Halloween used to be in my top three holidays (behind Christmas and my birthday). I loved dressing up! But sometime since college I’ve lost my excitement. I finally have an idea of why my mother always seemed less than enthusiastic. Between the energy expended to dress the kids, my expanded post-baby body self consciousness, and the lack of widely available, modest, flattering, affordable women’s costumes, I’m about ready to put on my mom uniform of jeans and a T-shirt and leave the fun to the kids for the fourth year in a row. For me, it’s a little depressing to see otherwise sane women using Halloween as an excuse to dress provocatively. But I haven’t seen much between that option and a huge ugly gorilla costume on the store shelves.

When I asked my out-of-the-box husband what I should be, he started out with “It would be funny if you were…” To which I blurted the reply “I don’t want to look funny, I want to be pretty!” He said “Great, be a princess!”

Isn’t there anything slightly more creative than a princess, with more coverage than the average party-store mini-skirted pirate costume, less dark and scary than a witch or gorilla, that doesn’t cost me my Christmas budget, and that I can look pretty in? I know it’s a challenging list of requirements, but I’d really love to re-discover my love of Halloween dress-up.

Spiritual experiences with hymns.  I've had a bunch, but usually it's just me finally noticing that the lyrics actually have meaning and apply to me.  Our YW music specialist had us learn "Dearest Children, God is Near You" before the YW broadcast and while she was teaching it she said that it was the song she used as a lullaby for her babies when they were little (they're all grown up now) and that to her it's a song that says everything she wishes her children would/could learn from her.  Then we sang it and it suddenly meant 10x more to me! 

There was another time during college when a girl in my ward was hit by a car in an accident and died.  They asked me to be part of a group that sang "Nearer, My God, to Thee" at the funeral and I found that suddenly that song was nearly impossible to sing without crying because I now had experience to understand it.  Same thing with "God Be With You Till We Meet Again" that we sang at the same funeral.  I'd always thought of it as a "see you next week at church" song, not a "we might not see each other until after we die, so I'm going to ask God to take care of you since I may not be around to do it myself" song.  Then, I was singing at this funeral where this girl's parents and siblings and friends were trying to have faith and remember the Plan of Salvation and not be bitter and angry about her dying and the music helped me believe and understand that God loves us, has a plan, and takes care of us even though sometimes bad things happen to good people.  Those hymns, along with "I Need Thee Every Hour" are a big part of my ability to have faith during hard times because they explain with music (which always helps explain things better) how utterly dependent I am on Heavenly Father for everything and that everything really will turn out okay in the end now matter how bad they seem right now because He will take care of me and those I love if we let Him.

"I Believe in Christ" is a hymn that helps me express my testimony.  When I sing it I really feel worshipful, and it helps me feel spiritual when it's sometimes hard to feel the Spirit as I wrestle with my kids during Sacrament Meeting. Maybe the Still Small Voice talks a little louder through music. 

The premise of the book is helping men and women understand some of the differences in the way they do things and express themselves so they can "translate" eachother and themselves to improve their relationships.  My favorite part is at the beginning of the book where he tells a story about his wife asking him to go out to the store in the middle of the night to buy milk for the baby.  He talks about all the things she did right, and how easily she could have asked him "wrong" without knowing it.  Simple things like, instead of asking him and then getting mad and saying "fine, I'll do it myself" when he hesitated, she just waited until he answered her.  And instead of saying "the baby is sick and crying and we're out of milk–can you go to the store and buy some?" (which would have been insulting to him by questioning his ability to do it and sounding to him like she's blaming him for all those problems), she just said "Will you go to the store and buy some milk for the baby?" 

Gray jokes in the book about how he had to phrase the title in terms of Mars and Venus because if he'd used intelligable lables all the women would have said it didn't apply to them.  If you want to improve your relationship with or your communication with a person of the opposite sex, this book will help you understand some ways you can make changes in yourself that work to help you get what you want.  Some of the specific exercises haven't been very useful for me and even seemed counterproductive, but many of the general principles and explanations of gender psychology have been surprisingly applicable and impressively helpful and I know my husband feels the same. 

The YW General President, Sis. Tanner, gave a talk about how we need to understand our identities as daughters of God and how much he loves us.  Her First Counselor talked about learning to repent and how we don't have to change ourselves alone–the Savior changes us as we humble ourselves.  Her Second Counselor talked about "staying on the path" of righteousness and not trying to see how close to the edge we can get.  I can't remember which speaker it was who emphasized modesty.  Maybe it was a couple of them, but they brought it up a couple of times in the meeting.

President Hinckley spoke next.  I was surprised at how frail and thin he looked, but I admire his ability to keep at it even though he's obviously not feeling well.  He gave a Napoleon Dynamite Pedro-like "your wildest dreams will come true" sort of promise tonight.  If you will 1) pray, 2) study, 3) pay an honest tithe, and 4) attend your church meetings, then your success will be beyond what you could ever expect was the jist of it. I felt sure that his promise applied to me, as well as the young women. 

It seemed like the theme of the meeting was helping the young women understand that they are daughters of God and need to act like it in order to be happy.  Thanks to everyone who participated for the inspirational meeting!

My lesson for the Beehives today is about the home environment. The idea is to teach them that keeping your home orderly and clean invites the Spirit to be in your home and that women staying home to raise children and keep their homes beautiful and clean is honorable work that God is pleased with. It's not mere drudgery and by having a cheerful attitude about our work we can bless our families.

I remember listening to this lesson when I was in Young Women as a young woman and I vividly recall the teacher ask us how we would feel if the Savior came to visit us at home that day without warning. Of course my room was a wreck and I believe I remember having had a fight with my mother that week about the subject of the cleanliness of my room (not an uncommon topic of discussion). It went something like: Mom: "You must keep your room clean. I'm sick of seeing this mess!" Me: "Well, then I'll close the door so you don't have to see it! It's my room and you shouldn't be in there anyway. I like it this way." Mom: "It's not your room. It's my room because it's my house. I let you use that room. As long as you live in this house, you'll keep your room clean!" You can probably imagine how it went from there. Eventually I would agree to clean it if she would help me. Of course one of my big problems with keeping my room clean was that I'd let it go until it was horrifying, then get overwhelmed and let it get even worse, then one weekend when I'd have nothing else to do and be sick of it I'd clean like crazy till it was "perfect." So, my mom would sit there with me, going through each dresser drawer and under my bed and in my closet until, hours later, we were satisfied or too exhausted to continue. My poor mother is so patient. I realize what a saint she is now that I'm older and have a house of my own to try to keep clean.

Anyway, back to young Bethany's beehive class. My teacher asked us if our homes were in a state to comfortably receive the Savior, or if we'd be embarrassed. I knew I would be embarrassed by my room and wanted to improve. It's taken me a lot of effort since then to improve, but I believe I have improved. I feel like my home is my stewardship, that I've been very blessed to be allowed to have a nice home with plenty of room and lots of stuff to mess it up with. I'm still not very good at cleaning or decorating or any of those skills I've been working on, but I'm getting better at it all the time.

As I've thought about this lesson I'm giving today, I realize that if the Savior were to come to my home today, He would see toys and clothes on the floor, books in disarray in the basement, a messy office, and dishes on the table from last night's dinner. But He would also know how much effort I've put in to getting it that good! I ran a full dishwasher last night, most of the laundry is clean and folded, the kids' bedroom and the guest room are picked up, there are clean towels and toilets in the bathroom. He would know and I would know that it's better and that I'm trying to be better still.

I had a couple of paradigm shifts that really helped me in my quest to improve myself in this way. One, I recognized that I don't have to work nearly as hard as my ancestors did to keep a clean, orderly house. I have a vacuum, dishwasher, clothes washer, dryer, and many other conveniences that make it hundreds of times faster to do what needs to be done. So, I earned to be grateful for the few tasks I have to do comparatively. Two, I found a web page called flylady.net which teaches that you don't have to do everything perfectly all at once to make your home a nice place to live. Just a few minutes a day working on the maintenance frees up time and psychological space to work on the time-consuming stuff that you never get to otherwise. It also taught me to just do a little something that will show me immediate results when I'm overwhelmed, and that helps motivate me to tackle more. And, I discovered that it's easier to do a little cleaning often (even when it's not very dirty!) than to do a lot of cleaning all at once when it's really dirty. It may seem obvious to you, but it was news to me! (Sorry Mom, I know you tried to tell me…) When my home is clean and orderly and when I'm cheerful about the work I'm able to do it's easier to feel the Spirit. It's also easier for me to serve others because I'm more worried about people than about all the things I need to do at home. I can think more clearly in orderly places, which is why the lesson brings up how clean the temple always is. Trying new things isn't really frightening when my home is in order, because there's space for one more thing on my plate. Making new friends is easier because I'm not embarrassed to have them over to my house on the spur of the moment when my house is clean (or at least closer to clean).

God likes things clean. He likes His house to be clean, His people to be clean, and His peoples' houses to be clean. It occurs to me that learning to clean your house can help you learn to become clean internally–to repent. We don't have to be perfect on our own all at once. Christ will sit with us in our room, just like my mom, and go through each drawer and under the bed and through the boxes in the closet. He'll help us get rid of the sweaters that don't fit anymore and the empty drinking-straw wrappers that somehow got in with the shoes. He'll teach us how to wash our sheets and maybe even paint the walls our favorite color. He never gets sick of helping us and he won't give up on us until it's done, if we're willing to keep working with him. He doesn't make us do it alone, but he insists that we do it if we are going to live in his Kingdom. Thanks for listening while I wrote myself through what this lesson means to me. I think it'll help me teach my sweet Beehives better.