Looking Up

This morning, I sat next to Flowering Buttercup in the van on the way to Seminary.  She was already deeply entranced by the little iThing in her hand, and it was not yet even 6:00am.  We drove the ten minutes to the East building without saying a word and she never looked up from that tiny little screen.  

On the way home from taking one of the other kids to school, I noticed a middle school aged girl walking to the bus stop from her house, the same familiar little iThing in her hand.  She didn't look up from that thing even when she arrived at the bus stop, and I'm not sure that she noticed the handful of other kids who were already gathered.  I wondered if she's ever talked to them?  I wondered if bus rides to school are now eerily silent with iThings replacing that archaic conversation we used to have as teenagers.   I wondered what all those kids who don't have iThings do while they're walking?  Are they socially unacceptable because they make eye contact?  Is it a whole new level of insecurity to not have texts to check or statuses to update?  

While I watched that girl at the bus stop and waited for the next round of kids to carpool, I remembered a story from a Conference talk a couple of years ago...

At the end of a particularly tiring day toward the end of my first week as a General Authority, my briefcase was overloaded and my mind was preoccupied with the question, "How can I possibly do this?"  I left the office of the Seventy and entered the elevator of the Church Administration Building.  As the elevator descended, my head was down and I stared blankly at the floor.  The door opened and someone entered, but I didn't look up.  As the door closed, I heard someone ask, "What are you looking at down there?"  I recognized that voice - it was President Thomas S. Monson.  He had seen my subdued countenance and my heavy briefcase.  He smiled and lovingly suggested, while pointing heavenward, "It is better to look up!"  - Carl B. Cook General Conference, October 2011

What a huge challenge it is to get these kids to look up!  Not even all the way to heaven, but just at the people around them.  What an odd generation we're cultivating who communicates primarily via text.  I worry all the time that boys will eventually lose the skill of asking girls on dates.  And then dates will become obsolete.  And then no one will get married and any chance I have at being a grandmother will be lost!  I worry that my future missionaries won't have a clue how to knock on a door and teach the gospel because they will have spent their entire teenage years looking down into little screens in their hands.  

Currently, only the two older kids in our house have cellphones and only one of those phones is an iThing.  June is now 12 and rapidly becoming more social, more involved, and less at home.  She petitions on a regular basis for her own cellphone so that she can better communicate with her chauffers us when she's away.  And I have to say, the thought has crossed my mind more than once to give in and upgrade Spell Girl to an iThing and hand down the older phone to June so she isn't left on some curb waiting for us to pick her up.  But then I think about how difficult it already is to get our ONE iPhone user fully engaged in personal interaction now that she has access to the entire world in her hand.  How can I compete with Pinterest, Netflix, youtube, the Mormon Channel, and a text from her current love interest all at the same time?  I can't.  Imagine if all the kids had those?  We would just gather around the table with our phones, upload a youtube video for FHE, listen to the scriptures from the Gospel Library app,  text our testimonies, and never look at each other again!  It's kind of horrifying.  

So, what's the answer?  How can looking up become more enticing than those little phones?  Maybe that's the test of this generation...and their parents.  

I came home this morning and read the rest of that Conference talk.  It's not about cell phone usage or teenagers or even communication.  It's about trusting in Heavenly Father.  

"As we parted, the words of a scripture came to mind:  "Believe in God; believe that He is...; believe that He has all wisdom, and all power, both in heaven and in earth."  As I thought of Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ's power, my heart found the comfort I had sought in vain from the floor of that descending elevator."  - Carl B. Cook

It is impossible to find that comfort on a little screen.  You can't adequately convey love and appreciation for someone in an email.  Sometimes that has to be done in person.  Prayers cannot be texted and answers cannot be received on an iThing.  Heavenly Father waits patiently for us to turn off all that stuff, set aside our worldly distractions, and look up to Him for guidance and direction.  That's my goal this week...not to be more exciting than youtube, or funnier than Netflix, or more interesting than a text, but to remind my kids that it's good to turn those things off every now and then, and just be still.  That relationships are more important than status updates.  That Amazon does not know them as well as their parents do.  That the things that will bring them the greatest joy and comfort and hope are not found on Google.  They are found in the quiet moments spent with Heavenly Father and connecting in person with the people around them.  

Phew...this motherhood thing is so hard sometimes.  I'm grateful to have the guidance of a loving Heavenly Father to help me with all the hard things.  I know that He has entrusted me with these four little people and that He has an even greater interest in their futures than I do, so I'm sure that if I look up and ask for help, He'll help me figure this out.  

"Experience has taught me that if we, like President Monson, exercise our faith and look to God for help, we will not be overwhelmed with the burdens of life.  We will not feel incapable of doing what we are called to do or need to do.  We will be strengthened, and our lives will be filled with peace and joy.  We will come to realize that most of what we worry about is not of eternal significance - and if it is, the Lord will help us.  But we must have the faith to look up and the courage to follow His direction." - Carl B. Cook

Unplugged

Well, it seems the inevitable has finally happened at our house this weekend.  The first of the month has come and gone and Savannah was unable to come up with the $30 required to keep her iPhone.  I knew she didn't have the money because I was the one who took her shopping earlier in the month so she could spend the billions she had earned while babysitting.  She had an extensive list and was very careful to combine gift cards with sales so that her dollars would go a little farther.  She even used $10 of that money to buy a birthday present for her sister!  I was so proud of her frugal-ness (frugality? frugalism?? frugalicity???) and watched in awe as she crossed one thing after another off her list.  She even remembered to take the amount for tithing out of her wallet before we left so that she wouldn't be tempted to spend it.  When she's responsible and has good intentions like that, it's sometimes hard to follow through on the rules we've set up around here.  

Yesterday morning it was even harder because she had had such a BAD morning at Seminary.  She was grumpy and complainy at breakfast.  And then when I asked her what was wrong she burst into tears.  It's hard to be a 16 year old girl.  We had a long talk and she was almost late for school, but it was worth it.  And on the way to school, I found myself conflicted about whether to bring up the phone thing or just let it go.  Did I really want to kick her when she was already down??  But somehow, a small window opened and I slipped in a non-emotional, non-judgy...

"Do you have the $30 for your phone this month?"

"Nope..."

"OK well, while you're at school today you might make other communication arrangements with your friends and warn them that you'll be out of service for awhile.  And then you can give it to me tonight when you get home."

And then I waited...

nothing...

no tears...

no arguing...

just...

"OK"

and that was it.

I did have to remind her a couple of times to actually give me the phone after school yesterday.  But it is currently tucked away somewhere in my room until she can come up with the ransom for its release.  

And guess what happens when a teenager is unplugged...

they read stuff...

they dance...

they clean...

they have sleepovers with their sisters...

I'm kind of secretly happy that she didn't have $30 this month and I'm kind of secretly hoping she won't get any babysitting jobs anytime soon.  Later this week when we're trying to coordinate after school happenings, I may not love this as much, but for the weekend, I'm going to thoroughly and completely enjoy time with my daughter's full, undivided, non-texting, Instagram-less attention.

Life Lessons

A few weeks ago, Flowering Buttercup was helping serve dinner at a church function and accidentally dropped her iPhone into a bucket of drinks.  There was just enough standing water at the bottom of the bucket that the phone came out with some noticeable side effects.  

The damage was pretty insignificant, but to a 16 year old who knows her phone better than she knows her sisters, and who relies on it for everything in her life, the damage was severe.  Only one speaker was audible.  Her music apps were all "messed up."  And the volume control no longer adjusted the volume of her calls (as if she ever actually CALLS anyone??)  
She tried the rice thing.  You know, that method of drying out your iPhone by submerging it in a container of dry, white rice.  Apparently that's supposed to absorb all the moisture inside the phone.  It didn't work.

She tried Googling information and asking all of her friends how she could fix her phone.  And finally, two days later, as a last resort, she asked her parents.  

Let me tell you why we were last on that list.  In April, while I was in Hawaii visiting my mom, my Android died.  The Scout Master convinced me to cross over to the Mac side and just get an iPhone.  He said our phones (and therefore our schedules, calendars, and lives) would finally be compatible which would make life so much easier for everyone.  As usual, he was right.  I was instantly in love with my new iPhone and raved about it when I got home from my trip (and showed everyone all those beautiful Hawaii pictures that I had taken with my PHONE!)  Flowering Buttercup was sold and knew that her life would only be complete if she also had an iPhone.  (She sometimes gets confused about the things I have waited 42 years for and the things she is entitled to at 16.)   

She already had a perfectly adequate little phone and we were very hesitant to give in and let her have access to social media, the internet and YouTube 24 hours a day, right from the palm of her hands.  But the thing about Flowering Buttercup is that she knows what she wants.  And when she knows what she wants, she makes a plan, and she gets it...every time.  By May, she had talked to the Verizon guy about the cost of upgrading and talked to her dad about the monthly cost to own a phone, and then saved her money until she was able to buy one herself.  She paid for her own iPhone, the protective screen cover, and the blingy little case that protects it.  She also manages to come up with $30 on the 1st of every month to cover the cost of her data plan.  (That is seriously a mystery to all of us because she doesn't have a reliable source of income.  The deal is, if she doesn't have $30 by the first of the month, she has to give us her phone.  Somehow, at the eleventh hour of every month, there is a call to babysit or a birthday check or money from the sky, and she is able to pay her bill and thus keep her phone.  She is convinced that this is because she pays her tithing every month.  I'm sticking with that as a very valid explanation.)

Initially, when we set up her data plan, the Scout Master requested that she also pay for insurance protection in case of droppage or breakage or accidental death/dismemberment to the phone.  She, very confidently, stated that insurance would be an unnecessary expense because she never loses anything or breaks anything (that's mostly true.)  So she opted to discontinue the insurance after the initial 30 day period.  And that plan worked out great until two weeks ago when she dropped the phone into the bucket of water.  

She didn't want to have to admit to us that she had actually broken her phone and that she would now have to replace it at her own cost because she no longer had insurance.  When she finally did tell us, the Scout Master and I were secretly happy that she would be learning a nice little life lesson from all of this...potentially lots of them.  The benefits of having insurance.  The cost of being over confident.  The patience that comes from having to settle for a less than perfect phone.  We shared her frustration over what had happened, told her how sorry we were that the rice didn't work, and then sat back to watch the lessons unfold on their own without a single lecture from either of us.  Oh, the contentment...

The next day, I picked Flowering Buttercup up from school and she was positively bubbly for the first time since the phone accident.  During a conversation she had had with a friend earlier in the day, FB realized that she had only owned the phone for 6 months!  Her friend pointed out that iPhones come with a one year warranty!  So she could just walk into the Verizon store, tell them what happened, hand them her phone, and get a brand new, perfect one in return.  I explained that it didn't always work that way, that sometimes you have to take responsibility for your actions...whether accidental or not, and that if we actually went to the Verizon store they would explain that to her.  

So we did.  

And guess what.  

She told them what happened.  She handed the cute Verizon guy her phone.  He tried to reset it.  It didn't work.  He placed an order for another iPhone to be OVERNIGHTED to us.  We would receive it by the next afternoon!  hooray

So much for life lessons...

Instead of comforting her as she learned a hard lesson, I had to spend the 10 minute drive home listening to her say things like, "I love Verizon." and "See, Mommy, everything always works out."  and "That was so easy.  I wish we had gone right to the Verizon store instead of living with this broken phone for a whole weekend!" and "did I mention I LOVE Verizon?"  ugh...

When she finally took a breath, I reminded her that just because we can have everything, doesn't mean we should.  And that just because the Verizon fairies made everything work out this time, doesn't mean they can always do that.  I don't think she heard me.

So the life lessons didn't go quite the way I had planned.  I'm not sure if she learned anything this time, but I did.  I learned that I have a daughter who is resourceful and determined and doesn't settle for anything.  Those are great qualities that I'm sure will transfer into other great things in her life, bigger even than the miracle of an iPhone.  I learned that it's better not to be too overly delighted when your children experience challenges in their lives.   Although I would like them to learn all the hard ones while in the comfort and protection of this house, it's probably not going to work out that way.  And I learned that it's better just to celebrate with them when great things happen, and be available to pick up some pieces when they don't.      

Digital Scriptures?

I have always been a firm believer in the importance of using actual paper scriptures...the kind with pages you can turn and margins you can write notes in.  Both of my sets of scriptures (the tiny little quad that I got when I was baptized AND my larger print set that I got when I turned 40) are covered in highlights and scribbles and marked with different colors for each time I've read them.  I LOVE my scriptures.  I LOVE that I can see exactly what I was thinking each time I've read a particular chapter in the past.  I LOVE that some passages have been highlighted so many times that they've become kind of a greenish brown color.  I LOVE that they're permanent.  

My scriptures have become very personal and I feel a little lost when I don't have them with me.  So today when I flew out the door to Institute, and realized I didn't have my scriptures with me, I was a little frustrated.  I seriously considered going back home to get them.  But since I was already 10 minutes late, I decided to just get there and make it work.  And then I realized that I have a scripture app on my phone, right in my hand, that I've never actually used.  

I was happily relieved at how easy and quick it was to download everything, find the scripture I needed, and still keep up with the Institute teacher.  And THEN...guess what!  I really wanted to mark one of the scriptures we had talked about.  And it turns out I can do that, too...right on my phone!  

I can even pick different color options and underline stuff!

Wait!  It gets better!  Later in the class, the teacher used a relevant quote that I really liked and knew that I would want to remember it the next time I read this section of the Doctrine and Covenants.  With my paper scriptures, I would normally have written it on a sticky note and just stuck it right on the page.  But with this app, I found a little "NOTE" option when I highlighted which is just like adding my very own digital sticky.  

After spending 90 minutes getting to know this app, I might be converted to digital scriptures. In fact, I came home and told the Scout Master that I need an iPad.  Think it'll work?  :)

Indexing

Last month, we had an Indexing Challenge in our ward.  

What is indexing?

Indexing is the process of creating indexes for record collections.  Having indexes allows researchers to more quickly find records for specific individuals; without them, researchers might have to look through hundreds or thousands of records to locate an individual record. 

In FamilySearch indexing, volunteers copy family history information from digital images of documents.  The indexing process is simple.

1. Genealogical documents from around the world are converted into digital images and stored on the FamilySearch system.
2. Each document is divided into small batches of about 20-50 names.
3. An indexer downloads the images to his or her computer and enters the requested information.
4. Each batch of documents is indexed by two different people to ensure accuracy.  We refer to the two indexers as the A indexer and the B indexer.
5. If information from the A indexer does not agree with information from the B indexer, then someone called an arbitrator reviews both versions, compares them with the original document, and makes the needed changes.
6. Everyone gets free access to the indexes at www.familysearch.org.
   
   

The adults competed against the youth to see who could index the most names.  I kind of like a challenge.  I'm slightly competitive.  I had a laptop that was already loaded with the necessary indexing program.  And I'm a pretty fast data enterer.  So even though I had no idea what was a reasonable number of names to expect to finish within a month, I randomly chose 3000.  By the end of August, I had indexed 2900 names.  

The challenge ended with a Ward Ice Cream Social where the winners would be announced and the non-winners would get to be the ice cream servers.  The youth won.  I was fine with that.  The youth should always win stuff like that.  They're awesome.  And I knew they had actually done a lot of work.  But the surprise came when the winners of each auxiliary were also announced.  The EQ winner had indexed 500 names.  The HP winner did 300.  The YM winner was untouchable with 5000 names!  Spell Girl was the winner for the YW and she had done 350.  So, as they got ready to announce the RS winner, I secretly got ready to get up and claim my candy bar and bear my testimony of all the things I had learned during the month of August.  Imagine my shock when another woman's name was announced.  Cathe Becker had indexed 3900 names!  I am completely embarrassed to admit that for a few minutes I was dejected, discouraged, disappointed...and not at all interested in ice cream.  What a brat, huh?  

And I hadn't planned on telling you that whole story until this afternoon when my friend, Renae, posted this on her blog.

"There are many of the sisters whose labors are not known beyond their own dwellings and perhaps not appreciated there, but what difference does that make?  If your labors are acceptable to God, however simple the duties, if faithfully performed, you should never be discouraged."  Eliza R. Snow

Apparently I hadn't learned everything I needed to from last night's experience.  This lesson wasn't just about "checking my pride at the door."  It was about having a better perspective.  And it was about feeling joy and satisfaction "in my labors" even if I don't get a candy bar for doing it.  2900 names is still an amazing accomplishment.  It's 2900 more than I've ever done in my life.  And it doesn't matter if the ward knows how many names I did.  I still did them.  
So after reading that quote this afternoon, here are the things I really learned...

I started the Indexing Challenge because I wanted to win it.  But I kept doing it because it was fascinating.  Looking at names of people who came from Scotland and Italy on a boat in the 1800s with their entire families just to start a new life was inspiring and uplifting.  So many times, I stopped and wondered about those people, and what they had done in the years after arriving in the United States.  

Because I was indexing, I had a greater desire to do my own family history work.  I was drawn to familysearch.org and then to ancestry.com.  And it all ties together.  As I was looking up my own family names, I found census records and passenger lists that looked just like the ones I had indexed.  Only these were names I recognized, and I knew what had happened to them in the years following.   

In the month of August, not only did I index 2900 names of people I am not related to, but I also added hundreds of names to my family tree and took 24 of those to the Dallas Temple.   I'm pretty sure the lasting effects of that satisfaction are better than whatever I would have gotten from the candy bar and five minutes with a microphone.  

Thank you so much, Renae, for helping me realize how grateful I am for my labors, the ones that are noticed and the ones that aren't.  

SoundHound

You know I'm a music junkie, right?  Well, I downloaded this app on my phone a few months ago because the Scout Master suggested I might need it.  Because even though I know what songs I love, sometimes I forget the details...like who sings them.  So now when I'm in my car and I can't remember that Heart sings Barracuda, I just get my phone, find my SoundHound, and click on this...(and I can do all that without even looking at my phone, by the way, which is handy because it's usually in the car that I feel the need to know the details of a song.)

and then it listens to the song...

And a few seconds later, I have all the details I need, including the artist, album, sometimes the year it was released, and the LYRICS!   (At that point I do have to look down at the phone, but don't worry, I usually wait until I'm at a light to do that.)  

Just that one little trick up there would be enough to justify having this app on my phone, but last night I found one more reason to love it.  There are about 200 songs that I know well enough to never have to SoundHound.  The ones that are available, I've added to that playlist up there, but I know I've left out some really great ones.  Yesterday I thought it would be so great if I could remember some of the songs I've SoundHounded so that I could add them to this playlist or to my iPod.  And guess what!  I CAN!!  SoundHound keeps a history of everything I've ever asked it to listen to.  Cool, huh?

I LOVE my phone, and my SoundHound app, but mostly I love great music.