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Tinkerbell Pom-Poms and Consecration
By Susan Elzey

           There I was standing in a long line at the dollar store waiting to pay for cheap Tinkerbell pom-poms—the last prop I needed to complete the Stake Enrichment Day play I had written about preparation. As I always am in a dollar store line, I was annoyed.
            “Really,” I thought, “is this what my pursuit of a consecrated life has become? Buying tacky pom-poms so eight sisters can stand up and do their part in the play? What if I don’t do it? If I just put them down on the rack of candy bars and walk out? Sorry, Table #8, I didn’t buy your pom-poms. You will be pom-pomless cheerleaders. I decided I couldn’t stand in line faster than I had strength and just didn’t get your pom-poms. Cheer without them.”
            After all, I had spent hours writing the play, an evening practicing it, hours underlining everyone’s part, several hours making a pasta salad for the refreshments, and a morning making other poster board props. So did I really have to stand there in the only open line in the crowded store?
            Suppressing the desire to cram two Three Musketeers into my mouth to anesthetize myself—they were only 59 cents apiece—I knew the answer. Yes, I had to pay for the tacky little pom-poms, take them home and put them in the box with the other props. They were the final piece to that particular section of my life that I hope will one day make up a huge, eternal mosaic of the consecration of my life.
 Starting at baptism, continuing with the weekly sacrament and culminating in the temple, we make covenants of commitment that sometimes take us over the seas to a mission, to the doorstep of a sick friend to minister with blessings and casseroles, on the floor of a nursery teaching other people’s sticky toddlers, behind a pulpit to deliver a talk with shaking knees , and, yes, even to the line of a dollar store.
            At that moment, I couldn’t leave on a mission, teach a lesson, or do my visiting teaching, but I could finish the assignment I had agreed to do when my sister was called almost a year ago to be the stake Relief Society president. I promised her I would be the Hyrum to her Joseph, the Aaron to her Moses, the Amulek to her Alma. I can’t always travel dark roads with her to her stake meetings an hour away, but I could surely write plays to be forgotten as soon as they are performed and follow a pasta salad recipe that made so much it could have fed the Mormon Battalion throughout the whole march. If I didn’t come home with the pom-poms, I would have broken my promise to her, her counselor who extended the assignment to me, and to the Lord whose meeting it really was.
            When we don’t do our church callings when we are capable of doing so, we inconvenience those who must step in and perform that duty for us. Who among us has not received that early Sunday morning call from a member of the bishopric asking us to direct the music, teach that class, or give that talk that others found a good excuse to make themselves feel good about skipping out on a responsibility? Of course, sick kids, colds and flu, family emergencies happen, but not all the time. Sometimes, it’s just too tempting to stop short of the commitment, the consecration, the inconvenience, that stepping outside of our comfort zone. We let others, ourselves, and, ultimately, our Savior down.
            It might be easy sometimes to think that because we are not one of the General Authorities, full-time missionaries or a faithful bishop, our sacrifice is not significant, but the Savior taught otherwise as He observed a poor widow throw her pittance in to the treasury:  And he called unto him his disciples and saith unto them, ‘Verily I say unto you, That this poor widow hath cast more in, than all they which have cast into the treasury.’” (Mark 12: 43.)
            Our consecrated all becomes whatever we have to give, however small it might seem to us. The Sunbeam in Primary struggling to share his first scripture; the timid missionary walking through the doors of the MTC with heart in throat; the sister who drives 20 miles to man the library on Scout night, not knowing whether anyone will need a picture or not; the visiting or home teacher knocking for the 10th time on a door that won’t be opened; and a sister baking 300 muffins for a luncheon she won’t be able to attend—all are giving their all.
            My third son left on his mission to Oklahoma on an October morning, and by the beginning of March was home again sick with chronic fatigue syndrome. For the next nine months, he sat on the couch, gray and weak, but uncomplaining at what his life had turned out to be. Gradually, over the next two years, he recovered, but was not able to return to his mission. He had successfully fulfilled his mission, though. Like Abraham of old who had to prove his willingness to give his best but was not required to, my son had given all that he could give at that time to the Lord and then offered up his lifetime dreams of going on a mission upon the altar of his consecration for whatever else the Lord had planned for him.
            “Behold, I have seen your sacrifices and will forgive all your sin; I have seen your sacrifices in obedience to that which I have told you,” the Lord says in D&C 132:50.
            At any moment in our lives, a sacrifice may be required at our hands to fulfill the covenants of consecration we have made. That moment becomes a choice and a crossroads for us. We must decide between choosing the easier path or the path others before us have chosen—the newly called apostles who cry and pray on their knees all night before accepting their new lives, the pioneers leaving bloodied footprints across the plains, the senior couples leaving children and grandchildren for a mission, the brother asked to give a blessing in an emergency room at 2 a.m., a sister asked to stretch a casserole to feed a family with a sick mother, the Savior in the Garden of Gethsemane sweating drops of blood and pleading that this cup pass from Him, yet offering up His final sacrifice willingly when that wasn’t possible.
           The path of consecration is whatever is required of us at the time it is required, however large and life-changing, however small and insignificant. And, yes, even if it is nothing more than standing in a dollar store line buying tacky Tinkerbell pom-poms.

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Susan Dean Elzey grew up as an Army brat, living all over the world, but found her home in Danville, Virginia, when she was 15. Soon after, she fell in love with poetry and writing. She raised seven children in Danville, her oldest daughter handicapped with cerebral palsy, which influences every moment of her life. Returning to school after 17 years, she earned a degree in English and journalism and then a master's degree in literature. Along the way, she published three LDS novels. In a blended family, she and her husband, David, have nine children and, so far, 12 grandchildren. She works as a freelance writer and reporter while she waits for her children and grandchildren to visit and bring her joy.

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