it all started with a red-head named Ariel.

so we were watching little mermaid, and we're at that part where king triton finds ariel's cave of stuff...

isn't it neat.

and he's mad cause she loves a human, and she's mad because she's a teenager searching for independence and autonomy, and he goes on a rampage destroying all of her stuff with his magical scepter...

then ariel is sad and ursula's little eels show up and ariel decides to go with them.

then i realized i'm not really into disney's hero formula. betray everything you've known, gain your independence through the betrayal, everything's rainbows and butterflies in the end. lion king, mulan, cinderella, snow white, sleeping beauty... they're all the same basic plot. and i'm also not into how westernized it all is. yah yah, i'm a westerner, obviously. but really, individuality isn't what life's all about. it's about family, and working together, and the greater good for the greatest amount of people.

back to ariel hooking up with ursula. so my girls, mostly deli, noticed that ariel disobeyed her daddy, and she said, "hey mom. did ariel do a no-no? she's not being obeying, right?" so then we talked about how ariel should have gone back home to her dad and talked to him, and how dad was mad but he still loved her and he needed to say sorry, and ursula gives us yucky feelings and we don't want friends who give us yucky feelings, and how mermaids should marry mermaids and humans should marry humans... and i gotta say, that's the day that "little mermaid" lost it's bedazzlement for me.

now it's not like i'm boycotting disney or anything... i'm sure we'll be popping in "the princess and the frog" in an hour or so. i'm just finding myself to be the ultra-sensitive, borderline paranoid parent i never thought i would be. cause if in 14 years from now deli is falling in love with the "wrong guy" (i mean, erik was quality human, but not good for ariel... you know what i mean??) and we lose our tops over it, i hope she comes back home to us instead of running off to the nearest elvis impersonating dude and tying the knot without so much as a call home.

is anybody out there picking up what i'm putting down?

6 years ago today...

this was me...

headed home.

some days i feel so different from that person... it seems impossible to keep up that level of spiritual understanding, to have such a strong and personal relationship with Heavenly Father when you get back to regular life. and that makes sense, because i was always doing His work, my will was so completely and totally aligned with His.

but the thing is i'm still about the Lord's business... e.v.e.r.y.d.a.y. it just looks different. it used to look something like this...

parke phillips' baptism

and now it's more like this...

i can honestly say that the joy i feel when teaching my children eternal, true principles is the greatest feeling! and seeing them live those principles, and show love to one another, and teach one another about Christ... that's what life is about. true, pure happiness.

so i'm grateful to have been called to serve on another mission, the mission of motherhood. a mission that never ends because we're all headed home together.

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