I finished President Nelson's Book of Mormon Challenge today

Today I finished reading the Book of Mormon. It was a challenge given by the prophet to all the women of the restored church of Christ to finish reading this book before the end of the year. By the way, I am also on schedule to finish reading it (aloud) in Czech by the end of the year.

We were specifically asked to mark each verse that speaks of or refers to the Savior.

This turned out to be somewhat problematic. Sometimes the scriptures are clearly referring to Jesus Christ. Sometimes, well...they aren't.

There are two very important things that I remember from when I did early morning seminary (which basically meant I woke up at 5:15 every morning through High School and studied the scriptures with my siblings and a really nice seminary teacher, except for the year when I was in France and we did a "home study" program where we met once/week at the church. Two of the other three years seminary was in my house and my mom was the teacher. My last year of seminary the bishop's wife (who was Japanese) a few miles away from us was the teacher and I drove there every morning with my little sister.):

1. A major theme of the Old Testament is being able to turn even some of the most awful situations into something good.
2. Jehovah, the God of the Old Testament, is Jesus Christ.

The name of the God of Israel is יְהֹוָה/yhwh. It means "He is/He causes to be." This occurs over 6,800 times in the Hebrew Bible. It's called the tetragrammaton, and the TLDR version is that this word got warped into Jehovah in English as a combination of the word yhwh and the vowels in the word addonay (which can refer to lord as in, like, the lord of a manor, the ruler of something). And the King James translators basically always translates this word to "Lord" (only 7 times out of 6,800 does the word "Jehovah" appear in the KJV).

Apparently most scholars think these things:
1. the Israelite's ancestors (like in the book of Genesis), the Canaanites, and other Western Semites worshiped the god "El"
2. the Israelites later began to worship yhwh/Jehovah
3. ...except when they didn't; some Israelites worshipped yhwh/Jehovah from early on
4. much later, yhwh/Jehovah was seen to be the same being as El

So, back to my read-through of the Book of Mormon. I decided early on that I was going to try my best to only highlight passages that unambiguously had something to do with Jesus Christ.

A concise(ish) latter-day saint understanding of the identity of God is like this:

• There is an all-powerful supreme being called God. His name is Heavenly Father. In the latter-days, we call him Elohim. I haven't studied this word in as much depth as I need to. But I do know that it's both a plural noun (!) and it takes a singular verb (?). Weird.
• Heavenly Father is a member of an organization called the godhead.
• It is made of three separate, distinct, unique people: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. They are not the same being.
• But all of them have the same, totally united ultimate purpose: bring about the immortality and eternal life of mankind.
• The Holy Ghost is a person of spirit. He does not have a body. Which is weird. But this allows him to fulfill his own specific mission.
• God the Father is the father of our spirits (and as such, there must also be a God the Mother, but we don't know very much about her, which is frustrating to me).
• We lived with God the Father before we were born as his spirit children. We are all spiritual siblings.
• God the Father's firstborn, only-begotten son (the only mortal child he has) was Jesus Christ.
• Jesus Christ was foreordained to be the Savior of the world.
• Jesus Christ was perfect and sinless.
• Jesus Christ was born into a human(ish - I mean, a human would never be able to suffer for the pain/sin of the world and life to tell about it) body as the literal physical son of Mary. (Remember how above I mentioned that we are all the spiritual children of heavenly parents? Well, we are the physical children of mortal parents, who are actually our spiritual siblings. So is Jesus Christ - except he's also the literal son of God the father.)
• Jesus Christ suffered for all of the pain and sin of the world. This is called the atonement. It was basically almost all accomplished during his great intercessory prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, but he also sealed this act by his death upon the cross.
• Jesus Christ was resurrected into a perfect (i.e. not mortal) body.  
• If we want to be forgiven of our sins, we will do these things:
• have faith that Jesus Christ's atonement is real
• repent 
• take upon ourselves the name of Christ and prove it by being baptized
• receive the gift of the Holy Ghost (remember the third member of the godhead previously mentioned? This is basically a promise that if you strive to keep the commandments, you can literally always have a member of the godhead with you, helping you)
• endure to the end: basically, rinse and repeat this cycle. We don't get baptized again, but we take the sacrament in church as a symbol of our renewed vow to keep our baptismal covenant (this is why it a. does not bother me that non-believers do not take the sacrament and b. not only that - it sort of does bother me for non-believers to take the sacrament! They aren't supposed to.)
• When we pray, we pray to God the Father in the name of Jesus Christ. 
• When we pray, we can sometimes talk about how great Jesus Christ is, and thank Heavenly Father for sending him. This is done all throughout the New Testament.
• There is a rare case when it's appropriate to pray to Jesus Christ directly, and that is when he is literally with you. He has a body. If he literally stood next to you in his mortal body or his resurrected body, it would be appropriate to worship him. 

So yeah. Back to my recent reading.

I had a really difficult time highlighting places that were definitely, unambiguously about Jesus Christ sometimes. Whenever the Book of Mormon referred to "the Lord", I highlighted it. When it was just "God" and it was not really obvious that it was Jesus Christ from the context (like, if it says, "God descends to redeem his people, it seems obvious it's about Jesus Christ. But it's not obvious in like, vocative cases. O God! Is that O God Jesus? Or O God the Father?)

I want to read the entire standard works and highlight it this way:

References to Jesus Christ: pink <-- because it stands out the most

References to Heavenly Father: yellow <-- because it seemed appropriate and is a common highlighter color

References to the Holy Ghost: green <-- because green is the color of life, this world, this earth

References to God that are ambiguous: blue <-- because blue rhymes with who

So what I am doing now is going back through all the pink sections that I highlighted (by the way, I went through seven highlighters) and underlining in a metallic gel pen these references:

Within the references to Jesus Christ I found that there are many cases that actually include:

- references to God the Father 

- references to the Holy Ghost

- references that are ambiguous about whether or not they are only referring to Jesus Christ

Some common ambiguous examples are: 

"the spirit of the Lord" - if Jesus Christ is "the Lord", then why is the Holy Ghost called "his" spirit? Is it the Holy Ghost? I am not sure.

"the Lord God" - is this God the Father or Jesus Christ?

I don't see how the scholars' understanding of the Israelite worship of Jehovah contradicts with the idea that Jesus Christ is the God of the Old Testament, though footnote nine of this article seems to indicate that? I personally don't have a problem with considering the Israelites were a bit misguided in their concept of God, even if they were the "chosen people." 

Actually, I rather think that there is evidence in the Book of Mormon that perhaps the ancient Jews did worship Jehovah. Here is why I think that:

Nephi was a Jew. He was born in Jerusalem to Jewish parents about 100 years after Isaiah, the great Jewish prophet, lived and preached. I really like Isaiah, by the way, even through the weird language of the KJV. I think I will like it more reading it in Czech, though. But that is just a hypothesis as yet.

On the first page of the Book of Mormon, Nephi describes how his father prayed "unto the Lord." (1 Nephi 1:5). Was Lehi praying to Jehovah (i.e. Jesus Christ)? I think he was. 

And I think it's evidence of his Israelite traditions that somewhat blurred the line between Jehovah and God the Father - or made them be the same thing, or perhaps before Christ's first coming - his mortal ministry - maybe people were supposed to pray directly to him (I think this is wrong, but I don't have evidence for why yet)?

Then on the next page, Lehi says, "O Lord God Almighty" which probably is that term "shaddai" which occurs 48 times in the Old Testament both in conjunction with the word El and yhwh. I think this word is specifically chosen to evoke the idea of power, supremacy, might, the ability to deliver and sustain etc. Does this refer to Jesus Christ or God the Father - and more importantly, did Lehi himself know who he was addressing? And beyond that, does it matter? If both Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ are totally united in purpose, aren't they both "almighty"? 

So yeah, I observed that there were numerous examples of Nephi and his family praying "unto the Lord" throughout 1 Nephi: 

All of these refer to people praying to the Lord:

1 Nephi 2:7

1 Nephi 2:12

1 Nephi 5:9

1 Nephi 7:17

1 Nephi 7:21

1 Nephi 7:22

1 Nephi 8:8

1 Nephi 8:9

Then between these chapters, Nephi sees the vision of the Tree of Life in which he is shown Jesus Christ. I think it's safe to say he learns something about the nature of God. 

Examples that follow include other people praying to the Lord (not Nephi):

1 Nephi 15:8 <-- "have ye inquired of the Lord?"

1 Nephi 16:24 <-- he did inquire of the Lord

1 Nephi 16:32 <-- they did give thanks unto him

1 Nephi 17:8 <-- Nephi was literally talking with the Lord in this case

1 Nephi 18:3 <-- here ambiguous about whether or not he was literally talking with the Lord

1 Nephi 18:21 still praying to the Lord <-- the only example after his vision where he is praying "to the Lord"

1 Nephi 21:22 <-- reference to "the Lord God"

1 Nephi 22:7 <--- another reference to "the Lord God"

I have not gone through 2 Nephi yet to check for other ambiguities in Nephi's references to God. I do know that it isn't until 2 Nephi 10 that Nephi's little brother says Christ's name is Christ. After that, the references to Jesus Christ in the Book of Mormon are significantly less ambiguous, which makes some sense; the Nephites had the plates of Nephi with his writing. They would have studied it. 

* * * 

I find it really interesting to study the scriptures in this kind of detail. It is deeply fulfilling to me. I don't expect everybody to "get" this, or to need to study the scriptures like this in order to have a good experience, but I really feel like clapping my hands for joy because there's a place for me and my weirdness in the world of gospel scholarship. 

I wish there were a "quad" corpus so that I could use other corpus analyzing tools to try to search the scriptures, for example there's this really fun "word mapper" tool that's pat of Lancsbox. But this wordcruncher tool is a pretty interesting tool that I've started to play around with a bit. I know that manually reading through the scriptures and highlighting the sections for Jesus Christ is valuable in its own way, but computers could do the job in a much more thorough, analytical, objective way that might be able to show us surprising things. Anyway, the constant invocation from the prophets is to "search the scriptures" - not merely to "read" them. 

There's this other really cool tool called the LDS Scripture Citation Index. It shows all the scripture citations from extant general conference talks from 1830-present (with a few breaks). From this tool, I learned that the most frequently (by a LOT) quoted chapter of scripture for latter-day saints is definitely the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 5. That makes sense, and I find it really interesting. 

Jesus Christ is the author and finisher of our faith. He is the God of the Old Testament. In the temple, we learn that Jesus Christ is completely obedient to Heavenly Father in every single minuscule detail. The way to eternal life and salvation is to accept his atonement, be baptized, and continue to walk down the covenant path. I have a testimony that Heavenly Father knows and loves us, that I have access to him through prayers in Jesus Christ's name. I know that Heavenly Father is the director of the plan of salvation. I know that Jesus Christ is also God and that his atonement is real, and that I can draw upon its healing and cleansing power when I sin by sincerely repenting. The scriptures repeat over and over that every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is the Christ. When I sometimes feel like that seems impossible, I can read these words and receive renewed testimony in God's strength and power. One of the sweetest messages of the Book of Mormon is that God is capable of accomplishing his work. What a hopeful, positive message. I believe it.

Who can answer my questions about corpus linguistics intersecting with my study of the scriptures?

Sometimes - rarely - I have a dream that is so nice that when I wake up and realize it's not real, I feel very sad.

I had a dream just now that was nothing concrete, just feelings. But the feeling was that it was okay for me to be this way. It was acceptable.

By this way, I mean something like an incomparably nerdy dork. And I know that nerdiness is the new "cool" - I'm not talking about that kind of nerdiness. I'm talking about the other kind. The one that prevents people from ever getting too close to you. Or that prevents you from being able to concisely articulate your ideas. Or that prevents you from being able to inspire people to do something.

I emailed a BYU professor a short email with a question that's been on my mind for weeks. He happens to be the creator of several extremely important, influential corpora. He emailed me back. The exchange went like this:

Question about x
Terse answer that I didn't understand
Three more questions about x and an apology for not understanding
Terse restatement of first answer with a link, ignoring my questions completely

I guess he's busy. But like...still...

I would like to live in a world where my weird way of thinking and seeing things is valued more. Where I can feel free to be myself.

Sometimes I decide I don't care, and that I can just be myself anyway. And then there are moments like this stupid email exchange where I personalize everything. I'm not stupid; in my head I know that he's just busy, email doesn't transmit tone very well, and it's likely I was asking the question in the wrong way.

But it isn't my head that hurts, is it.

My Weltschmerz

This post has been a very long time coming.

I have two forces inside myself at war with very strong opinions that seem to completely contradict one another, yelling at me about how the world "should" be. It has been over a decade and I still don't have any exact answers about how to resolve these forces. So I have found a kind of meagre resolution in just accepting that is ok for the time being that I don't have acceptable answers, and trying to find happiness in it anyway.

I strongly believe that I should be the best wife and mother that I can be, that this is my most important role and contribution to this world, and that as such I should be present and work diligently with all my might in the real, physical world. This force probably has something to do with both evolutionary biology and being raised in a conservative religious culture that places great importance on family. Also, I probably innately value and idealize this role.

I also strongly believe that my ideas, intelligence, and contributions to the world can matter enough to make a big positive impact for good in the minds, hearts, and actual lives of people outside my family. This force strongly values my individuality. It probably comes from being raised in a family culture which highly values education and learning. It probably is also just an innate piece of me.

Do not tell me that my work in the home matters. Do you think I don't believe that? Do you honestly think I haven't thought about it in exquisite, frustrating detail? While you're sitting at a desk getting paid and praised by your colleagues - or even critiqued or yelled at by them - I have spent the very vast majority of the last ten years, "alone but not alone", with very little validation of any of my first goal's efforts.

My husband, you ask? Doesn't he validate me? Are we talking about the endless, mindless battle against entropy here? The thing about dishes, laundry, and organ playing on Sunday is that people only notice them when they are broken. So, you're a programmer who creates tools that only gets recognition when there are bugs or when they break, you counter? There are millions of ways to creatively optimize problems on a computer. There are limited ways to creatively optimize problems with housework, and all of them involve a lot of physical drudgery and immersion in the real, moist world of caring for small children. Lift this. Fold that. Wipe this. Clean that. You think *your* life is a daily grind, try living mine. You really haven't got a clue. You achieve progress with your next version. You receive feedback of many, many kinds. You have some measure of control over your efforts. I am constantly at war with entropy, and somehow no amount of my sweetheart's, "oh, you folded the laundry! Thank you!" is fulfilling to my individual intelligence and self-worth, the second goal, anyway.

Some days I just want to scream about the unfairness of it.

And I'm not talking about "gender roles," I'm talking about conditions of mortality that make it so that I must make continuous, massive sacrifices in order to fulfill both of these purposes - including goal number one, my greatest dream, my highest personal value of bringing children into this world and raising them into good adults. I know I wouldn't be happy as a man. I wouldn't be happy as the primary breadwinner, either. I think this housewife role is where I can be happiest. But it definitely still sucks sometimes. It isn't "the way it should be" - but then, I don't know what that really would look like. I have to just accept and believe that it's better for me to pass through this sorrow for some reason having to do with my eternal progression and that the pain of living will one day be resolved.

My nine year old summed it up nicely. "Your job is great because everything you do is for our family." I totally cringed when she said this. Fortunately I was making dinner and so my back was to her, and my husband sensed what was wrong and sent her away on an errand.

"She just succinctly explained the entire problem. I don't *want* everything I do to be for our family. I want to do other great things."
"That makes you a wonderful person, Kate." He proceeded to give me a quote by Joseph Smith about how people should not be content to bless only the lives of their family but to be anxious to make a difference in the world as well, or something like that.

Around 2012 my goals started to shift. I couldn't figure out the internal "mommy wars" thing so I just set it aside completely and started to pursue genealogy research more intensely. There's a fulfilling project if ever there was one. And it is an odd synthesis of both of the two goals I have: be a force for good in my family and be a force for good on my own. 

I have been so much happier setting aside my preoccupation with resolving my Weltschmerz and just DOING what I can to fulfill both of my bigger goals. It's easy to get lost in doing.

For me, "doing" seems to look quite different than it does for most of my peers. Example: the only path towards really being the genealogist that I want to be is to learn Czech. I find enormous amounts of joy in studying Czech. But it is sad to me that it's not something I can share with others around me in the real world.

You know what, though? There's a place for me. I don't have to "shallow" my way anywhere. I am okay being this person who I am; nobody ever said we should ignore the Weltschmerz or pretend it isn't real. It's ok that a lot of things around me are unsatisfactory and that sometimes causes me to retreat into my internal world. Still, I choose to live happily in my real world here in Ankeny in my warm, cluttered house with a basketball team's worth of children constantly playing "hot cross buns" on the recorder, slamming all the doors and cabinets, and running around outside in 37 degree weather without shoes (!!), and always yelling/complaining/whining at me. One day they're going to grow up and we'll be able to have the intelligent conversations I so crave. Also, Danny assures me that the day for my advanced degree will come, and probably fairly soon. Perhaps even in the next year or two.

There isn't an easy solution to solving my personal Weltschmerz, but perhaps there's a simple one: believe that it's going to be okay. Love the people around me and myself. Focus on doing what I can to be a force for good within all my spheres of influence. The validation piece is still pretty lacking, but I guess since it might be that way for the other moms in my life, instead of trying to tease it out of others I should shift my focus on giving it to others in great abundance. That, and do my best to give it to myself.

Genealogy Friends

[I originally wrote this in October 2016, reread it as I was refiling some stuff, and decided to both publish and add to it.]

My two best genealogy friends fell from the sky into my metaphorical lap. They are both Czech.

There's nothing like a good friend who shares your same interests to make you realize how much you wish you had more of them. Externism again: the more close friends you have, the less close friends you feel like you have.

Every day my husband goes to work and I count down the hours until he can come home again and we can talk about everything. Or rather, that I can spill my soul out and have him collect it again. I have so many thoughts and feelings and they are not shareable with the majority of my current friends. One of my close friends moved to St. Louis recently, and I feel that loss.

Danny has very few friends and doesn't seem to mind it very much. He tells me that he sometimes wishes he could just have close friends without the effort of making them. I understand that feeling. Cultivating friendships is a little bit like planting a garden with a package of mystery seeds. It takes a while to figure out if anything you've grown will be beautiful or edible.

When you find a beautiful flower, or a tasty pepper plant, you try to overwinter it in the safety of your house. I have 10 pepper plants I started from seed that are on a counter next to the windows in the basement, one of the few sunny rooms in our house. They are nice to look at when I'm typing at my computer. I also brought the red geraniums inside and they are by the sliding deck door in large window boxes I built and painted by myself. If they bloom all winter, it will be much more cheerful than last year when somebody drained all the color out of the landscape for months and months, and we were stuck inside with nothing to do and four very energetic small children.

I also have some begonias, impatiens, and one habanero plant that I overwintered in 2015. If it is possible to overwinter plants, it should also be possible for a housewife in Iowa to make lifelong friends with whom I can discuss my nerdy interests and explore the exciting world of transcriptions and genealogical proof without abandon.

Maybe someday I will be friends with my children. As long as they still lick the floor, that day is not today.

Motherhood is very hard, but in ways I hadn't foreseen. It's hard to be home all day with a mountain of meaningless jobs to do. I sometimes feel like a slave. But I am fully aware that this would be the same if I were a father, and in some ways worse because at least I have the small benefit of being my own master. I can and often do intersperse the most obnoxious chores with exciting transcriptions, 10 minutes here, 10 minutes there. Unless the 10 minutes turns into two hours, and the school bus suddenly has arrived and we still have no groceries because I was supposed to have gotten them earlier…

But the way motherhood is most painful to me is the loneliness.

Although, claiming motherhood is the loneliest stage of life is wildly inaccurate because absolutely nothing competes with being a celibate unmarried college student while Danny was serving his mission. I dated so many guys but the whole time it was so, SO pathetically empty and miserable. I can relate very well to Škvorecký’s lovesick novels and the desire for human connection.

The loneliness of motherhood is not like that. I have found another human soul, my beloved husband, who understands me and loves all of me. If we could spend every waking second of every day together, maybe it would not be like this, but since we can’t, it's like loneliness of the brain. I want meaningful intellectual connections with humans.

Teaching English to small humans is neither easy, nor mindless. But it is tedious. Other tedious jobs include teaching basic morals (no you may not punch your brother in the back with your shoes), basic manners (no you may not fart on purpose at the dinner table), basic religion (no you may not fart on purpose during the prayer either!), and basic common sense (no you may not lick the floor!!!)

I try to reach out to smart people I know in the real world. There are many well read, witty, fun moms out there… somewhere… right? Maybe it will require me to try to focus more on their interests rather than luring them into indulging in mine. But that sounds so...boring...

My close friends from college all have infants to worry about right now. If I become pregnant again anytime soon, it will most certainly not be out of boredom or an attempt to address an identity crisis - which maybe is an accurate description of how I feel. I'm turning 30 next week but I feel 15. This stupid trampoline injury from three weeks ago that refuses to heal tells me I'm not 15.

I went to Las Vegas in April on a “girl's trip.” I spent a week with my awesome mother in law, who I admire and get along with well, since she is Danny's mom and they are very similar. Also on the trip were my sisters in law, a cousin in law, and Katie the close family friend. It was not for gambling. It was for a cheap resort hotel, human interaction, and tradition. We do this every other year or so. I would never be invited if it weren't for my family connections, though I get along well with all of them. It’s just I would never naturally fall into their friend group. But then, neither would Danny. It was just the luck of fate that he would be born into a “cool” family.

For example, there I was, reading “Deciphering Handwriting in German Documents” by Robert Minert by the pool… for fun. Despite (or probably partially because) they all made fun of me for it.

“What are you reading, Kate?”

“Oh...just my book about German handwriting.”

“Let me see.” [looks at it] “Um...I would never read that. I would rather die”

After talking about the Family History Library, and how the women lucky enough to live in the vicinity (cough cough) really should go do some look-ups for this specific British genealogy problem Danny and I were working on back then, his oldest sister Ruth Ann said, “I would literally rather poke my eyes with a stick than do that.”

This increased my feeling of gratification by 1,000x when, a few months later, I won the ridiculous diet competition that I was pressured to join with these 8 women. Everybody else’s requested prize was something like money; I asked for 3 hours of their time in which to teach them how to do some family history. I shall claim this prize when we visit there at Thanksgiving in the end of November. Ruth Ann will definitely need to bring a stick with her.

I don’t naturally fit in with these people, but with conscious effort, I can be relatively happy. Of course, know also that the way these women show their love is through their teasing, and nobody is exempt. It’s a compliment that they tease me for my bookishness. In the end, of course I swam in the pool with everyone instead of devouring my glorious nonfiction book. Later, though, as we were loading the cars to leave, I somehow became engrossed in my first ever texting conversation about Czech nationalism with my friend Lukáš, and the contrast was palpable even to my mother in law. I was beaming.

“Who are you talking to?”

“oh, just my genealogy blogger friend. He says that Czech nationalism is a really interesting but complicated topic, that maybe people weren't as oppressed under the Habsburgs as we sometimes pretend they are… which I had never considered… but maybe it's because blah blah blah”

Her eyes glazed over as she stopped listening.

“How did you meet this guy?”

“oh just through blogging.”

Out of the sky.

Maybe if I work really hard I can trace the living descendants of my Czech ancestors who stayed in Moravia or something. Maybe I can fall into their metaphorical lap “from the sky” (ha! the “sky” that actually represents hundreds of hours of research spent in trying to find them). Maybe I can find another brain with whom I can share my genealogy musings, thoughts, wonderings…

I haven't heard from Roman in about a month. He's been busy. He says he's “lazy.” I have been wickedly hoping he breaks his ankle at badminton again, like he did when he found me in 2012, so that we can discuss the important pressing genealogical issues for our family. This desire is partly so that I can solve the puzzle, partly so that I don't feel like such a pariah, worthy of only one single good Czech genealogy friend with whom to discuss time machine envy, negative evidence, whether the letter is a capital H or not (and thus changes the meaning of the sentence), etc.

No, I simply refuse to accept this. It’s time to start searching through the wide, blue sky for some more geraniums to overwinter: friends with whom I can share my brain freely, and who in turn help mine to expand and bloom.



Update November 2018:

Two years later, I can attest to these facts:

Friending is still a struggle for me, and will probably continue to be for the rest of my life.

But it really can happen. People do exist in this world around whom I can be my mostly unfettered self.

But like, perhaps sometimes being a good friend means "fettering" yourself. And that's okay.

I really wanted to keep this blog upbeat, positive, non-melancholy, non-bitchy. The 2016 section of this post is not really any of those things, at least to me. When I reread what I wrote, I am flooded with memories of how I felt and who I was. It is so difficult to love one's past self.

I am choosing to be confident that there are people in the world who share my deep passion for somewhat eclectic things, who are interested in reading my thoughts and feelings, and who love me. This is a really difficult choice to make. I realize that my personal anxiety refuses to trust anything or anybody. But perhaps to really have the kind of friendships I really want, that's what is needed. Trust in people, that they won't let you down, that they don't implicitly hate you, etc. etc.

I think I can try out this trust, even if it is not my natural state of being, and even if parts of me would rather not. I am quite sure there is a version of myself called "Tragically Romantic Kate." She's pretty much a myopically stupid super-female drama queen who deeply enjoys writing awful poetry. Maybe I'll allow some of the poetry writing, but mostly I think she belongs in a nursery with all the other helpless crybabies.

PS

The 3 hours remain owed, but I've accepted that it's not going to happen, least of all how I imagined it.

Why would you choose to live in hell?

I don't really believe in hell, or at least the traditional version of it.

It's just too ludicrous. Satan and his devils with horns and pitchforks surrounding some giant lake of fire and brimstone. This is, quite literally, the stuff of comic books.

Ludicrous things are quite often very funny, and I can't help but laugh at this, nor its caricaturesque counterpart of pearly white gates guarded by Saint Peter (I guess that's the stereotype? It's not even really "a thing" in my own personal religious/cultural experience, not even in jokes), a befuzzled God with a halo and white robes, bunches of winged angels standing around on clouds and playing harps - etc. But right now I want to talk specifically about damnation and hell.

The scriptures are full of references to what at first glance is something similar to the above depiction of hell. Here are some examples:  "A lake of fire and brimstone, whose flame ascendeth up forever and ever and has no end" (2 Nephi 9:15-23) or the beast from Revelation being taken and "cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone" (Revelation 19:20) or how, "upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and an horrible tempest: this shall be the portion of their cup." (Psalms 11:6 even though I don't really like the Psalms that much yet) - or in reference to the days of the Lord's vengeance, how the "streams [of Zion] shall be turned into pitch, and the dust thereof into brimstone, and the land thereof shall become burning pitch." (Isaiah 34:9) Later, how "the fearful, and the unbelieving, and all liars, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie, and the whoremonger, and the sorcerer, shall have their part in that lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death." (Doctrine and Covenants 63:17).

And, just because I am pretty sure you probably just skimmed the above paragraph, know that the point I was trying to show was that images of a brimstoney hell are completely laced throughout the scriptures.

But I'm sure it's not literal.

I am also quite sure that this particular kind of hell as described is not a post-final judgment experience, but rather, that we experience this when we are separated from God.

Like, now.

During our every day existence.

Brimstone is sulfurous. It's this nasty smelling stuff present in hot springs all over the "Holy" Land (I personally think this title for this land is the biggest misnomer of all and wrote a tiny bit about my time in Israel here, though it is highly abbreviated and doesn't really express this idea perfectly - but the unholiness of the holy land deserves its own rant, not here, not now). It is mentioned in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and other various cities throughout the Old Testament. It's a symbol of God's displeasure and anger.

Does God's anger only come upon us after we are dead and judged for our actions?

No way.

If the God of the Old and New Testaments and other books of scripture is real, for sure he interferes with our lives while we are yet living. Or at least, he has with some people, and certainly has the power to interfere in our lives, even though that might seem difficult to believe in our "modern, educated world" that is allegedly devoid of angels, communication with God, revelation (hint hint: it's not devoid of those things!).

The meaning of "damnation" has changed over time to imply something final. But in the past, and in its use in the scriptures, it actually described the state of being that is the opposite of salvation, which we know exists in various degrees. It's a spectrum, guys - which means it's infinitely personal. That's the only way it makes any sense. If you are not "saved" then you are "damned" - i.e. hindered in your progress and privileges. But precisely where you're hindered totally depends on you, yourself, where you choose to be on the spectrum of salvation.

And it really is up to you because salvation itself - the possibility of being saved - is freely given to all mankind through Jesus Christ.

It's for everyone. "He cometh into the world that he may save all men if they will hearken unto his voice; for behold, he suffereth the pains of all men, yea the pains of every living creature, both men, women, and children, who belong to the family of Adam. And he suffereth this that the resurrection might pass upon all men, that all might stand before him at the great and and judgment day. And he commandeth all men that they must repent, and be baptized in his name, having perfect faith in the Holy One of Israel, or they cannot be saved in the kingdom of God." (2 Nephi 9:21-23)

Basically: Jesus Christ, aka God himself, came down to earth, lived a perfect life, suffered individually for our sins (I referenced my time bubble theory in this post - I really don't know how this is possible, but I have a big imagination and God is all powerful so I can just trust/believe that it is), and all of us - EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US including nonbelievers, sinners (ahem that's all of us), murderers, etc. - Every single human that has ever lived and ever will live will be resurrected into a perfect physical body, which is very different from what we experience in this life (I reference my displeasure at having to live in this crappy human frame in this post as well).

I know we will all be resurrected, and that after resurrection we will be judged.

If we want to receive salvation, i.e. be saved, the steps are clear: repent and show your faith by being baptized. And then continue to walk on the covenant path. Keep going. Keep repenting. Keep showing your faith. Keep growing it. Keep fighting the good fight.

The scriptures talk about two different, distinct kinds of death: physical death and spiritual death (or sometimes called "the second death"). Physical death is when our spirit is separated from our bodies. You know, the death we always think about when we hear the word "death."

But the other death is when our spirit is separated from God. This is "spiritual death." Because of Adam and Eve's choice in the garden of Eden (well, however literal that story is - which is also a totally different topic for another day), we have the possibility to experience both of these kinds of death. We make our own spiritual death by what we do, what we think, and our daily actions. Paul talks about this, by the way. "Some are "dead" while they "liveth"" (1 Timothy 5:6).

"And if they will not repent and believe in his name, and be baptized in his name, and endure to the end, they must be damned; for the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel, has spoken it." (2 Nephi 9:24)

Clearly, this scripture infers that you can be damned while you are still alive. You can choose to separate yourself from God. You can feel great agony and misery now. You can choose these things.

But why would you?

Does that make any kind of sense?

If you had the chance to be happy now - wouldn't you take it?

I think the Old Testament in particular talks a lot about damnation and hellfire and that kind of stuff for this reason: it works. Nephi, who lived about 100 years after Isaiah (so, right in the thick of this damnation and hellfire rhetoric. Yay ancient Israel and the Mosaic law - not! So glad I live now, not then) talks about how it works, about how he continually had to preach to his people in this way.

I am not sure that this rhetoric of damnation and hell works so well today because it has become such a caricature that it is almost impossible to think seriously when confronted with it. It's easy to be dismissive of this image. And it's also easy to think, "well, a loving God isn't going to be this way." It almost sounds like some kind of temper tantrum - that's how I would describe how "God's anger" seems to me when I am not thinking introspectively and seriously about what a paternal kind of anger that is fully justified and real must actually be like.

But the thing is, I have a firm understanding of hell as guilt, hell as anxiety, hell as the feelings of anguish and nastiness that well up within yourself when you willfully separate yourself from God. I understand that and experience it. It is a constant struggle to me to repent.

Hence why I go to church. At church I can literally be "baptized" again - except it's not through baptism, but taking the sacrament. A symbolic gesture, a physical way of re-covenanting with God, recommitting myself to try my best to do his will. 

The "chains of hell" are metaphorical. They are the feelings which overpower us and bind us to misery when we choose not to repent and come unto Christ, and accept the salvation he's willingly offering us. The scriptures talk about how the devil will "rage in the hearts of the children of men, and stir them up to anger against that which is good." (2 Nephi 28:20) He also talks about how he uses other strategies like pacifying and lulling us into carnal security - i.e. a state of not caring about anything. Or how he flatters us and tells us that everything we hear about religion is just one big lie.

It's not a lie.

Salvation is free.

We can turn ourselves - our problems, our worries, our anxieties, our fears, our physical suffering and pain, our personal individual hell that we naturally and willfully create for ourselves - over to God. We can ask to be forgiven, and he will forgive us.

Because he loves us.

Do you really think that a loving God would make a plan whereby the majority of his children would not receive salvation? Does it really make sense that we are here and then our bodies get old, decay, crumble, and eventually rot away - that all of this is meaningless and we have no reason to hope or to try to become the best kind of people we can, and to create the best kind of world that we can? Is our existence puny, pathetic, and meaningless or are we joint-heirs with God, with the possibility of exaltation and limitless creative powers (!!!!) and glory? What makes sense? Everything around us testifies that God is real and loves us.

If infinity is real, in one of the infinite possible scenarios that could exist, God must be found in one of them. Why not in this existence?

Why not search your feelings and find a space to trust that God exists and loves us? Even if it weren't real, faking it would make you happy.

How much more so then if it were real?

It is real!

We bring hell upon ourselves when we willfully turn away from God. Sometimes this is not really our fault (see Limited Agency Theory). I have firm faith that God will judge us fairly, and that we will all end up somewhere on the spectrum of salvation, limited in eternal progress only by what we ourselves fairly and rightfully choose. So let's choose God!

I think that it should be very easy for most of us to understand what faith looks like in a digital world. We engage in this kind of action all the time. We post things out to some Great Unknown Nether - a black hole - a nebulous connected labyrinth of wires and electricity connected all over the world (well except maybe not North Korea) - with a firm hope that somebody out there will read what we have to say. That our message will make it to its final destination - but even more specifically, that it will be understood by the recipient. I feel especially close to this metaphor of faith being like digital communication because I love to blog and I love to interact with far away, distant friends who live on the other side of the world yet somehow, for some reason, seem to really get my mind (Nowadays I feel that I could probably end that really lonely poem in that aforementioned post with, "oh! Right there!").

But even if you're not a blogger, I mean, we all send emails and texts and write social media posts all the time. We never (or hardly ever) see the recipient open them. We just know they will be read. We know that someday, what we write will be received. We trust that it will be understood, and perhaps even reciprocated.

Faith is just like this, only it's not about typing on a keyboard but about prayer. But even if you can't or won't bring yourself to like, kneel and pray, either silently or aloud (and maybe you're limited, and it's not your fault that you can't do these things), you can still direct your thoughts to the possibility that God loves you (ha! Just by reading this I tricked you into doing so! Master Manupulatrix mwahahaha). You can direct your curiosity and wonder towards considering that God wants you to be his, that you matter, that this world and this life matter, that there is meaning. You can, in your mind and in your heart, start to think about these things.

After you think about these things, you can wonder to yourself if they could be true. You can pretend that they are true for just a moment, and this is how: you can create the words in your mind to ask God for yourself if they're true.

And he'll answer you.

He speaks your language, and I'm not talking about crippled languages we can speak.

I mean he knows exactly how to communicate with you so that you will understand and get the message he wants you to have, and because he loves you, he will!

I had a dream the other night which was a great comfort to me. (By the way, apparently this is the way that I best communicate with God, perhaps because it is the only way that I will shut up enough to listen? Or - perhaps because I think in really strange metaphorical ways, so a dream with completely unrelated images can end up making sense to me, carrying a precise, direct message straight to my heart. Also, I'm not insane: I am fully aware that my dreams are not all divine. Sometimes they are just random neurons firing. But I really have experienced, and quite recently, an assurance from God that he cares about me, given to me through a really personal dream that I just know would make sense to nobody else, therefore it is not worth typing out for the world to mock.) 

Just try it. What's there to lose but your pride, and in any case, isn't that something worth losing?

Clothes Suck

Gotta get this off my chest, pun intended.

Postpartum bodies are not fun. I don't even want to go into all the magnificent details of it.

I just want to write about clothes.

Ah, clothes shopping. That "universal" female pastime. Billions and billions of dollars go into perfecting the female form. We are supposed to care an awful lot about our looks.

I can't fully disengage with this near constant cultural pressure, as much as I'd like to sometimes. It matters how I look because it is extremely connected in both overt and subtle ways with how I act and how I'm treated.

None of my clothes fit. I resisted the intense desire to burn all my maternity clothes and instead gave them all to a pregnant lady in my ward. Well, most of 'em.

Maternity pants are way too big. Maternity shirts are too big and too small in the wrong places.

None of my prepregnancy clothes fit, either. Shirts are all too short. My biggest pants fit fine in the legs but not in the hips. The hair-tie trick doesn't work.

So I got to spend my day shopping for clothes.

Great.

Not.

Clothes shopping as a latter-day saint woman is always a challenge due to my underwear, called temple garments. Endowed adults pretty much always wear these night and day, the exceptions being fairly obvious (working out, swimming, etc). It's an outward expression of the covenants I made in the temple to devote my life to serving God.

So here's how the temple garments affect my clothes shopping experience:

- does the shirt have sleeves?
- is the skirt long enough?
- is it see through?

Then there's my own personal requirements:
- is this shirt breathable? I'm wearing two layers minimum at all times. I really don't want to be required to wear three for it to cover my garment top. I wear jackets and sweatshirts, but like, if I get hot, I can take those off.
- do the pants stay on? I have an obnoxiously curvy figure. Most of the time pants that fit over my hips do not fit my waist because they are too loose. I am a big fan of spandexy leggings but they aren't pants. You have to wear a long shirt or tunic or you look like you're not actually dressed.
- is it comfortable? My life is spent lifting, crouching, kneeling, washing dishes, sitting with children on my lap or in my arms. The clothes have to allow movement, be soft to the touch, and allow some kind of margin for my underwear to not show when I'm being touched by children.
- is it something I can nurse a baby in? I happen to love wearing dresses. Unless they are a wrap-style or have buttons, I can't nurse in them. So there goes half my Sunday options.
- is it machine washable and dryable? I don't have the patience or interest or budget for dry cleaning. Also, every single item of clothing I wear gets covered in sweat, milk, dirty hands, actual dirt, food/oil, baby spit up, urine, poop, blood etc. I also don't have a good place to lay things flat to dry. Everything I own goes through the washing machine and dryer except for very, very rare exceptions.
- is it durable? Will I get some wear out of it?

And of course, how much does it cost: is the cost to value ratio acceptable?

All this before even starting to think about how it looks: is it attractive on me?

I'm not a hideously ugly person. Some clothes look better than others with how I'm shaped. My postpartum shape is really disproportionate. I personally don't like or enjoy the crazy proportions. It's inconvenient. It's uncomfortable. I could (and have) devote many, many words writing about the topic of bra shopping in a culture that doesn't believe in objective bra sizing standards. But that's not what I'm writing about now.

I had to go clothes shopping for myself today, so I went to three stores: Goodwill, Hy-Vee, and Duluth Trading Company. I spent $100 and got 3 pairs of jeans, 4 skirts, 1 blouse, and 4 black t-shirts.

Goodwill is a thrift store. I bought everything except for 3 of the black t-shirts there. It's completely hit or miss, it feels grungy, and it's not very organized. But hardly worn jeans for less than $5? That's pretty great. Also there's some fun, eclectic, weird pieces there. I like that.

Hy-Vee is the grocery store. It is really weird, but there's a clothing shop inside of it and it happens to be really cute clothes. All my friends also agree: it's the best clothing store in Ankeny. This is partially a statement on how few clothing stores we have, but partially not. It's a British clothing company, and all the clothes are modest and work with garments. They're also well made and cheap.  The only downside is that the sizing can be confusing since it is European, but American sizes are ridiculous, unstandardized, and wildly inconsistent, so it's not really that confusing anyway. There wasn't anything that great there today.

Duluth Trading Company is a midwestern cultural phenomenon. It sells work clothes, shoes, outerwear, and "long tail" t-shirts. Meaning, t-shirts with slightly more length, maybe two inches. They have pretty raunchy, distasteful ads but the clothes are great. The t-shirts are thick, durable, prewashed, and comfortable. It is ridiculous that 3 black t-shirts cost more than all the other clothes combined. But they fit great, will match anything, and will hide stains okay. No regrets.

When I buy new clothes that I like that aren't statement pieces (ahem, jeans, bras) I buy 2 because it's rare to find the perfect combination of all the above factors and I personally don't love shopping that much. I don't hate it, but what I do kind of hate is how I feel like my day was wasted. I really want to get to my computer so I can work on some of my Czech language endeavors. It's as though I spend almost every day trying to claw my way to my computer. It is frustrating that I didn't get that time today. My phone is a really poor substitute for some things.

The Sixth "Love Language"?

I mean, who hasn't read the Love Languages book? And maybe it's useful to people who have never thought the idea, "my spouse experiences the world differently than I do." Except instead of 16 options, there's five. And instead of taking a test, you're supposed to intuitively know which of the five awesome things you like best. As if any normal person in the world doesn't like sex. Pfff.

There's this studio c sketch about how Santa Claus decides to give all the kids gifts based on their love languages. So only one of them actually gets gifts, while the others get Santa's hand in their face (physical touch), their toys given away to charity (acts of service), etc. In the morning I'll embed it in this post.

My brother: "Well, that sketch funny because they get the languages completely wrong."

Me: "No, it's funny because it's making fun of the entire idea that people like to be appreciated only one way; every single person likes getting gifts."

I recently discovered my "love language" (even the term makes me somewhat vomit in my mouth: the alliteration, admitting this loaded word into non-spousal relationship contexts, oozing sentimentality and disgusting piles of subjective feelings) and it's something completely different from quality time, words of affirmation, acts of service, gifts, or physical touch (omgosh seriously, how did this shrink fail to think about sex. "Hey honey, wanna fulfil our primary evolutionary function?" said no person in a serious way ever).

It's interest.

Me: "Hey, I discovered this course about Beethoven's sonatas and it's really interesting! What do you think about it?"

My uncle: "Yeah, I recently started listening to [some other works] by Beethoven. Really, I think there's nothing the man produced which is not of interest."

Later
Me: [daydreaming aloud] "But seriously, doesn't that sound like the most magnificent compliment one could ever receive? Wouldn't it be amazing if someone said those words about you?"

Danny: "I think for those words to objectively be true one would have to produce very little."

Ha. HA!

To summarize a conversation that pierced me to my core:

Me: "whine whine whine I feel like very few people out there care about my thoughts."

My friend: "I think there's lots of people who care about your thoughts. Anyway, what's the signal that people [online] give you that they care?"

i.e. what's your love language. Excuse me while I vomit my displeasure at realizing this.

.
.
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Okay, back.

Me: "I have no idea what the signal is that people online care about my thoughts, but I definitely know that they DON'T care when they ghost me or just don't read what I've said at all."

Ghosting is when you contact someone online, you know they received what you wrote, and they don't respond. They ignore you on purpose even when you specifically are trying to communicate with them.

Scrolling past my writing because it's not interesting is also ignoring me on purpose but it's less aggregious; you can't be interesting to everybody at all times. Even if you're Beethoven.

But like, what the heck. I carefully pour my most important thoughts - my genuine testimony! - out of my mind, sacrificing nearly all that days alloted precious, limited free time - and I get a response from...4 or 5 people? I had low expectations but apparently they weren't low enough. In five seconds I can reshare a pretty postcard photo from the place where I grew up or write down one of the millions of snarky thoughts that pass through my mind and generate more interest in a matter of hours. That's...

Well, that's sad.

Interest doesn't fit neatly into any of these dumb five categories. It's pretty much some combination of all of them.

It's really difficult to guage interest online. You get these weird signals that are oddly specific (did they open this document and leave tracks in it? Did they like or comment? Can I see them writing something and then going back and erasing it and rewriting it? If I'm feeling extremely creepy - haven't done this one for a few years but I used to regularly and even labeled them in my blog stats tracker - did someone at their IP address open my blog?). You don't have any of the fundamentally human visual signals that are so impossible to name: a tiny microglance to the side, a slight wrinkle of the nose, a goofy laugh or involuntary grin. I can't see those but I'm $&#@ good at imagining them. Or am I.

If you want to know your love language, the best way to figure it out is not to ponder over it for days and days. It's simply to ask yourself, "how do people you love piss you off the most?" The opposite is your love language. Or maybe, "how do you like to show people you care about them?" That's probably your love language, too.

I really, really like to show love by being interested. It's what I enjoy doing most. I don't even think of it in those terms because it is the way I naturally am. It is infinitely fun to watch people react, especially when they are provoked into laughing or smiling. I love this. And I enjoy doing it in all the five "official" ways, except that physical touch is in this roped-off strictly family-only area.

My greatest worry is that I'm not actually that interesting.

Going off of social media for a while is inevitably going to give you these powerful messages: "People don't care about your online thoughts even close to as much as you hope they do."

"You're never going to be able to get everyone you know to care."

"You're the only one obsessing over yourself. Get over yourself and get out in the real world."

"You can show a lot more interest in others by a simple phone call or text than by a like or a comment."

And mainly: "LACK OF A SIGNAL ISN'T ALWAYS A SIGN OF DISINTEREST." There could be a hundred really good reasons somebody doesn't respond, so base your self worth off something real, something more concrete and lasting, like the promise that is repeated on every page of the scriptures by every prophet since the dawn of time: God cares about you.