These are the highlights of the book Lighten Up that I read in 2021.
“…” usually indicates the next part of the quote was later in the paragraph.
Quotation marks indicate the author is quoting someone else.
A line starting without a capitalized letter indicates my highlight starts in the middle of a sentence.
This is a book written for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints about going easier on themselves, and lightening up.
Rejoicing in Diversity (Chapter 1-4)
Chapter 1 Lighten Up!
The greatest bridge of all is the culture of the gospel.
Love is not just a nice feeling about someone. It is the pure and joyful pulse of the universe, and being in tune with it means you are in tune with the forces that bind together the stars on one hand and the atoms on the other.
According to the measurements we usually use, for the most part Jesus did not make people’s lives physically better.
We are the rainbow, but it is Christ who is the light.
Chapter 2 Principles and Practices
We should never compare ourselves spiritually to someone else.
Sometimes we think we can’t be united unless we’re all the same – doing the same things, talking the same way, understanding a gospel idea the same way. I think the Apostle Paul has a very different opinion.
Let us be careful not to snicker at jokes that demean and belittle others because of religious, cultural, racial, national, or gender differences.
(on 300 families surveyed that were considered “Effective Mormon Families” by their stake presidents) 99 percent of these families always paid their tithing; 93 percent said they always accepted Church callings; nearly all of them were sealed in the temple;…When the interviewers asked if they usually had family prayer, 73 percent of them said yes; 66 percent usually held family home evening; 24 percent went to the temple regularly, and 28 percent had regular family scripture study…lots of leeway on practices. Yet all of these families were, in the opinion of their stake presidents, effective and successful. Isn’t that encouraging?
(effective families continued) “You don’t have to come from a strong LDS family yourself to have one. Forty-nine percent of the husbands and 39 percent of the wives had not graduated from seminary. Only 21 percent of the husbands had been on missions. Twenty percent of the fathers and 18 percent of the mothers were not baptized at age eight. Between 15 and 18 percent were baptized after the age of twelve.
“At some point, sometimes before marriage, sometimes as a couple, these people decided that their own children would be raised up in a gospel environment…. [And] they followed it up with action.”
What’s the principle? Teach your children the gospel.
Lighten up about yourself – and about other people.
“Ideals are stars to steer by. They are not a stick to beat yourselves with.”
If we focus on principles instead of practices, we free ourselves from the unwarranted and unnecessary burden of guilt that often ensues when our practices do not match those of everyone else. We also free ourselves from the even more terrible burden of judging others because their practices don’t match ours.
“The one great stumbling block to our progress in faith is rule-keeping that does not spring from an honest heart…Jesus Christ never condemned the honest heart. His wrath was kindled against the hypocritically empty rule-keeping of the Pharisees.”
If I know how you feel about Jesus Christ, I am much less worried with how you feel about many other things.
Chapter 3 Walk in My Zori
We cannot replay God for his blessings.
Whatever your season is, enjoy it. Don’t try to concentrate on the tasks of another season.
A mission…wisdom of our leaders…it is a full-time assignment that deserves and receives the missionary’s complete concentration.
Meet the season of your life wholeheartedly.
Our marriage was like that – a team effort – and It might not have worked so well if we had spent much time thinking about who the leader was.
I knew that I must not let this time of physical weakness become a time of spiritual weakness as well.
(Lessons of the zori) One: Mutual obligation to each other…Two: relishing each season of life in turn without trying to rush through them all…Three: knowing that progress comes by teamwork and by each person in a marriage taking turns…Four: there is a time to bear heavy responsibilities and a time to let those responsibilities shift to someone else.
My great task in this life is the task the Savior has given all of us: “Learn of me.”
Chapter 4 Limitations: A Fine Line
We waste tremendous energy when we fret about our limitations instead of getting on with those portions of our life that are under our control.
(On consecrating what we have and what we are to the Lord’s work, a woman who said she “took my blackness with me…and that was part of what I consecrated. A woman cried saying she never had the privilege of doing this for a black woman before and she replied) “That’s one of the things I can do for you that no one else in the temple today could do.’”
Magnifying our callings doesn’t mean multiplying our tasks.
(The earth is ours. Why? Because we’ve deserved it? Because we’ve earned it?) No, because it is our Father’s delight to give it to us: “And it pleaseth God that he had given all these things unto [you]; for unto this end were they made to be used, with judgement…”
When we can thank God for trials, tribulations, irritations, and afflictions, something happens to transform them into blessings.
(Being grateful for fleas, concentration camp where guards let them be so they could read their Bible) “My mind rushed back to our first hour in this place. I remembered Betsie’s bowed head, remembered her thanks to God for creatures I cold see no use for” (The Hiding Place, pp. 2018-9.).
I could have chosen to feel frightened and let the children and parents feel that.
“And if [you] come unto me, I will show unto [you your] weakness. I give unto [you] weakness that [you] may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all who humble themselves before me; for if [you] humble [yourself] before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong” (Ether 12:27).
Defining Ourselves (Chapters 5-9)
Chapter 5 “For Such a Time as This”
We, like Esther, have come to our place for such a time as this…”we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places”
(Story of Elizabeth Francis Yeates conversion) “When I had read it all,” she wrote, “I said aloud ‘praise the Lord. I have found the right way at last.’”…”I could see no other way but to repent of my sins and to be baptized. I knew my people would bitterly oppose it when they knew it, and that my former friends would treat me coldly but it was worse than I ever thought.” That one sentence, “It was worse than I ever thought,” contains an agony of heartbreak.
She did not falter. Her last moment of hesitation had come on the very brink of her baptism when she looked down into the dark river at midnight, December 4, 1855. (The ceremony was performed in secret because of the risk of persecution.) She wrote, “[I] felt as though I could not possibly go in it, but a Voice seemed to say ‘There is no other way.’” In faith, she took that step. “It seemed after that,” she wrote, “that every thing had changed. The scales had fallen from my eyes, and the gospel plan was glorious, and I covenanted with my Heavenly Father that however dark the clouds may be, if friends turned to be foes that by His help I would serve Him.
“And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself (The Hiding Place, p. 239).
“The Holy Ghost filled me with the awareness that my mother had been handicapped in mortal life. She had an emotional handicap, the source of which remains a secret to me. But she is handicapped no longer. And neither am I” (“Forgiving My Mother,” Ensign, August 1990, p. 49).
Joy comes from serving others and delighting in our sisterhood – in ministering to rather than administering for each other.
You, in whatever callings you have throughout your own life, will face many choices between serving the program and serving an individual. I believe that if we truly serve individuals in the Lord’s way, we’ll have less trouble with the program. There’s a wonderful story about President McKay that illustrates the distinction. Irene Bates tells the story, which involved her husband, Bill, the first British president of Manchester Stake in England during the 1960s. (The story goes – It was normal for stake presidents and two bishops to be invited to General Conference with all traveling expenses paid. Instructions came to have all bishops and branch presidents come. A stake president named Bill was sure this was an error, but eventually gave the names of all the bishops and branch presidents in his stake. There was one branch president who was overjoyed for the chance to go to General Conference. He and his wife opened up their home in their little town to have church. The local paper featured a story about the trip. Word came down that it was a mistake. The stake president was distraught. He called the president of the British Mission who provided the prophet, David O. McKay’s, direct number. The stake president “looked at the number for a long moment, then said, ‘I’ve got to do it.’” He phoned President McKay and laid the whole situation before him. His response: “You’re quite right, President Bates. It would be very wrong to do that to that good man. We must have them all come. Please do me a favor and let me call President Tanner.” Bill came out of the office with tears streaming down his face.
Chapter 6 “A House of Glory”
Each of us wants to be friends with time,
Comfortable waiting for toast to pop,
The trick is to find out
whether a minute is worth more
Crammed or empty.
And, either way, to get on with it.
Heavenly Father doesn’t save up all his spiritual experiences just for sacrament meeting or the temple.
And that’s because you’re a temple – a living, breathing, walking temple on two legs with a spirit that’s in motion, seeing the needs of many.
I know that I am nothing; as to my strength I am weak; therefore I will not boast of myself, but I will boast of my God, for in his strength I can do all things.
Chapter 7 Motherhood: Less Guilt, More Joy
How grateful the entire house of Israel could be that Moses’ mother did not insist on being Moses’ only mother.
Our agency is eternal.
(speaking of her sons) it was far more important to us that they pay their tithing, attend their meetings, and administer the sacrament worthily than it was for their hair to be a certain length.
“They have their agency.”
(her son) instantly identifies and summarily rejects attempts to make him feel guilty about not being married. How foolish I would be to pick up the guilt my son has properly rejected and bind it on my own shoulders, to create a burden where none exists!
(about mothers) guilt is a burden they need not pick up.
Chapter 8 Defining Ourselves
Now, the point I want to make is this: Ed was trying to be the best son, the best son-in-law, and the best Mormon he could be. I was trying to be the best daughter, daughter-in-law, and Mormon I could be. Those were three role definitions apiece we were trying to work out with our families and the Church – not to mention trying to be the best husband and wife to each other we could be. How we succeeded had a large impact on our self-esteem. But there came a point where we had to choose. Ed couldn’t be the best son – in terms of Japanese culture and in terms of what his mother wanted – and also be the best Mormon he could be. I couldn’t be the best daughter-in-law – in terms of what his mother wanted – and still be the best Mormon I could be. Being a good daughter-in-law was important to me, but being a good Mormon was more important. Being a good son was important to Ed, but being a good Mormon was more important. So he had to establish that definition of himself without knowing if his mother would ever come to terms with it.
Do you feel that newness? Do you feel that strong connection to Jesus and the love that he has for you? If you do, it makes it easy to choose being a good member of the Church first.
Minimize the areas of conflict.
You want your family to see that you’re a better, happier person as a result of belonging to the Church.
Chapter 9 Three Ideas for a Brighter Life
But it was the fear of making a mistake that paralyzed him, traumatized him, and made him dissolve in tears…. Does that happen to us sometimes?
Old proverb – “He who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.”
Sin involves two characteristics: knowing the law and willfully breaking the law
D&C 80:3 “it mattereth not, for ye cannot go amiss.”
The Japanese word for this self-motivated goodness is kigatsuku.
Embracing Charity (Chapters 10-13)
Chapter 10 The Pure Spirit of Charity
(On teaching and knowing the first day what child would be difficult) I learned that I must go immediately to that child and return to him or her often during the day – to give a hug, to ruffle up his hair, to pat her shoulder. If I would do that, by day’s end, whatever in me sensed a difficult difference about that child had dissolved, and we had created the special bond that had come spontaneously with the others.
(Her husband while Mission President in Japan, when a woman criticized him for helping to setup a tent) “My title may be president, but that only means that I am the Lord’s servant here in Japan.”
Chapter 11 Surrounded by Samaritans
We all know why children behave this way. They want to feel special and important – and Satan’s counterfeit way of achieving that goal, even in little children, is to make someone else feel unimportant, unspecial, wrong.
(dream told by Jude Inmpey of the Aba area of Nigeria) “He dreamed he was at a major social event where an organ was being played, but the sound from the organ was painful. Upon investigation, he found that the organist was playing only on the white keys. The interpretation came to him sometime later at a Church gathering: ‘The Church has for many years played the white keys on the keyboard,’ he said, ‘and now they’re playing both the white and the black, and the music is much sweeter.’”
But I think of growing up on a plantation in Mahukona. I think of the Hawaiian women in that tiny Mormon branch who welcomed a Japanese Buddhist girl who edged shyly in the door. They made room for her beside their own children, taught her to sing the hymns, and loved her – not because she was going to be the first counselor in the Relief Society general presidency fifty years later, but because she was there and because they had loving hearts.
Chapter 12 The Power of Charity
What I’m suggesting is that our expectations need to communicate confidence and joy, rather than anxiety and pressure.
(Question she and her husband asked themselves when talking about goals for their sons) “If we continue with these same goals and priorities for Ken, will they help him reach his eternal potential?”
He (Christ) talks about his Father who, in a parched desert land, sends rain “on the just and on the unjust” and permits his sun “to rise on the evil and on the good.” Then he says, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father…is perfect.” How is our Father perfect? In not withholding the blessings of this sun and rain – which I think are symbols for his love – for anyone.
love doesn’t make distinctions about whether someone is evil or good, deserving or not deserving. Love will spill over in blessing, simply because that’s the nature of love.
We only imperfectly grasp his (God’s) immense patience.
the need we have to achieve perfection. There is no waste. And there is no haste. We will all have all the time we need. We have a loving Father who makes sure we will receive the experiences we need to achieve perfection.
we definitely don’t need to inspect other people.
The reason “charity never faileth” is because we aren’t in charge of the supply department.
Chapter 13 “Neither Do I Condemn Thee…”
Neither do I condemn thee (John 8)
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, no anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8)
Seeking the Light of Christ (Chapters 14-Epilogue)
Chapter 14 Opening the Door to Christ
The gospel is not a system that distrusts or despises the world.
Illness and adversity are not punishments for being alive; they are natural accompaniments of life.
If one great constant in the universe is the unfailing love of the Savior, the other great constant is his unfailing respect for human agency.
He wants to hear real prayers, honest prayers.
But who are we trying to kid? Jesus has just seen the stove where the spaghetti boiled over, and it was pretty obvious that wasn’t the only thing that had ever boiled over on the stove. He heard what you muttered when you picked up that one sock, just as you’ve been doing for the past eight years. He caught that worry about the dentist bill that flashed across your mind when you were putting toothpaste on your brush. He doesn’t want polite platitudes. He wants you! All of you! He wants to be the center of your total life – the worried you, the mad you, and the sad you as well as the inspired, happy, obedient, loving you.
(From a missionary after saying a no substance prayer and wondering why God wouldn’t help her) “This time, I didn’t say a prayer – I prayed.”
don’t think anything is too small for the Savior’s loving attention.
Chapter 15 Spiritual Preparation
But a life centered in the future is not really the kind of life that makes living today worthwhile.
the gospel brings peace. Even when it stretches us and makes us work hard, it brings peace.
(After listing all the “shoulds” in the church, or things we’re told we should do) You should do what works for you.
many of the good women of the world (in whom there is often such an inner sense of spirituality) will be drawn to the Church in large numbers. – Spencer W. Kimball
Chapter 16 “Learn of Me”
There are two things I want us to remember about light: First, light doesn’t compete with darkness. It dispels darkness. And second, Christ’s burden is light.
For all of us – whether we are converts or were born in the Church – there comes a moment when the gospel becomes real to us in a way that it hasn’t been before. These are moments of a reality beyond realness. They make a light go on permanently, a light that never goes off unless a line goes down or a switch gets turned off somewhere. If that’s the light that we share together when we feast on the scriptures and learn of Christ, then it is a light that dispels the darkness in our lives.
One of the inevitable effects of true spirituality is light-heartedness, a generosity in happiness.
Jesus is our yokemate. When we take his yoke upon us, he’s pulling on the other half of the yoke. There aren’t many loads that are too heavy to pull if Jesus is pulling beside us.
(Paraphrase of Matthew 7:9-10) “What Relief Society president is there among you, who, if a sister ask for comfort, will give her a lecture? Or, if she ask for more spiritually nourishing lessons, will give her guilt instead?
To have faith in his identity is only half the principle. To have faith in his ability and in his power to cleanse and to save, that is the other half.
We must have faith in Christ – not only that he is the Savior, but that he is our Savior.
Stephen Robinson told another story that impressed me. His seven-year-old daughter Sarah asked for a bicycle. She was the only child on the block without one. Brother Robinson didn’t have enough money to buy her a bicycle at the time, so he sidestepped the issue by telling her, “You save all your pennies, and pretty soon you’ll have enough for a bike.” A couple of weeks later, he saw her do a job for Janet, then add the two pennies she earned to some others in a little jar with a slit in the lid. She showed him the pennies in the bottom and said, “You promised me that if I saved all my pennies, pretty soon I’d have enough for a bike. And, Daddy, I’ve saved every single one of them.”
“My heart melted,” he says. “She was doing everything in her power to follow my instructions.” She didn’t know – though he did – that she would eventually have enough pennies for a bicycle, but by then she would be in high school. So he took her shopping and they spent all afternoon looking at bicycles:
Finally we found it – the perfect bicycle, the one she new in the premortal existence. She got up on that bike, and she was thrilled. She then saw the price tag, reached down, and turned it over. When she saw how much it cost, her face fell and she started to cry. She said, “Oh, Dad, I’ll never have enough for a bicycle.”
So I said, “Sarah, how much do you have?”
She answered, “Sixty-one cents.”
“I’ll tell you what,” I said. “You give me everything you’ve got and a hug and a kiss, and the bike is yours.” Well, she’s never been stupid. She gave me a hug and a kiss. She gave me the sixty-one cents. Then I had to drive home very slowly because she wouldn’t get off the bike. She rode home on the sidewalk, and…I drove along slowly beside her.
We all want something desperately – but it isn’t a bicycle. We want the celestial kingdom. We want to be with our Father in Heaven. And no matter how hard we try, we come up short. The Savior proposes, “I’ll tell you what. All right, you’re not perfect. How much do you have? What can you do? Where are you now? Give me all you’ve got, and I’ll pay the rest. Give me a hug and a kiss; that is enter into a personal relationship with me, and I will do what remains undone.”
There is good news and bad news here. The bad news is that he still requires our best effort. We must try, we must work – we must do all that we can. But the good news is that having done all we can, it is enough (“Believing Christ,” pp 51-52.)
Chapter 17 Inviting the Dragon
Epilogue: Strength in Every Season
No Coincidences 