Me and my mom curling our hair while camping. What high maintenance girls we must be!

Today is Mother’s Day and across the world Primary children will be getting up in sacrament meeting to sing a song to their mother’s in honor of the day. In our family we have a joke about my mom’s least favorite Mother’s Day Primary Song – Mother, I Love You.  If you’ve never heard this song performed by a chorus of primary children you may not understand why she has such a loathing for this song – the lyrics are really sweet and who wouldn’t love ANY song sung by their children to them on Mother’s Day?!  But something about the timing of the song, and the opening few measures, the sound is reminiscent of a whining child who is slowly plodding through and fighting doing their morning chores.  While that may be an appropriate depiction of motherhood, it’s hardly the one most desired for remembrance on Mother’s Day.

Fortunately in our ward this year they’ve chosen a different song to honor mothers.  This will be my first Mother’s Day when I will actually have a child old enough to sing with the Primary children for Mother’s Day, and I’m stoked!  When I first heard the song choice, while I was relieved it wasn’t the aforementioned song, I was a bit confused.  The song that our music director had chosen is Love is Spoken Here, and while it’s a beautiful song, it had never struck me as a particularly Mother’s Day-y song.  However as I listened to our primary kids sing it, tears welled up in my eyes as it made me think of my own mother.  For those of you who don’t know this song the words to the first verse are below -

I see my mother kneeling with our family each day

I hear the words she whispers as she bows her head to pray

Her plea to the Father quiets all my fears

And I am thankful, love is spoken here.

I wish I had a digital picture I could post, but I have a very vivid picture in my own mind of my mother kneeling by her bed daily in prayer.  It’s probably one of the most recurring and constant memories of my growing up years to see her there.  Almost daily I would walk into her room to ask her where my homework was, or what we were having for dinner or to come kill a spider in my room – and there she was in silent prayer at the side of her bed.  I know that my mom has a very close prayerful relationship with our Heavenly Father.

As I heard the words “Her plea to the Father quiets all my fears” I thought that even though I no longer live with my mom and don’t have that visual reminder, I know that she is still there by her bedside and praying for me.  I thought of some of the things I am facing right now that are a little bit daunting.  When I thought about it, I knew that my mom is praying for me to be able to get through the trials I have before me, and I truly did suddenly have all my fears quieted.  Whatever I may have to face, I know that my mom is there, pleading on my behalf with the Lord.  What a wonderful feeling of peace that gives me.

The last line doesn’t quite seem like it goes with the rest of the song.  The song is tells a story of prayer, but then at the end the author says they are thankful that love is spoken in their home.  The word love isn’t even mentioned in the song before that.  However, I think that’s a powerful message right there.  Even without saying the words “I love you” to her child, the mother in this song has communicated love more effectively than any words could.  My mother spoke her love for us with actions as much as with words.  How could I doubt that my mother loved me when she spent her time talking to the Lord to know how best to raise me and love me and do all that was best for me?  I think the message of the song is that the best kind of love comes through teaming up with the Lord to provide the best care possible for your children.

I feel so very blessed to have the wonderful mother that I do.  Her example of prayer and faith has been a beacon to me throughout my life, and will continue to be so into the future.  I love you so much Mommy, and I hope that I can be as good of an example of faith and love to my children as you have been to me.

Happy Mother’s Day!

We’ve all been there.  You’ve gone onto Pinterest to pull up a recipe, or get an idea for FHE… and 2 hours later you realize you’re still there, pinning a million ideas that you’ll never get around to doing.  Dinner’s still not made, you’re no closer to actually having an FHE lesson prepared and you wonder why you got on in the first place.

Pinterest is an awesome resource.  I’ve seen so many awesome tricks and tips for making my life easier and better, but I also know how easy it is to get sucked in for hours at a time without getting anything done.  I’ve come  up with a couple of techniques that I’ve started to use to help me make my Pinterest time productive rather than wasteful.

I think the best thing I’ve done is change my Pinterest bookmark from going to the Pinterest home page, to going directly to my personal boards page (i.e. http://pinterest.com/techiechic/ instead of http://pinterest.com).  That way when I’m logging on to find a recipe or idea that I’ve already posted I can go right to it rather than seeing a whole bunch of other brilliant ideas on my home page.  Also, if I am just logging in to find a good idea or browse for a little while, this encourages me to look at the things I’ve already pinned and actually DO one of those things instead of pinning 50 more things.  Why spend an hour pinning things when you could spend it actually starting to make that skirt, do that exercise, or clean your house?  It’s a good reminder to me that there are plenty of things I could be doing instead of trying to find more :)

The other thing I’ve done is set up a separate Pinterest board for recipes that I’ve already tried and one for recipes that I haven’t gotten around to yet.  This makes it easier for me to find the recipes that we already know and love instead of having to sift through the hundreds of recipes that are waiting for me to try.  It also makes it easier for me when someone asks for a recipe to be able to tell them – it’s on my Pinterest board of recipes I’ve tried – so they don’t have to sift through a million recipes either.  Plus, it lets my friends know that this recipe does have my personal stamp of approval and not just an enticing picture.  I always try to write my own reviews of those recipes as well, especially if I have tips for making it better.  I would recommend doing this for other projects as well, but I definitely use it most for recipes!

This last one may seem kind, but remember – your friends won’t know if you’re following them or not!  When I do surf my newsfeed on Pinterest I’ve found that there are a lot of things that my friends pin that I really don’t care about.  I’m already married so I don’t care what wedding dresses/cakes/flowers my single friends are saving, I’m not big on makeup so the latest nail painting tutorials don’t appeal to me, I’m not a photographer so I’m not looking for the best ways to pose my subjects.  When I see pins on my home page that are in a category that doesn’t appeal to me I simply click on the pin and unfollow that particular board – not the person, just that board.  It has made my browsing SO much more effective because I see fewer results that aren’t applicable to my life.  It saves me a lot of time not having to scroll through those ideas, and I really don’t think anyone is offended that I’m not following their makeup board anymore :)

That’s all I have for now.  What about you?  Does anyone else have great tips for using Pinterest wisely?

If you don’t want to read through my whole explanation of how this FHE lesson came to be, or my personal suggestions for making this a little more special feel free to click here to skip to where you can download the lesson outline and PowerPoint.  I won’t be offended.  Ok, well I might be offended, but really, I won’t know so don’t let my being offended stop you!

A few weeks back Eric mentioned to me that he had something he wanted to do for Family Home Evening. This surprised me a little since usually I plan our FHE lessons but I was excited that he had something he wanted to do.  That particular night though was the Monday before Easter and I had spent a lot of time putting together this lesson, so I asked if we could do it another night.  The following few weeks were busy with a trip to California, Daniel’s birthday and I think a week where we either missed FHE or Sam had something very specific that he wanted us to do.  So last night I  told Eric that we’d plan on doing his FHE tonight.  I realized though that I didn’t know what it was that Eric wanted to do for his FHE so I asked him.  He replied that he wanted to dedicate our house.

This was an excellent idea.  Even though we’ve lived in this house over 2 years already (man, time flies!) dedicating our home wasn’t something we’d ever gotten around to.  We’d lived in so many places in the 4 years we’d been married before purchasing our house and hadn’t really lived anywhere long enough to think of doing this.  I’d thought of it a few times but always forgot to mention it to Eric.

As we got ready to do it this evening I thought it would be good if I could put together a little lesson about what it means to dedicate a house so that our children could understand what was going on.  I ended up with an outline and a power point presentation which you can download at the bottom of this post.

If you want to do this FHE and dedicate your own home (even if you’ve already lived there awhile) I would suggest at least having the priesthood holder who will be dedicating the home read what the Church Handbook says:

Church members may dedicate their homes as sacred edifices where the Holy Spirit can reside and where family members can worship, find safety from the world, grow spiritually, and prepare for eternal family relationships. Homes need not be free of debt to be dedicated. Unlike Church buildings, homes are not consecrated to the Lord.

A Melchizedek Priesthood holder may dedicate a home by the power of the priesthood. If there is not a Melchizedek Priesthood holder in the home, a family might invite a close relative, a home teacher, or another Melchizedek Priesthood holder to dedicate the home. Or a family might gather and offer a prayer that includes the elements mentioned in the preceding paragraph and other words as the Spirit directs.

If you’re looking for more reading material I also really liked this article about this family’s experience dedicating their home.

We didn’t end up getting around to doing this tonight (our neighbors got their trampoline set up for the first time since the end of winter and the boys played outside until it was too late for a real FHE so we did a prayer-song-Mormon Messages on YouTube- song-prayer-leftover birthday cake FHE instead), but here are some of the guidelines that I think will help make it a more successful experience.  One thing I really tried to do today was to really get our house cleaned up before we dedicated that.  Now, understand that as I write this there are still clothes on the floor from yesterday, and a couple dirty dishes in the sink, and balls ALL over our front room.  But, our closet is cleaned up, the guest room is all made up nicely and the boys’ room is pretty well picked up, and there aren’t any toys out in the family room :)  I was starting to get there.  I don’t think that your house (or ours) needs to be immaculate before you dedicate it, but I was thinking of what we do with temples and chapels before we dedicate them and I just think that, to the extent possible, cleaning your house with a little more attention than usual just puts the home in a nice spirit beforehand.  I’m also thinking that I might try to dress up next week when we do this for reals.  Maybe not quite to church clothes, but I could probably put on at least a casual skirt and have the boys in polo shirts.  Just something to mark that we’re doing something a little bit more special, a little bit out of the ordinary for our FHE.

Anyways, without further ado, here is the lesson plan and the PowerPoint.  All of the images in my PowerPoint are either personal pictures, from LDS.org’s image library or from the Microsoft clip art gallery, so there shouldn’t be any issues with copyright.  If you have a minute though I would recommend going through and swapping out a few of the images.  Right now the temple in the pictures is the Draper Temple because it’s our closest temple, but if you go to Temples.lds.org you can find your closest temple and insert that picture as well.  I also have a picture from Eric’s and my wedding day on the page talking about temple ordinances, which might be better replaced with a picture from your own wedding day (if available).  Finally, on two different slides there is a picture of our house and obviously it’s nice if the house in the picture is actually your own :)  You are completely welcome to use my PowerPoint as is and just treat the pictures as stock photography, but also feel free to modify it to better fit your own family too.

Downloads

• PDF Lesson Outline – Dedicating our Home
• PowerPoint – Dedicating our Home

If you download either resource and use it I’d appreciate a comment letting me know what you think!  I never know if people really use my lessons or not but I’m hoping that they’re put to good use by more than just my own family (although it’s worth the effort even just for them :) )  Enjoy!

So today is Throwback Thursday.  I don’t usually post something for this, but I was thinking of a story that I don’t think I’ve recorded before, and I figured it was worth doing.   If you want more of a reason for this post, sorry, you’re not getting one.

In May of 2006 I was on the tech crew for a group at BYU called the Young Ambassadors.  This was my 3rd year in the group and we traveled all around the country and the world with a Broadway review show.  In previous years I had toured with the group in Brazil, Argentina, Hong Kong and South Korea.  I’d also gone on 6 shorter stateside tours to every state west of the Rockies.  This year our longer tour was to the southern states.  Someone in the leadership of our group had taken the time to contact the parents of each of the people in our group to ask them to write a letter to their student to be given to us on a day when we might need a little extra encouragement.

When my parents received this assignment they thought it was a little bit funny.  After spending full months abroad where I had hardly any contact with them at all, a tour which remained entirely on US soil, where I’d have my cell phone to call or text them whenever I wanted didn’t really seem all that daunting.  So they decided instead of writing me a serious letter telling me how much they loved me and were proud of me, they were a little bit snarky with it.  I can’t remember everything that they wrote on the note that they included in my envelope, but I remember that the entire message from my dad was “Suck it up princess, walk it off!”  They also included a printout of my dad’s favorite “News from Lake Woebegone”.  I remember showing this to some of the performers in the group and they were horrified!  What kind of parents would write such a thing?  Didn’t they know that this was for a day when I was having a hard time and could use some love from my parents?

I on the other hand thought it was brilliant!  I don’t think I’d been having a particularly hard day when they gave me that letter, but I definitely wasn’t afterwards.  It was something that I knew had come specifically from my family.  We can be a little bit snarky sometimes, but I know that my parents love me.  So receiving that letter was just a proof that it came from my parents and not someone else’s.  It made me happier than if they’d sent a lengthy letter telling me how much they loved me and how proud they were of me.  In fact what that letter said to me was, “hey, we love you and are proud of you and think you’re great.  But you already know that, and you know we’re here for you for whatever you need.  In the meantime, enjoy the inner workings of Garrison Keilor’s mind and some silliness from home.”  I don’t think there’s anything better they could have sent me :)

So for Christmas this last year I put together 12 FHE lessons for my little sister’s family.  I put together a lesson plan for each month with visual aids, recommended opening/closing hymns, an activity and a recommended treat (I couldn’t exactly put together 12 months of treats and hope they’d still be good at the end of the year).  The idea was that she could pull out the lesson 5 minutes before FHE and be all ready to go (especially if she does like us and just goes with Oreos for her FHE treat).  I had meant to post all of those lessons after I gave her the present, but it hasn’t happened yet.  However, as I was getting ready to do the Easter lesson for tonight I thought it might be good to share what I put together with anyone who might be interested.

So, my favorite resource in putting together these FHE lessons was A Year of FHE – she puts together the most well thought out lessons that are just easy to do, spiritual and geared to kids.  For my Easter lesson I decided to use her lesson plan called Jesus is Resurrected.  I made some modifications to her lesson plan for my use.  She uses the Gospel Art Kit a lot, which is great, but my kids tend to like the flannel board style lessons better.  So, using her lesson plan I put together some visual aids that were more kid-friendly.  She also has her lessons organized on a month-by-month basis and has her recommended closing song be a song that the family is practicing for the whole month, and I wanted to pick something that associated with the lesson instead.  I also found an idea for a treat that I wanted to add into my own lesson.  Finally, because I’m a dork about things like formatting, I always want my lesson plans to fit on one piece of paper, or one piece double-sided at least, so I copied her lesson into Word and rearranged things so that I was happy with it.

Anyways, I’m not going to post my version of the lesson plan here because I feel like I did too much copying for it to be fair use.  I might contact the sister that runs the Year of FHE website and see if she would mind me re-posting it here, but in the mean time if you’d like the Brittny-approved copy leave me a comment with your email address or shoot me an email asking for it – my email address is my first name {at} byu {dot} net and promise me you’ll click over to her site and say a big thank you for the lesson plan.  Otherwise, her lesson plan is awesome and if you want my treat idea it’s these Resurrection rolls that were floating around Pinterest like crazy a few months ago.

The visuals I put together are what you see at the beginning of this post.  I got the colored in images of Christ and the tomb etc. from Chocolate on my Cranium and the other images were from Microsoft publisher.  Nothing too fancy, but it would save you the hassle of trying to gather all the items from around your house/yard.  I’ve uploaded a regular pdf copy here or a reversed copy here (so you can print it on an iron on transfer for a flannel board).

In preparation for our upcoming General Conference in a couple weeks I’ve decided to re-listen to all of the talks from October’s conference.  I haven’t made it very far – I only just finished the second talk from the Saturday morning session.  Yesterday though I started by listening to President Monson’s opening remarks where he lowered the missionary age for young men and young women.  While I really have come to peace with the timing of that announcement, I still get extremely choked up when I hear anything in relation to that announcement.  I’m so excited for the young people who can now go on missions at earlier ages, and especially for the young women who might not have had a chance to serve under the previous standards.

As I was listening to this talk and thinking about it an interesting thought came to my mind.  I think that one of the best decisions I made in my life was the decision to *prepare* to serve a mission.  Obviously I never had the opportunity to make use of that preparation and actually serve a full time mission, however one of my main focuses in my growing up life was that of being ready to serve a mission.  That preparation has not gone to waste in the slightest.  Preparing to serve a mission meant my focus was on the temple, learning to teach others, improving my scripture study, serving in the church etc.  I use the skills I worked on during that time every day as I raise my children, serve in the church, work outside of the home, and make friends.  I’m grateful for the time that I spent in mission prep classes learning how to work with a companion – I have a companion now who I’m stuck with for eternity.  I’m grateful that I built up a strong foundation upon the basic principles of the gospel by going to gospel principles classes and helping me to understand that for all the different parts of the gospel that you could focus on – the gospel itself is actually extraordinarily simple.

After this thought I realized that I’m excited for all the young women who will get a chance to serve missions, but more importantly, I’m excited for all the young women who will now be encouraged to more diligently prepare to serve missions.  What an incredible strength these upcoming young women will be in the church in all that they do.

The Crucifixion (Gospel Art Book [2009], no. 57)

Some of you may already know that the bishop in my parents home ward, is my dad.  The little girl in this story was me.  Although I didn’t know this story when my dad told it, the question is one I have pondered apparently for more years than I realized.  How could anyone kill our Savior?  I still believe that the only real explanation is that they must not have known how much He loved them.  Somehow they missed the fact that this man had suffered for every pain, sin and sorrow that these people would endure only hours before they took Him, beat Him and nailed Him to a cross.  If they could have comprehended, even to the smallest degree, how deeply and personally He loved them they couldn’t have done what they did.  And yet Christ’s attitude as they gathered around Him to mock Him was “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”  What perfect love He has for each of us.  In a situation that would make any reasonable person say “Seriously?!  I did all this for you, and this  is the thanks I get?” He turns and says, “Look, they don’t get it.  It’s sitting right in front of their faces and they just don’t get it.  Please don’t hold them accountable for this.”  Furthermore, Christ, being the only one who could tell the Father who to forgive, as the One who had taken all sins upon Himself, rather than making a simple request He tells Heavenly Father – forgive them.  While they were yet in the act of killing Him, he frankly forgave them.

Last night I was putting Sam to bed and as we were discussing his behavior that day he started to throw a huge fit about the privileges he would be losing as a result of the things he had done.  As I was sitting there I was just begging him inside, “Don’t you get it?  I want so desperately for you to be happy.  I helped make that little body you’re flinging around.  Your father and I spend our waking hours working to provide you with food, shelter, clothing, activities, education, and love.  I would love to give you everything I can so you can grow up to be happy and healthy.  I wouldn’t even give you these rules and expectations if it weren’t truly for your own happiness.”  Afterwards I thought, is this how Christ looks at us?  Trying to tell us, “Look, everything I have done I have done for you.  I’ve created this earth, and helped create you.  I want you to have all that I have.  I’ve put everything in front of you, all you have to do is keep these few commandments, be kind to each other, learn to be righteous, and it can all be yours.”  Does He look down at us refusing to follow His plan and just shake His head and think “Don’t you get it?  You’re pounding your head against a wall and causing your own unhappiness.  Please, let go of these things and follow me and be happy.”

So today I want to challenge each of us, to get it.  Do you realize how much your Savior loves you?  Does that love guide your actions?  And then I want to further challenge – have you shared this love with those around you?  Are there those around you who are kept apart from a relationship with Christ and His love only because we haven’t shared it with them?  I wonder, if more people understood the love of their Savior would we have the violence and hatred and wars that plague our world today?  We read in 3 Nephi about the people who live in absolute peace for 300 years.  While this peace lasts for less than a page of the 500+ page book, the period of time it describes is about a quarter of the time period of the whole record.  Could it be that once the people had met Christ and understood fully how He loved them that nothing else was as important? All the petty strifes of life fell away and they cared about each other better and lived happily and in peace.

I want to bear my testimony, that I know that our Savior loves each of us, deeply, and personally.  His greatest desire is for our happiness and we can achieve that happiness by following His commandments.  Please, if you haven’t felt the love of our Savior pray to feel it, ask for the opportunity to catch a glimpse of that love and hold on to it tightly.  I know that the gospel that He taught is true and if you live it you will be happy.

Somehow before that I’d always thought of it as a democracy.  The war was that we wanted it one way, they wanted it another way and we were fighting so that our plan would win.  But as we learned this I realized that Satan’s plan was no plan at all.  What we were fighting for was just for the opportunity to come here and get bodies and have this experience.  I’m sure that even if only one spirit had wanted this opportunity Heavenly Father would have provided it for them, but we were fighting for our brothers and sisters to come and do the same.  The war wasn’t to see who would get the most votes, it was to see who would stand up for the right and come to the earth.  Brother Bott also pointed out that in the scriptures it says that “a third part” of the hosts of heaven followed Satan, and not as we usually think of it 1/3 of the hosts of heaven.  He hypothesized that maybe rather than actually 33.3333% of the hosts of heaven it was that we were split into three factions – those who chose Heavenly Father’s plan, those who chose Satan’s plan, and those who were on the fence.  The war was for those who hadn’t made up their mind to get them to one side or the other.  An interesting thought.  I don’t know that it changes my concept of the war in heaven as much, but it is interesting to think that either way it wasn’t a vote of 2:1 that gave us the opportunity to come to this earth and gain bodies, but choosing the only side that could give us that opportunity.

This passage impressed me. How often do we feel alone or abandoned, thinking maybe what we’re doing has no value or will never be enough? I think more than ever at these times we need to turn to the Lord and realize that we are not alone. Even if it seems we’re the only one fighting for the right, we need to realize that there are likely thousands of others who are quietly living out their own lives of devotion and that we are not alone.

Today my brother Cody enters the Missionary Training Center for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to begin his two year mission preaching the gospel in Spanish to the people in the area of Morristown, New Jersey.  I am so proud of him.  In the picture above you’ll see over 80 muffins that I made in honor of my little brother receiving his mission call.  Ever since I can remember my brother has had the nickname “Cody Muffin”, so making muffins for his mission call opening party seemed appropriate.  I don’t know why we call him Cody muffin, but the name stuck.  He even has a song that goes along with this nickname.

Cody Muffin (sung to the tune of the Indiana Jones theme song)

Cody muffin, Cody boy

Cody muffin, Cody muf-fin boy

Cody muffin, Cody boy

Cody muffin, the muffin, the muffin of boy

Yes, we’re very creative lyricists in my family :P  As he was playing basketball in high school this nickname spread as they called him “The Muffin Man” and we’d joke about “Do you know the Muffin Man?”  But the nickname itself isn’t what I wanted to write about.  As I was making several dozen muffins for my brother I realized that me baking muffins for Cody is nothing short of a miracle and I wanted to share with you the miracle of the Cody muffins.

When my mom was pregnant with Cody she started having severe pain in her stomach when she was about 6 months along.  She went to her doctor a few times and the doctor couldn’t find anything wrong with her so he sent her home saying “Well Mrs. Anderson, pregnancy can cause pain sometimes.”  This rather ticked my mom off as this was her fourth pregnancy; she pretty well knew that pregnancy could cause pain, and that this particular pain was NOT normal.  Finally the doctors figured out that she had a kidney stone, and not just your regular run-of-the-mill kidney stone, but a stone that was about 1cm in diameter.  In terms of kidney stones that was a veritable boulder.  She couldn’t pass it normally and they couldn’t do anything about it surgically until after the baby was born.  So she was stuck for the last three months of her pregnancy with this extreme pain that they couldn’t do anything about.  They put her on codeine and bed rest for the last few months of her pregnancy.  We joke that Cody is so named for the codeine that made it so our mom could continue her pregnancy without dying in pain, but my parents insist they had liked the name before my mom was given the drug.  During that time my family was so blessed by our friends and neighbors who helped take care of us.  I remember there was one lady who would come over and make me a lunch to take to school every day.  I don’t actually remember if she came over every day or what but she would always make me a ham sandwich.  To this day I still don’t care for ham sandwiches and I attribute that dislike to an overabundance of ham sandwiches at that time.  But I now realize more clearly what a simple but incredible act of service that was for her to make my lunch every day so my mom could take care of herself at this time.

Finally on 19 December 1993, Cody Allen Anderson was born, 3 weeks before his due date.  He had some difficulties at first so he was placed in the NICU until he was strong enough to come home.  After coming home my mom could tell that Cody had difficulties she hadn’t seen with her other children.  He would break out in hives and had a very difficult time breathing.  The doctor put him on Nutramagen, a special hypo-allergenic formula that was very expensive but kept Cody from having these reactions.  My mom knew he had allergies, but the conventional wisdom at the time was that people didn’t develop allergies until they were at least 2 or 3 years old, so my mom couldn’t even get a referral to an allergist from Cody’s doctor.  When they finally did get him in Cody was diagnosed with some severe allergies and asthma.  There were three things that Cody absolutely could not eat or he would need to be hospitalized almost immediately – eggs, milk and peanuts.  His airways would close up and he would go into anaphylactic shock.  My mom started having to carry around an epi-pen in case of any severe reactions and even though it was only the mid-90s, my parents were early adopters of cell phones so that they could be reached any time in case Cody had a reaction to something.  Cody was also more mildly allergic to a wide variety of other things – wheat, rice, soy, corn, grass, dust, mold… you name it.  In other people they would have considered these to be substantial allergies, but compared to his trifecta of anaphylactic allergies these were almost disregarded.  Feeding Cody was a very difficult task because so many basic things were off limits.  He ended up most of the time eating things that he *was* allergic to, but not as severely as the major allergies because there was so much off limits that it was hard to find something that worked.

A good example of Cody’s allergies – for his first birthday my mom realized that she wouldn’t be able to make him a birthday cake.  So instead of cake she opted to make him some red Jell-o.  However if you look at the pictures of Cody’s first birthday you’ll notice he has dark circles around his eyes and some hives.  We found out that day that Cody was allergic to Red 40, a common dye in many foods.

As the years went on we got used to living with Cody’s food allergies.  We became experts at reading food labels and knowing that dextrose meant that there was milk inside (this was before the advent of common allergens being listed out separately and clearly at the bottom of the labels).  One of our favorite Cody allergy stories happened when Cody was 4.  My mom found him walking around eating a peanut butter chocolate chip granola bar, an obvious choice for something Cody could NOT have (remember anaphylaxis for peanuts and milk?).  She told him to hand it over, that he couldn’t eat it, and Cody told her “Don’t worry mom, Zach checked the ingredients!”  Zach, of course, was Cody’s best friend, who was at the time 3 and obviously had no reading capabilities and certainly was not a qualified choice for an ingredient checker.

Of course, being limited in what he could eat was difficult on his little growing body.  Despite having great athletic talents Cody wasn’t growing and developing as quickly or healthily as we’d have liked.  He was cheerful and a delight to be around, but he constantly had Benadryl in his system making him tired and not as capable as he would have liked.

When Cody turned 8 he was baptized, as most children in our church are.  After the baptism our dad had the privilege of laying his hands on Cody’s head to confirm him a member of the church and give him the gift of the Holy Ghost.  At this time it’s also customary for the person performing the confirmation to give a blessing to the person who has just been baptized.  As my dad was giving this blessing he suddenly stopped speaking.  He had a really long pause and we all started furtively looking around the room wondering what was going on.  Then, my dad started crying and we were really wondering what was happening.  Then he pronounced in his blessing that the allergies that had plagued his body for so long would no longer affect him the way they had.  There was a collective jaw drop and a sort of stunned moment for everyone there.  Typically blessings of this magnitude are not part of a confirmation, usually more general knowing the love of our father in heaven, being a good example to siblings, maintaining righteousness etc.  Not that those aren’t awesome blessings as well, but they don’t have the same sort of effect.  Everyone in that room knew about Cody’s allergies, heck, pretty much anyone who had ever met Cody knew about his allergies and it was an incredible thing for him to have been blessed with.

After the baptism day we all went home and pondered this declaration of healing.  It’s something we all knew and believed was possible, but not something we were expecting to witness that day.  Ironically, before the baptism I remember my parents discussing how they weren’t sure how prepared Cody was for baptism.  He’s not a super deep kind of guy, and that started from when he was pretty young.  What you get from Cody is pretty much all surface level.  Which isn’t a bad thing, I think what you get right there at the surface is pretty awesome, but he’s not one to go and sit and ponder on the things of the universe.  My parents weren’t totally sure that he’d done the sort of thinking about this choice as they thought it would merit.

The next day was a fast Sunday and we agreed as a family that we would fast to figure out the meaning of this great blessing.  The blessing hadn’t been that he was completely healed of his allergies but that they wouldn’t affect him as they had.  So we all fasted the next day.  We decided that what we would fast for was that if what the blessing meant was that he really could eat just whatever he wanted that he would have a desire to eat the foods.  That might sound silly, a kid who has been refused these things all his life and we’re asking that if he *wants* to eat them that’s an answer?  But you have to understand, these foods could have killed him the day before.  Only a week or so previously he had accidentally touched some ranch dressing at a class party and despite having the dressing washed right off he had hives breaking out all up and down his body.  The idea of eating something like that was incredibly frightening.  It would be like wanting to eat ice cream laced with cynide.

At the end of the day as we were breaking our fast Cody came up to my mom with a container of yogurt and asked my mom if he could eat it.  She asked him if he wanted to, which he said yes to and so she let him eat it.  I’d like to say that we all had perfect faith at that point and didn’t think too much of it, but the truth is that we all took mental note of where the epi-pen was, calculated how much Benadryl he would need and considered whether or not we should just hop in the car right away to go to the hospital.  But as we watched him with great trepidation… nothing happened.  We watched for the hives that we knew so well to break out – nothing.  We listened for his asthmatic breathing to get really bad – it didn’t.  We looked for any sign that we were wrong to have believed that this could happen – and we came up empty.  Cody truly had been healed in a way that can be described as nothing short of miraculous.

Later Cody told my parents that as he was under the water being baptized he’d had the thought that if baptism could wash away his sins then it could wash away this trial from him as well.  We also found out that his sweet best friend Zach had been praying every night that Cody could get better from his allergies.  Oh the faith of little children!

The few weeks following Cody’s baptism were nothing short of a celebration for those who knew what had happened.  That night we attended a baptism for a young woman who had recently converted to our faith.  Afterwards they had the traditional open house with different refreshments.  The mother of the young woman noted to a family friend afterwards, “There was a little boy there who looked so happy, you’d think he’d never had a cookie before in his life!”  Little did that mom know at the time, he really hadn’t had a cookie before in his life.  Different friends called dibs on taking Cody out for different firsts.  His first cheeseburger, his first ice cream, his first time eating scrambled eggs.  His descriptions for the different foods were mind blowing, things that we take so much for granted were a whole new world for him.  It was an incredible experience.

In the years that have followed we’ve come to better understand why Cody was blessed that his allergies wouldn’t affect him the way they had rather than that he was completely healed.  While the foods that were so toxic to him before have diminished, there are still a very few things that can cause him the same distress as before, mainly almonds and walnuts.  He still has some minor asthma and is allergic to cats, but comparatively this is NOTHING when viewed in light of what his problems once were.

So the miracle of the Cody muffins?  A few months ago I had the privilege of making muffins for Cody – with eggs, milk, flour and all kinds of things that once would have killed him – and he was able to eat them.  When Cody was younger the prospect of him going on a mission was pretty grim.  The chances of him ingesting something lethal and not getting the care he needed in time by the time he was 19 were extremely high.  But beyond that, how could someone with the difficulties he had go and spend most of his time outdoors among dust, pollens and molds while going door to door to preach the gospel?  How could he leave an environment where a very controlled diet kept him alive to go eat at the homes of different members eating whatever might come his way?  The little 8 year old Cody would have been disqualified from serving a traditional mission based on his health.  I cannot express what a great miracle I was blessed to witness and how grateful we are as a family for it.  I’m so grateful for and proud of my little brother – his faith, his personality and his commitment to serve.  We’ll certainly miss him, but he’s going to be a great missionary.