Our childhood experiences can be very significant in the shaping of our lives. At that time we are most dependent, most vulnerable, and most needful of love, acceptance and belonging. Our parents and significant others are our role models, the course of most of our satisfactions. We identify with these models, good or bad, not so much intellectually as emotionally. These experiences, positive and negative, have the cumulative effect of giving to us a script. We normally think of a script as an actor’s written part which he learns, memorizes, and acts out on stage. It not only involves his/her words and actions but also his/her attitude or frame of mind, indeed his/her character. It becomes his/her part, his role.
All of us have scripts given to us which become our parts, our roles. I emphasize again that these scripts are more emotional, more subtly absorbed than they are intellectually or consciously chosen. They rise out of our deep vulnerabilities, our deep dependency upon others, and our absolutely screaming needs for acceptance and love, for belonging, for a sense of importance and worth, for a feeling that we matter.
All of this does not mean we are necessarily controlled by these scripts, but it does mean we are powerfully influenced by them. The difference between being influenced by and being determined by is 180 degrees. Determinism, whether it be genetic, psychic, or environmental, is false doctrine. In one sense the underlying assumption and tone of this entire column is self-determinism, that we can learn to write our own scripts, that we can re-script ourselves, that we can identify with new models, have new relationships with true scripts, true models – divine ones. Just consider the word scripture itself. In the gospel context, is not one possible meaning “true scripts’?
However in spite of the gospel, scripts written and developed early in life, pounded in by powerful emotional experiences – even traumatic ones – become deeply imbedded within our natures; and they may have influence upon us for the rest of our lives unless equally powerful, even traumatic, experiences divinely erase them and write new ones in the “fleshy tables of the heart”. This is why those first 8 years of life are so critical, so supremely important.
-Stephen Covey
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3rd grade
I got was baptized this year by Dennis Rogers, a priest in the ward - he is the brother of my sisters best friend (Ella). Mom took me to a play in Phoenix and then we met daddy at Big Apple, Dad told the waitress to treat me right it was my birthday! I was super grateful to be baptized, I knew it made mom happy.
Judyann home now working and her problems (sickness) seem to be thyroid related. One day she fainted while in the shower, scared me to death. I remember her laying there past out and striving to wake her up, shaking her and hugging her. It was a moment of terror with a memory for me.
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Kelly Sue
by Grandpa Albert Lyman June 22nd, 1965
An angel came from the heaven-world
as a bird from the upper sky.
'Twas the Heavenly Father who sent her down
and He followed her with His eye.
He gazed with the warmth of a Father's Love
As He watched from His throne on high.
And He gave her a body of flesh and bone
In which to live on earth,
He prepared her to live and to see and think
From the time of her mortal birth.
O this was a glorious gift from God,
A gift of the greatest worth.
And they to whom she came were glad
And they tried as parents true
To bless her with everything they had
And with all that they could do;
They cherished her gently to their hearts
And they called her Kelly Sue!
And now she is starting Forth to find
And follow the safety way,
To see and to turn from the ugly things
She will meet with every day,
To discover the richest joys of life
In work as well as play
She will meet with things that she never knew
And with folks of every kind;
She must always look out for Kelly Sue
And ever keep in mind,
That the path of many a little girl
Are oft with danger lined.
O how we do hope that no evil thing
Will come to Kelly Sue,
The she will continue to watch and prya
And carry safely through
With thoughts that are always pure and sweet
With Standards bright and new.
We would clear from her pathway every snare
And make it, if we could,
A way of safety and love and light
To all that is great and good,
A way to the loveliest thing of all,
Which is perfect womanhood.
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| Mom and Grandma Gladys - Mesa |
We still live in this tiny trailer! 8 x 30!
They totally have BIGGER Motor Homes today than this "house" we lived in then.
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| Cat Ballou |
Oh man!!! Not that I wanted to be her, (Jane Fonda - not thought of fondly in my house) but I wanted to be her character! Tuff, and in control - a hands on take control kinda cowgirl!!! again - OH man!!!!
but I must have had two personalities cuz I also loved Sonny and Cher too!!!!
