The Repentance Chair

Today in church one of the speakers talked about something she and her husband have in their home. It is called the "Repentance Chair." It is a chair, big enough for one child. Whenever her kids get into a quarrel or a fight (I know, this never happens in YOUR home), both children are placed in the chair and told that they must remain there until each can tell their Mother what he/she could have done differently to have made the situation/altercation different. There is no "he started it" kinds of statement allowed - each must recognize his or her role in the fight, and identify what he/she did wrong in escalating it. I thought that was a great idea. No blaming. No fault finding, except within yourself.

So often we are prone to see what the other person did wrong. No feeling in humanity is more common than the feeling that if someone else would change, everything would be fine. The Repentance Chair helps children see that they have a major role in any fight they are in. Great idea.

You Know Not to Do That, Right?

Dad told me it was past my turn to write something on the blog. I told him I didn't set it up and that it was HIS thing and besides he likes to write and I don't. However, because I'm trying to improve in sportsmanship, I will be a good sport now and give you something new to read. Here it goes.

I got a belated Christmas card last week from a long time dear friend of mine who is going through a divorce after more than 20 years of what seemed to be a great, adventure filled, temple marriage. I called my friend the next day and listened to her for two hours. She said that things had not been good between her and her husband since he started making tons of money(millions)in land investments about 6 years ago. He became friends with some big wigs in Phoenix and was pulled into their way of living. First he had one drink of alcohol just to get along with them. Then he had the occasional drink with his friends. My friend didn't know this was going on. They bought a big beautiful house in Queen Creek and a condo in Hawaii. They went on several vacations a year. My friend always had great things to write about in her yearly Christmas letter. I'm ashamed to admit I felt a little envious of their lifestyle.

Anyway, about four years ago, my friend said her husband started coming home from business meetings drunk. She begged him to stop. He would apologize when he was sober and beg her forgiveness(he would never do that again). She is one of the sweetest, least judgemental persons I know and of course she believed and forgave him. Little did she know that he had already started using meth and having affairs with other women. Over the next few years he started abusing my friend. Of course he always cried and begged for her to forgive him when he was sober. She tried to help him but he gradually turned into a mean, abusive person. She stayed with him because they have a twelve year old son that adored his father.

My friend prayed for help constantly and attended the Temple to try to get answers to what she should do. Then one night last May,her husband put a loaded gun to her head and raped her. He told her if she went to the police he would kill her and their son. Now she knew she had to get out. After her husband fell asleep,she took her son to a friend's house and she went to her bishop. He took her to the police. They arrested her husband the next day. Apparently, he had been under suspicion for business fraud along with another guy he worked with. The police were quick to bring him in. He has been in jail since and is awaiting trial on fraud charges. The other charges cannot be proved (his word against hers) so they have been dropped. My friend has lost everything material but she said she feels more at peace now than she has for several years and her son is happier too. She will start teaching at Franklin Academy in Queen Creek next Fall.

The point to me telling you this story is just a warning to never, never compromise your standards. It will start you on a path to destruction. Also, appreciate the life you have, love each other and love the Lord. I am so grateful to have a husband who lives righteously and who loves and cares for his family.

Happy New Year!

Today was too lovely to be believed. At 11:00, it was 60 degrees outside! I was outside in a T-shirt with my iron bar and shovel, trying to break up the ice from our driveway so we won't slip and slide every time we go to the car. Around 1:30, Melissa and Brad and the kids, along with Jay and Lecia and their kids arrived to play in the snow. The kids wasted no time in running into the front yard to play. Tomorrow they are going up the the old Sunrise along Hwy 260 to sled and play all day. They planned to stay at Hiatt's house up here, and after hours of shoveling and packing, they succeeded in getting into the driveway. We'll see if they can get out tomorrow!

Happy New Year to any readers. This year will either be much better than last year, or the end of civilization as we know it. Either way, it should be quite an adventure.

I have been reading "The 5,000 Year Leap" by Cleon Skousen. I recommend it to everyone. It will really open your eyes to the meaning of the Constitution and it will show you just how far we have come from what the Founders intended. I am also reading "Liberal Fascism" by Jonah Goldberg. It is really worth reading, too.

Keeping the Town afloat financally is getting to be a lot like banging my thumbs over and over and over again with a hammer. People have gotten so used to buying whatever they want or "need" whenever they want or "need" it, they can't seem to understand what "we are out of money" means. I might just as well be rubbing a cheese grater against my forehead. But I am grateful to have a job, I truly am.

We will be breaking ground this month for the foundations of our home addition. That garage would really have come in handy already this winter, with all the snow we have had. Global warming, indeed! Our high last Saturday was 22 degrees. Balmy!

That's enough random posting for one night.

Shoveling in a Winter Wonderland

December 23 - We woke up this morning to a LOT more snow! I got up at 6:00 and looked out the window. The snow was more than a foot deep and still snowing. I started shoveling, and had a path cleared for one car a little before 9:00. That is a 12" ruler in the photo on top of my car. Today is the day we drive to Mesa for the Brooksby family party tonight, and it looks like it is going to be a rather slow trip with all the snow on the roads.


MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL! Remember always the real reason for the blessed season.

Our Best Christmas Ever

If I were asked to name my favorite Christmas ever, I would immediately answer Christmas, 1994. Christmas fell on a Sunday that year. I was the Bishop of our ward, and we had decided only to have Sacrament meeting that year, combined with the other ward in our building. The meeting was special: one of the speakers was Greg Prososki, who was not a member of the church and who had never expressed any interest in joining the church (He was later baptized).

After church that morning, our family opened the presents we had at home, then bundled ourselves into our van for a drive to Mesa to spend Christmas with the rest of our extended family. On the way down, we sang Christmas carols and excerpts from Handel’s Messiah. Having a musical family is such a blessing.

As we were approaching the Valley of the Sun, we remembered that Sister Kaggie, a sweet, elderly lady in our ward, lay recovering from a stroke at Barrow’s Neurological Institute in Phoenix. We thought of how hard it must be lying in a hospital bed on Christmas, hundreds of miles from family and friends. Jan suggested that we make a detour and do some Christmas caroling to her in the hospital; after all, no one in Mesa knew what time we would be arriving. Instantly, the entire family agreed.

We drove into Phoenix and after driving around for awhile, arrived at Barrow’s. An inquiry at the front desk gave us her room number. We rode the elevator to her floor in excited anticipation, planning on the songs we would sing for her. As we arrived at her room, we started singing. I will never forget the lovely smile and excitement in her eyes as she recognized us.

My family sang for her for perhaps twenty minutes. People from all over the floor came as they heard the music. Finally, we stopped singing and wished her and everyone there a Merry Christmas as we left. We walked back to our van quietly, and really didn’t talk all that much as we made the drive back to Mesa.

I don’t remember anything else about that Christmas: what I got, what anyone else got, or anything else we did. Without a doubt, it was the best Christmas I remember, because we shared the love and joy of the season with a dear friend in need. It was only two more years until she had passed on. But the memory of singing to her that Christmas day lingers on in our family.

The Adventures Continue...

What a week we had last week! On Tuesday we flew to Salt Lake City where Emily and the kids picked us up. We spent the afternoon having lunch at Big H burgers (Yum!) then went to the Discovery Zone children's museum for a few hours before riding the tram to Temple Square to see the Christmas lights. That was a full day. Wednesday we just played with Jackson, Natalie and Staci. We had a great time.


Thursday was sad, saying good-bye to the kids. Natalie just broke our hearts - she was so sad about us leaving after only two days. She wanted her Grandma to stay "for five years." She kept saying, "I just can't take it anymore!" through her tears. We rented a car and drove to Rexburg to help John and Anna pack and move. John's graduation was Friday night, but there was an enormous winter storm moving into the area Friday night. We told John that we hated to miss his graduation, but if we didn't get out of Rexburg Friday, we might not get out for a week. At the last minute, he agreed and passed up his own college graduation to go with us.

We left Rexburg at 3:00 Friday afternoon, me driving the moving truck, Jan driving the rental car, and John and Anna and the boys in their car. We drove like the wind (John gets his driving habits from Jan, if you know what I mean), and finally called it a day in Nephi, Utah at about 9:00 pm.


Saturday morning there was no snow in Nephi - a relief - but it was blizzarding in Salt Lake City, so we hurried and left. We had dark clouds hanging over us almost all day, but the only thing we really had to contend with was extremely high winds all the way to Phoenix. I mean, there were many times that I thought we were going to be blown clear off the road or into oncoming traffic. It was a white-knuckled 12 hours of driving. Finally we arrived in Mesa, and I was completely exhausted.

Sunday, Jan and I drove home to Pinetop-Lakeside. There was a little bit of snow on the ground, but the driving was pretty easy. Today (Monday) it is snowing, and the forecast for tonight and tomorrow is MAJOR snow. So we got home just in time.

As I came to the office this morning, I found my office decorated with congratulatory ribbons, decorations, and confetti. In our travels last week, I had to miss the Town Christmas party, where I was named "Department Head of the Year" by our Town Manager. It was a nice surprise to come home to. I got a plaque and a $50 gift card to Safeway.

It has been a pretty rewarding/enjoyable/stressful/happy week. Love to all.

Thanksgiving Thoughts and More

Well, as usual, we had a wonderful Thanksgiving in Pine at the cabin with family members. Cynthia, Chris and Hannah drove up to spend Thanksgiving afternoon with us, and Melissa, Brad and the family came up Friday for a few hours. We loved spending time with loved ones, thinking about the many ways our family has been blessed and continues to be blessed. We are so thankful for our parents, our siblings, our extended family, and all of our posterity. If we were to be any more blessed, we would not have room to receive it all.

I was talking with Phil Thursday, and he was telling about the life lessons he has learned watching dogs interact with their young. He says that from the moment a baby is born, be it a dog or a human, it is either being trained by the parents or the parents are being trained by the baby. He gave some tasty scraps once to their dog who had given birth just a week before. The puppies tried to get to the mother's food. As they approached, she growled and then snipped at the puppies, biting them enough to feel it, but not enough to hurt. The puppies backed away. When they tried later, all she had to do was growl and they backed off. They learned very early to obey their mother.

My grandpa Hamblin taught me about letting a horse have its own head. He told me that a horse has to learn who is in charge. If the rider is not in charge, the rider will have no control over where the horse and rider go. Sometimes you have to speak the language the horse understands to get him to obey, because nothing is more useless than a disobedient horse.

This got me thinking about parenthood. The scriptures tell us that we are to teach our children to obey their parents, to correct them when they need correcting, to teach them to be subject to their parents (Prov 13:24, 23:13). This is a commandment. I have often wondered why children have to learn to obey. Why not just let a child determine what happens in the home? The little one doesn't want to go to bed, so he doesn't have to until he feels like it. He doesn't want to eat what Mom has fixed, so she fixes something he likes. He wants a story, then another, then another, when the parents need to get other things done. There is one basic thing wrong with raising a child this way.

That thing is the godly quality of obedience. How will a child raised that way ever learn to submit his will to God, when he has never had to submit his will to anyone before? This is the way to raise a bunch of "natural men;" enemies to God. Children who always get their way as children not only grow up spoiled, but it will be much harder for them to grasp the concept of obeying God's commandments later, because they have grown up thinking that their way is the right way. Does that make sense?

Deuteronomy 8:2 says, "And thou shalt remember all the way which the LORD thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldst keep his commandments, or no." In other words, the people were being tested, and it took 40 years for the Israelites, as a group, to show the Lord that they would be obedient. There must have been a lot of people used to having their own way in that group.

Mosiah 3:17 says that unless we become as little children, submissive, humble, meek, patient, and willing to submit to all things even as a child submits to his father, we cannot be sanctified. It sounds to me like parents must set the rules and enforce the rules, or else how can a child learn to submit to his father, and later to his Heavenly Father?

Too many times, I see young families who just let their children do whatever they want, with no reprimands or consequences, in the name of gentleness. Again, I am not suggesting that parents need to be mean or harsh, but they need to teach their children that the parents make the rules and the children obey. I believe that this is truly in the best interest of the children. Parents must be gentle but firm. It is time to go. It is time for bed. This is what we are eating tonight. No, you may not do that. This is not meanness; it is kindness. It is helping them turn into the kind of people Heavenly Father wants and needs.

Just as we sometimes have to say, "Lord, I don't know why I have to go through this trial, but I know you do, and I trust you," our children need to learn that theirs is not the will that governs the universe.

So much for the ramblings of an ancient parent. Think about it.