Tayler Applies for a Job. Easter Sunday. With a Few Other Pictures.

Yesterday Tayler turned in her fist application for a job.  She's been anxiously waiting for her 14th birthday, because at 14, you can apply at the school district for a janitorial job.  Brynn is currently cleaning the elementary school that's a block away from our house every day after school.  They're always taking on "subs" for when the regulars need to find someone to cover a shift for them.  Brynn started out as a sub and has now become a regular.  Tayler is excited to get the ball rolling and get herself on the sub list (they're used quite often).  So she got her application, filled it out, and got the head janitor at the elementary school to sign off on it.  I drove her down to the distric office so she could turn it in.

She scoffed at me when I told her I wasn't going to go in with her.

"Mom, I'm not an adult."

"But you're applying for a job.  Get on with it."

And she did.

 
She came out of the building on cloud nine, "I did it!"

She certainly had.

Normally Easter is an exciting time for us in that it opens up our first camping trip.  Our first stretch from our winter hibernation.

However, this year we took our first trip out during spring break (post coming), and it wasn't our year to have the kids for Easter, so we relaxed at home.

Casidee and I donned our new Easter dresses, attended church, where I taught, not about the Savior, because I had done that all through the previous month, but about the restoration of the church.  Which I still felt was very apropos as the Savior atoned for our sins, died and was resurected again, and therefore covered all for us.  And in so doing had the right to lay out what He now asks of us in return.

Going with Brad Wilcox's analogy (here), if a parent pays the piano teacher it does nothing to help the parent.  The parent did it so the child could grow and become better.  But because the parent paid the teacher, they now can ask the child to practice.

Our Savior "paid the piano teacher," and He asks us to practice.  Our practice comes in the form of repentance.  And while sometimes it's heartbreakingly hard to repent for the same thing, yet again... I know how hard it is to kneel and know that I need to say the words "I'm sorry" for the same thing time and time again.  "How can I face this prayer again?"

Let's remember Elder Jeffrey R. Holland's quote, "However many chances you think you have missed, however many mistakes you feel you have made … , I testify that you have not traveled beyond the reach of divine love. It is not possible for you to sink lower than the infinite light of Christ’s Atonement shines” (here).

It is by repentance that we practice becoming heavenly.  We practice becoming more like our Father.

And just like a parent can dictate the "when, where, and how" of practice, perhaps saying, every day for an hour after school, so does our Savior.  We are asked to attend church, make and keep sacred covenants, lover our neighbors, read our scriptures, and repent daily... to help us in our practice of learning to become heavenly.

And so we talked about that in Young Women's on Easter.  And I also spoke about this topic for Mikayla's "homecoming."  Perhaps I'll dig out my notes and write it in full here.  I love the topic of the plan of salvation, the plan of happiness.

A couple random pictures from my phone:

When your arm starts to tingle but The Man is fast asleep and you don't want to disturb him, so you settle into the tingles and just enjoy his closeness.

And when you've found that you've dressed the same as your daughters.  With five of them, it's bound to happen on occasion.