Caught in Flight

It's been a fun week here in Mannheim. Lots and lots of rain, fall is HERE, it's finally time to wear boots again, and I've learned some skills that I never knew I would on a mission. 

Yesterday was a Kinder Spektakulär in the big main park in Mannheim. There were a ton of booths with different activities for kids, and the church was in charge of one of these booths. We were not sure what we were going to be asked to do, but face painting, balloon animal making, and rubber band bracelet making was not all on the expected list.

 

I face painted for 4.5 hours.

Folks, I've never face painted in my life.

Whose idea was that? This is coming from the girl who cannot draw a straight line.

With a ruler.

Now you want me to paint something on a child's face that's supposed to be recognizable afterwards?

Good Night!

Mercifully, the Lord's plan is perfect, miracles do happen, and most of the kids wanted to be cats or pirates.

I always talk about being able to reach dreams, like they are just something you can pull off of the shelf and pop open and "just add milk".

I'm always going off about wings, and flying, deserving, and attaining dreams. Today, though, I've been thinking about what you do when your wings are in the shop, or broken, or scratched, or just really ugly.

How do you fly if you can't get off the ground? Or don't want to be seen once you do?

Something that hit my soul in the head like a ton full of bricks is that I realized that I have spent most of my life thinking about what I could do, rather than what I can do.

For example: "If I had just felt a little more comfortable about myself, I would have been myself and he would have asked me out on a date."

Or, something more personally relevant: "If I wasn't bogged down with gluten, I would be clear headed enough to say something thoughtful, like I usually try to do."

Or yesterday, I played a movement from the Undine Sonata in Sacrament meeting with this really cool person from the ward. "If my lips weren't so dry, and if I had had my Chapstick dabei, I would have played with my usual sound."

I found that I am continually excusing myself from less than profi performance by assuring myself that I could have done all of those things splendidly, had I had the right circumstances.

With this train of thought, I have in effect, been raining on my own parade, or switching the railroad switch, so that my train of experience runs off course, then blaming the weather for the mess I am in.

I think it is so important to accept what we can do in the exact moment we are doing it. Once we are willing to do that, no matter what or how much that is, we will take our foot off the break, and we will be able to do more than we expected.

Wanting and trying to give more than we can give in that moment, to satisfy some understanding of our own worth, is in a sense, selfish. To give all that we have, to give it all to the Lord, and give it freely, that is what expands our ability to be able not only give, but to receive.

"  Surging selfishness, for example, has shrunken some people into ciphers; they seek to erase their emptiness by sensations. But in the arithmetic of appetite, anything multiplied by zero still totals zero! Each spasm of selfishness narrows one’s universe that much more by reducing his awareness of or concern with others. In spite of its outward, worldly swagger, such indulgent individualism is actually provincial, like goldfish in a bowl congratulating themselves on their self-sufficiency, never mind the food pellets or changes of water. 

Because selfishness is really self-destruction in slow motion.  " Elder Maxwell

That's how you fly, when flying doesn't seem possible. Like a penguin or an emu. If you can't fly in the sky, fly in the water or across the sand. But, you can always fly.

Sister Roderer

Welcoming our new Zone Leader at the Mannheim Bahnhof