Besides sewing the past two weeks, the main thing that has kept me from writing lately has been a Bible class project which grew a bit bigger than I originally envisioned (as all my projects seem to do!) We’ve been studying different aspects of the priesthood for a number of weeks, and considering that God has made us a holy priesthood ourselves  (1 Pet 2:9,11) and designed the Levitical priesthood to be a shadow of ours (Heb 8:4-5), I wanted the kids to come away with a good grasp of what the priesthood was all about. I asked Mother for suggestions how to make the subject come alive to the kids. “Why not make a book describing each part of a priest’s day, from the perspective of an actual priest?”

Two labor-intensive months later…Mother’s idea is printed and bound, and the priesthood means so much more to me than it did before. I’d…

I have a big house, a husband who sees to my needs, a boy I adore, and friends who’ve got my back. But these things are just the facts of a fuller story that no one in the know would envy. Who would think that I who have it all, by appearances, can understand why Facebook famously feeds depression? The Happiest Virtual Place On Earth can feel like one endless taunt of the Things That Are Missing in your life. After a ginger foray into that part of social media this year, I found myself leaving the screen disturbed – and sad – and eventually realized the feelings came from wounds that have yet to heal. Offline, I look at the people around me. My single friends would give an arm to be married. Those with families of their own each have their burden, ones I am grateful to have…

For the past couple of years I’ve been working on a series for older kids on the Books of Law. So far we’re on lesson 50, but only maybe half way through? Prior to this, I had never studied the books of Exodus through Deuteronomy in too much detail, since they seemed both a little daunting and dry to me. (Shame on me!) Though I’ve put my heart into making these lessons interesting for my students, I think I’ve learned way more from this study than they have. It’s been the most rewarding (albeit challenging) series I’ve ever worked on, partly because I began it with virtually no knowledge of most of the laws, and have learned so much; also because the topics in the Old Law foreshadow the New Law so beautifully, exactly as God designed them for.

My students are ages ten to fourteen, but most of the knowledge has been…