When I was five, I was at the park with my friend Cole and his mom. After playing happily for several minutes, I looked up and realized I couldn't find a familiar face. The park was huge. I started to panic and feared I would never find my friend or his mom and that I would never get back home. My parents had taught me that I could always pray to Heavenly Father and that He would hear and answer my prayers. I found a park bench, knelt down, and prayed for help.
I had hardly opened my eyes when the image of a yellow shirt burst into my mind. I gave it a moment's thought and realized, "That's RIGHT!" Cole's mom had been wearing a yellow shirt. I glanced over the whole park from where I stood and it didn't take me long to see a woman in a bright yellow shirt coming up over the hillside. I ran over, relieved, to join Cole's mom. I remember smiling thinking, she didn't even know I had been lost. But I had learned some very important things since I last saw her. I knew that God was real. I knew that He knew who I was, and that He had answered my prayer.
If I have learned one thing from reading the Old Testament, it is that things seem to work out for nations who choose to remember God, and those who don't are left to their own power.
I believe when we chose to remove God from our own lives or from our nation, it is to our own detriment.
I have said that a vote should not be based on religion. If I have the choice of placing a God-fearing individual of any faith in the White House, and the rest of him checks out, too, I'm going to take it. And I'm going to sleep better at night knowing that the issues of this country are being brought before an all-knowing God.
I am voting for Mitt Romney because he is a God-fearing man. He has openly discussed his faith in God on the campaign trail, in debates and interviews. Here's what he said when Oprah asked him if God would be part of his decision-making process as president:
I believe deeply in the value of prayer, and I pray regularly and
contemplate important issues. But I have to tell you a story about one
of the leaders of our church, and that was Brigham Young. It is said
that as he was leading the wagon train to the West, one of the wagons
that was going through the North Platte River got caught by a current,
and as it was beginning to be swept away, the person who was driving the
wagon got on his knees to start to pray, and Brigham Young rode out
into the river on his horse and grabbed the man by the back and said,
"This is no time for prayer." So we're a very hands-on,
get-the-job-done, take-personal-responsibility kind of people. But of
course, in the meditation of prayer, I hope to seek the kind of guidance
that comes from the Divine.
I voted early on Thursday.
It's no secret that I am passionate about this campaign. As Paul Ryan has said, "I don't think I have seen a time in our nation's history where the man and the moment have met so perfectly. This man is a leader. Everything Mitt Romney has done in his life has prepared him to provide the kind of leadership we need."
If you haven't, please take a moment to look over the previous six Saturdays.
If you feel good about it, please help me increase my reach by sharing them through email, Facebook, and Pinterest.
If you have 26 minutes, please watch Mitt Romney's closing argument to the American people. It will be worth your time.
And finally, it is in the ever so capable hands of He who "set all the borders of the earth," who "made the summer and the winter" (Psalms 74:17) that I leave this election, knowing He will remain constant no matter the outcome.
In 7th grade, my world as I knew it came to a screeching halt. After 10+ years in a neighborhood where all the kids had assumed the privilege of running between each others yards and where kick-the-can tournaments had been held for
countless summers, my dad announced that we were building a new home. The main reason was because the little gray home we had built in 1987 was bursting at the seams since my little brother had been born. I shed many tears during the process, some warranted, some, slightly dramatic, but none so much as the night we pulled away from the gray house with the beautiful bay window for the last time.
Our new home was beautiful. It was larger and more expensive than the first, and it was surrounded by other larger and more expensive homes. The idea hadn't phased me much, but at the dinner table, all of us in the family who were old enough would report being told by a coworker or a classmate or two, "Good luck on snob hill."
Such statements caused me to approach our new neighborhood with some apprehension. However, it truly all dissolved when we received the warmest of welcomes at our arrival. There were in this neighborhood, as in the first, good neighbors. In the eight years I lived there until I married, I can name many people from that area who had a hand in shaping me for the better during impressionable growing up years. Hard times hit our family and people from that neighborhood rallied around us during dark hours. I was also moved to see the way some of the families in that area used the wealth they had acquired in their medical practices and law firms and small businesses to quietly but generously bless the lives of others.
I am not saying my experience will be the case in every upscale neighborhood, but I am saying that in many instances, wealth does not equal arrogance. In many instances, individuals who possess wealth also possess the virtues of hard work, persistence, the determination to forge through difficult times, and ultimately the ability to be successful. And many remember to help others.
This is the case with Mitt Romney.
There have been several attempts during this campaign to associate Mitt Romney's success in the business arena with greed and to try to disconnect him from the American people, when actually, he is a true representation of an individual pursuing and attaining the American dream. These attempts to create a gap between the rich and the poor are unnerving and unAmerican.
This is what Ann Romney had to say about it:
"It amazes me to see his history of success actually being attacked.
Are those really the values that made our country great?
As [moms].. do we want to raise our children to be afraid of success?
Do we send our children out in the world with the advice, 'Try to do... okay?'"
I am voting for Mitt Romney because he is a successful businessman. He was the CEO of a business consulting firm that took struggling companies and turned them around. And they were successful at it. That means he understands what is good for businesses. And he understands how to take things that are in trouble and turn them around.
Is it time to vote YET?
At the height of his success at the firm he was asked to take over the 2002 Winter Olympics, without compensation, and he left. And he decided he wouldn't go back after three years and try to pick up the reins again. He would leave it to those who had stayed behind.
Yes, wealth can corrupt men and women. But I have seen through the example of my neighbors what it can do in the hands of good people. I love how Ann Romney describes their experience of choosing to share what they have with others, "It's given us the deep satisfaction of being able to help others in ways that we could never have imagined."
I repeat, to take people who have used their knowledge and resources
and through ingenuity and hard work have made better lives for
themselves, their families, and others, and cast them as villains in the
story of America is unAmerican. I am voting for Mitt Romney because he is a successful businessman who understands how to take organizations that are in trouble and get them thriving again.
I will continue to share a reason I am voting for Mitt Rommey each Saturday until the election. If you don't agree with me, that's okay. I have friends who are very dear to me who don't see politics the way I do. But if you feel good about it, please use your reach to share these posts through email, Facebook, and Pinterest.
How will you make a difference in this election?
This is Mr. Collado after registering to vote this week. While I ran around my little gray house playing kick-the-can, he was living in one-bedroom apartments with his mom and sisters. He often expresses gratitude for the opportunities America has provided him, and what it has provided his mom who worked so hard to keep them fed and clothed. Today he has a bachelor's degree, works as an MRI technologist, and we purchased our first home a year ago. Needless to say, I am very proud of him.
P.S. There is a presidential debate this Tuesday. Watch it. More information here.
Today I was thinking about some things I am really, really, really hoping for right now. That got me wondering what kind of person I would be if I had gotten everything I wanted when I wanted it.
If I had gotten to ride the carousel every time my mom and I went to Kmart when I was a little girl, it would have been expected and not special. Instead, I still remember how excited I was to drop the quarter into the machine when Mom said it was okay.
Same goes with getting gum or candy at the checkout line in the grocery store. Because it wasn't a given for every grocery store trip, I learned that I didn't get everything that I wanted, but the times when I did were more meaningful.
If my parents had agreed once I entered jr. high to spend their money on the most expensive jeans and shirts and shoes for me, I would have felt like hot stuff, but I might have not learned to look deeper than clothing. I might have chosen my friends based on their wardrobe choices and not how I felt when I was around them.
And again, the birthday when I opened up a brand new pair of Doc Martens wouldn't have been as exciting to me.
If I had married my first love, I might have been happy. I for sure would have missed out on some terribly painful heartbreak. But I never would have met and fallen in love with my Danilo, and I thank heaven on my knees that that's not the case.
If the hardships I have experienced had been lifted the first time I asked for them to be, I would have missed the opportunity to allow Heavenly Father to see me through to the end, letting Him show me that I can do hard things and that He was mindful of me through the entire process. He has taught me that this will always be the case, without exception, throughout my entire life.
This knowledge is carrying me through our job-hunting-house-building-roller-coaster of an experience.
“I have had prayers answered - most strangely so sometimes - but I think our heavenly Father's loving-kindness has been even more evident in what He has refused me.” --Lewis Carroll
This is Gracie being held by my longest friend. We're talking she moved in two doors down when I was four and she was three. She and her older sister Emily are the ones I built nests for squirrels out of lawn clippings and filled them with acorns with. She's the one I taped cooking shows making macaroni and cheese and peanut butter sandwiches with. They're the ones I was going to start the Kid's Cafe with where all the neighborhood kids could come eat (probably macaroni and cheese and peanut butter sandwiches and fruit roll-ups for dessert) and we started by making aprons out of material scraps. We used a stapler because it was easier than sewing. They're the ones with whom we decided that going door-to-door to sell lemonade might make a bigger profit than just sitting on the sidewalk, and we were right because NO ONE turned us and our little wagon full of cups and a pitcher down. I still have her phone number memorized (See? XXX-XXXX :). Every so often a wedding or a holiday will bring us back to the same neighborhood where we grew up and we make plans for lunch, which we had last Friday. This was the first time I had a daughter to bring along, which sweetened an already exciting afternoon. It was fun to hold my little girl while I caught up with my friend from when I was a little girl.
My 5th birthday party. Cousin Kenny, you're in there too.
When I bump into old friends that haven't met my husband, they ask if I married anyone they know. I say, probably not. Born in Italy and raised in Santiago, Chile, my Danilo came to the United States when he was 13.
