Brenda Emmett

21 Principles–Principle 6

May 9, 2021 by Brenda Leave a Comment

Last month, I started a personal challenge to share one of the 21 principles as covered in the book by Richard G. Scott. This book has really touched my heart and I have felt impressed to share it with you and my own feelings about each of the principles. You can read about the other principles I have covered here. If you would like your own copy of this book, you can purchase it here. This is NOT an affiliate link, even though I do have an affiliate account with Amazon. I have chosen NOT to use an affiliate link as I don’t feel right about it in this circumstance.

“As you seek spiritual knowledge, search for principles,” counsels Elder Richard G. Scott. “Principles are concentrated truth, packaged for application to a wide variety of circumstances.”
“A true principle makes decisions clear even under the most confusing and challenging circumstances.”

I love this principle, though it is one of the toughest ones to practice. Sometimes it is really, really hard to understand when the Lord says “No.” We wonder what we are doing wrong. Why is this happening to us? Why do I have to suffer?

Instead, we should be asking ourselves questions like these: What do I need to change? What am I supposed to learn from this experience? Who do I need to help?

I think it is one of the hardest things that we need to do when we are having tough times. Instead of being drug down by our challenges, we need to get out of ourselves and try to see the bigger picture. In order to do this, we need to go back to the first principle, and ASK. We might not get an answer right away. But an answer will come. It might not be what we want or long to hear. It might be simply to just be still and give it to God to handle. We need to trust that it is all part of His plan, even when we don’t understand it at the moment. Eventually, if we are faithful and have faith, we can learn to understand why. We might not get our answers in this life. It might be the next life before we gain understanding. But if we trust the Lord, and give it to Him to handle, we can have peace in this life. Accepting Him and His will does not mean we won’t have struggles in this life. Our struggles are for our personal growth. But we can be at peace about those struggles by learning to trust that the Lord knows what we need when we need it. We just have to trust.

Dandelion Bouquets

May 6, 2021 by Brenda Leave a Comment

Mother’s Day is one of those holidays I still don’t feel old enough to be the guest of honor. I grew up wanting to be a mother someday, more than most anything. It was what I wanted to be when I grew up. But the actual celebrating of Mother’s Day is what we did for my mom. It just feels weird to be the mom being celebrated, and I have been a mother for almost 25 years.

With that being said, when I think about Mother’s Day, I always think about the year my son was five. He was in Kindergarten and honestly, it was the first Mother’s Day where he made an effort by himself to do something for me. His dad was always good about it before, but there is just something special about the first time they give a gift that is completely from their child’s heart. It is magical for a mother.

It was this year that my son gave me my first dandelion bouquet. Oh, he had picked the occasional dandelion here and there for me prior to this, but this was the first time he did it without me telling him to pick them. And this was a large bouquet of yellow. We seemed to have a rather healthy crop growing in our backyard that year. I probably could have made several dozen dandelion chains and necklaces and still had a ready supply for more. So he had plenty to pick for my Mother’s Day bouquet.

We also hadn’t started homeschooling at this time. So he had been influenced by his teacher at school. I think she told the class that all mothers just love to receive dandelions from their children. It is true. It isn’t so much that we actually like or love dandelions though. It is because our children thought of us. It is because they made the effort to pick something for us that through their eyes is beautiful. Eventually our children quit picking the dandelion bouquets for us and those days are over.

I think that this first bouquet was also memorable because of the other item he gave me that year. It was also heartfelt and done in only the way a kindergartener could do it. His teacher had made little papers for them to fill in with their own answers. My son was in the more advanced group and could read and write his answers by himself. He had all sorts of nice things to say about me. He loved when I would play with him. He loved when I would read to him. I was feeling quite good about myself and then I got to the last answer. It was a question about what my son loved most about his mom. I read, “I love my mom because she is buttfull.” What on earth did he mean by that??!!

Now, I tried to reason with my mother’s heart that he was only five, and meant beautiful. But this is the child who rarely misspells a single word. If he had written that at his current age, I would devise a suitable form of motherly torture that all good moms can come up with in a moment. Things like extra dishes, cleaning the bathroom, or weeding the garden. I would demand to know if he was saying that my derriere was big. But you can’t do that to a five year old. Five year olds are honest. And do you really want to hear the answer to that? No. You just smile and thank them. What else can you do?

It’s no wonder I smile at this time of year. As the days pass, I remember fondly the many dandelion bouquets I received for Mother’s Day over the years. I think that is why yellow is my favorite color. It reminds me of sweet little faces handing me bouquets of love. It makes me feel special. Even if it also reminds me that I am forever the mom who is buttfull.

21 Principles–Principle 5

May 2, 2021 by Brenda Leave a Comment

A few weeks ago, I started a personal challenge to share one of the 21 principles as covered in the book by Richard G. Scott. This book has really touched my heart and I have felt impressed to share it with you and my own feelings about each of the principles. You can read about the other principles I have covered here. If you would like your own copy of this book, you can purchase it here. This is NOT an affiliate link, even though I do have an affiliate account with Amazon. I have chosen NOT to use an affiliate link as I don’t feel right about it in this circumstance.

“As you seek spiritual knowledge, search for principles,” counsels Elder Richard G. Scott. “Principles are concentrated truth, packaged for application to a wide variety of circumstances.”
“A true principle makes decisions clear even under the most confusing and challenging circumstances.”

I really like this principle. It is really a very simple principle that a lot of people just don’t really understand. And that is unfortunate, as no matter how hard we may try to change certain things, truth is eternal. Let me see if I can explain this a little.

We all are free to make our own choices in this life. Some of those choices will make us happy and other choices will cause us unhappiness. If we willfully make a choice that goes against the laws of God, we may justify and rationalize that this choice makes us happy. But while we have had the freedom to make that choice for ourselves, we cannot choose the consequence for our actions. From the beginning of time, every action that we choose has a consequence attached to it. There is not a way around it, and we cannot choose to do whatever we want and not pay the price for our actions. Some consequences are good. Some are bad. Our freedom to choose comes in that we can decide how we will act in any given circumstance. We cannot choose what will happen because of our actions. Confused? How about a very simple example…

Suppose your child has a specific school assignment that they need to complete. They have the freedom to choose to do the assignment or to not do the assignment. Choosing to do the assignment means they will be learning and they have the opportunity to get a good grade. They will be able to understand future assignments more easily because of the work they did on this one. That is the consequence for making the choice to act and do the assignment. Now let’s say that instead, they make the choice to NOT do the assignment. They choose instead to play a computer game or with a friend. The consequence of that choice and action is that they don’t learn anything new, and they will get a bad grade, most likely a “F”. They also might not understand future assignments because they didn’t complete this one. In turn, they get a bad grade for the whole course. You see, they had the freedom to choose how they would act. But they did not have the capability to choose the consequence for their actions. They couldn’t choose to NOT do the assignment and still get an “A” on it and all future assignments.

It’s the same thing for every single choice we make during our lives. We can choose how we are going to live. We cannot choose the consequences though. Just as we make rules for our children and have consequences for not following the rules, we also have rules and laws from our Heavenly Father. We can learn about those rules and what happens when we choose NOT to follow them in the scriptures. We may choose not to listen and obey. But we cannot choose the ending consequence for the choices we make.

Lessons From Disney

April 29, 2021 by Brenda Leave a Comment

When I think of summer, it brings to my mind things like sunshine, parties, popsicles, watermelon, fireworks, things that explode, and family vacations. It is extra special when you have something that combines all of the above, or at least a good portion of them. As I think of all of these things, I anticipate memories. And then I remember an occasion where most of these things were combined and I give pause…

The funny thing about our family is that while we love Disney, we haven’t made it to one of the parks yet. I mean, I went when I was 5 years old, but I am the only one who has ever been to one.

However, when Chandler was just a little guy, he had a set of stuffed figures which resembled the well known mouse characters from Disney.

While the rest of the world referred to these characters as Mickey and Minnie, Chandler insisted that their names were Bob and Mrs. Bob. We have no idea why. It was just the way it was at the time. If we tried to correct him, he would become extremely distressed.

Chandler took Bob and Mrs. Bob everywhere. They were his real imaginary friends. He needed to know Bob’s opinion on just about everything. If we went to the zoo, he had to make sure that Bob saw everything too.

Bob was Chandler’s favorite. But Chandler insisted that we have Mrs. Bob too since they were…yes…married.

Chandler also had a fascination during those years, like most little boys, with things that crashed and blew up. He still does…who am I kidding here? Anyway, during this time, Gary was the Cubmaster for our local troop. We had a fun pack meeting planned and it even included a cannon that we were going to shoot candy out of for the kids. You can see where this is about to go, right?

We went over to our friend’s house to try the cannon out so we were prepared. We all thought it would be fun to shoot Bob and Mrs. Bob out of the cannon for Chandler. We placed them in the cannon and set it off, anticipating the fun of watching Chandler’s friends fly through the air.

We did not anticipate that they would emerge from the cannon on fire. When we got the fire put out, Bob had scorch marks across his face and a melted hole in his butt. Mrs. Bob had scorch marks and a melted shoe. Chandler was hysterical.

Chandler was also convinced at this age that anything mom put in the washing machine came out new. He begged me to wash his friends. So we took home the scorched critters and I quietly placed them elsewhere and started a load of laundry. Meanwhile Dad ran to the local and well known variety store and managed to snag another set of friends for Chandler. The day was saved!

Lessons learned from our cannon experience?

Never put anything into a cannon that you aren’t willing to replace.
If you do decide to put something into a cannon just to see what happens, make sure there are replacements available.
Read lesson #1.

21 Principles-Principle 4

April 25, 2021 by Brenda Leave a Comment

A couple of weeks ago, I started a personal challenge to share one of the 21 principles as covered in the book by Richard G. Scott. This book has really touched my heart and I have felt impressed to share it with you and my own feelings about each of the principles. You can read about the other principles I have covered here. If you would like your own copy of this book, you can purchase it here. This is NOT an affiliate link, even though I do have an affiliate account with Amazon. I have chosen NOT to use an affiliate link as I don’t feel right about it in this circumstance.

“As you seek spiritual knowledge, search for principles,” counsels Elder Richard G. Scott. “Principles are concentrated truth, packaged for application to a wide variety of circumstances.”
“A true principle makes decisions clear even under the most confusing and challenging circumstances.”

I really love this principle. How often do we really receive promptings from the Holy Ghost and then just ignore them? Do we understand how the Holy Ghost really works with us to influence us to the things our Heavenly Father desires of us and for us?

To explore this further, we need to understand that the Holy Ghost works in many different ways. It is different for each person. Sometimes, we can hear an audible voice. These are usually times when we are in danger and our attention is needed immediately. Not everyone does or will have this experience. For most of us, we will feel the Holy Ghost affirm and confirm things to us through our thoughts or gentle impressions in our hearts. In Galatians 5:22-23 we read about the fruit of the spirit. These are the ways we can know if we are feeling the influence of the Holy Ghost in our lives.

“But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.”
Galatians 5:22-23

One of the easiest ways to keep the influence of the spirit with you is to keep a prayer in your heart. This is essential as we make important decisions and also seek to be a tool in the hands of the Lord. This is how the Lord communicates with us. In order to understand what He is trying to tell us, we must exercise that spiritual muscle and our spiritual hearing. This takes practice. The more we practice it, the better we get at it. Let me see if I can explain this a little better…

Often, I am faced with making important decisions in our home , for my business, or even just my personal life. If I am earnestly listening to the promptings of the Holy Ghost, I will most often feel at peace and calm. As long as I am feeling this way, I know that I can proceed along my path, as this is what the Lord has in mind. If I began to feel anxious, or I experience a stupor of thought–meaning I am just not sure or I forget what I was thinking about–then I know that I should back up to where I was before I started feeling that way. Once I do, then I can try again to listen and try to find the right way to the Lord’s plan.

Sometimes I am stubborn and continue along the wrong path. I am sure I weary the Lord with my inadequacies at listening to the promptings I get from the Spirit or Holy Ghost. And I am positive I miss important messages of how I can be of service to someone in need of something I can do or share. I need to be better about listening for those things so I can bless others. One of my favorite quotes talks about how the Lord usually blesses us through the actions of another.

“God does notice us, and he watches over us. But it is usually through another person that he meets our needs.” ~Spencer W. Kimball

I need to be better at listening for these promptings. It would be a wonderful thing to be used by the Lord to bless someone else. This is something I want to work on in my own life, and I hope it is something I can continue to teach my son every single day. I can’t think of anything more important than teaching him to listen for and to the Lord through the promptings he receives through the Holy Ghost.