Do You Have a Plan for Studying your Patriarchal Blessing?

WHY REPEAT WHAT I'VE ALREADY SAID? Under this blog's search box, put in Patriarchal Blessing, and many of my previous posts, that are so labeled, will come up especially from the year 2012. Read them and see if anything there pops out to you as something you'd like to use in your study. My mother worked for Lockheed in Burbank California during the WWII years. She used her gifts, skills and talents as well as her current passionate interest to create my birth announcement. It shows different ways of looking at a project. We might do the same with our blessing. If we read it like scripture (that is prayerfully) the Lord will not only state explictly our talents and gifts, but sometimes subtly whisper them as we read. If we are currently passionate about a topic that is not covered in our blessing, not to worry. These blessings are not meant to be a dictatorial declaration, or a list of what to do and not to do. God has granted us AGENCY. It has been my experience that men and women will only read their blessings occassionaly. I didn't really understand mine when I first received it as a 24 year old newlywed. I divorced that husband and we had no children. But I am eternally grateful for him introducing me to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He has since married two more times and is not an active member. So, when I married my second husband and was sealed to him in the Washington D.C. temple, and began more vigorously journaling, I reformated my blessing when re-typing it so that it reflected my name change. Now I read it, and when it says "husband" I think of him. I challenge you to look at each sentence in your blessing with an eye for different elevations. Is it temporal? then look at it from a spiritual view. Or if it is scriptorial, look at it by studying it in our Study Helps located in the Scriptures. Or maybe it is just puzzling to you, study each word as a noun, verb, adjective and see where the action words lead when so modified. Yep, look at it from a new elevation. I became fascinated by chiasmus and found the "center" of my blessing using that method of scriptural structure. Have I become a geek? Some might say so. But, I still find myself with that burning witness as a I read my personal scripture or come close to tears when I realize that God is talking to me. May He do the same for you.