Healing

I think that the body part that takes the longest to heal is the heart. And the mind plays a role. The mind replays things that have broken the heart, causing any healing that might have occurred to become an open wound again. So how can one keep from re-opening the wound? Is the answer to avoid the things that cause the mind to replay the hurt?

To Redeem or Not to Redeem

I have been giving some thought to service this week. We had our yearly fundraiser for the YW this month. Generally what they do is have ward members donate their time, talents and goods and have a silent auction.

In the past, we have donated goods. They always sold.

This year, we donated 3 pie tins of cinnamon rolls, which were all bought. One very nice man told me that they were good. I also donated a food storage tutoring, which could be anything from learning how to make bread to using beans or wheat. As far as I know, no one bought this. That's fine. I'd actually do it for free if anyone was ever interested.

Last year we donated dinners. Meaning that people pay to come have dinner with us.
One was redeemed, one was not.

After having a facebook conversation with someone (who was not actually the person I addressed), I realized that some people just do not realize how hurtful and insulting it can feel to donate something and, though the donation was bought, not have it redeemed. The thought is, "It's all good. It's for the girls." Well, of course it is for the girls. BUT, then the donator is denied the opportunity to serve and receive the blessings that come from it. The buyer donates the money, but the donator donates time. When that time is not redeemed, nothing is donated. No service is given. No blessings received. Maybe for the thought, but not for the action.

Agency

It surprises me that so many people don't understand the difference between socialism and the law of consecration. It seems pretty straightforward to me that consecration is voluntary charitable giving, while socialism is government mandated and takes away people's agency. Not only does government mandated redistribution of wealth take away my free agency, but it also takes away the blessings I might receive for giving charity of my own accord.

Darin

Wisdom

I've been studying "wisdom" lately. That's my new topic for my scripture journal. I was blessed with wisdom (as per my Patriarchal Blessing), or at least the potential, so I wanted to learn more about it. More than just the "Solomon had wisdom" things, but what truly is wisdom, and how do we get it?

So here are a few things I've learned so far from LDS.org:

• "Wisdom is the ability or gift from God to judge correctly."
  

Ok, so that's a little heavy to carry. I started thinking, am I judging correctly? Do I make good decisions?

• "A person gains wisdom through experience and study and by following God's counsel. Without God's counsel, a man does not have true wisdom."

To be wise, we must be humble. We must rely on God to have wisdom. It is through personal revelation that God gives us wisdom. Without the Spirit, we wouldn't be able to make good decisions, to judge correctly.

Without scripture study, we wouldn't be able to be wise. I think part of that is learning from the experiences of others in the scriptures. Making them personal, "likening" them to ourselves.

I think also we can learn from friends and family who have special insights and experiences with certain things, trials they have gone through, mistakes they have made and the knowledge they have learned as a result, or decisions they have made that kept them out of trouble.

I hope that I can develop wisdom and make good decisions, so that I can be an example to my children and help them to make good decisions as well.

Vaccinate Your Children!

My Child Has Autism and I Vaccinate
by Shannon Des Roches Rosa

Have you or would you ever let your children travel by airplane? If your answer is "yes," then you should re-examine any concerns about vaccinating your children. Both flying and vaccination carry real risks, but those risks are statistically unlikely to affect your family.

I know it's more complicated than that, so keep reading. I also understand the fear behind not vaccinating, as I've been there myself. I clearly remember the stone age of 2003: my two-year-old son was newly diagnosed with autism, and I was desperate to help him.

The first thing I did was to enroll Leo in an ABA program, because that was the only method proven to help children with autism gain skills. But ABA is hard work and doesn't promise miracles, and I wanted changes, fast. I craved a son who could tell me, "Mommy, I love you!," so I started exploring alternative autism therapies.

And indeed, I found many self-appointed autism professionals willing to tell me to look past the challenging but loving boy I already had and focus on a theoretical Recovered Boy of the future. I tried not to be bothered that these people were (and still are) promoting scientifically questionable approaches, and focused on one of their popular theories: they thought that mercury in vaccines caused autism.

Those anti-vaccination people were passionate about "curing" our autistic children. I was passionate, I wanted to cure my autistic child. I did what they told me.

I stopped vaccinating my kids.

My youngest child was born in 2004, eighteen months after her brother's diagnosis and during the thick of my alternative-treatment frenzy. I was so freaked out by being told, repeatedly, that Leo's autism was likely caused by an injected environmental factor that there was no way in hell my new baby was getting a shot of anything. Not even vitamin K.

As that fortunately healthy baby grew and thrived, so did the evidence refuting a thimerosal/vaccine/autism link. Unfortunately, so did the rates of preventable and potentially lethal diseases. Turns out I wasn't the only parent who'd freaked out and stopped immunizing his or her kids.

I needed to know if vaccinations had in fact affected my son, so I formally investigated the possible correlation between Leo's autism and his immunization schedule: I enrolled him in a MIND Institute study that tracked the emergence of his autism symptoms via home videos, medical records, and my own journals.

The result: there was no evidence that Leo had regressed into autism after being vaccinated.

I thought long and hard. And decided that the risks of vaccinating my children were acceptable .

I started slowly, under the supervision of a pediatrician who was willing to listen to my concerns. My daughter initially got only one shot at a time, only when she was healthy, and with a month between doses, because I wanted to see how she reacted to individual vaccines. Once she showed no adverse reactions, I began to allow vaccinations in small batches. I also resumed vaccinating my son -- you know, the one with autism. Both kids remain fine, or at least no quirkier than they were before their shots.

Mine is not the only vaccination perspective you should be familiar with, however. As you probably know, there is no talking about vaccines and autism without mentioning "safe" vaccine advocate Jenny McCarthy. Ms. McCarthy recently declared:

"If you ask a parent of an autistic child if they want the measles or the autism, we will stand in line for the f___ing measles."

Really? If we're going to media mouthpieces rather than experts for our information, I have to counter with a recent Law & Order: SVU episode, in which a child too young to be vaccinated died from encephalitis as a complication of measles, which was acquired at a neighborhood park from an unsymptomatic carrier kid whose mother had refused to vaccinate him.

I'm sorry, Jenny, but Mariska Hargitay, Christopher Meloni, Ice-T, and Stephanie March say that measles kills and that we need to vaccinate our kids not just to keep them healthy, but also to protect other people's kids. And because the SVU team is on TV too and outnumbers you & Jim Carrey, I'm going to side with them.

I kid, but only slightly, as I really do prefer my son alive, autism and all. And I seriously doubt Jenny would volunteer to give her son measles -- or pertussis, diphtheria, tetanus, or polio if she'd actually seen these diseases affect a child, or considered that acquiring these diseases is much riskier than getting vaccinated for them.

We live in a culture where some people make critical health decisions for their children based on the opinions of self-proclaimed celebrity graduates from "The University of Google." I'm asking you to help right the balance, to ensure that science-based viewpoints counter earnest but misinformed sensationalism in the autism -- and parenting -- communities' information flows.

I know that some people will never vaccinate their kids, no matter the argument or evidence. Herd immunity will compensate and keep the rest of our kids healthy *if* enough other children get vaccinated. That is why it is so important to reach and talk to parents who are still formulating their immunization opinions, to educate ourselves with facts rather than furor, to have the confidence to spread the word about what we know and believe, to tear down the wall of harm that Jenny and co. have erected, and to shout it loud:

There is no proven link between autism and vaccinations! I believe it is my social responsibility to vaccinate my children!