Impressions

Earlier I had posted things that we had done this past week. I also wrote that if I feel impressed to write something else I'd jump and do it then.

I am writing now because I just listened to a talk that was given at BYU-Hawaii Thursday, November 04, 2004 Emerge With Your Gifts by Mervlyn Kitashima. She grew up on Kauai and is a graduate from Kamehameha and received the mother of the year award for 2003.

What I was impressed with is what she talked about concerning the Ohia Lehua Blossom. An ohia lehua tree provides rare color on a lava field in Volcanoes National Park, Hawaii. Ohio lehua are the most abundant native trees in Hawaii and are among the first life in new lava flows. According to Hawaiian legend, the tree is actually a young warrior. Pele, the goddess of fire, wanted to marry the warrior. When he refused, she turned him into a tree. The other gods weren't able to turn him back, so they turned his true love into the lehua blossom so they could be reunited. It's said that if you pick one of the blossoms, it will rain – the tears of lovers.

OK...it isn't the legend that I want to focus on, it is what Sister Kitashima said about the actual tree. She said that at first, the tree is small, it doesn't grow very big and it has ugly branches and it is straggly and doesn't look appealing. It is not pretty, gnarled and twisted possibly because of the stress and the amount of work it takes to break thru the lava created earth. The blossom is beautiful once it blooms though. The post popular color is RED. There are other colors though such as pink, yellow and gold. Her whole point of this analogy was that look at the beauty from such a distorted tree, look at what it becomes from such a distorted environment and look what beauty God can create when he provides the necessities of life to bloom.

I thought about that scenario this morning as she was speaking and had to go back and listen to it again at least 3-4 times to know that she was talking to me. I was to listen to that talk today so that Karen would remember that she is a daughter of God and that he loves me and that he provided a Savior for me so that I could return home to him again because he doesn't want me to be alone.

The awesome part of this story is, is that my middle name is Leihua. Mine name has the "I" because the flower is included in a Lei. How wonderful it is. I don't think that my grandma even had a clue that this world and name would be so significant to me later on in my life and I'm grateful for my parents who agreed to give me the name.

I love life, I love the Lord. I sound like an idiot when I share my testimony because my Savior means so much to me that I forget where I am, but I don't care. I know how I feel and I know that it means TONS to my Father in Heaven and to my Redeemer, Jesus Christ. I am grateful for the atonement and what it has done for me to bring me out of this distorted life and to allow me to blossom. Out of barren and rough ground I can be clean and beautiful. I am humble to say that Heavenly Father has created a beautiful me and I'm grateful to him for that.

Love,

Karen