No offense to Holly and her Google commercial, but THIS is the best commercial I’ve seen in a long, long time.

Ok. It was 1999ish and Holly and I attended the same BYU student ward. I had seen her around here and there, but we hadn’t formally met. One fast and testimony meeting, she got up and bore her testimony. I was in the congregation. I remember she was dressed in black. She got up and just… completely blew me away.

The way she looked, the way she talked, her strength, her emotion (this one, like all of Holly’s testimonies, included a few tears), her presence. She was stunning. I was hooked.

How do you not love this woman?

I can’t recall the specifics of her testimony (thanks a lot, faulty brain), but I do remember sitting there, with wide eyes and a slightly open mouth, thinking, “Wow.”

Ten years, three kids, and a hundred thousand joy-filled moments later, she still wows me every day.

I love you, Holly. Happy birthday.

What’s your earliest/favorite/best/etc. memory of Holly? Cheese-intolerants, you can come back now.

“Great music does not just make us feel good. It means something. It makes us understand. It makes us happy.”
~ Lukas Foss …obviously referring to this song.

“Hold on a little longer. You can do this! You are part of a special generation. You were prepared and preserved to live at this important time in the existence of our beautiful planet earth. You have a celestial pedigree and therefore have all the necessary talents to make your life an eternal success story.”
~ Dieter F. Uchtdorf …obviously referring to all of us. We CAN do this.

Come on. Rise up.

Let me stop right there and answer your question. The answer is yes. We are super righteous.

Anyway, the message is amazing (of course) and it’s full of inspiring goodness, but one passage really stood out to me as I read it. It’s this quote that Elder Scott used from John Taylor:

“Joseph Smith, upwards of forty years ago, said to me: ‘Brother Taylor, you have received the Holy Ghost. Now follow the influence of that Spirit, and it will lead you into all truth, until by and by, it will become in you a principle of revelation.’ Then he told me never to arise in the morning without bowing before the Lord, and dedicating myself to him during that day.”

Every morning. First, bow and dedicate. Then, arise.

This makes so much sense to me right now. I seem to get so easily lost in the bustle of the day. Every day. I keep forgetting what I’m here for. Some days, it’s like I suffer from short-term memory loss.

“Ok, who am I and what am I doing with this life again?”

You know that adage about how airplanes are off course 99 percent of the time?  Apparently, flights aren’t straight shots. The pilot has to make course corrections repeatedly throughout the flight in order to keep the plane flying toward its destination.

That’s us too, right? We are those planes, those pilots. We’re off course 99% of the time.

I know I am. And that’s what the quote is about. Life is so full of distractions that if you want to get anywhere, you just have to rededicate yourself every day. And that’s what prayer is, right? That’s what personal revelation is. They’re our way of making those necessary course corrections. Every day. Every morning.

So. If you are having one of those days (years?), and feeling just hopelessly lost, I say:

Calm down.

Of course you’re off course. Nobody expected otherwise.

Just wake up, bow, dedicate yourself, and arise.

And then do it again tomorrow.

Both Olive and Holly are doing very well. Thankfully, the only complication so far has been fitting little Olive’s out-sized feet onto the ink pad.

Not enough über cute newborn baby photos for you? Okay, fine. Here’s the gallery.

…and draws a picture of “Jesus in heaven and Satan in Satanland” (her words) in the same week.

I really like the angels. And the fact that she circled the tongue sticking out at me.

A limerick about Ninja Cat.

Before you read what we came up with, let me first say this: you’re welcome.

Ahem.

There once was a nice ninja cat
with whom we wanted to chat.
He said “Go away!”
so we didn’t stay,
but went home and sat on a mat.

But. It’s got a strong heart. And it tries. And that’s enough reason to go ahead and give it a read anyway, isn’t it?

I vote yes.

Okay. So, back when I was a stupid teenager, I hated General Conference. No. That’s not true. I didn’t feel strongly enough about it to hate it, but it did bother me. Every April and October it annoyed me.

It was just SO long. And SO boring. And SO frustrating.

The place where weekends go to die (photographed by the talented Jeremy Hall).

Each time it rolled around, conference seemed to gobble up my entire weekend. Not just my Sunday, mind you, but my Saturday too. From 10 in the morning to 8 at night! And all those talks just ran together like a two-day chain of navy suits and tidy haircuts and droning voices. Those voices! That same soothing, rhythmic, peaceful cadence… in speaker after speaker… lulled me… to… sleep… JUST as one of my mom’s side jabs jerked me back.

Torture.

Long, boring, frustrating, teenage torture.

The fact that those weekend-consuming, tidy-haircut-sporting, sleep-inducing voices were the voices of latter-day prophets didn’t really register with me. As a stupid teenager, I just wasn’t ready to appreciate conference.

Going on a mission (and growing up a bit) has helped me to start to turn things around. I’ve slowly started hearing the value of those voices.

Now, at thirty-old years-old, I feel like I shed a layer of stupid teenager husk each year. I enjoy conference now. I engage with it.

Don’t misunderstand me. I still doze through a talk or two (or three?), but when I’m awake, I’m REALLY awake. I hear those voices now. They affect me. They change me a little bit.

I finally want them to. <brushes off husk flakes>

Wait… wow. Preachy, heavy-handed, clumsy, AND self-righteous. I warned you, right?

Anyway.

This conference—this time around—there was one voice that really boomed out, don’t you think?

If you’ve got 15 minutes and you’re not a stupid teenager, listen to Elder Holland’s talk again.

It might wake you up.