I love breakup songs best.

I hope this isn't indicative of some deep-rooted problem in my psyche, but I love breakup songs. I have an entire mix of them in my car, and I keep thinking I need to make more because there are SO many good ones. Something about breakup songs is just so real and honest. I don't know ... I just love them. There are some I can hardly listen to because they remind me so clearly and exclusively of certain boyfriends. But I love the ones that don't remind me of anyone. Eldon introduced me to this one. He knows me well. :)

"Somebody That I Used To Know"
(feat. Kimbra)

[Gotye:]
Now and then I think of when we were together
Like when you said you felt so happy you could die
Told myself that you were right for me
But felt so lonely in your company
But that was love and it's an ache I still remember

You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness
Like resignation to the end, always the end
So when we found that we could not make sense
Well you said that we would still be friends
But I'll admit that I was glad it was over

But you didn't have to cut me off
Make it like it never happened and that we were nothing
And I don't even need your love
But you treat me like a stranger and that feels so rough
No you didn't have to stoop so low
Have your friends collect your records and then change your number
I guess that I don't need that though
Now you're just somebody that I used to know

Now you're just somebody that I used to know
Now you're just somebody that I used to know

[Kimbra:]
Now and then I think of all the times you screwed me over
But had me believing it was always something that I'd done
But I don't wanna live that way
Reading into every word you say
You said that you could let it go
And I wouldn't catch you hung up on somebody that you used to know

[Gotye:]
But you didn't have to cut me off
Make it like it never happened and that we were nothing
And I don't even need your love
But you treat me like a stranger and that feels so rough
And you didn't have to stoop so low
Have your friends collect your records and then change your number
I guess that I don't need that though
Now you're just somebody that I used to know

Snapshot Of This Moment

Low lighting.
Noelle sleeping on my lap.
My journal, the Ensign, The Happiness Project, a post-it notepad, and a highlighter sprawled out on the bed beside me.
Eldon and Chiara out on a daddy daughter date.
A silent house.
Cold water bottle on my bedside table.

Life is so, so good.

How I Make Her Feel

I have a three-year-old who personifies an exhausting combination of energy, high maintenance, and intelligence. Every button I have, she pushes. In fact, I think she creates buttons just to push them. She's not a bad child - quite the opposite. She's funny and sensitive to the feelings of others. She is tender-hearted and outgoing. But lately she's been pushing me to the brink of complete motherly depletion.

There's a story about Saint Terese who didn't enjoy the company of one of her fellow nuns. Everything about this woman's character seemed to grate on Terese to the point where she felt no love for her at all. Saint Terese was so bothered by this - not by the other nun, but by her own response to that nun - she determined to treat her as if she were always happy to see her. She doted on her, gave her undivided, kind attention, and smiled at her to the point that the other nun actually asked her why she loved her so much. Little did she know Saint Terese was simply exercising all the virtue she could muster to even tolerate her company.

I don't want to sound like my response to my own child is similar to Saint Terese's. I love my daughter and find daily delight in being her mother. But there are moments when I get frustrated with her.

Today is a perfect example. I asked a friend to come over to chat with me while I finished up some projects around the house. I cleaned out my girls' closet and did the dishes from the day before. While my friend was here, my daughter decided she wanted everything she wasn't allowed to have. When I told her my answer was no - for the hundredth time - she threw a tantrum like I'd never seen. She yelled, flailed her arms, spit at me (a definite first), kicked her door, and wept giant tears. I wasn't feeling very much delight right then. Like none.

So I've been thinking how to stop a child from acting that way. Certainly she's never seen my husband or me throw a tantrum, so the problem is not following a negative example. She's unusually intelligent, and I know she gets frustrated easily when her understanding is enough to recognize a problem but not enough to find a solution. And she's highly sensitive to moods. She can perceive positive or negative emotions in other people very quickly. Which makes me wonder if she's sensing - and responding to - my own frustration with her.

That may sound obvious to some of you, but this is what I've decided to do about it:

I'm going to follow Saint Terese's example and act as if my child delights me every minute of the day. When she's happy I'm going to be thrilled about it, and when she's sad I'm going to smother her with love. I'm not going to be fake ... well, sometimes it will be fake. This morning the last thing I wanted to do while she was screaming was take her in my arms and tickle her neck with kisses. But nonetheless, I'm going to remove all evidence of my own frustrations or fears (how am I going to parent this child??) and show her only love. Every minute of every day. Love love love.

Discipline can still happen. It needs to happen. But the angry look on my face while I'm telling her she needs to sit in the "trouble chair" doesn't need to happen. The angry tone of my voice doesn't need to happen. And certainly the exclamations of irritation don't need to happen. "For the love!" "Oh my gosh, child." "Seriously?" Those simply have to be eradicated from my mothering moments.

My new guideline is this: "What can I do in this situation to make her feel loved?"

And then I'm going to exercise all the willpower and self-control I possess and do whatever that is.

My Valentine To Me

I'm reading a book right now called The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. Memoirs about goals and finding self and character development are my favorite genre - at least for now - and I'm loving Gretchen's approach to her year of finding happiness.

In fact, she inspired me to start my own project.

My plan is to give myself a Valentine gift: one year of loving myself.

It occurred to me not long ago that I'm not really great at keeping the second great commandment, that is, to love my neighbor as myself. I'm not very nice to me. And I think in there somewhere is the commandment to love yourself, along with God and neighbors ... Somewhere recently I read something that made me think of all the good a person can do who is comfortable and gentle with themselves. I think kindness to others and generosity of thought might come more easily to those who are not fighting some kind of inner war with their own heart and mind. (Yes, I think of myself as quite separate from both my heart and my mind ... I'm often at odds with both of them. Maybe that makes me crazy? That's a very real possibility.)

So, I decided I'd like some inner peace ... for the first time in my life. I'm always fighting with myself, telling myself yes or no - whichever one is harder. Then, when I fail at whatever it is I've told myself I should or should not do, I hold it against me. I use it as evidence that I am not as good as I want to be, and, most harsh of all, I tell myself God has the same expectations of me that I do ... So I never feel I'm what He wants me to be either.

Rough.

Gretchen focuses on one area of improvement per month. I like that idea because my resolutions are usually I list I expect myself to be immediately perfect in performing, a list of daily, weekly, and monthly deeds I want to accomplish. This month by month thing might help me develop habits one at a time before I overwhelm myself in characteristic fashion and give up entirely.

I'd like to start on the actual day of Valentine's ... today ... but I'm not organized yet and that will make me feel frantic. So I'm going to begin on February 25 - Chiara's birthday. That will give me some time to plan my habits and make a schedule and really put some serious thought into it all.

Basically I want one year full of reasons I can be proud of myself. I want to rejoice in the small and simple things I can do to bring about great changes in my life and character. I want to learn to be nice to myself because I'm afraid that if I don't I might unintentionally teach my girls to treat themselves this way too. And I don't want that.

Because He First Loved Us

Being a mommy to two little girls has changed so many things. I think differently. I read differently. I even speak differently, desperate to show them a feminine example they can follow. That being the case, I was reading my scriptures the other day, thinking - as is my new habit - of how I'd teach what I was reading to little girls. I don't remember the passage I read, but it occurred to me that we obey the Lord out of love but that some people might not consider love for Him a natural thing. Why should we love Him? Why do so many love Him?

My mind did a small accounting of my moments with Him that have brought me to fall in love with Him again and again. Could a non-believer discredit those moments and attribute them to my own imagination and desire to create illusions for myself? Of course they could. And might someone also look at their life of trial and feel bitter or resentful toward the God who supposedly caused or allowed all those challenges? Absolutely.

So, I was searching for a doctrine to teach the love of God, and love for God, outside of mortality. We don't remember Him, so it's difficult to initiate a loving relationship with a being we can't see or hear. But we did know Him before we came. And this is the doctrine I'll teach my girls. Whatever trial we might be facing, whatever hardship we might be enduring, we can - if we desire - feel the truth in the teaching that we lived with Him before we came to this earth ... that we already have a relationship with Him.

It was His love for us, before we came to Earth, that made us love Him so dearly. It was His love for us that created a world wherein we might learn to be like Him. And it was our love for Him that made us so anxious to come here, so anxious to receive bodies and experience the joys and sorrows of a mortal life. It was His love for us that provided a Savior, His beloved Son, who endured the agony of the Atonement that we might all return home to Father better than we were when we left Him. And it was our love for Him that gave us the courage to exercise the faith to come here, trusting Jesus' word that He would do what He promised, that we could really become godly through His sacrifice.

The love I want my girls to remember is the love we had with our Father (and Mother) in Heaven before we came to earth. I'm confident they will have experiences here in mortality, as I've had, that give them new reasons to love Him. But if they are so deeply buried in trials and tribulations that they cannot feel His love for them, as I've been, or they struggle to find their faith in Him, as I've done, maybe it will be helpful to remember why we came to earth to begin with: we loved Him too much to remain unlike Him. Earth life was our chance to become like He is, and we could not resist it. We held our moral agency in one hand, and our love for Him in the other, and joyfully accepted the challange and opportunity of mortality.

I hope my girls feel the truth in the doctrine of our pre-mortal life. It is such a blessing to know why we're here. Yes, we're here to get a body, and be tested, and all those other things we hear and say in Sunday School. But ultimately we're here because He first loved us.

Thought While Cleaning

Why do bugs die on their backs? I always find little critters in corners and windowsills on their backs with their legs all scrunched up.

It just seems a little dramatic to me.

Simple Touch

I've always loved the story in the New Testament of the woman with the issue of blood. I love her for her twelve years of lonely solitude, being unclean and unable to participate in her society as a "normal" female would. I love her for her humble yearning, that she would not be like some who brazenly ask Jesus for a blessing, but rather hope that there might be such reserves of overflowing power in His person that her unobtrusive touch would go unnoticed by Him and still change her life completely. I love her for her faith. And for her courage when she tells Him all, not knowing how He might respond. Powerful people are not always kind.

But as I sat tonight reading my book on my bed, tearful because of my own heart circumstances and the trials that come simply from being mortal in a fallen world, my mind caught hold of her in a different light than before.

I was berating myself, as is my ignorant and misguided way, for being seemingly incapable of the kind of goodness I aspire to. I want to be like God. Holy. Patient. Loving. Perfect. I wanted to delve into my scriptures for hours, and pray with unwavering faith, and serve my family with endless selflessness. But I am incapable of those things right now. And I was feeling the consequence must be a life and heart with dim light. A little heaven but mostly heathen. A little faith but mostly fear. Not the life I'd hoped to be leading when my 28th birthday was a few days away. Twenty-eight years ... surely enough time for more than I've become.

Then the thought of this unnamed New Testament heroine entered my mind with the thought, "Touching the Master's robe was a small and simple thing." Then a flood of the simple efforts I make to come close to Him passed through my mind. Little things that I criticized myself over because they weren't bigger and grander came into my mind as praise from heaven. Perhaps the unnamed woman could have made more effort ... maybe she even considered herself lazy or cowardly. But she touched His robe and it was enough.

It's 4am right now and I'm not writing clearly, but I'm feeling clearly. And I'm feeling that the Lord is more grateful for the faith behind even small effort than I'd realized. He is always better than I realize. I feel He spends His energy praising the faith I have rather than criticizing the faith I have yet to develop.

It reminds me of putting curtains up in Chiara's room last week. I asked her to go get me a chair from the kitchen because my hands were full and if I moved I'd lose the place on the wall I'd measured for the curtain rod. As I heard her coming back with the chair my heart melted. It was so much harder for her than it would have been for me to go get it myself and remeasure the wall. As I watched her struggle to shimmy the chair across the carpet, carrying it for short spurts then needing to put it down again, I was so pleased with her. And grateful. Because she was doing it for me. Because I'd asked her to. And I loved her for it. Not because she did it perfectly, because she didn't, but because of her effort.

"What a good girl." I thought.

And right now I feel willing to hope and even believe that my Father in Heaven looks at me the same way.