My Sunday didn’t turn out too bad after all.

Just long details about how my day went well. You can skip it, it’ll bore you. I wrote it down mostly just for me to remember.

Aside from my parents bickering, this Sunday actually went really well. I gave a talk today on “Sacrament Meeting Attendance” (a subject very dear to my heart) and I think it went quite well. I don’t like to boast, but it’s always such a good feeling when people approach you and tell you what a great job you did.

Ironically, Anthony Lim spoke right after me on Family Home Evening. Right after I had talked about how we need to be prepared for Church by being slightly early (yeah, believe it or not, we’re doing quite good at it now. Sharing a personal experience of how being the slave driver to get everyone to church on time at the very last minute had put my family into a foul mood and ruined church for all of us. I looked down at my family with my mom and dad sitting on separate pews. (Nothing new anyway, the rows aren’t long enough for my whole family but they were frowning and Ernie was upset over something)

Mom spent most of the meeting reading the latest issue of the Ensign (our church magazine). I glanced over a couple of times. I think she had read an article about exercising righteous dominion in the home or something to that effect. She’s probably going to leave it around for my Dad to read or something.

I also taught the lesson again in Young Women’s today. “Sharing Work In The Home”. I was less prepared for that than my talk, but it went alright. We sustained Tiffany as the YW class president today. It could be just me but I thought I noticed Melody taking the news with some difficulty. She is older than Tiffany and certainly gives us a lot less trouble to deal with in the YW, but as I had mentioned in an earlier blog, mom and I felt Tiffany needed the calling to learn responsibility – and she is returning to the US soon anyway. And with much larger classes, she most likely wouldn’t get the opportunity to serve in that position there.

I approached Melody later and asked her if she was ok with that. She just laughed and said of course. Sounded genuine. To be safe, I told her how I never got to be YW class president even though I felt like I “deserved” it (nah… I’m irresponsible; I would’ve done a terrible job.) I also said that sometimes we give a responsibility to someone not because we think that they will do a better job, but because they need the learning experience. And then I attempted at humor suggesting how less responsibility meant less migraines and more freedom.

She just agreed and laughed. She might think I’m a total whack job now for thinking that she had a problem with it, but at least I can put aside that worry knowing that I have addressed my concern. Years ago, Sister How sat me down and explained why they called my sister to be class president instead of me even though I told her I was ok with that (I was, but I wasn’t.) I really appreciated that she was aware of the sensitivity of the situation and was frank enough to approach me. I see now what a great lot of good that calling did for my sister. She really rose to the occasion and proved herself to be the more responsible of the both of us. People looked at me as the leader before – they had a chance to notice her then. They did good in giving her the position.

So, I never got my chance. I really needed the humbling anyway.

After church, we had dinner at the Craguns. Ooooh I love that family! Rosie is a Philippina and Mike is white American. They met at BYU (of course, of course) and they have 2 gorgeous children. Naomi is 4 this year and Liana is uhmm… 6 months?

We had a scrumptious dinner and talked and laughed for a good while afterwards. Dad just observed for the most part (my mom’s the one with all the animated stories that make people laugh) and when he did talk, he went on a 5 minute monologue about Anthony Robbins, and Steven Spielberg’s success story (which was in Anthony Robbins’ book) and Steven Covey and the 7 habits.

Dad loves to read self-help books and all kinds of books. He’s in the training business. He’s perfect for it. The problem is, he can’t snap out of that mode and is constantly trying to teach people about what he just read and is a total bore. It was so awkward! We were all laughing and having a good casual conversation till he pitched in and everything just turned serious and quiet. “Uhuh… Oh… is that right? Ah…”

I felt so embarrassed. I know I shouldn’t feel ashamed of my Dad. I really look up to him and think he’s amazingly intelligent. He’s just becoming less and less human to me sometimes. Heh. And I thought it was bad when he would tell the same stories and jokes over and over. Oh well.

The weird part is that I can’t just go up to him and say, “Dad, nobody cares to hear about all the books you read. You bore us when you do that,” or “Reading jokes to us from a book isn’t funny.” I’ll let mom deal with that. I’m not here to change my Dad. I doubt he’d listen anyway. Dad can become defensive too, you know.

Oh well. I’ve embarrassed plenty of people myself. loL! I love my Dad and I’ll just laugh about the awkwardness.