Consider the lilies

Ceci n'est pas une pipe. A concept Magritte perpetuated to explain reality. What is and what isn't. If only he knew how well this relates to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Our Brother would have us focus on what is. Who we are. What we are. I am a daughter of God. I am a strong, confident, talented woman. I possess potential limited only by my own choices.

Our other brother, that Lucifer, terrorizes us with the tempestuous swindling of what we are not. (I'll spare you what I am not. You can probably already tell me that and I don't like to focus on it anyway).

We, as beloved children of God, cannot and should not define ourselves by what we are not. That is not reality. That is not the way of the gospel. Though I've pondered on this idea for the past month, this week it has infiltrated my reality. Heavenly Father often prepares us for these things.

Onto the more superficial.

Substitute teaching. A near-perfect profession for one who's transient, like myself. Near-perfect because let's face it: Does anyone aspire to be a substitute teacher?

No, no. Probably not.

Yesterday I subbed at a middle school in Provo. I love subbing middle school, adapting to the different dynamic in each class, discovering immediately that the class clown is wholly unpredictable on sight alone. The period two class clown was in a friendly verbal dispute with a classmate. I only heard the class clown's final response, which was: "Tu madre." I laughed. I shouldn't have, but I did. And the class caught me. Another girl, who was a 5th period student of mine, had been told all day that she and I looked exactly alike. Sure enough, we did, and we were even wearing almost identical coats. Lastly was period 6. It had come up during class that I served a mission. I don't remember how. Later, I commented to one student (I don't remember exactly what) in formal, proper English. The kind of English no one really uses unless they write for The New Yorker. After the comment, the class clown said: "Dang, did you serve your mission in the medieval times or something?"

Comic genius.