Writing Down Our Spiritual Experiences: Katie's Story
Have you ever gotten some advice but didn’t know why you were told that? It’s sound and makes sense but why in the world are they telling you that? Come listen to Katie’s story, the advice she received, and how it’s made a difference in her life. It’s story week on Chatting with Camille!
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Camille: Welcome welcome. Today, I am excited to introduce you to Katie Clark. She is a mom of three and lives in Littleton, Colorado. Horray for Colorado. She is a graduate of Brigham Young University, and a professional blogger with eight different websites; her most popular being Clark's Condensed. Katie loves bringing positivity to the internet, whether it be through easy recipes and crafts, travel tips, pregnancy, breastfeeding advice, church ideas or through silly reels on Instagram. She enjoys spending time with her family playing games and being outside on walks while listening to a good podcast. Welcome.
Katie: Thank you. I'm so happy to be here.
Camille: We're very happy to have you, and I'm going to turn it right over to you so you can share your story with us.
Katie: This is a little bit about tithing. Before I got married back in 2010, I had a Bishop, it was a Bishop I hadn't, I'd only had him for about a month cause I moved into my husband's ward before we got married. He just called me in right before we got married. The only thing I remember from that conversation was to always remember the blessings of tithing and to specifically write them down, record them for my children. I was like, oh, it's kind of an interesting thing to say, cause I think it was the marriage interview or whatever they do before we, I don't even know, it was something before we got married.
And that was really something that he felt very strongly about. And I was like, okay, well tithing is great. That sounds like a good idea. I've always paid my tithing, but back then, that's when you had to either bring in cash or check. I was always not very great about writing checks so sometimes I would just let the money pile up kind of my bank account. And then I would write a check, you know, three or four months later. I realized that probably wasn't the best way to do it, but that's what I did for a while.
We've been married, I think I had my, I was either pregnant or I had had my baby. We were really poor. We did not have very much money at all. As many married college students don't have, I was like, okay, I need to make sure I pay my tithing. I need to make sure I'm doing that better about doing it on time. So I pay my tithing. I think it was like three or four months’ worth.
We were really struggling to make ends meet that month. I didn't know how we were going to pay our rent, even though our rent was super cheap. But I paid it and then out of nowhere, I got an email. I did some contract work every now and then writing things but then I just got this email from this random person about some website he had started.
I think it was some church base, something about Joseph Smith, and he just needed somebody to, I don't even remember what the job was. It was either I had to write some stuff or I had to edit some content and I was like, this is kind of random, but okay. I took it because we needed the money and, it just, it literally came out of nowhere soon after I paid my tithing and it was a totally random job.
I did it. And we got enough that helped us get through that month. As quickly as I got that, He kind of disappeared. I've never heard anything about that website ever since. They paid me good money to do it, I don't think the website even exists, but it was one of those times, like, I think everyone hears those stories about immediate blessings of tithing. And most of the time we don't have those, they're kind of more longlasting blessings. But for me that was one where it really stood out to me.
It's something that I did write down and it's something that I have shared with my children I don't know why that advice my Bishop gave me to write things down, but I am starting to realize now that it is cause as I was thinking about this podcast, I was going back and thinking about all the things in my life. I can't remember a lot. Experiences that I've had, even though I've had a lot of, faith promoting experiences. not only was that a lesson of writing about tithing, but also the importance of writing down these experiences so we remember that cause that was over 10 years ago that that happened. I don't remember a lot of things from 10 years ago. My memory's not great.
Camille: It's so funny because we hear people tell us to write things down all the time, right? But like, we don't believe them.
Katie: No, we think we're going to remember them, but I think I read the other day, someone was saying, I don't know what it was, but it was like, you remember something like 50% the next day, 25% the next day. And then you just like, forget most things that happen. But when you write them down and review them, you really, you do remember them as if they happened more frequently. we hear that a lot. Like you said, we hear write things down, but I think it's so true and so important that we do because we, we forget things, even things that we think we'll never forget.
Camille: Yeah. Something that seems so monumental and we totally forget it. That's a great point too. I love that. That's a dual lesson there. One of the things I was thinking about when you were saying that you were going to tell us a story about how your Bishop encouraged you to write things down. Do you think you noticed additional blessings because you were writing things down?
Katie: Absolutely. Like I said, I forget things a lot and the things that I do write down, I do feel like that. Very important advice from him because I have seen in my life, journals from other people, people that have passed away when they were young or from my family members, ancestors, just their stories and their very faith promoting things.
I think for me, writing down some of these experiences, even if it's not necessarily in a journal, cause you know, I'm not the best at journals, but I do think that they help my family and me. One thing that I do do is on Instagram. You know, everyone has Instagram, I've been very prolific about writing down a lot of our experiences where sometimes people are probably like, this is like TMI , but we get those in Chatbooks., We have dozens of Chatbooks and my children love those and they go through them and they read them and say, “Do you remember this?” or “I didn't know that this happened.” And there's things where I'm like, I didn't even know that happened and I don't even remember that happening, but reading it and going back to it, I'm like, wow, I'm so glad that we have that record and that I have remembered to write down some of these things and it may not be like the most traditional way of writing things down, but it's in a way that has been a blessing.
And I, just the other day I was thinking, I want to have more of those experiences. You know, those faith promoting tender mercy experiences. I remember telling Heavenly Father, I will write these down. I promise I will write these down if I can have them. I think that we are blessed for remembering the things that we have been taught are the things that have happened to us. And those help us through those harder times where we might feel less of God's presence or feel like, we're all alone.
Camille: I love that you mentioned how your children go through those books too, though, because what a blessing it is for them to remember their great childhood. We have to remind them, right?
Katie: Yes. Yeah. Sometimes we do. Sometimes they're like, we never do anything fun. I'm like, go back and read that. Remember the things we have done.
Camille: Remember that, but is, I mean, it's a blessing, not just for our kids, but obviously it'll be for beyond that, which is wonderful. Absolutely. You mentioned such an immediate, significant blessing from tithing and how sometimes we don't get quite a big every single time we pay it, right? Have you noticed maybe more some of the subtle but significant blessings in your life? Like some of the ones I was thinking of is, you know, like an increase of gratitude. What are some of the things that you have noticed?
Katie: For sure. After that, especially after they made it easier to pay tithing online, I became much more consistent about paying my tithing right away. I have found the blessings of consistency have helped me with my testimony of tithing. Where in the past, I would, you know, kind of build up that money and then I'd be like, oh, I don't really want to pay this money right now cause that's a lot of money sitting in the bank, but I, would.
I have found that with the consistency of paying, right? When, like it's the first thing I do before I do anything else before I pay any other bills, I pay my tithing it's not something I'm like, oh, I don't want to, maybe I'll just have to pay tithing next time. It's just something that I do automatically. It's not something I've struggled with. And I feel very grateful for that because I do know that we've been blessed because of tithing. Some of it, I think it's our business. Our business has been something that a lot of people were like, what are you doing?
Why isn't your husband going to law school? Like he was planning to do. Cause he was going to go to law school. And then all of a sudden I'm like, well, we have this blog and it's kind of taking off. So we're going to do that. People were like, you're crazy. I truly believe that so much of that, some of the blessings that have come from that have been because paying tithing. And following the promptings that we had, and it allowed me to be closer to the spirit and be able to follow the promptings with our business. Because when you look at what we do for a living, it is kind of weird. It's kind of like, how did that work out that way?
I have seen so many things along the way, when I look back on it, I do think that tithing has helped us, through some of those harder times and helped us, you know, get some of those things that helped us grow our business when maybe it was a little bit leaner in the beginning. I do think that the tithing helped us. I just think tithing in general, I think just paying it, it's the faith of paying it. Sometimes we might be like, well, why are we paying this? Like maybe I should just pay to someone else or something else that I think they're going to. I don't know, you know, there's different feelings on that. I think so much of it comes down to the faith and the, just the obedience and that we are blessed for being obedient.
There was some quote I saw where someone was talking about like, oh, like I don't, I didn't pay my tithing. Like, what's wrong with that? And somebody was like, well, You think you can do better things with the Lord's money than he can do. I think that's true. I'm grateful that I'm able to, have that testimony of tithing and see that it's not just me, that it's helping, but a worldwide church. I do think the consistency of it does help with the testimony of it.
Camille: That's a beautiful testimony. One of the things I picked up on was being blessed kind of with a spirit of discernment, I guess as you made those choices with your business. I think that's such a blessing that we overlook. It's not just the money, right? It's how to use that. How to use our time, how to progress in our businesses.
Katie: Love that. Absolutely. We had some weird experiences with our business where we had some people come in and they're like, we're going to make you thousands of dollars. They're like we really want you to sign on. But then I remember some very significant experiences where I did have that discernment where I'm like, this doesn't feel right. This is not working. I do think that it comes back to that. I think all parts of the gospel work together. It's not just, I'm going to pay my tithing, but I'm not going to do this. I think it's all of the things they add up to allow you to have that increased spirit. Absolutely.
Camille: Absolutely. Great points. Thank you. Thank you for sharing your story. Share with us where people could find you and maybe one of your websites, right?
Katie: Yeah. Clarks Condensed is our first website. That's the one we started. That's where I post most things on Instagram. If you want to go to ForrestandKatie.com that has all of our websites. If you're curious to see all the crazy stuff we do, but Clark's Condensed is definitely where we have a lot of our church folk. We have more church-focused things there. That's what people are looking for, but we have a little bit of everything there. You can find me on Instagram or a website or just all over the internet. You just search Clark's Condensed and you can find us.
Camille: I love it. A great way of sharing the gospel online in these little ways of websites. I love it.
Katie: Thank you. I do feel like that's one of the things God has blessed us with is to be able to share with other people about the gospel and just life in general. I think that's important. I know I started it because when I was pregnant, it was like, everything was negative. Everything about the internet was negative. I felt like about parenting. my biggest goal, I said this in my bio was that I wanted to bring positivity, particularly about family life to the internet. That's been a big goal of mine. when I lose focus, I go back to that.
Camille: Oh, that's beautiful. And you definitely do so thank you.
Katie: Oh, thank you. I'm glad that I can connect with people like you. It's amazing what the internet can do. We focus on the bad, but there's a lot of wonderful things that come from it.
Camille: Want to have more gospel conversations with your family? Come to my Market and check out my gospel games Cknscratch.com, where you can have all kinds of fun, simple conversations while playing a game because the more we talk about the gospel, the easier it is.
