Nancy's Musings

I'm beginning to think that gaslighting is a thing that I sometimes do to myself. Lately, things like chickens and dishes and teaching and friendships and family have overwhelmed me. And everytime the current pulls me under again, I choke and flail and overexpress on Facebook. There are too many worries, and I am drowning. My father gives wonderful blessings. They are often inspired, and several times he has given me the same advice that I know is from my Heavenly Father. The advice and the power that he gives me is to discern between what is my job and what is not my job, and to concern myself only with those things that are mine to worry about. This type of discernment is not easy, and it is not simple. On one side of the scale, we risk avoiding responsibility for our weaknesses and bad decisions, and on the other side of the scale we risk a much-inflated sense of self which leads to the self-gaslighting that I am just beginning to understand in myself. It's a kind of s...

Reading this morning in Alma 22, I meditated for a few minutes on the word "worship" in verse 7. It felt weird. It sounded obsequious. It sounded like fawning and groveling, neither of which seemed like the proper way to address a Heavenly Father. We still use the word "worship" and I'm not sure I know what we really mean by that. The Oxford English Dictionary gives some insight into what it might have meant to Joseph Smith as he translated. As a transitive verb, its most common definition is "To honor or revere as a supernatural being or power, or as a holy thing; to regard or approach with religious veneration." The quotation closest to Joseph Smith's time was 1847: "Men have worshipped some fantastic being for living alone in a wilderness" (Arthur Helps, Friends in Council ). "Honor and revere" and "regard [. . .] with religious veneration" both still sound like fawning and groveling, respectively. Even though ...

My dad calls it "being a worrier" but it's a diagnosable mental illness in the anxiety family. And right now, it has given me the hiccups. A generous way of describing this part of my anxiety is that I care about and for people and other living things. I care what they think and how they feel about me. I care in great volumes, so when I lack information or when I see struggling, then I struggle. I have found recently that the media tries to take advantage of this, and make me care about things I can't change, or that actually don't matter. But I do this all on my own, without their help. So I am giving myself a new tool: mental avoidance. Until I find balance, I am going to consciously shift my thoughts away from my worries and onto things that bring peace and comfort. The problem is that most of the things that cause me worry do so because they also bring me joy. Let me show you what I mean: Worry: It hurts that the man I like doesn't text me. He appare...

Once upon a time I was interested in having some G-rated fun, so I signed up for Mutual (Tinder for Mormons) and sort of let the universe know that I thought dating men might not be such a horrible idea. I'm an extrovert already, so it's not a huge stretch. I live in a small town, and am a member of a religion that has some strict dating restrictions, by the world's standards. But when I moved into this house, I sort of joined a family and circle of friends by default. One of the second-hand friends I inherited has been searching for vicarious romance for a while, and of the mission companions her husband still remains in contact with is another single man old enough to tie his own shoes, so to speak. She thinks to herself, "I should set them up!" "Can I give him your number and have him text you?" she asks me. "Well, yeah!" I said, "He sounds awesome!" She did, but he didn't. Years passed, and I fell in love with some...

In a meeting of the department I have lately and hesitantly joined, our department chair shared a poem with us that moved me deeply. I sent it to a close friend of mine, but his response was at best, dismissive. He acknowledged that it was a poem and that he understood most of the words. I was suddenly at a loss. Poetry often moves me, and this poem particularly brought hope and a vision of what we could become. Poetry, at its most common, expresses moments that people connect through. They talk about the mundane, the familiar, or the utterly foreign, but in such intimate terms that we identify in words not just a list of emotions, but a common humanity: not common in the sense of ordinary, but in the sense that it is shared. I wanted so badly to share this moment with someone who has listened patiently to me for years. I thought that certainly we could meet through this mirror. He does experience physical symptoms that sometimes disconnect him from people, and perhaps that is one ...

There's a really funny scene from Labyrinth (1986)   where Sarah meets a sleepy old philosopher who, for the price of some jewelry, gives her the following advice: "The way forward is sometimes the way back." He's not actually wrong, but like most philosophers, he's not actually helpful, either. (See Chidi Anagonye from The Good Place  for a similar opinion.) And I can't believe I never noticed (or forgot) that he's sitting on a chair made of books! Anyway, that advice isn't helpful to me right now either; nor is it likely to be helpful to you. But it's a great image to start explaining an idea I had. I had an absolute trainwreck of a teaching day yesterday. There were technical difficulties, and I made a couple of thoughtless comments, and the conversations kind of escaped my control. I'm still writhing from the mortified agony of it, and am terrified that this will be the thing that makes teaching impossible. I've been struggling...

Today my Sunday School teacher asked us for examples of lies that Satan has told us. Of course, many of us have that instinct to jump to the nearest nonsense that we easily see through - the temptations and enticings from which we already have immunity, or at least strength. But that's a mote and beam problem. Those are somebody else's lies. What if we look inside ourselves to the lies that we have had to overcome? All of us have confronted and beaten lies. Sometimes we confront the same lie over and over again throughout our lives. Sometimes we recognize it immediately for what it is and still fall prey, and sometimes it's sneakier. I'm going to describe a few of the beams that have appeared in my eyes. You can gloat, if you like, about how much smarter you are. I give you permission. But I do not advise it. Avoid the fate of the man at our street preach who pointed and laughed at us while we were singing, and promptly ran straight into a lamppost. The lie I talk...