May 9, 2015

The Blessings of Sharing Goodness Through Social Media

This is the address I gave as part of the Brigham Young University Women's Conference on April 30, 2015.  Of course these ideas are my own and do not represent the official positions of BYU or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
 
In his address at the 2014 BYU Education Week, Elder David A. Bednar extended the challenge to “sweep the earth with messages filled with righteousness and truth”[i] using social media.  I don’t have a cool job with the Church, and my efforts to share goodness have not taken the internet by storm.  Instead I offer the experiences of a regular woman of faith who is mostly a mother but who also shares goodness over the internet in small and steady ways.  We know the Lord is happy to work in small and simple ways (Alma 37:6) as well as large and polished ones, so there is room for all our efforts.  I am a witness that big blessings come even when sharing goodness on a small scale.
          
Seven years ago my third child was born.  Being at home with my children was the right choice for my life, but my brain felt like it was turning into oatmeal.  I had a horticulture degree from BYU and a desire to be useful with those skills.  These words from President Gordon B. Hinckley were inspiring to me: 
          
“To you women of today, who are old or young, may I suggest that you write, that you keep journals, that you express your thoughts on paper.  Writing is a great discipline.  It is a tremendous education effort.  It will assist you in various ways, and you will bless the lives of many—now and in the years to come, as you put on paper some of your experiences and some of your musings.”[ii]
          
“Well,” I thought, “I could start a garden blog.”  So I set up ‘VW Garden’ for free using Blogger.  On this blog I post about landscaping projects, favorite plants, floral arrangements, and gardens I have designed as part of my calling at the Spokane Temple grounds.  Beautiful flowers help us feel God’s love for us, and they can sometimes soften hearts when other efforts fail.   Lovely gardens nourish our spirits by reminding us of our heavenly home.  Some of the most important events in the Plan of Salvation occurred in gardens[iii].  Principles of landscape design such as unity, asymmetrical balance, and the rule of three are reflections of eternal truths.  It is a happy thing to share about these useful and uplifting topics by blogging. 
          
Although I do not write directly about the gospel on my garden blog, I have a link to my Mormon.org profile, my faith blog, and some Mormon Messages on the sidebar.  In this way I can offer light from the gospel to many blog visitors each day, even when I’m spending all day doing laundry. 
          
A little over a year ago, I felt the Lord nudging me to do a better job of recording the answers I had received to prayers and other bits of inspiration that have blessed my life, especially in regards to motherhood.  So I started another blog about faith and named it ‘Witness of a Mother.’ 
          
You are probably familiar with this quote from President Spencer W. Kimball:
          
“Much of the major growth that is coming to the Church in the last days will come because many of the good women of the world (in whom there is often such an inner sense of spirituality) will be drawn to the Church in large numbers.  This will happen to the degree that the women of the Church reflect righteousness and articulateness in their lives and to the degree that the women of the Church are seen as distinct and different—in happy ways—from the women of the world.”[iv]
          
I believe this prophecy may be fulfilled in part as we learn to articulate—to express fluently and coherently—then share our testimonies through social media.  With the wisdom of middle age, I have learned in my heart as well as in my mind that we do not have to be the biggest or best in order to make a worthwhile contribution.  When our purpose in writing is sharing goodness instead of earning money, we enjoy a broader definition of success.  Who can measure the importance of lifting even one soul toward God?  My faith blog is younger and has a smaller audience than my garden blog, but it feels more successful because of the souls it has lifted, including my own.
          
Do you find yourself studying more effectively when you are preparing to speak or teach about a gospel topic?  Preparing to share testimony through social media can have the same effect on our gospel study.  We know that answers can be found as we search, ponder and pray, and I have learned that answers come more quickly and completely when I also record and share those answers in appropriate ways.  This is because sharing our testimony of God and His truth is a way to keep our baptismal covenant as described by Alma, “to stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places” (Mosiah 18:9).  Through covenants the Lord teaches us how heaven works, how His power works, and how we can invite more of that power to work in us and through us to accomplish His work.  Whenever we invite the Lord’s power to flow through us in keeping covenants and doing His work, that power blesses us along the way. 
          
Inspiration comes through Christ’s enabling power, or grace, and it requires a combination of humility and boldness.  This is taught in Ether 12:27, “My grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me” and in Hebrews 4:16, “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace.”  Humility allows us to recognize that these answers won’t be the result of our own intelligence or creativity—though we will study things out, truth will come as we become good at listening to the Spirit.  Boldness is needed to ask the questions, seek the experiences, and record and appropriately share the answers.  Elder Bednar’s book, Increase in Learning[v], has been a great help in increasing my confidence that I can discover inspiration for myself by asking the right questions, digging into the scriptures, and listening.  General Conference is a reliable yardstick to measure personal inspiration.  If I hear thoughts and ideas in General Conference that parallel and echo the inspiration I believe I am receiving, then I know I am on the right track.  There are so many answers we will not receive and experiences we will not have if we are not humble and bold enough to ask. 
          
Thinking back on President Hinckley’s quote from earlier, I like his choice of the word ‘musings.’  It is a much more comfortable word than dissertation or book or even ‘five hundred word essay’.  We all have musings or inspiration when we’re hiking in the mountains, puttering around the garden, rocking a baby or folding laundry.  The repetitive tasks of homemaking are fruitful opportunities to ponder and listen to the Lord.  We also receive bits of inspiration as we sit in conferences that we jot down in little notebooks.  As women we have the “inner sense of spirituality” that President Kimball describes, and our nurturing responsibilities allow us opportunities to develop that spirituality even further.  As we learn to go about other tasks while keeping a part of our mind listening for the waking cry of a baby, we also learn how to live each day while keeping a part of our mind constantly tuned to the Holy Spirit.  As we develop our ability to recognize and respond to the needs of a child—even when those needs are unspoken—we increase our capacity to recognize and respond to the teachings of the Spirit, even when those teachings are not verbalized.  It seemed the years of caring for my babies were turning my brain into mush, but in fact that experience was an intensive training program for how to listen for, recognize and respond to the Holy Ghost.  The great thing is that nowadays we don’t have to write a whole book before sharing the inspiration we receive—we can share a line of insight into scripture or a paragraph about a personal experience with a gospel principle by using social media.
           
When the angel Moroni visited Joseph Smith in 1823, he quoted five verses from the book of Joel and said that those prophecies would soon be fulfilled.  Two of those verses in particular are inspiring to me:
          
And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy . . . and also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out my spirit. (Joel 2:28-29)
           
We are daughters and handmaids of the Lord.  Have you felt the fulfillment of this prophecy in your life?  Could responding to Elder Bednar’s call to share goodness through social media invite the Spirit to be poured out in greater measure upon you and your family?  Could pondering “What shall I write about today” develop your ability to ask the questions that lead to personal tutoring by the Lord?  What other blessings would come as you answered this challenge?
          
Even though my faith blog is just over a year old, sharing testimony in this way has already brought great blessings for my life and for my family.  About six years ago, I began experiencing a series of health problems that were very painful, confusing, and scary.  After several years of one problem after another after another—with months at a time when I cried on the phone to my dear mother nearly every day—I  found myself feeling weak and shaken in body and in every other way.   “Who am I,” I wondered, “because I am not the confident and capable woman I thought I was.”  After seeing so much of my weakness, I didn’t see how I could ever become strong.  Looking back, I recognize that although I loved the gospel and had been trying to follow Christ, I was built too much upon the arm of the flesh—upon my own strength instead of the Lord’s.  As I sought to come unto Christ, He saw fit to scour me down to the base before beginning to rebuild me solidly on His foundation.  I had experienced the first part of Ether 12:27[vi], where the Lord promises to show us our weaknesses.  Next I needed to experience the second part of the verse and find strength in Christ’s grace.  But even if we know that we should lean on Christ’s grace, it is a challenge to learn how to actually do it.  I did not understand the nuts and bolts of how that worked.  What exactly was I supposed to do? 
           
It’s one thing to follow Christ on the path of life when we feel like we’re moving under our own power, but it’s quite another thing to see Jesus across the sea and climb out of the boat, trusting entirely in His grace to support us step by step in coming to Him.  I wasn’t as brave as Peter; I had to be lovingly but firmly tossed out of the boat through my health problems before I learned to walk by grace.  Have you, like me, ever been thrown out of the boat?  Have you, like me, spent a lot of time sinking and choking and feeling so exhausted that you sometimes wished you could just drown and be done with it all?
          
Peter walked on water, supported by grace, when he focused entirely upon his faith in Jesus Christ.  I have learned that articulating my faith in Jesus by recording and sharing testimony invites strength into my life through His grace.  Psalms 71, verses 12-16 illustrate this connection:
          
O God, be not far from me: O my God, make haste for my help. . . But I will hope continually, and will yet praise thee more and more.  My mouth shall shew forth thy righteousness and thy salvation all the day; . . . I will go in the strength of the Lord God: I will make mention of thy righteousness (italics added).
           
As I have ‘made mention’ of my faith in Jesus Christ and my increased understanding of and hope in the mighty change of heart, as I have praised Him more and more for what I’m learning about His love, I have felt Christ’s power buoying me up.  I’m starting to figure out how I really can be strong in His grace, every step of the way.
         
This faith blog has also been a blessing for my family.  Just before Christmas I compiled all the posts into a little book for my children and gave copies as gifts.  A few days after Christmas, I found my daughter up past her bedtime, reading with a flashlight under her covers.  I couldn’t be upset with her when I saw she was reading my little book of testimony.  “Mom,” she said, “I am so excited to be a mother!  It’s really hard, and we have to sacrifice a lot, and the world doesn’t understand, but we teach our children how to love, and that’s the foundation for the entire gospel, so it’s really important!”  I felt the deep significance of that moment, for my nine-year old daughter had internalized a vision of mothering that I didn’t gain until after my four babies were born, after a miscarriage, after many complications from childbearing, and after suffering through it all from painful questions about why mothering requires so much sacrifice.  My little book was a handmade shield of faith that would protect her in ways she might otherwise be vulnerable to Satan’s attack.  Perhaps the best part is that she has seen that when she has questions of her own, she can take them straight to the Lord in prayer and find answers through the scriptures and the Holy Ghost.  No matter how many other people read or don’t read what I have written, that moment made my faith blog a complete success.  And yet I don’t know if I would have had the motivation to get to that point if not for the encouraging words of friends along the way as I posted little by little to my blog.  It is beautiful to me how the Lord can stretch our efforts to share the gospel with others and send them back around to bless our own families.  How could your family be blessed by sharing your testimony through social media?
           
Blogging is an appropriate way to share longer messages, but shorter thoughts and musings can often be shared effectively over Facebook.  For example, I have stumbled into the role of a family historian and have found that it’s really effective to share an old photo and short story about an ancestor on Facebook, tag all the cousins and other interested family members so they are sure to see it, and at the same time inspire Facebook friends to get into their family history by showing them how fun it is.  If we have a photo and a story, then an ancestor becomes real to us.  Those of us who are pulled to read long life stories and dig deep into family history can involve our family members who don’t have the time or inclination by sharing snippets of the information that we find.  Blogging, email and Facebook are all useful in this effort.
           
When Elder Bednar extended the challenge to share righteousness and truth, he warned about the negative effects of letting technology take over our lives.  He encouraged us to produce steady streams of goodness instead of a one-time flash flood.  I have watched other bloggers who have let themselves be sucked too far into the blogging world for a time and have eventually become burned out and quit.  We can avoid that by setting reasonable goals and limits for our internet projects, depending on our season of life and other responsibilities.  I am mother to four really good but really intense young children.  Mothering them is not like herding cats; it’s like herding rocket ships, and I am not a naturally patient person.  I have to conserve my best energy for mothering if I am to have a hope of being the calm and kind mother I need to be to keep the Spirit in our home.  So I keep social media in its place with goals and limits.  I don’t have Facebook set up on my phone, and I gave up on Pinterest pretty quickly for lack of time.  I have even learned that I shouldn’t log into Family Search in the afternoon or my husband will come home to a trashed house, fighting kids and no trace of dinner while I’m glued to the screen.  We shouldn’t neglect the living too much in our excitement over serving the dead, and we must be alert and cautious to avoid missing out on ways to share goodness in real life by becoming too involved in sharing goodness over the internet.
           
When we consider ways to share goodness and truth, we may worry that our contributions will not be mighty and strong but ‘mitey’ like the widow’s mites in Mark 12.  She didn’t have a lot to contribute, but Jesus magnified her offering when He pointed it out to teach a lesson on generosity.  Who could count how many have been blessed because of the way the Lord magnified her example?  I have experienced how the Lord can magnify small and simple offerings of goodness.  He will do that for us all if we invite Him to do so by laying our gifts on the altar.
           
I will close by sharing an experience I had when preparing to teach a Primary class that consisted entirely of ten and eleven year old girls.  I knew these girls would not long remember the individual lessons I taught them, but I felt they might remember an overall theme if I wove it into each lesson.  As I prayed to know what this overarching message should be, I began to see in my mind again and again a picture of myself standing next to my Savior with His arm wrapped around my shoulders.  Although I could not see His features, I knew that He had a big, delighted smile on His face as He looked at me.   I could feel that He was delighted with the good things that I do and that I am, and I knew He felt the same way toward the girls in my class.  He feels the same way about you.  This was the lesson I most needed to teach my class, and it’s a lesson most of us need to be reminded of regularly.  Sisters, have you taken time lately to feel how delighted the Lord is in you?  Have you imagined Him smiling over the good things that you are and that you do, even on days when the not so good parts of yourself have been on display?  Our Savior knows that those not so good parts are going to go away eventually if we keep following Him, so He delights already in the good that will remain and grow.
          
I would guess that everyone here is already sharing goodness in their lives, probably in many ways every day.  Our Savior is already delighted in the good things that we do and that we are.  I hope you won’t leave this session feeling overwhelmed with something else to squeeze into your busy lives.  But if you feel Jesus Christ inviting you to collaborate with Him to share even more goodness, take that step.  He will magnify your offering in beautiful ways.  Working together with Him to share more goodness will bring greater delight to Him and more strength and joy into your life.



[i] David A. Bednar, “To Sweep the Earth as with a Flood,” address given at BYU Education Week, August, 19, 2014; available at https://www.lds.org/prophets-and-apostles/unto-all-the-world/to-sweep-the-earth-as-with-a-flood?lang=eng; accessed 5 May, 2015.
[ii] Gordon B. Hinckley, One Bright, Shining Hope, (Salt Lake City:  Shadow Mountain, 2006).
[iii] Dennis Rasmussen, “Three Gardens,” Ensign, Apr. 1972, available at https://www.lds.org/new-era/1972/04/three-gardens?lang=eng; accessed 5 May, 2015.
[iv] Spencer W. Kimball, “The Role of Righteous Women,” Ensign, Nov. 1979, 103-4.
[v] David A. Bednar, Increase in Learning, (Salt Lake City:  Deseret Book, 2011).
[vi] Ether 12:27 - And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them.