Learning to Love

Yesterday my brother Chris, profoundly advised me, "Mary, don't sweat the small stuff. Don't even worry about money for retirement. We all simply need to be courageous about the things we know are true. Very courageous."

He told me this after he told me that his son had just called to tell him goodbye before going to war. His son is an airforce pilot. Since then I have been watching the news for hours. News without any news, if you know what I mean.

And how do I show my courage? How do I demonstrate my faith in the future, no matter what it holds? I only know of two things: Prayer and Love. They stand as inseparable allies in our journey. Both different and yet so similar.

And so I pray. I approach God. It is to Him that I offer petitions of mercy. It is He who with his omniscient majesty, comprehends me and all the billions everywhere else, and personally answers in perfect faithfulness. Prayer is passageway to my Heavenly Father. It is my means of expression and opening my mind. It is simultaneously, introspection and adjusted perspective.

And so I love--or sometimes in difficulty try to. Love comprehends me and all the billions. Love is always available and outflowing from our Eternal Source. Love is passageway to God and passageway to another person's heart and life. If I am true it is means of expression and opens my mind to understanding. Most definitely it is introspection and offers corrected perspective.

Sometimes love heals, sometimes it makes me bleed. I also have seen and enjoyed healing miraculous prayers. But, while upon my knees, I also have felt rebuke and correction. Love has energized me so that even my fingers and toes felt infused with magic, but at other times reeled me with exhaustion. Likewise, prayers have given me strength and renewal; and at other times left me still lonesome, tired and wondering.

Different circumstances demand different loves, but final realizations always prove love to be the bond between ourselves and happiness, and I suspect, the very element of Eternal Life. Likewise I have never been at a loss for a prayer in any trial or any joy, and always time has proven that prayer always was the infallible cable of strength and security to our Maker.

Show Courage: Pray and Love.

Morning Muster Granola

Sorry about the upside down picture--I will tell you more about that in a second.

Granola. This post started out to be about granola, in all its delectable crunch, toasted nuttiness and just barely enough honey and real maple syrup for my sweet satisfaction.
First here is the recipe that I have mutated from so many others I wouldn't even know where to begin. One of the most delicious ingredients is the salt, giving it a perfect shake of savory. This is a MUST TRY! Even though it is high fat, it is healthy fat to infuse you with energy for your morning muster. Just keep your serving to one-half cup and enjoy!

MORNING MUSTER GRANOLA

6 cups oats
1 cup walnuts barely chopped
1 cup almonds barely chopped
½ olive oil
½ c real maple syrup
½ c honey
2 t sea salt
2 t nutmeg
1 T cinnamon
Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Mix all ingredients together and spread on a cookie sheet. (I used two large ones.) Bake for 40-45 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes. Cool, then store for up to 2 weeks at room temperature. Makes 9-10 cups.
½ c serving:
Calories 230
Fat 13 grams (good fat)
Choles. 0
Carbs 24 g
Sugar 6 g
Fiber 4 g
Protein 6 g


THE REST OF THE STORY

OK, so I got the formalities of granola out of the way. Now for the informalities or the rest of the story. I'm not very good with the camera to begin with, but how hard is taking a picture of granola? Do I need to hire an enterage to clean my kitchen, iron my linens, sparkle the silver and china, then someone else to snap the photo?

First after looking at a few sites with beautiful close up food pictures, I decided to get out my new dishes I bought at Costco. So gorgeous they practically drive me to screaming. I poured a bowl full of granola and took the picture, but all I could see was the pattern of romantic black flowers on the dish. So I re-poured the granola, making a preschool-type mess, into a glass jar.

Then I had to conceal the crumbs and whatever else under a tablecloth. I snapped a couple of pictures, picked up the jar and it slipped out of my hand. CRASH! My heart was broken to bits along with one of my beautiful dishes that I had covered with the tablecloth! AAAH!

So that is why I am not going to do one lousy thing about the upside down picture of granola. No wonder Martha Stewart employees so much talent! And she smiles.

But then, after 35 minutes of letting the experience settle in my cells a little bit, I am smiling too. After all, why not?
Love to you.

Mr. Perfect

This is the man I hunted down at Brigham Young University. I do have a cuter pictures of him like one taken about twenty years ago in a black and hot pink wet suit posing like a smiling shark in Hollywood shades. Oh well—for my eyes only!
During last week's Sunday School lesson, given by a darling, young couple who have been married about a year, the husband said, “Everyone should talk about their spouse as if they have no problems, that everything is perfect and that you are completely in love.” Not an exact quote, but close enough. I could not look my “Mr. Perfect” in the eye. I couldn't even look around the room to see if anyone else was convulsing the same way as I. Too many times I have been EXTREMELY realistic, honest and also ready to cut my tongue out. So since it is still January—the month of resolutions, I proclaim: This is a picture of me with my perfect husband, Al.

Seriously and with complete honesty, he is perfect for me. One recent example happened just yesterday when I talked to him like he was my girlfriend. "I ate too much today," I mournfully confessed, "I was doing so well, and then completely blew it today!"

"Don't worry," he comforted me even with sincerity, "It's OK."

That is all he said, but because Al said it, I believe it. He is Mr. Stability, Mr. CTR, Mr. Nice, Mr Good Looking and Mr. Perfect. Admittedly he doesn't always say what I want to hear, or do what I want done or blah, blah, blah, but he has just the right amount of everything to help make me a better person, and he overlooks, ignores and forgives my shortcomings. For all that and more, I love him deeply.

Baby Brigham

This dog came small. I don't know what happened, but Mr. Fluffy (alias), my Golden Doodle that my husband named Brigham, is bigger than either of his parents. For this I am HAPPY! I am a big girl. I need a big dog.

Seriously, if I had one of those darling little dogs, it would appear that I was walking a chipmunk on a leash!

Pay It Forward

Thank you to Barbara Shieving for spending about 90 hours helping me set up this blog. I don't know of anything that I can do for her, but I will pay the good deed forward! I think that is what really makes this world beautiful--paying forward. I like it because it gives you a way out of "owing" someone, yet at the same time it gives you the responsibility to invest in others' lives. Can you get any lovelier than that?

About Mary

I am one of the few women who admit going to college to find a husband. Alvin Stosich and I met at Brigham Young University. Al and I were married on July 5th. It is said: Firecrackers on the 4th, Dynamite and on 5th! Mission accomplished, I quit college after three semesters and followed my dream of having babies, cooking dinner and cleaning the house. Seriously, that was my dream. I have been blessed beyond measure to enjoy such a life for thirty-five years. We loved living in beautiful Idaho for over twenty-three years but eventually ended up in Utah. I love being back home in the valley of my birth and childhood.

I was raised in a rural community called Union—on the outskirts of Midvale, Utah. Today, Fort Union is towers of business and stretches of shopping centers, but back in my day, there was a Christmas card-beautiful, white church on the corner and I played and ran through dreamy, green pastures. If you happened to drive down 900 East in Union during the summers of the 1960's, I was the kid sitting about six inches from the pavement, selling tomatoes (that I hoed all summer) for 20 cents a pound.

One of my most satisfying moments was to see my first book on the shelf at BYU Bookstore, where as a student in the 70's, I worked part-time. Thirty-four years later, I graduated from BYU in the December of my fiftieth birthday, with a degree in Marriage, Family and Human Development. Meanwhile, I spent my energy doing the greatest work of my life—being a wife and a mother to five children.

Someone once asked me, “Why are you so happy?” In answer to that question I wrote my first book, Finding the Diamond Within: Ten Ways Every Woman Can Sparkle, released in January, 2008. My mission is—Nurturing Happiness

In my dedication to nurturing happiness, Al and I are parents to three sons and two daughters, two daughters-in-law, two sons-in-law and blessedly, nineteen grandchildren.I have worked as a liaison between birth mothers and adoptive parents; taught preschool, piano and troubled youth; I have written for Brigham Young University's website foreverfamilies.net; served as a volunteer LDS Institute instructor; speak publicly; write, counsel as a life coach; and a few afternoons a month, I play the gorgeous grand pianos in the lobbies of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building at the LDS Conference Center in Salt Lake City.