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.

Molt

I suppose no one is as handsome or as beautiful as he or she wishes,

or as brilliant in school or as witty in speech

or as wealthy as we would like,

but in a world of varied talents and fortunes that we can't always command,

I think that makes even more attractive the qualities we can command-

Such qualities as thoughtfulness,

patience,

a kind word,

and true delight in the accomplishment of another.

These cost us nothing,

and they can mean everything to the one who receives them.

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, "How Do I Love Thee?", BYU Speeches, Feb 15, 2000.

I received a kind word in the form of a school essay. Rebekah Pitt, who stood tall in her crib and could barely peek over its railing the day I met her, wrote about ME for an English project and mailed me a finished copy. Being loved and remembered for things that had nothing to do with physical beauty was one of the best feelings I ever had.

Gift Wrapped

Years ago, before there was Joy in her world, Blue-eyed Becca went to the Holy Land and brought me home two requests: a stone from Shepherds' Field and an olive pit from Gethsemane. (Five years later I learned she also bought me a Bethlehem blanket to wrap my babe in for a church blessing…I’m so glad she believed in my future when I was iffy. Those blue eyes have foresight!) I glued the souvenirs on linen in a shadow box and pinned strips of paper containing lyrics from “O Holy Night” under each tidbit. Beneath the stone: IN ALL OUR TRIALS BORN TO BE OUR FRIEND. Beneath the pit: HE KNOWS OUR NEED, TO OUR WEAKNESS IS NO STRANGER. Ever my favorite lines they bookend the singular perfect life; a life filled with purpose and prophecy from day one where shepherds were abiding in the field through the fulfillment of the atonement to this end was I born. A stone and a pit beloved in my home.

I love this time of year because WONDERFUL, COUNSELLOR, THE MIGHTY GOD, THE EVERLASTING FATHER, THE PRINCE OF PEACE bounces repeatedly in my brain's elevator music. WONDERFUL not as a platitude for GREAT but WONDERFUL because Isaiah was predicting He would cause people to be FULL OF WONDER. As in oh it is wonderful that he should care for me enough to die for me/oh it is wonderful, wonderful to me!

There are scores of names for Jesus Christ. Once my aunt wrote as many names as she could find on bias tape, wrapped the tape around an antique spool, and pinned it with a pearly-head pin to stay put. It’s one of my favorite gifts to date.

ONLY BEGOTTEN – JEHOVAH – EMMANUEL - LAMB OF GOD – SON OF THE HIGHEST – ALPHA AND OMEGA – LIGHT AND LIFE OF THE WORLD – ADVOCATE WITH THE FATHER – GOOD SHEPHERD – MESSIAH – KING OF ZION – ROCK OF HEAVEN – BREAD OF LIFE – THE TRUE VINE – THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE – THE BRIGHT AND MORNING STAR – REDEEMER – THE GREAT I AM – MEDIATOR – SAVIOR – CHIEF CORNERSTONE – A STAR OUT OF JACOB – THE LIVING WATER – LORD OF HOSTS – A SURE FOUNDATION – THE END AND THE BEGINNING

But one was missing. The best one. The one that doesn’t even show up on lds.org’s search engine despite being typed perfectly.

Sheena Parker used to teach Sunday School and it became a joke how she consistently involved a rock as either an object lesson or as table décor. One week I heard her describe the Savior by a name I had never, ever heard in all my life of attending three hours of church every Sunday and in decades of scripture study. (I obviously glossed over Isaiah in my personal reading because the best name sits quite openly on the page. I think a lot of stuff is hidden in Isaiah. My Grandpa Kerby used to tell a joke about the missionary who was shot at close range on the street but survived because the bullet went through his Bible…and nothing gets through Isaiah. [ba dum dum] I must be getting old because all the beautiful words I’m finding lately are in Isaiah. No wonder Nephi loved him! Shakespeare has nothing on Isaiah, either.)

Therefore thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste. -Isaiah 28:16

A TRIED STONE.

It’s easy for me to imagine the Savior as the chief cornerstone; strong, solid, perfectly cut, able to have everything stacked on top of him because he already bore infinite burdens.

It’s simple to envision the Savior as the sure foundation because we sing “How Firm a Foundation” and quote Helaman 5:12 a lot. We want to be wise men who built on the rock, not foolish men sinking in sand. The Savior is sure because He is forever level and never wobbly.

Of course he is the Rock of Ages and the Rock of Heaven; his right hand stretched forth the heavens and his ample, outstretched arms have never ceased reaching out to any of us whether they belonged to Jehovah, the son of Joseph the carpenter, or the resurrected Lord.

But a tried stone. I just never saw it coming. Never thought of the words. How do you try a stone? You try to break it. You try to find a weakness, a crack, a fissure. You hit it with external force so great it shatters. Oh, my sweet brother and Savior knelt in the garden as a perfectly chiseled masterpiece and never fractured. He took it all for all of us; enormity times infinity. It is such an apt and simple description of the greatest one.

We have trials and issues as varied as the names of the Savior. If your trial is extra messy, sticky, hurtful, or heavy do not be deceived you are in it alone. I believe The Tried Stone is asking you to TRY HIM for relief. For I am thy God and will still give thee aid. Only Christ can offer it; He alone will deliver it. Succor always arrives in a pretty package.

Gift wrap from the same aunt who made the spool. This pattern has it all…the new star, balmy palm trees, sheep who got a sight from the angels, harps and horns and glad tidings. Bells ringing to announce the King of Kings closeby in a lowly stable, camel transportation for wise men, and tall things that look like Eiffel Towers but really are sideways angel trumpets. I don’t save everything but I am a total paper hoarder.

"Gethsemane" is Hebrew for "olive press". I’ll always think of it as a stone press, too. Or maybe the olive was needfully pressed but the pit remained. The resilient, withstanding, industrial strength pit forever able to take us out of our deep pits. “There is no pit so deep that He is not deeper still.” –Corrie ten Boom 

A stone and a pit. See what I mean about WONDERFUL?

The Great Pumpkin

We have an odd Thanksgiving toy/decoration/thing I didn’t know what to do with for years. It’s a soft-sided pumpkin house that unzips to reveal a scarecrow family of four plus pet turkey. RE hasn't played with dolls in ages and the poor pumpkin has been neglected year after year as I've put up fall decor. I saw it this year and loved it! It is obviously housing Greg, me, RE, Archer, and Lucy. We finally became the pumpkin toy! This is the best decoration ever! All those years of wanting a baby but secretly hoping it wouldn’t be a boy and now my boy is here and boy am I glad he was a boy. Boys are not turkeys. They are spunky and fast and delicious; they look at their mamas in a way that beats all else.

We bought a plot of land on the side of a mountain when I was pregnant. I told Greg I didn’t want to work on house plans during my last trimester or the newborn phase because I had waited years for them and wanted to savor them in the present. We slowly eased into designing a home. Having never done so we shot for the moon and included every whim and fancy ever desired. The Trapper Keeper I’d been stuffing with dream house ideas for a decade (take that, Pinterest, and yes, they still make Trapper Keepers) didn’t diminish the effect. Before we paid for structural and civil engineering on the dream plans we felt we should get a rough bid from some builders to make sure we were on the right track. Boy were we on the wrong track, unless that track was for billionaires.

After killing some whims, wounding some fancies, and settling for a half-finished basement we came to our senses and paid the architect for affordable final plans. With a huge roll of officially stamped blueprints we began the quest for bids.

I have deep roots in my current house and adverse reactions to change so it didn’t bother me in the slightest to be ignored by busy builders all summer. We did meet with one guy whose bid made me wonder if it might be more plausible to just live in a pumpkin with a pet turkey.

The thing is, in the meantime I’ve been soaking up my life at 416 North because I’m not sure when it’s going to end. I assume every season will be the last. The last time I watch cartoon Ichabod and make BBQ chicken pizza (WITH the cilantro, McBrides) while trick-or-treaters ding the doorbell. The last time I rake my lilac leaves on Thanksgiving morning...from the bucket-sized lilac bush we planted on our 5th anniversary that now covers RE’s 2nd story bedroom window. The last time I’ll squeeze an Ault's alpine fir in our tiny parlor with a labyrinth of sofas around it.

I’ve even started to get sappy about my outdoor trees.

Our Colorado blue spruce was a housewarming gift from my parents in 1999. It was 8’ tall and the eighth foot was a single spike. It is currently 20 feet tall; Greg still races out to smell it when rain falls from our dry Utah sky. I rub the new growth between my fingers each spring; it is soft like a Pink Pet eraser and and bluer than a Smurf. It has been slow growing, solid, sturdy, and noble. Just like Greg.

We planted a pear tree for Greg’s birthday the following year (it was such a relief to not buy him fishing junk). It dressed my kitchen window and masked State Street effortlessly. We got a bird book to identify the many species seen on the branches. (I love Western Tanagers!) Yesterday, for the first time in 16 years, I saw two quail in my pear tree. Quail, like partridges, have plumes. I think it’s the closest I’ll ever get to a partridge in a pear tree! Robins swallow pear berries whole and I thank them for picking the tree clean by Christmas. Yes, pear tree smells like pooberry in the spring but I forgive her because she also pops popcorn. Once we took a fall trip and I specifically prayed to not miss the changing of her color guards.

Pink thundercloud plum was planted in honor of our first child and daughter’s birth in 2001. Plum’s razzle-dazzle, pinkalicious mass blocks the westerly sunset from melting the façade of our home. The day plum blooms she wins Mother Nature’s “Best of Show”. Plum always has a bird nest in her lower fork, low enough I can peek inside. The designer in me appreciates the autonomous color schemes God created; Robin’s egg blue, desaturated pink plum petals, and weathered brown twigs were surely the original shabby chic.

If this is how I feel about my trees imagine how I feel about my neighbors. The salt of the earth is unquestionably sprinkled on all the latitudes and longitudes but my life here has been perfectly seasoned. When I think about leaving the people who have become familiar to me I honestly lose it. I feel like I’m exchanging three square meals a day of soul food for a good view I'll look at all alone. Wah, wah, wah.

But to fear the next step is to lack faith. We know our lot is where we are supposed to go. It was years in waiting and years in the making; the way it unfolded made a beautiful shape clearly pointing to Draper.

I’ve loved everywhere I’ve ever lived, including Crown Apartments at BYU with its one functioning toilet, slow-draining sink, and bleached tiger shag carpet. Because of that rentable gem I found the guy I wanted to marry a hop, skip, and jump across the street.

I loved my tiny newlywed apartment with its microscopic, ventless bathroom. It was where Greg and I studied our majors on free couches while eating McFlurries from Freedom Blvd. It is also where we learned to not flock a Christmas tree indoors.

I have LURVED (lurve is greater than love) 416 North, although I almost threw up when we wrote our non-refundable $3K deposit check for this starter house. This house has been better than good to me. Its backyard pond and running stream have made a boxcar children dreamscape for my kids. Its ceilings have contained love, a few arguments, airborne grease droplets from frequent homemade chip-making, and lots of music pumped up with bass. It has welcomed two babies and two dogs, three of which I never thought I’d have and all of which have left smears on the front window. (In fact, I only washed off Max’s nose smears a year ago. After he died I couldn’t bear to wipe away the last proof of his existence. Oh, Max. He was my watchman on the tower. He would have eaten the mailman for me. Lucy, on the other hand, would lick a robber. She’s worthless in the protection department.)

I choose to believe our next home will be lurve-worthy; I just don’t know in what ways yet. I’ve made up my mind to love wherever I’m at and adopt Old Nauvoo’s motto: WHEN WE’RE HERE, WE’RE HERE. Our nest is best, no matter what tree it’s in. Home is the people inside the pumpkin, not the great pumpkin itself.

Photo of the cover of my 1st edition I Capture the Castle Frenchie gave me. It's also one of the letters "D" in my blog's logo.

Lovey Dovey

Thanksgiving night I asked RE what she would do if she only had three weeks left to live. She told me she would go skydiving and then make sure she was sealed in the temple. (I'd do it in reverse order! Yikes.) Cristall and I had a long conversation ruing the dichotomy between living providently and living like you're dying. They say we hold our future in our hands. What if those steady hands occasionally want to throw the future, and all caution, to the wind? Planning ahead and being smart doesn't always feel like LIFE TO ITS FULLEST. Clipping coupons and exercising isn't as fun as flying first-class to eat overseas pastries.

On the one hand I should live every day as if it were my last, diminishing my bucket list one check at a time. If today were my last day I wouldn't cook dinner for my family, go to Walmart, or iron Greg's shirts. I wouldn't gas up my car in the freezing wind or clean the cursed high chair. (All I want for Christmas is to drop kick that piece of cheap plastic from my roof and watch it shatter into a thousand pieces. However, it is the only item in my house with a harness and sometimes I need to know Archer can't move.) If today were my last day I would breakfast a Bruges' liege waffle with extra dark chocolate and strawberries, lunch Thai Siam's pad thai, and dinner a heinously expensive wagyu beef steak with peppercorn cream sauce. Then I would unbutton my pants, kiss and hug everyone I loved, and fade out mid-massage on Ruth's massage table.

On the other hand, today probably isn't my last day and living like I'm dying will either ignore, destroy, or bankrupt my household. It's hard to find the fine line between living sensibly with self-control and riding life's horse with guns blazing. My fine line is to scrimp via self-denial and thrift stores so I can splurge with a massage every other Wednesday. Ruth gives me one Dove dark chocolate after every massage. The chocolate has a fortune inside the foil. I save all the fortunes because that's what tiny desk drawers are for.

Today being Wednesday I already splurged. This was my fortune:

I wholeheartedly agree; good thing I had a chocolate chip peanut butter open face and massage for breakfast.

At a church social I played a get-to-know-you game with my female peers and one of the questions was IF YOU HAD ONE FREE HOUR WHAT WOULD YOU DO? Every single woman said TAKE A NAP except for Keri Heath, who said READ A BOOK IN A HAMMOCK NEXT TO A RIVER. (I knew I loved Keri Heath.) It made me sad that every woman I know, including Keri, seems to be exhausted. Why are we so tired?

Early last December I wasn't feeling very Christmassy with my life in total chaos, my hair falling out, my pooch still poochy, and my psyche not meshing with the new norm of life with a baby. I called my friend J with a random question; ninety minutes later we hung up. I remember her telling me about buying Christmas village houses at the dollar store and spraying them black to use on the mantel for Halloween, but other than that I don't remember what we talked about.  I just know the call eased my misgivings and transformed me from Scrooge to Tiny Tim. It felt like Christmas after I hung up.

However, in late October I texted Michelle a picture of my canner on the hot stove at midnight and she texted me right back. We text-lamented how lame it is to can alone since we used to can together in our ruffled aprons...one of us blanched while the other sauced, one of us wiped floor splatter while the other wiped wall splatter. I love a good call but in general I have less time to talk and more time to text.

I prove I am alive by posting a digital heartbeat to social media of some form. Technology has made it easy to keep a pulse on my inner circles. Sometimes all the scrolling and liking is akin to fool's gold; it's shiny but not valuable. Social media is connection but I don't want to get caught in the trap of mistaking edited details or #nofilter glimpses for friendship. Hugging someone tight enough you can smell their shampoo is friendship. Walking in someone else's house without knocking is friendship. Ruth, my massage therapist whom I neither text nor friend on social media, is one of my best friends. It's crazy how close you can get to someone when your only method of communication is talking face to face. It's crazier how close you can get without it. What a world we live in; I sure hope I'm living it well.