Hie to Kolob

This morning I am feeling overwhelmed and truthfully a little down. Is it "Tis the season"? No really it's just life and my own frustrating struggles. My dear friend Mary though, sent this little message to me the other day when we were on vacation and I just got around to opening it up. It made me smile and it's just what I could use this morning. I'll explain more after you read her email...

Why LDS Women Stress
As Latter-day Saint women, we are practically obsessed with anxiously engaging ourselves in good causes. Maybe it's subliminal...Glancing through the hymnal last Sunday I noted that as sisters in Zion, we who are called to serve are all enlisted to go marching, marching forward because the world has need of willing men to all press on scattering sunshine. We wonder if we have done any good in the world today because we have been given much and want to do what is right, keep the commandments, press forward with the Saints, choose the right, and put our shoulders to the wheel going where He wants us to go. However, as the morning breaks high on the mountain top, truth reflects upon our senses, and while we still believe that sweet is the work, we also realize that we have work enough to do ere the sun goes down.

And thus we ask Thee ere we part, where can we turn for peace?.... If only I could Hie to Kolob…

Great right? I think I might have overlooked all the parts in the middle and really focused on the end because the only thing that stood out was, "if only I could Hie to Kolob". I read a talk once in high school when Brother Draught made me make up some seminary attendance stuff. It was about the location of Kolob and what it was all about. I found it intensely interesting but unfortunately that was high school and I don't remember much of it. Hearing the end of that email and the word Kolob did however bring about wonderful memories of girls camp. Every year for 13 years since right before I turned twelve, I went to girls camp. This picture reminds me so much of how excited we all were year after year to just get into camp and yes the road through part of Zion in Kolob Canyon is red like that. It's been a number of years now since I have been to that wonderfully sweet and beautiful land but those memories that flood back everytime are so dear to me. I wouldn't trade those times for anything. I could go and "Hie to Kolob" right now. It would be pretty cold and I wouldn't get very far but in my mind I certainly have gone there this morning. I used to think that being on that (to me) sacred ground was as close as I could get to heaven and I still think that in some sense but being slightly older and slightly more mature I realize there are other places where I can feel the same things. Hie to Kolob? Escape? In my previous post I told myself to "let it go". Can I be free of my emotional turmoil and give my mind a break? Can I Hie to Kolob and not let things get me down? I think for now I can swing in my hammock in the shade, listen to the 3rd years play tricks on the 1st years, and smell the pine, red dirt, and lingering camp fire smoke from the night before filter through my nose and just relax, figuratively speaking of course!