Wake-up Call

So... I sobbed like a baby while conducting “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” last Sunday.

1. It was a long time coming.

2. They were happy tears.

3. I guess I won't complain about sweaty armpits anymore. Sobbing > Sweat.

My brain is a stove with lots of back burners. And front burners. It’s possible it could even be a six burner with the built-in griddle. I never know exactly but pots-a-plenty have been simmering for weeks.

Burner One is peanut butter. Archer has recently learned to open the pantry and bring me the jar of peanut butter. He won’t back down until I give him a spoonful. On the surface this doesn’t seem like anything to cry about.

My dad’s mother was killed in a car accident when he was two. It is an understatement to say he has missed a mother’s love the length of his life. Shortly after RE turned two my dad was in town. He was on the couch observing our interactions. He mentioned all I did for her and all the ways she reciprocated. With lamentation in his voice he then said he couldn’t believe he didn’t have one memory of his mother. It made me super sad for my dad. Less than ten photos of his mother exist; his stepmother burned the rest. This is one photo that survived and she's holding my curly-haired dad with a look of pure joy on her face:

This is another: 

I’ve been told there is some family resemblance. There are also a few letters she wrote. Not a lot of evidence but the proof is undeniable: she loved my dad (and her other three children, of course).

The story goes after she died my toddler dad would only eat peanut butter. It appears extreme love of peanut butter is genetic; it’s the one food I must eat every day. The seven days Greg and I spent in the Dominican Republic were the only sans-peanut butter days of my adulthood. It was no resort. It was rehab lockdown. I was twitching. Maybe this is how soda drinkers feel about their fizzy bubbles. Maybe I should have more compassion towards soda addicts.

Burner Two is the generally scary state of the world. A lot of people have sick heads and dead hearts. God’s children are doing mean things to each other. The phrase past feeling comes to mind. After the attacks in Paris I had a fresh jolt of HOW CAN I RAISE MY KIDS IN THIS WORLD? I’m certain parents in every decade since time began have asked this question. Who wanted to have kids during the plague? Who wanted to have kids in the Great Depression? Who wanted to have kids during WWII? (I’m glad my grandparents did!)

Burner Three is a recent text from Heater, my old BYU roommate. Yes, her real name is Heather but I call her Heater. Heater finally sent me a picture of her new baby and a textversation ensued. When you love a person dearly and they aren’t in your day-to-day circle of life you can unload all of your pent up emotions on them. I told her about my friends who are battling ovarian cancer, leukemia, a bad car accident, and financial woes. These women are already muscled from carrying their burdens. It’s hard for me to see them in awkward poses attempting to carry more weight. I question their pain even though I know the Lord is aware of every pound and ounce. Heater texted back:

I have decided that for me, not understanding why I have seven healthy children when you were blessed with two or why my baby was born perfect when my brother’s died just a year ago is a lack of faith. I just read Elder Wirthlin’s talk again, “Come What May and Love It.” He talks about the law of compensation. I believe so strongly in that. It may not be on earth that we will see that fulfilled, but nobody is being short changed.

I learned about the principle of compensation from a letter my FNDN (Forever Next Door Neighbor) JP sent me after our failed IVF. I counted on its authenticity and crossed my fingers the hundredfold portion would come in this lifetime. It did. The hundredfold was Archer and he’s as busy as 100 babies, so I hereby vouch I have been compensated a thousandfold!

Burner Four is a box of Life cereal. When I was a kid you got a toy in your cereal. The best toy was a sticky octopus made for throwing at the window or wall. The toy could be on the top or between the sealed bag and the cardboard box but 99% of the time the toy was at the very bottom. I think it is an appropriate metaphor that in the box of Life you have to dig down, down, down through the darkness to find the prize, the prize being a personal relationship with the Savior. In my own box of Life I have discovered Corrie ten Boom’s wisdom to be true: “You may never know that Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have.”

Burner Five is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. I purposely chose his poem for the last hymn of Christmas because it is MY favorite, and if you can’t pick your own favorite song now and again what is the point of being the chorister? A little self-interest never hurt anybody.

I had reread the circumstances surrounding the poem December 7 after The Lower Lights’ concert. He wrote those fabled stanzas on Christmas Day two years after his wife Fannie died from severe burns (her dress caught fire, he tried to save her and burned his own face and hands, hence the beard) and while his eldest son perched on the survival fence full of Civil War wounds. It was an ugly time in the world, much like our day, yet he embraced the one great hope that never disappears: God is not dead, therefore peace is possible. When the pit is deep and dark as night it paves the way for lofty steeps and blinding brights.

Burner Six is the 39 times I've watched "A Savior is Born" this season.

The last important detail is this: when I discussed the possibility of playing chimes on the organ for verses 4 and 5 one of my organists said he’d “never chimed” and the other said “chimes don’t work for whole verses because they make a song sound…drunk.” I didn’t want drunk bells. I figured we had unanimously killed the bells.

Fast forward to the last few minutes of Sacrament Meeting. As verses 1, 2, and 3 were sung with gusto I suspected I was not the only one who loved Longfellow’s hymn. Verse 4 started and Steve, that sneaky Christmas angel, let the chimes loose. And all my pots boiled over. And then I boiled over.

Frankly, I was overcome with hope. I love, love, love verse 4 and those bells were a wake-up call to have more faith in the Savior. I realized the line the wrong will fail, the right prevail is also a principle of compensation.

God is not asleep and He was wide awake when He gave us His son. I believe in them. I can’t see the whole, uncropped life pictures of my friends but I know burdens come with a 2-for-1 offer: for every burden you get a Savior. Life will give us lack, loss, and lows but they are leased with mortal limits. For now, All that is unfair about life can be made right through the Atonement of Jesus Christ.* In a coming day good will literally triumph over evil and Christ, with his justice, mercy, and grace, will reign. Through His merits there will be endless fixing, eternal healing, and empty halves made whole.

What's not to cry about? 

The principle of compensation (as stated by Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin): "The Lord compensates the faithful for every loss. That which is taken away from those who love the Lord will be added unto them in His own way. While it may not come at the time we desire, the faithful will know that every tear today will eventually be returned a hundredfold with tears of rejoicing and gratitude."

*Linda K. Burton, “Is Faith in the Atonement of Jesus Christ Written in Our Hearts?” October 2012 General Conference

I was also newly pregnant but not revealing I was pregnant this day. Althought I'm not sure pregnancy is an excuse for crying moreso than my living and breathing.