Eternally Encircled in His Love

My thoughts on Sister Parkin's talk "Eternally Encircled in His Love"

Sister Parkin's talk hit me really hard last night as I was reading it. Of course I was "full" from just watching Sunday's sessions (haven't yet watched Saturday's) and this just affirmed the feelings I had from the four hours of testimonies that I just watched and felt.

I am someone who feels the messages and then goes back and gleans from them (hence this group) so I can't recall who said what but I can tell you the feeling each person who spoke gave me. I can almost always tell you the jest of their talk but rarely get a quote correct. I do my best in looking them up, but for the life of me...it was a good thing my seminary teach gave us all year to memorize the mastery scriptures. But I can tell you where on a page the verse(s) is and what color I marked it in and about how long it looks on the page---just not every word. ~SMILE~

With that said..

This first quote hit me.
"Sister, this was a woman who had made temple covenants and was active in the Church. And yet she still felt unworthy of His love."

How many of us fit that to a "T"? Sister Parkin just described me. I have temple covenants and go to church (although family issues have kept me from attending for the whole month of September-I don't think that has EVERY happened in my life. I did miss back to back Sundays once but that was because I was in the hospital giving birth one week and the next my baby was in the hospital-jaundice, nothing serious.)

How come we feel that way? Why aren't we like the woman at the well? Why aren't we like Mary and Martha? Why aren't we understanding of his love? Is it a cultural thing? I don't know the answers, but I want to feel that love?

When is that you feel loved by the Savior? When do you feel like his Daughter?

I know I struggle with the second one because I didn't feel love from an earthly father so I feel very unloved my father figures in my life. It was a shock to me when I married my husband and his father said "I love you" to me and I saw in his face that he really meant it and was going to live up to that statement.

Well, I think that is enough for this morning. I have more highlighted from last night, but let's chew on this for a minute.

(from another post)

I can't help but see this in a mommy/homeschooling light.

"Mothers, can you see how essential you are in teaching this truth to your children? As you encircle your children with your love, they will catch glimpses of His love. President Gordon B. Hinckley urges us to "love the Lord [our] God, and His Son, and be ever grateful for Their love for us. Whenever other love fade, there will be that shining, transcendent, everlasting love of God for each of us and the love of His Son, who gave His life for us."

Why is it so easy to see our children wrapped in His arms and us not there?

I thank [name deleted] for sharing her very personal thoughts about her experience with feeling the Savior's arms encircle her. What an experience!

This is the part that I want to get to:

"A mother who knows her relationship with God helps her children to know Him and to be encircled by His love."

I hope I can once again see my face in the pictures of Christ and the little children. When I was little I asked my mom who those children were and she told me that they were my little brother and me. I was so excited, but I think I have personally lost that idea and thought. I need to put myself back into the arms of Christ.

I sometimes find it very hard to do that with the business of life, especially when your children are there all day and demand so much of you. I think I have stopped writing this email five times to address someone's need and we are supposed to be on mom's time out during lunch time.

(from another post)


[name deleted],
I'm so sorry for your loss. I too am going through the same struggle, but my struggle is my sister. She is in the very last stages of brain cancer. It is so hard for the natural man to let our loved ones go, but with the Comforter as my companion I know that she has done her work here, her Father loves her and is waiting on the other side to welcome this faithful daughter back into his arms. It is so hard for my heart to let her go, but my heart also knows she needs to be released from the physical torments the cancer has caused her. Sometimes I'm not sure I like the "opposition" in all things. Pain, suffering, joy, health. Opposites and so necessary.

I'm glad that the Atonement is here for us and it truly shows us the ultimate and eternal love of our Savior and God, the Father. Sister Parkin talked about it in the talk. I couldn't help but just weep as I read that.

I am also in the same shoes you are, [name deleted]. About six years ago (actually it is this month) out ward was divided (I was RS president and never got to say good bye-HORRIBLE!!!!!). I was in the new ward with only about 5 active families from the old ward. My kids lost ALL their friends and being HS made it even worse as the new ward looked down on homeschooling families. (Thankfully the bishop NEVER said a word to me.) I tried my best to welcome the new members in the ward. I spent three days delivering apple pies that I bought (talk about a cash lay out) to the members of the ward welcoming them and hoping to make friends. It was the most trying 3 plus years of my life. I NEVER felt part of that ward family. The one family that was from our old ward and still in this new ward was about the only reason we didn't move sooner. When they packed up and moved to Utah, we started looking to move. We are now in a new ward and I have been welcomed, but I still don't have that one friendship I've been looking for. It is so hard. I still alone in RS. I am also a very difficult position. Very few moms are my age. We have a ward where they are nearly empty nesters or their oldest isn't even out of 3rd grade. Very hard when that gap is where my family fits. But I am trying really hard to be that person Sister Parkin wants us to be. The sister who wraps her arms around her sister in the gospel and weeps with them. (I'm still waiting for that person.) I haven't attended church in for a month (going to SLC to visit my sister every weekend) but it seems that no one has noticed.

When I first moved into that ward that six years ago was split, I had walked into heaven. I was never more welcome. It wasn't the dinners in people's home (never was asked and yet in this ward we have been to five different families) it was the feeling in the halls, a class rooms. One of the RS teacher who has moved often was once asked by her husband how she could endure the moving and leaving friends behind. Her reply was, "Within seven days I will be surrounded by a room full of friends." I think that is why I continue to go to functions. (This has nothing to do with my testimony of the gospel-it is true and that will never change in my heart and mind. We are talking about being loved by those around us and how we can love those around us.)

I ramble and these thoughts just make me weep and I just put my make up on. [name deleted], I hope you can be the person that binds the ward together. I want so bad to do that, but... I want you to know you aren't the only one in that boat and I'm sure there are others who are in the same boat we just don't know they are there. Anyone else and how do you make it feel like a family?

(from another post)

[name deleted],
I hope like Sister Hughes you "remember" this for the rest of your life. I too had a similar experience. I had just broken up with a boyfriend-he dumped me for a close friend two days before my Jr Prom! I was despondent and broken hearted. For about three weeks I barely could get myself up and go to school, seminary, track and work. My mom was very worried and now I know that she was praying for me like Alma the Sr. was doing for his son. [deleted personal note] One night while in my bedroom trying to study for an upcoming Biology AP test (why I remember that I don't know) and I just couldn't wrap my mind around the stuff I was studying and to pass this test meant $$ to me since I was paying for every cent of my college experience. I knelt down to pray and started just like you. "thank you's and please's" and eventually I got around to the "I'm so heart broken."

I too had the physical feelings of arms being wrapped around me. I still can't explain how it feels except to say it was beyond human description. I too knew that my heart may have been broken, but it would heal and this wasn't the young man for me and the young man for me was elsewhere (on him mission at the time-but I didn't know that) and that I was to continue on being the wonderful young woman I was becoming. My heart still hurt but more because I lost a good friend from betrayal and a boy friend who together we went through a LOT! BUT, it was healed because I knew my Father was happy for me for choosing the right and doing what was proper and good.

I have often thought or remembered that night in my room as the first time that I really felt the arms of my Savior wrapped around me. There are a few other times I felt such, but most of the time I just remember and get that feeling again.

(from another post)

Last night was the third night in a row that I had a dream (that doesn't mean it was a good dream, but it wasn't a nightmare either) about all those kids back in high school (even back into grade school). This morning as I was rereading the last two talks and thinking about all the things we have been freely discussing it hit me how much all of us to some extent had our school experience shape who we are and how much we allow the arms of our Savior to encircle us. I don't want to bash PS, because it wasn't the "systems' fault, it was the nature of the beast.
But this really has me thinking and I don't have the complete thought process. To truly feel the Savior's arms around us we did those not in the mess of the school hall or locker room, those quiet and tender moments most likely happened away from that environment. How lucky are our children to continually know that the Savior loves them and we can talk about that when we talk about the human body, or a piece of literature or the colors of the rainbow, counting, tying a shoe, solving an algebra problem. HOW WONDERFUL!

Just today we were designing our boomerangs to go along with our "visit" to Australia. My son drew Heavenly Father, Jesus and the Holy Ghost (he was just dashed lines) on his boomerang because they made him feel happy. Could you imagine if this 9 year old would have done that in a PS setting? His friends would have laughed him and scorned him and persecuted him. It was contagious and my 7 year old then put CTR on this boomerang so he could remember to choose the right. Then the 9 year old decided to put the primary colors on his so that he could remember the Primary song about Red, Yellow and Blue and what they stand for. I sat back and relished what these too boys where saying and doing. Even a 7 year old girl who attends this glass put lips on her boomerang because that means kisses and love. Another 8 year old girl put a lot of dots on hers and explain that was courage to do what is right.

These children are growing up knowing that they are completely encircled in the arms of their Savior. I hope that when they reach that critical age (jr and sr high) they still have that wonderful knowledge and NEVER let others take it away from them like many of us have expressed happen to us. I think that was the message of the dream. I let the knowledge of that LOVE be overshadowed by those in my high school and forgot to look where the light was coming from to begin with. I never forgot, just needed to have it brought to the forefront and will probably have to have that happen time and time again as I live in the world and try my hardest not to be of the world.