the structure involved in gospel living, was that I began to slowly get sucked into the unintentional culture of the church. Observing members of the church made me happy and proud of myself that I was able to experience what they were experiencing, something I had never experienced before: success. But eventually my mentality of just wanting to love God changed into a mentality where success in obedience was more at the forefront of my mind than was the God himself. If I did something wrong or felt like a failure, I felt like I needed to clean myself up a little before going to the Lord in prayer, because no way did I want to go to Him embarrassed and looking stupid. I would try to fix things and get right before I could show my face to Him. And before I knew it, I had become the atonement negating soul that Brother Bartholomew explained.
I'm writing all this and explaining my gospel stages from the start of my new life because I'm realizing there have been not only stages of conversion but stages of mentality also. The nudges and signs from God lately were building up into a great light bulb moment experience in Brother Barhtolomew's Tuesday class where I realized I needed a new mentality and that it was time be done with this dumb stage. Those nudges and signs from God that I couldn't quite make out until Tuesday were telling me to "get over this stage"! "It's dumb!" The stage of unawarely adopting a culture; the stage where the nouns are I and ME in statements about my obedience and my part. The dumb stage where I was obsessed with my performance at all times instead of the Lord's performance.
How in the world did I become your run of the mill atonement denier? How did I become the average Savior negater? Who even knows. What I care about now is not being that person. My paradigm has shifted brother Bartholomew! It's time for a change and I'm reverting back to the basics that first got me going when I fell in love with the gospel, but with an added wisdom. I promise to remember that my level of commitment to the Lord does not alter what He has already finished, nor can my breaches of commitment to the Lord alter His doing. It's done and over, He did it all already! I promise to get back to me-the me that feels such a strong connection to the sinner woman who weeps at Jesus' feet and cleans His feet with her tears in Luke 7. I promise to remember how I do not merit the giant change of happiness from depression He's brought to me and how my heart breaks from gratitude for Him just thinking about it. I promise to remember that His burden doesn't mean trying to do His job, and to remember that His yoke is so so light and featherey.This is the good stuff. I'm happy just thinking about Him. The rest should just happen. And when it doesn't, I promise to remember Him. Thank you Ron Bartholomew for the best Tuesdays of our lives.
That's Nate looking great in his vest I got him for Valentines day. (The gentleman also got me the cutest and perfectly sized skirt from D.I.) I woke up at 7:30am Saturday morning to start working on decorating our extra bedroom into a love shack and to work on the rest of the things I had planned. It took me about 7 hours or more to finish everything but it was definitely worth it. I revamped a used Candyland game into Nate and Nichelle's Luv game and came up with about 60 questions for us to ask each other.
I wrapped up this romantic dinner package, complete with a tablecloth, customized Martinellis, tea lights , glass tumblers, hostess cupcakes, customized matches, and some home made heart shaped brownies in a little valentines box Alison Faulkner helped me out with. It was supposed to be for little apple pies, but I didn't really have time to be rolling out dough for mini apple pies.
This is the romantic dinner package all wrapped up before Nate opened it.
This is me waiting for Nate with our Burger King whopper feast. We love Whoppers. Sadly, we both opted for the double Whopper and huge fries.
We stuffed our faces, played our Luv game, and then headed off to our Stake Valentines dance. It was quite an experience. We took a video and tried to post it but neither one of us could figure out how to do it. I'll just tell you we did the electric slide for the entire duration of the 6 minute song with the ten other people that made it to the dance. Nate wrapped up the night with a reminder to me why I love him so much: His indulgence in his obsession with fireworks.
Yes that's him doing his usual flee from the scene. I love him. Hope you had a great weekend.
Things have changed... Nate noticed the difference in these two pictures of him and his mission friend Kyle from on the mission and post mission. He asked me what was different about the way he looked and all I said was that his hair is longer now. Kyle just got back from his mission two weeks ago and the bottom picture is from us at his homecoming in Midway. (In Midway, UT. some families have a second warehouse sized building built right next to their home used specifically for family functions like the one we went to. I've never seen anything like it before.) Going to Kyle's homecoming made me sad that I didn't go to Nate's homecoming. At the time I was too worried about smothering him and letting him settle in, but now I'm regretting that decision.
