Am I silk?

I have to share an experience that I had yesterday that was one of those 'AWHA' moments, but I have to back up just a little bit.

I have had a hard time as of late meshing and conversing with some of the other mothers of the same age of kids in the ward, neighborhood, community etc. because I feel so different from them. I work, I have kids that are classic kids and I'm not like everyone else. Upon appearance and looking at them, watching them, and listening to them, they make it sound like they have it all together. "This kid is doing so and so and is great, and this kid is doing so and so and is great." Now don't get me wrong, I too am a believer that everyone needs optimism in life but doesn't reality ever bite these people too? They just seem too perfect. My kids are not perfect, I think everyone knows that. Dylan and his physical hangups and issues that he still deals with today leaves me feeling so different than the other moms I see. Taylor also suffers consequences of Dylan's behavior and so many times my heart goes out to her. (I hope she is never too scarred by our family.) Jared's personality is still developing, but he absolutely loves to run up onto the stand at church in the middle of sacrament meeting, or a whole host of other things that I know others look at us and go, "Ugh, why can't you people get it together!?!" In summary: I am flawed and different. So many others around me are great moms and have perfect standing in the community. Not me.

Anyway....So I was sitting in one of the most beautiful rooms on this earth, the Celestial Room at the nearby Rexburg Temple. I had been taught and was pondering upon many things, looking at the chandeliers, reading the scriptures when my eyes were caught upon the flowers in the room. They of course were so beautiful. The flowers, the tall ferns the garland of ivy leaves. They were 'perfect'. (Then the AWHA moment.) Then the impression came to me that they were fake. Of course they were perfect, because they weren't real. I remember a fireside done by artist Leon Parson, who talked about how in nature, real things are flawed. Leaves or petals are not symmetrical. Apples and tomato's are not truly circular. You only see the truly perfect in silk, in something being fake.

Well ladies and gentlemen. There is my epiphany. I am very real. I am not silk, I am not fake. I am very flawed and with that Heavenly Father can work with me. And in that I can know him. If I were to be silk there would be no need for him to make me better and in turn, no opportunity to know him. Thank heavens for flaws.