3-30-22 SPLITTING STEAKS

Sometimes I imagine what it will be like when Dave and I are no longer together. I don't know why we do this kind of stuff to ourselves. Maybe I'm just testing to see if I can still breathe so I don't have to live with unbearable anxiety worrying about that possibility. I imagine what I would miss: Someone to laugh at my random jokes; someone to make sweet little num-num sounds when I cook, someone who is able to completely ignore piles of junk that sit on various flat surfaces all over our house, not because he isn't willing to go through them and clean them up, but because he knows there might be some sort of treasure in there that I would not want to be thrown away.  I would miss the sound of his breathing at night, the way he randomly asks if he can get me anything when we're watching TV. I would not have someone to split my steak with. I imagine sitting there at some random restaurant crying over a large ribeye, my tears falling into a side of potatoes. 

Our imaginations are funny things. "You can be anything you imagine yourself to be!" That's an absurd statement. Doesn't anyone else ever have wild unpleasant imaginings?

This is a rather morbid thing to be thinking on this night when my David enters a new decade of life. I have no idea why I'm even thinking it.

I guess its late and I am tired.I should be recalling this very sweet day when I made garbage cake cupcakes and took to the courthouse so they could celebrate him. And then took more of them to dinner at Spencer's tonight where we celebrated with our kids and my local sisters, et al. Maybe I'm thinking about the yummy steak we split tonight, how we don't hardly have to ask each other, though we do out of courtesy. "Wanna split a rib eye?" Both medium rare. Both with a cup of French onion soup. And rolls with hard butter. I suppose I am waxing a little sentimental about these silly things, which are not at all silly because they are our's. They are part of our holy language.

During Lent, more often than not, I am writing at midnight when Dave goes to bed. I tiptoe in when I'm done, trying not to wake him. By the dim light of my phone I shuffle through the bedroom to the bathroom/closet area to get ready for bed. The other night I paused at the side of the bed and let the very edge of the light shine on his sleeping face. This thing rose up in me, you know, that feeling that starts low and sort of buzzes up to the head, and tears start forming in your eyes? That feeling overcame me and I whispered the words, probably heavenward, though it was not intentionally directed there... I whispered the words "I love him." Like I needed the angels around me to hear them and nod their heads.

After completing the nightly bedtime ritual I quietly lifted the blanket on my side of the bed and slid into place, gently pulling the blanket up over my shoulders. Dave slept through it. I said my little prayer, and checked messages one last time on my phone. A few minutes later Dave rolled over, opened his eyes for just a split second, and, almost as if he were talking in his sleep, he said; "Oh, hello beautiful." Then he was immediately back to sleep.

I laid there and felt the tears rolling down the sides of my face and into my downy pillow. 

Who does that? Who thinks those sweet pure thoughts in their sleep? This is not normal!

And yet, it is my reality.

There is a part of me that thinks this should not be shared. This is something you should not put out there, because it will make other people feel bad if this is not their reality, and let's face it, this is not a common reality. But another part of me wants this to be preserved, in little snips of words. It is possible to love like this. It is possible to love like this for a very long time. And it is possible to not feel this way for chunks of time, and then have that feeling roll back in again, like some sort of relationship tide, ebbing and flowing, but never leaving the shore. I adore the fact that we have grown into each other. That I no longer have to hold my tummy in around him. And he can belch around me.

When I have been very sick, a couple times in our lives together, there was the greatest comfort that came to me when I had his hand to clench. It's an interesting thing. Frankly, I have had that same kind of feeling of safety when my sister held my hand during a spinal tap, so I'm not talking about romantic love or intimacy per se. I guess I am talking about pure uninterrupted energy exchange, where one soul takes up where the other leaves off. Sometimes at night I'll reach over for Dave's hand, even though he's sleeping. I'll hold his in mine and thank my God for him, and at the same time breathe a blessing into him, as if I could. I would wish him easy passage wherever he goes, because he is so kind and so selfless and so full of love that I think there really is nothing more he needs to learn by struggling.

I imagine too much. I need to rejoice in reality. 

Tonight, surrounded by our closest family, minus our New Yorker Kate, I did split a steak with my favorite fella. And we lifted a glass to him for his 70th birthday.

Hooray that we have lived this long! Hooray that our love has, too.

3-29-22 THE END OF THE RAINBOW

I knew it.

I've known it for a long time.

I generally keep it to myself, sharing it only with Dave, cuz he lives with me.

But today every living being could see it, so there's proof.

I live at the end of the rainbow.

Falling right on our rooftop.

... a double one, no less.

3-28-22 HEART & HUMOR

Yesterday morning I received this text from my teenage grandson:

How often do you get such deep questions via text? I toyed with writing an elaborate and deeply profound response, but opted instead to move quickly and succinctly, asking the Holy Ghost to guide me:

I worried a little that he might be in a rough place emotionally. Then I got this response:

I was reminded how much I love the combination of heart and humor. 

I love deep and meaningful thought based on spiritual matters. But it sometimes gets so heavy to me, and a little humor always seems to lift the weight of it to a bearable measure.

When the world as we knew it screeched to a halt, two years ago this month, we all went into crisis mode. At least we did in my part of the world. We were cut off from our work, our family, our friends. If we ventured out to get supplies, the streets were eerily empty. Even the skies, devoid of air traffic, were silent. There was an undercurrent of fear everywhere. We worried we might die or, even worse, the people we love might die. Then, when we could not find Clorox, or toilet paper, or our sports fix on tv, we thought maybe death might not be the worst thing that could happen.

We started working from home. I taught guitar virtually in our family room, and Dave held virtual court in another. Isolation was the common thread that, ironically, connected all of us.

Most difficult for me was not seeing my family. So, I decided to record a little video every day on my smart phone: a scripture and a joke sent out to my family. My thinking was that I needed my kids to see my face. I wanted them to see we were alive and well and getting through this, without waxing too philosophical. We had enough heavy in our heads. I figured a scripture and a joke was a nice balance of yin and yang. That combined with the sound of their grandmother’s voice was solid evidence she was breathing would provide a little calm, and a bit of comic relief. I mean, just seeing my face and what frock I was wearing that day had to provide some humor.

Yup, pretty much every day in the heart of the pandemic,
I sent a joke and a scripture to my grandkids.
My kids and siblings got them, too.

I want to remember how healthy it was for me to see crises with a regular dose of the Lord's Word, served up with a side dish of clean humor.

Here, as a reminder, is a scripture and joke just for today:

"Fear not little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the Kingdom." Luke 12:32

(Don't you just love how he refers to us as his little flock?)

Now, a couple short jokes:

Q: What did the buffalo say when his son left for college?

A: Bison

Today at the bank an old lady asked me to check her balance, so I pushed her over.

3-26-22 PERCUSSING IN MARCH

I'm tired. Really tired. It's 12:30 am and my body wants sleep. A lot happened today. Lots and lots of "happens".  Here is 30 minutes worth of March 26, 2022: Something I created.

I didn't actually create this boy, but I helped create his mom, who helped create him. So, I have some measure of ownership in the creation process I suppose.

Timo Petersen - Captain of
Mountain Ridge Drumline.

This is Timo. His Drumline at Mountain Ridge High School had a competition today. Since it happened to be ten minutes from our house, we took a break from the monumental task of cleaning our garage, picked up my sister Libby, and went to clap. Well, we actually went to see it, and hear it, but any grandparent and uber-auntie knows the driving force behind the attendance at multiple performances that pile up this time of year is the foreordained calling to be a clapper. And, in this case since it was in Davis High School gym, we whooped and hollered too.

One of the nice things about these indoor percussion competitions is the show itself lasts something like four-and-a-half minutes. They are docked points if they don't get on and off stage within a certain amount of time, so it's a mad rush.

Here's what my iPhone absorbed of the short visit we made to Davis High today:

Upon arrival the lined-up marimbas and xylophones
looked sort of like a funeral procession.

Each high school percussion group had its own
area in the large parking lot.

The group stood in a large circle and reviewed their
piece vocally, with one drummer keeping the beat.
It sounded awesome.

Showtime! The whole band has something like two
minutes to roll out a large painted tarp as part of their set.
Then they roll all their instruments on there, set up their props,
and place their bodies and instruments in position.

It's an amazing physical orchestration.
Then the music starts.

The thing about marching band is it's almost as much
dance as it is music.

When they're done they have to get all that equipment
 off stage in a couple minutes or they are docked points.

They end by rolling up their canvas floor prop
and removing it. It takes serious teamwork.

My drummer boy is a Senior this year...

... and I'll hug him every chance I get.

Timo is just now hearing from colleges where he auditioned. He has, so far, been admitted and offered music scholarships at BYU, the U of U, and BYU-I. Man, time flew since that day I bought him his first pair of drum sticks as a four-year-old!

3-25-22 POSSESSIVE ADJECTIVES

It was a lying-in morning, one of those long-awaited rewards for living this long. It took a lifetime to earn, and let me say, at least from this side of it, it was worth it. 

I was lying in bed this morning, with nothing compelling me to get dressed and go to a meeting. I laid there praying in my head. I do this on lying-in mornings. It usually starts with me thinking about someone in my family. Sometimes it’s a struggling friend, but more often than not it’s family who gets my first layer of prayers. I’ll get to thinking about how this person is having a  struggle, (and let’s face it, someone always is) so I knock on God’s figurative door and ask if I can come in and have a talk. 

To be truthful, I tend to do all the talking. I think about, let’s say, one particular grandchild… and then I start thinking about their mom, so I pray for her, and then their dad… and so it goes until I’ve basically gone through my whole family, if I haven’t fallen back to sleep from mental exhaustion first. So my prayers might go, in condensed form, something like this…

”Please bless my Sophie, and my Ashley, and my John….” 

Because everyone is so affected by the others in their immediate family, I generally go through the whole family, then jump over to a cousin or sibling, until I have eventually visited my whole clan.

This morning as I was praying I micro-focused on the word “my” as it was repeated over and over in my supplications. I own these people in my heart and calling them mine feels endearing to me. But for some reason this stuck out to me today, so I started repeating my prayers, but instead I said, “Please bless your Sophie”… and so on. 

It was remarkable to me how my feelings shifted. The emotional shift was so powerful I had to sit up from my prone position and ponder what was going on. 

I spent all morning, while digging through and cleaning out a messy cupboard in my bathroom, pondering why it felt so different to change what is grammatically called the possessive adjective; changing my to your.

The idea of possessing lies at the root. Who we are to other people is not so much who we present ourselves to be but what they perceive us to be. While I may think I am presenting one way to someone, they may be seeing me in a completely different way. When I over-ponder it, I conclude that there is no way for anyone to see someone as they truly are. 

Unless, for instance, you’re God, who knows the beginning from the end, who knew us a thousand years ago and has a vision of who we will be in a million years. Unless you’re God and know how far to push and prune to allow proper growth. 

Our Sophie

God’s Sophie is a lot more complete than my Sophie. There is a sort of calm that quickly comes to me when I refer to her as God’s Sophie. I give her to Him and let him prevail. Because I trust him I can let go of my Sophie. I’m not sure if I am explaining myself very well. My thoughts don’t line up as easily or nearly as pretty as the glass bottles of perfume in the cupboard I organized this morning.

We tend to, we humans, think we know more than we actually do. Especially when it comes to other humans. I don’t even know myself very well. At all. So, I am relieved that God is a little “possessive”, that he modifies the noun that is me, knowing that my Life is a whole lot longer in the making than this particular life.

3-24-22 GO TEAM

Sunday evening, after family dinner, I slipped outside and let other people clear the tables and do the dishes. I decided I needed to play basketball with my three youngest grandsons. We decided to play HORSE because I can't run anymore without tripping over my neuro-pathetic feet. We decided to go youngest to oldest: Walter (8), Joe (9), Calvin (10), Gummy (64). I was last.

I went inside when we were done and remarked how sad it is to no longer be able to do a jump shot. Park (15), who was at the kitchen sink, said, "Oh yeah, weren't you on the girls basketball team in high school?" I answered, "Why yes, and I kept that bench warmer than any other player on the team!"

I've been conscious of teams the last few days. All sorts of teams. Athletic, musical, intellectual, spiritual, familial. I realized I have been on a remarkably large number of teams in my life, and not very many of them had mascots. Most hardly even have official names. But in general I feel really fortunate to be part of a team. How sad my life would be to have been flying solo all the time.

These past two years I've been really involved in Team RS, (Relief Society - our church women's service organization). On that team I am jumping regularly between coach, manager and head cheerleader. More often than not I'm that kid who slides out on the floor between plays and wipes the sweat off the hardwood after one of the players has fallen. I like this team, and I really enjoy the fact that we do not have to compete against anyone, we just play and give each other high-fives whenever any one of us makes a shot.

Team RS getting together for the first
time since the Pandemic hit

Tasha is one of our team captains. Yay Tash!

This team of disciples spent two Saturdays (and many other days)
cleaning out the mobile home of one of our church members.

Because I've been so involved in Team RS I've had to take a leave of absence from some other teams. Most of these former teammates  play musical instruments and know how to string together words really nicely. They speak my second language, and I fear I am losing my ability to speak the way I used to in that blessed tongue. I have to pray I will be able to find those teams again and that there will be some elasticity left when I am done being stretched so thin. I wonder sometimes if they are still playing with each other, or if the whole division has dissolved. I wouldn't know, because the Pandemic came at the same time as I was recruited onto the RS team.

A couple weeks ago, on my birthday, my social network accounts reminded me that my team of friends is vast and powerful. It's made up of a lot of super wonderful players, each one with their own strengths. We play together, all these team mates and me, in different ways, all of us. It's really pretty magical. Because my church team and family team are so foundational, I sometimes forget how extremely important my team of friends are. Thanks, Team!

I love all my teams, from the Foundation for Artists of Faith (Formerly Mormon Arts Foundation) Team, made up of the most talented and good hearted capable people one could ever know - to my Girls with Guitars Team who used to gather in my family room once a week through most of the day every Thursday. I like huddling with whichever team I'm playing on at any given time.

Seriously, give yourself a challenge to think about the teams you belong to. There are likely more of them than you were aware of. Then say a little prayer of thanks that you are not he last living creature on the earth.

Today Team Lifting Lives in Kenya is over in Africa helping with the Gardner Granny School and Orphanage. I had sent a couple sets of leather bound scriptures to Ezekiel and Roseann, the two orphans our family helps support. Recently both of them had found the LDS Missionaries, had been taught the Gospel of Christ, and were baptized. We had also sent letters and photographs. Today Ali Adams, on the team over there, texted me little videos from Ezekiel and Roseann. They were beautiful and a little nervous and oh so sweet. I love being part of that team.

Roseann age 9

Ezekiel age 14

Dianna (Libby's girl.)

Shawna Meek, also on the team over in Kenya right now, sent Libby a picture of our family that they have hanging on the wall of the school. I guess there is a wall of photos of people who have helped and continue to help these kids. They're generally lovely photos of normal attractive people. 

Cindy and Reed Gardner's photo hangs on the wall

Then there's us:

Apparently our family provides comic relief.
(My siblings and I)

It reminds me how awesome it is to be on the ultimate Team of Teams. As crazy as we are... as overly embedded and probably codependent as we are, we sure do like each other. And we love each other. They're different things, you know. I was talking with my sister this morning and it hit me how lucky I am to have safe people in my life. People with whom I can be completely myself, who take me as I am, flaws and all. Right now there are four of our five sisters in the same church congregation. They call us the Hansen Sisters. Team Hansen. It would probably be a more appropriate homage to call us the Parrish Sisters, using our mother's maiden name. She was one of the original 7 Parrish Sisters, who came one generation after the original 9 Parrish brothers. I guess if you've had to figure out how to do chores together from the time you could walk, you can figure out how to work together to throw a ward party.

Anyway, I am grateful tonight for the teams I am on, the teams I've been on, and the ones to come.

3-23-22 RANDOM TEXTS

I like my kids. I love them, and I like them. I feel really lucky to be able to say that. Love carries us when there isn't much to like. Everybody who is a normal human has moments when they are simply not likable.  But, in general, I like the people who happen to be my kids.

And I like their dad, too.

One of the things I am grateful for, these days, is our ability to communicate in short snippets. Sometimes people are not able to stop what they are doing and answer the phone, like we used to have to do in the old days.

The generation under me likes texting. I, myself, like texting. The thing about texting is you can send something out and people can respond, or not respond, as is often the case, when they have the ability to focus on it. 

In our family, especially with our grandkids, we will randomly say (physically say) "I love you" something like 50 times a day. The littles and I do it when we are in the car, or playing basketball in the driveway, or sitting on the couch eating buttered popcorn and watching Paw Patrol. I love that we allow each other to speak our thoughts randomly, for no reason at all, and completely unprovoked. Texting is like that. 

My friend messaged me tonight with this funny little meme:

It reminded me of my daughter Kate, who is the queen of randomness, and all things teeny. She's always kind of wanted a goat.

I forwarded the meme to my daughters, in honor of Kate's love of goats, and Sarah and Annie's current state of parental overwhelmed-ness (I don't think that's a word, but it is certainly a condition we are familiar with.)

I'm posting Kate's and my text interchange, cuz it makes me giggle.

That's all.

Night.

3-22-22 ONE SOLITARY TEAR

A dear young friend saw me sitting in the parking lot of the church this morning and stopped to thank me for something I’d given him last week. We chatted  for a minute through the passenger window of my car, then he paused and said:

“I got my mission call today.”

In our church young men and women on the brink of independence often decide to forego their education, employment, and all other worldly pleasures that entice 18- and 19-year-olds. They, instead, make the courageous leap into missionary work, dedicating up to two years of full-time service to the Lord. They go through a somewhat rigorous application and interview process and are then assigned by the General Authorities in our church. It’s a big deal in our culture when that “call”, or notification, comes.

I opened my car door and ran over to embrace him. He told me where, and when, and what new language he would be learning. As we spoke, leaning against the side of my car, I looked at the face of this young man, whom I have loved since he was a child. His mandarin orange hair swept to the side. His jawline had grown manly and whiskered since the days his boy-soprano voice sang in my Heavenly Choir. As he talked, I could see the joy bubbling up in him, like he was trying to process this long awaited revelation. A beautiful smile came over him as he spoke. The late morning sun caught itself shining in a solitary tear as it sprang from his eye and gently slid down the side of his cheek. The whole of my soul curled itself around my heart as I watched it meander down his face, his words shifting to the background as my love for him overtook all. One gentle tear, making its way to his smile, his chest rising and falling in rhythmic effort to contain all the emotion of his heart. I was enraptured.

Our human existence seems to be a constant recombining of ingredients from the pantry of our lives. We create recipes of experience and feelings and thoughts. We gather up conflict and weariness, stir in a little tension and bring them to a rolling boil. We attempt to whip the sweetness of gatherings like pure white cream and preserve it in the proverbial freezer of our experiences, hoping it will remain unchanged. Some ingredients combine poorly, and we try, often unsuccessfully, to discard those recipes. But some recipes turn out unexpectedly delicious. We hope to remember how those were made and attempt to recreate them. Of all the recipes of emotion I’ve tried in my human experience, I think gentle laughter through tears might be my favorite. There is a divine balance in it, just the right amount of salty and sweet. True, pure, heartfelt laughter through tears is unmaintainable. That’s probably why it’s such a delicacy. It has to be captured quickly, because soon it is overtaken by one or the other emotions and it is gone. But when you’ve tasted it, when you’ve felt it and inhaled for a few breaths in its presence, your heart is somehow disproportionally renewed. 

This boy-turned-man who pretty much owned my heart to begin with, sealed it to his this morning in the otherwise empty parking lot of the church. He stirred up my favorite recipe and handed it to me. I’ll hold the place, the time, the temperature and the image in my holy space for however long my memory will allow me. 

One gentle tear.

One radiant smile.

One massively good heart.

They all came together today in a glorious flash of divinity. 

Godspeed, Prince Andrew.

Andrew Manwaring
England Leeds Mission
Mandarin speaking
July 2022 - July 2024

3-21-22 FLEXIBLE RULES

A renowned therapist once spoke in a meeting I attended. Her talk was entitled "What Every Teenager Needs." There were just a small handful of things she submitted are necessary for every healthy teenager to survive, if not thrive. (These are after the basic human physical needs are met.)

One that I remember is that kids need purely unconditional acceptance from some adult in their lives. I was a mother of four teenagers at the time and had a sudden wave of misguided guilt wash over me, until she followed with the suggestion that such a person is rarely a parent, because parents, by nature of their position and calling, have to discipline, and discipline too often feels like rejection. Her opinion was that the person to fill that role is more often a grandparent or aunt or uncle, or some other adult friend. That was powerful advice. But this is not what I am focused on at the moment. 

One of the other factors the said was important in raising healthy teens was to have a small set of well defined rules. Then she followed that statement with this:

The rules need to have some measure of flexibility.

When you hear these words over the pulpit at church it seems almost like an oxymoron. We are used to hearing about exact obedience. This particular talk, given decades ago, was pivotal for me. I recall it often. It immediately affected my parenting. Now, in my stewardship as a mother, I am the only teenager left. (It's taking me a long time to mature.) I've learned to apply the eternal concepts underlying these rules to myself.

Timo in Saturday night's concert.

This past weekend was one of those intensely over scheduled times. So many things converged, and all of them were important. In one 48 hour period our Timo had two major performances, which required a couple hundred miles of driving and roughly five hours of performance. 

I had accepted a request to speak and sing at a Stake Women's Conference in a neighboring city, which had been postponed twice because of Covid and finally ended up on Saturday morning. Then our friends' son unexpectedly passed away and his funeral was scheduled for Saturday morning. So we lugged our sound equipment to Centerville Friday evening so it would be all set up Saturday morning. I was also asked to sing at the funeral Saturday morning. On top of that I had Relief Society Presidency meeting Friday morning, and a luncheon following the funeral that we were providing for the grieving family.

Grant Tingey 31 years old

We set up tables and decorated into the wee hours, I worked on my talk/musical performance, cooked, and joined a remarkable handful of devoted disciple women who not only planned, set up, cooked, served, cleaned up, put away tables and all other supplies then vacuumed and mopped until Saturday evening without sitting down for many hours. Then Dave and I finished the night by attending the second of Timo's performances at the Salt Lake Tabernacle, after which we hurried over to give a birthday gift to our grandson Walter. I record all this so I will remember how ridiculously busy my life was as a 64 year-old grandma Relief Society President, and also to explain why RULES NEED TO BE FLEXIBLE.

I committed, thirteen years ago, to write every day of Lent. This was a healthy exercise, and I have remained committed.  But when it was 1 am Friday and I had to be up and performing early Saturday morning and still needed to solidify my presentation, I actually let the thought rumble around in my head that I should do my Lent writing instead. I had to pause and do one of those deep dives, asking myself what the purpose of the rule was. Then I decided this was one of those times to break the rule.

I write during Lent in order to improve my writing skills, which develops my thinking and perception skills, which follow the promptings of my heart. And all of this follows my devotion to my Lord which underlies the writing at this particular season. And underlying all of that is my desire to understand my relationship with God and my fellow man. And underlying that is my belief that I am only here temporarily, that I am returning home at some point, and I want to be not only comfortable in the presence of divinity, but I want to be improved by my experience on earth. The rule basically was established to fulfill my desire to connect with my eternal home.When I stopped, took a breath, and analyzed the pressure I was feeling to not break the cycle of my daily Lent writing, I realized that it was, on this weekend, actually getting in the way of me achieving the greater goal. Testifying through word and song to 300 women seemed more important. Nurturing and ministering to  grieving friends seemed more important. Supporting our soon-to-graduate grandson in his magnificent talents seemed more important. So I broke the rule. There was no post for Friday, March 18. And the post for Sat March 19... well, that was one of the "spare's" I had written the week before Lent, specifically to have on hand for days like this.

I want my kids and grands to understand that tradition and rules, if they do not serve the eternal goals in our lives, do not have to always be the end-all. That is not to say they are not important, if they are well thought-out and guided by the Holy Spirit when they are established. But if the rules themselves always took precedence, then, frankly we would not exist. Eve would never have had the courage to eat that proverbial apple. Martin Luther would not have nailed his 95 Theses on the door of St Anne's Church. Gahndi wouldn't have opposed that salt tax. Rosa Parks would not have sat on that bus. 

Of course not writing a few creative paragraphs doesn't really fit in the same category, but freezing our minds to follow rules blindly is risky business. In my thinking, if all we needed were hard-fast rules then why would God even give us the Holy Spirit? 

All in all, I am a believer in limited rules, with underlying truth giving them foundation. They simplify our lives. It is just easier to establish in my mind and heart that I am going to be honest, then I don't have to keep having to re-decide every time an opportunity to be a little dishonest comes up. But if it takes breaking a lesser rule to keep a greater rule, you'd better believe I'm gonna consider it with intelligence and prayer both being driving forces. 

The take away? Limit your rules. Make the reason for them clear. But also make them flexible. Even the Master of All Rules gave us Jesus.