Woman of Service: Where is Your Focus?

“I try to visualize in my head, is my mirror or my windowpane up?  If your mirror is up, you miss out on the beautiful world around you.  That visual helps me when I feel like I’m getting into too much of a pity party.”

Julie grew up in Sparks, Nevada and graduated from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.  She’s been married for 32 years.  She and her husband have eight beautiful children, four wonderful in-laws, and six grandchildren with one on the way.  She loves to be with her family, be outdoors, go on walks, and have spontaneous dance parties in the kitchen (all the youth she drives places know they have to have a dance party in the car).  She is the loudest mom at sporting events– her children attest to them doing better at their games when they can hear her.  What brings her joy in Christ?  “Knowing that my family can be together forever because of Him.”

What Christlike attributes have you tried to develop that have brought you joy?

Patience and kindness

How would you describe these attributes?

I think patience is being understanding of someone.  When you have patience, you try not to react with a gut reaction, but try to understand.  Kindness is understanding as well, but looking outside of yourself where you’re serving someone not for your own benefit.  It’s doing something for someone without expecting anything back.

What has helped you to develop these attributes?

I think being a mother has helped me to acquire patience and kindness.  As a mother, you often put everyone else’s needs above your own.  

Also, through church assignments and volunteer work.  (Julie is currently serving as the Stake Young Women’s President, which position allows her to serve, teach, and lead 12-18 year-old girls in her local area.)

Through these assignments, I work with people in all different walks of life.  It requires a lot of patience and understanding to serve them properly.  We don’t always know their whole story and it’s easy to be quick to judge.  As I’ve learned their stories, it helps me to be kinder and more understanding because we’re all on different levels.

How does practicing this attribute give you joy?

For me, when I’m being kind, it helps me forget my troubles and focus on someone else.  If I’m having a bad day and I’m kind to someone else, it changes how I’m feeling.   It’s like a ripple effect.   I like to see how many people I can make smile as I’m going about my day.  We never know what people are going through.  

I think of an example of looking through a mirror verses a windowpane.  When we’re looking through a mirror, all we see is ourself and focus on our own problems.  When we look through a window pane–which to me means being kind and patient– we take away ourself and can see the world in front of us better.

What experiences have helped you develop this attribute?

I have learned kindness when others are truly not kind back.  The Lord has blessed me with the ability to listen and be guided by the Holy Ghost to know what to do and react with kindness, even when those around me may respond with anger.  The girls I work with in my church assignment are sometimes experiencing different challenges and need someone to be patient, to love, and be kind with them–not to just write them off.

We need to act on thoughts of kindness because we never know who needs it that day.  I have tried to act on any prompting that I have to send a text or call someone or pay a compliment. I feel when I’m kind to someone they turn around and are kind to someone else.  It’s a ripple effect.  My mother used to tell us if we were having a bad day, to serve someone else and it would make our own problems not seem as bad.

It’s easy to be self-centered when you’re sad, but I tell the young women I serve to just take the time to see things around them.  

There was a day I was feeling really yucky.  I took a trip to the grocery store and helped a few people. By the time I left the store, I felt so much better.  I now look for someone to help because there’s always someone that needs help.  Try it– you watch and see how many people there are to help (even in the grocery store).  It makes you happy.  I’ve even helped people go out to their car and unload their groceries.  

I try to visualize in my head, is my mirror or my windowpane up?  If your mirror is up, you miss out on the beautiful world around you.  That visual helps me when I feel like I’m getting into too much of a pity party.

Who has mentored you in your quest to develop this attribute and how?

My husband has always been a great example of patience and he’s very even tempered.  He always assumes the best in people.  My mom was always very service-oriented; she has taught me about kindness.  My dad was always very patient.  He never wanted to say something in anger that he couldn’t take back.  When we were in trouble, he would have us go to our room and wait to talk about it until we were calm and ready to talk. As a parent I never wanted to say anything out of anger because once it’s out there, it’s hard to take back.

What role has Jesus Christ played in your life?

He is hope.  When I get down and feel like I’m not doing well, there’s always that hope that he loves me.  I always think of my cliche comment “remember who you are”.   I’m a daughter of Heavenly Father and he loves me no matter what.  He knows the trials I’m going to go through before I do and knows that I can do it.   If I don’t have faith in myself, I know that Christ and Heavenly Father have faith in me.  Trust their instincts.  They will always love me and because of Christ’s atonement, I can always repent (change).  Our Heavenly Father loves us so much that He sacrificed His Son on our behalf.  That makes me think, “Okay, I need to do my part then!”

What was the happiest /most difficult moment of your life?

Happiest: When I’m around family; my family makes me the happiest.

Difficult: About a month ago I was having a really hard time.  I was just coming off of some difficult experiences.  I was realizing my kids are grown-up.  I was feeling like I wasn’t good at anything.  For a few weeks I was in a really hard spot, wondering, “What’s my purpose any more?”  But it just came back to the Savior and that I need to remember who I am and that I do have a purpose here.  I realized I needed to look outside of myself and at the world around me.  I’m out of my rut now.

Who has been the biggest influence on your life? What lessons did that person teach you?

My kids have.  They each have different attributes they came with that have helped me along the way.

What are the most important lessons you’ve learned in life?

We need to be patient with ourselves.  

Also that true happiness is found in the service of our fellow beings.  I feel like you can’t help but be happy when you’re helping someone.  When you’re serving others, everything else seems so irrelevant.

How has your life been different than what you’d imagined?

I wanted to be married in the temple and have lots of kids, and I have that.  Maybe just the trials that I’ve gone through were different than what I’d expected.

How would you like to be remembered?

As a happy, kind person.  

I was sitting in a funeral once and thought, “If I were to die, what would people think about me?”  I would want to be known as someone that was a representative of Christ.  Someone that was kind.

Also for my sweet dance moves 🙂  

What lessons have you learned from your relationships?

That is where you learn a lot of the patience and kindness.  I feel like what’s hard on the earth right now is that so many people are so self-centered.  If someone does something nice to someone and is kind, they’ll turn around and do the same to others.  It’s like the pay-it-forward concept.

I once told a friend who was cranky that we would do random acts of kindness.  So we went to the store and bought treats and found cute little quotes.  For a month or so, we would go and doorbell-ditch people and leave these bags of treats.  If my friend was particularly frustrated or angry with an individual I would say,  “Okay, we need to go give them a bag of sunshine today!”  I found that when we were doing that, she was a lot happier.  It’s helped me by having relationships with some of these different types of personalities to feel more refined and sensitive about things.  It’s helped me do a double-look at myself and see what I can change.

Interviewed by: Ashley Marchant

Editing done by: Dani Davis

Photo by Joseph Pearson on Unsplash