I got a bunch of homey stuff done today, prepping some veggies for the freezer, so my time will be decreased when I go to cook dinners. My hands only smell a little like onions…

I kicked off my morning by heading out to physical therapy. I injured my shoulder at yoga class back in APRIL. (Seriously, why did I wait so long to do this?) I’ve been babying it ever since. It makes it hard to sleep some nights, and sometime in this past bronchitis season, I finally asked myself what I was waiting for. I mean, I can’t breathe, my arm hurts, and all that makes sleep difficult.

So, right about the same time I scheduled the physical therapy to start, the MD put my stressed-out lungs on prednisone, so between the meds and the exercises, life is getting better. My face looks like I am storing a jelly donut in each cheek, but that’s temporary and I’ll deal with it. The scale is banished for now.

I used to wonder why Lehi would wander around in the dark drearys of his dream so long (1 Nephi 8) before he would ask God for help. Now I’m just here asking myself the same question about this shoulder problem. Sometimes I guess it takes a while for us to figure out that some things don’t get better unless you ask for help with them. And I have a feeling this won’t be the last time I have to learn this lesson. Do what you can in the moment you’re in, right?

I didn’t get a journal page written to share today. I might later tonight, but I want to post before it’s too late tonight for me to be coherent.

I’ve been thinking about how Lehi tastes the sweet fruit of the tree and it brings him so much joy that he wants to share that experience with his family. So he calls out to them in a loud voice, beckoning them to come have some.

Some folks I’ve heard talk about this joke about how they use a loud voice with their kids sometimes to try and get through to them. I’m sure most parents do that at some point, but this mention of a loud voice made me think of kulning. It’s an ancient Swedish/Norwegian way of calling the livestock, and different livestock had different kinds of calls, and the livestock knew their owner’s call. It’s a very entrancing sound that carries over great distances. It is seeing a bit of resurgence on the internet, I think because of the Frozen movies.

Anyway, I have a lot of Swedish ancestry and I’m thinking this is one of the reasons my mom could call us kids home for dinner when we were four blocks away. (No cell phones back then.)

Here you go, a link to kulning:

Jonna Hinton kulning. She has an awesome YouTube channel! Check it out!

This kind of calling (kulning) also made me think of the Bible verse about, “my sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” (John 10:27)

I came across this video of a man calling his sheep. What really surprised me was how fast they ran to him when he called! I think I need to improve my response time when Jesus calls me to come. Here’s the shepherd link:

The Good Shepherd & His Sheep

I’m heading on a vacation later this week, so although I will try to post something here, my internet service will be spotty and I won’t be as frequent until I get back in a couple weeks. I will still be journaling my scripture reading though and will put it up when I can. This experience has started a huge change in my heart, that I can’t really describe, but I find myself thinking about Jesus Christ and his words, and what he wants me to become, so much more frequently than I ever have before, and the fruit of that is sweet, indeed.