There and Back Again: Week 35 BRAVE!

Last Friday I had the pleasure of teaching another homeschool group about the science of soaps and detergents and then we made homemade icecream and learned how salt makes ice colder! I sat on my driveway in the shade of the house waiting for them to arrive so I could show them the back door and then to the basement. We're having a heat wave so I decided to do our class indoors. As I sat there, a little robin landed about 8 feet in front of me, looked right at me and BOWED LOW and held it for a long time while still looking right at me... long enough for me to get my camera out and take a picture. Then it flew off. I felt like I was in a fairy tale, with castles, and rainbows, and magic adventures! LOL

Then I looked it up on google...It was either Sunbathing or Flirting with me. So mystery solved. LOL

Thursday we set up over 900 chairs for the June 27th Memorial of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. The box truck arrived with the chairs just as two tour buses of youth were finishing their tour of the jail and getting ready to go to dinner. Their guide asked what needed to be done and was told "we need help setting up chairs" he was excited for the youth to have an impromptu service project and they flooded from the air conditioned buses back out into the heat and litterally in less than a half hour set up hundreds of chairs! It was a mercy from God.

The Memorial went wonderfully! The music was great, the talks were well done, and Elder Cullen and I got many many compliments on the conditions of the grounds which felt really good.

You can watch this event on youtube. It's called June 27th Memorial of Joseph and Hyrum Smith 2025 Today I was demoted from Superhero Status to just a brave person. I will explain. For over 30 years I have been teaching hundreds of students to not be afraid and to do hard things. I would chuckle to myself as a student would come to me and say they were too scared to perform with the other 200 students. I would think but not say "With over a hundred kids up there...no one but your parents will even see you. If you hold still , sing or play as directed (even if you just mouth the words) no one will even look at you. You will be camouflaged."

What I do say is this, " You can do hard things. It's good to be afraid because that means you are brave. Brave people are people who are scared but do what needs to be done anyway. Mrs. Cullen is not brave because she's not scared anymore. she's performed so many times and failed and succeded and survived that she just doesn't care anymore. Now she's free to help others not to be afraid, that's superheo status. When a person can enter a scary situation and is not afraid and can help other's to not fear..that's superhero status. But before you can be a superhero you have to be brave, and before you can be brave, you have to be scared." 99% of the time they believe me and participate and are so proud of themselves afterwards. They can do hard things.! This gives me huge joy. For this next story adventure I am inserting pictures of our Saturday trip to McComb where Monopoly was invented. It has nothing to do with the story BUT it breaks up the text. There are no pictures of what I went through! LOL SO NOW, how did Mrs. Cullen get demoted? Well, two months ago the choir director here was asking for accompanists to help out. I love singing, but when there wasn't any eager response from anyone, I volunteered to play for a song that was to be performed in two months. I can do anything with two months practice, I thought. I started practicing daily and soon the choir finished all their other songs except the one I was to accompany. We began to rehearse. There were only three rehearsals.

We came down to Nauvoo for the first practice and the piano felt so different from my keyboard. The hard parts of the song got tripped up. It was weird. I upped my practicing game. At the second rehearsal I came back and was alarmed at the number of mistakes I was making!! I didn't make those mistakes at home. Sections I totally knew became lost and forgotten. And it was inconsistant too. There one time, gone the next. The choir and director were gracious but I was scared. What was happening? I asked them to pray for me. I had four days left to performance time. I had Elder Cullen give me blessing. He laid his hands on my head and promised that if I would put in extra hours, the Lord would bless me. So I did hours. I haven't practiced like that since High School. I came to our last rehearsal this morning at 7:30am with the performance at 8:30am

I was scared. I thought, " If ye are prepared ye shall not fear" but I had prepared and little sections of the song were just coming and going randomly. I was scared. Thoughts filled my mind. I knew it was just Satan attacking my head but I couldn't ignore it. "I can't play piano anymore. I'm never volunteering for anything again. My brain is broken, I'm going to ask Elder Cieslak to play it. I could just walk out and they can sing accapella." THEN I thought, "NO! They trusted me. I can't do that to them. UGH where is my faith? Where is my confidence? God help me not to waiver." I was so jumbled in my head. Then I remembered, "I CAN do hard things. I'm scared. I will probably ruin the performance, but I will still be OK and so will everyone else, except they'll never ask me to play again, and I won't volunteer anyway." Practice ended, I played prelude for the meeting and the usually talkative crowd suddenly became VERY quiet. Very Very Quiet. "OH My GOSH!" I whimpered in my mind. "They're listening to me! I'm going to mess up and they're all going to hear it!" OK SO THAT'S CRAZY because I love playing prelude. It usually calms and delights me. Now I felt so unstable and it was NOT NICE. (Elder Cullen said it was SO beautiful they had to listen. He never lies.)

"Jesus Help me!" I pled. I thought about my friend back home who had suddenly started having panic attacks and depression several years ago. She refused to play her instruments for our congregation ever again. So weird...I was beginning to understand. I played the opening song and felt like I was faking the whole thing. Then the sacrament song, then the first talk began and ended and then suddenly it was time.

"Faith not Fear, Faith not Fear" I chanted in my mind as I walked with the choir to the front and took my seat at the piano. I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly and looked at the director who smiled so lovingly. She gave me the tempo and my fingers flew and tripped over the keys. There were small glitches, but none that anyone in the audience would notice and then, suddenly I was playing the last measure. It was over. I survived, I didn't mess up the choir. I was so grateful I could feel my face beeming with relief. So, somehow, I have become brave again. I don't know why or how but I do know this. I can do hard things and with God, nothing is impossible. You don't have to be a superhero to know that.