The great cherry tree in my neighbor’s backyard, the focal point of my view out my kitchen window, suffers. One half of its leaves and branches wither, just as its owner did before his passing a few weeks ago. One half is still healthy enough to show green leaves. I have found inspiration in this tree over the years to keep going, enjoy the blossoms and red cherries, and endure long winters. Now, it reminds me of loss, and of the burden of living with half.
As eternal beings who are the offspring of God, something within us cannot be comfortable with halves. The Lord knows this about this, and has a plan to make us whole as we step forward with our fractured halves… of understanding, a partnership, ability, vision, purpose, joy, testimony, or strength.
One way he makes us whole is through the sacrament. Last Sunday, I heard the word “souls” in the sacrament prayer. We come to the sacrament table as souls, two halves of a whole: spirit and body. I learned that the emblems, blessed and sanctified, were for for the benefit of both my body and spirit. I learned that God is involved in the tangibles of toothache just as much as the imperceptible needs of the spirit, homesick for heaven, but not ready to be there.
At age four I could mimic the life I wanted as I played wedding, house, and office. My closet was my kitchen; my neighbor, my groom. I dressed and held each doll differently, as any mother does. I kept lists of things to do, places to go, and rents paid.
At age fourteen, I took my first Zoology class and this steered me to science teaching. I was also voted “most likely to become a seminary teacher’ that year.
At age twenty-four, I had a Zoology degree, a husband, two babies, and a class of teenagers who showed up at my door for my seminary lesson at 6 am every school day.
At age thirty-four, our children were all with us, and I taught home school. I also played science teacher to dozens more at a community center.
At age forty-four, my heart stretches to embrace a child living across the world, and toward a soon-to-be new son holding my daughter’s hand. I teach mostly through encouragement, whether at home or at church. I know now that there are many ways to teach.
I had the audacity at age four to act out my future. There was no fear in my play, only hope and love. I need to take a lesson from my four-year-old self: if I can hope and love, it will be enough, because God is the one who planted these desires for family and influence inside of me. He is the one enabling me to accomplish His purposes. He knows which songs I love best, and has blessed me to be able to play them because he loves me.
My four-year-old self did not foresee an end to the little house life, nor that the children would challenge us deeply. Perhaps it’s that immature self inside of me that feels some defeat in reality. But this stretching and fatigue is not how the story will end. This is the part where it gets really interesting.
A fixture is something you think is necessary and useful in a house or schedule, and once it’s there, it becomes part of the landscape. You hardly think of it.
I am challenging many “fixtures” in our home and lifestyle.
The computer desk in the kitchen for kids? Not needed. They now use the kitchen table and my laptop on which I control access.
Books we own but did not enjoy and will not read again: donating those.
Fabric from the past twenty-four years: down to one box.
Cards and letters: while so meaningful to me, the objects themselves don’t bring happiness. It’s relationships that do that. I am parting with many of these pieces of paper.
Collections: what can’t be displayed and enjoyed is not needed.
Papers showing our children’s home education: I have learned most of these are not important to them, and just a few treasures are important to me.
Craft supplies: many of these have not been used since Paige was a little girl. Most can be donated.
Ultimate Frisbee: Just one night a week now, in a city league, not the school team.
Piano lesson times: changed to fit MY schedule better. This has made a huge difference in my stress levels, and we found times to make everyone happy.
Working through these objects and activities is also making me work through my history, my dreams, and my insecurities. It’s no surprise that a home is the best place to find out what a person is really dealing with. Apparently, I have real issues letting go of reminders of my children when they were young. This is silly because while they were adorable and smart and fun back then, they are even more interesting now. I love the new depth possible in relationships with my adults and teens, and it is so exciting to watch them soar. I am also learning to stand up for my personal needs when it comes to scheduling the kids and taking on obligations. I cannot run the pace that others run. For my gifts to flourish, I require a lot of stillness and order, and a good, real, in person conversation with someone every single day.
The dog is healing. He finds comfort in the boys after school and Richard in the evenings. During the day, he is stuck with me, the mean one who forces down medicines, locks him in the mudroom during errands, gags at the smell of his food, and cleans up his messes while muttering threats at him. I have never been a dog person because they scare me. This experience taught me that I like our dog a little bit, after all.
I finished my study of an important topic to me in the Book of Mormon in the early morning hours on Monday. This has been my steady work for months, and considering what it has given me, it seems funny it is only 16 pages. It is my record of reconciling some things I heard in a lesson at church and what the scriptures have to say on the topic. This study helped me see how things really are… And they are not what the teacher said, and not what I thought. Still, I could feel something was off, and now I know. And the Book of Mormon is, as ever, absolutely true, and a perfect manual for life. Amen.
“We are perplexed to see misfortune falling on decent, inoffensive, worthy people….Let me implore the reader to try to believe, if only for the moment, that God, who made these deserving people, may really be right when He thinks their modest prosperity and the happiness of their children are not enough to make them blessed: that all this must fall from them in the end, and if they have not learned to know Him they will be wretched. And therefore he troubles them…” -C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain
In a stake meeting last night, we sat in a circle with the leaders of a ward that had been through a lot in the past few years, including recently, the unexpected passing of a member of their bishopric. Our Stake President asked, “What have you learned?” The answers were poignant and it was clear that each person had wrestled with difficult questions and had learned something unique.
One thing our Stake President taught was that we need to show gratitude for trials and the lessons they teach.
Earlier in the week, I wrote in my gratitude journal that I was struggling to find anything to write. Here is a list of things I could have been thankful for this week:
I am thankful to be able to visit my friends with bruises, bandages, arthritic hands, blindness, and pain to learn from them how to endure. I am thankful for their gracious welcome and when they laugh at my jokes. While their suffering makes me sad, I have learned through my visits that connection is the best source of joy in my life.
I am thankful for the 4! barking dogs behind my house because they keep strangers from lurking in our yards. They remind me how to keep friendship separate from annoyances.
I am thankful for the increase of love I feel for someone when they are suffering.
I am thankful for my own physical pain, because it helps me to slow down. It also helps me to appreciate the joy of pain-free days.
I am thankful for the struggles my children are facing because it is evidence that they are growing. I am thankful for specific understanding about a child’s struggles that came while I read the Book of Mormon this week.
I am thankful for a gracious God.
For all the blessings life has brought, For all the sorrowing hours have taught, For all we mourn, for all we keep, The hands we clasp, the loved that sleep…
verse 3 of Thou Gracious God, Whose Mercy Lends, words by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., 1869
I have posted this piece before, but I love the words.
In recent years, I have measured success in projects completed and books read, people visited and words written. By most of these measures, I failed this summer, seriously failed. However, the days were full. I did what I thought I should do each day. I put aside some things to do the invisible and unnamed. Some days I wasted time, other days I did too much. I learned that my goal to read one book a week is not a good goal. The goal should be to keep reading.
So, the lesson of summer 2019 is to keep going, even when it seems like it doesn’t make a dent. Eventually, I will finish that 900-page book, and hope to see that these days of unremarkable tasks were the making of me.
(Photos are from our Labor Day hike to Twin Lakes, which took us past Solitude Lake and Silver Lake)
Summer feels less like a family member and more like a visitor once school begins. I sit in the car at the base of Little Cottonwood Canyon in front of the piano teacher’s house and watch the rays of sun find their path through the leaves of trees. Shifting gold patches of light lay scattered on the road before me and the poplar leaves shuffle in the wind, sounding almost like a stream. Hazy light brings definition to the fins of cliffs layered like a fan ahead of me. The quality of light brings thoughts of football season, new pencils, new shoes, and the crunch of leaves beneath my feet.
Frisbee game this week
I have declared lesson time is writing time, the car, a retreat from the house that seems to echo with reminders of all I need to do.
We do, and do, and do. The lists are getting checked off, but the signs of strain showed up for me this week: mouth ulcers, forgetfulness, irritability toward our naughty dog patient.
Paige began her move back to Provo, her last move to BYU. I watched her drive away through tears even though I knew she would be back the next day. It’s as if I owe each child some tears to mark milestones. They breeze out of the house, anxious for the next step, but I see the path, and the steps of childhood and early adulthood are running out. Their days grow bigger than toys and games at home, their circles are wider than family and a few friends on bicycles, and their journeys as different as their interests and gifts.
Sigh. Hooray! ((Sniff.))
What’s on the list for today?
Buy more cereal, the fuel of choice. Vet Calls A visit Clean. The. Floors.
Some words that have influenced my thinking in the last few weeks from Elder Jeffrey R. Holland’s talk, “Living After the Manner of Happiness”:
The Prophet Joseph Smith once said that “Happiness is the object and design of our existence; and will be the end thereof, if we pursue the path that leads to it.”
Remember the Prophet Joseph’s choice of language: He spoke of the path that leads to happiness as the key to realizing that goal.
We know one thing for sure; happiness is not easy to find running straight for it. It is usually too elusive, too ephemeral, too subtle. If you haven’t learned it already, you will learn in the years ahead that happiness comes to us when we least expect it, when we are busy doing something else. Happiness is almost always a by-product of some other endeavor.
But my reassurance to you today is that in God’s plan we can do very much to find the happiness we do desire. We can take certain steps, we can form certain habits, we can do certain things that God and history tell us lead to happiness…
In short your best chance for being happy is to do the things that happy people do. Live the way happy people live. Walk the path that happy people walk. and your chances to find joy in unexpected moments, to find peace in unexpected places, to find the help of angels when you didn’t even know they knew you existed, improves exponentially.
How can we know the way? Jesus gave the answer that rings from eternity to all eternity, “I am the way, the truth, and the life…”
Learn as quickly as you can that so much of your happiness is in your hands, not in events or circumstances or fortune or misfortune. [President Abraham Lincoln said,] “folks are usually about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” Happiness comes first by what comes into your head a long time before it comes into your hand.
“The Lord requireth the heart and a willing mind,” the revelations say. Too often we have thought it was all up to the heart; it is not. God expects a willing mind in the quest for happiness and peace as well. Put your head into this. All of this takes effort. It is a battle but a battle for happiness that is worth waging.
Kindness and pleasantness and faith-based optimism are characteristics of happy people. From the words of Mother Teresa “Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God’s kindness: kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile.”
Avoid animosity, contention, and anger in your life.
Work at it. Learn to work. Serve diligently. Don’t be idle and mischievous.
I encourage you and applaud you in “pursuing the path that leads to [happiness.] Christ is “the way, the truth, and the life” –that no one comes to true happiness except by Him. I bless you to know that someday, sometimes, somewhere you will have every righteous desire of your heart as you live the gospel of Jesus Christ, thus living “after the manner” that leads to those blessings.
