Special Delivery

Dedicated to All Who Were Ever in the Pacific Drive First Ward

I was in an Apple store in San Francisco when spontaneous applause broke out. A woman walked out the doors, it quieted. I asked the nearest employee what just happened. He said that at Apple you get clapped in on your first day and clapped out on your last. He said they like to welcome newcomers and celebrate those moving on to new opportunities. I was so moved I bought a charger.

Today I was clapped out of my ward, my church congregation, after being clapped in almost 18 years ago. It was hard, like being hit by a tsunami. I've seen it coming for months but had no idea what it would really feel like. I have reflected on what it is that makes this ward so special. This is what I came up with:

This ward isn't cliquey and it won't judge your kids.

It doesn't care how much money you have or what you drive.

It doesn't care if or where you graduated from.

It doesn't care where you work or what you look like.

It doesn't care if you rent or own.

It doesn't care about your square feet or your crow's feet.

It doesn't care how many times you cut bangs (even though you shouldn't have).

This ward could use your best, but will happily accept whatever you are willing to give.

This ward needs your gifts. It will repay you with new ones.

It will be patient with you while you grow, while you get a clue.

If you want to grow faster, accept your callings.

This ward has a Bishop who loves you.

This ward is full of women who need naps. Like the widows of Zarapheth, they sacrifice their last bits of oil and meal by donating dinner time, family time, and sometimes all their free time to the cause.

This ward is full of people who don't feel good. People who show up with migraines, broken knees, broken hearts, cramps, cancer, and confusion. People who are infertile, abused, addicted, depressed, betrayed, unemployed, lonely, and overlooked. People who are worried about their loved ones. People who feel ugly. People who feel forgotten.

This ward won't let you be forgotten.

This ward will hold your baby. If you don't have a baby, it will hold you. It will fast for you and write your name on the temple prayer roll for a decade until you have a baby.

This ward will cry with you. It will stand as close to you as you will let it.

This ward will answer your prayers and carry your burdens.

This ward will be the backdrop to great miracles in your life.

There is power in attending church in a ward. If the family is the fundamental unit of society it is no wonder the Lord organized His church into ward families. One of my favorite stories about family (Greg even read it at RE's baby blessing luncheon) is this:

A few years ago, twin girls Brielle and Kyrie were born prematurely to the Jackson family. They were placed in separate incubators to reduce the risk of infection. Kyrie, the larger sister at two pounds three ounces, quickly began gaining weight and calmly slept. But Brielle, who weighed only two pounds at birth, could not keep up with her. Suddenly one day Brielle's condition became critical. The nurse tried everything she could think of to stabilize Brielle. Still Brielle squirmed and fussed as her oxygen intake plummeted and her heart rate soared. Then the nurse remembered a procedure she had heard about. She said to the worried parents, "Let me just try putting Brielle in with her sister to see if that helps." The parents consented, and the nursed slipped the squirming baby into the incubator with the bigger sister. No sooner had the door of the incubator closed than Brielle snuggled up to Kyrie and calmed right down. Within minutes Brielle's blood-oxygen readings were the best they had been since she was born. As she dozed, Kyrie wrapped her tiny arm around her smaller sibling (see Nancy Sheehan, "A Sister's Helping Hand," Reader's Digest, May 1996, 155-56).

This is what my ward family does for me. When I'm feeling out of the box I just go to church, get an arm around me, and come back to life. When I'm stable and on top of the world I let people snuggle up to me until they feel stronger. In this ward, everyone is strong sometime at something. Together we have it all.

Buried Treasure

I have Post-it notes lining my bookcases, desk surface, and fridge. Scribbles on the back of receipts, in the margins of church programs, and on junk mail envelopes. Digital reminders and lists on my iPhone. Three book journals (mine, Everett's, Archer's) I simultaneously enlarge each night. The wall calendar and the purse-sized ATA Glance. Two Trapper Keepers in my desk drawer. (Yes, they still make them, but magnetic closure replaced noisy irritant Velcro.) Dated index cards on the fridge for each child's funny sayings and milestones. Dog-eared magazine pages. Screenshots of written passages that moved me. An assortment of mini journals and bound pads, because who doesn't want to get organized with an InkJoy or a Le Pen or a Pilot Precise V5 on page one of a virgin notebook?

Every day I think through the same cycle of

1. I need to remember this, so

2. Where should I put it?

Any slip of paper is in danger these days. We're moving; the contents of my entire house are either getting taped within cardboard or dumped in the trash. I shudder saying it, but I think the only thing I can trust is The Cloud.

I'm on emotional overload right now; there is an imminent changing of the guards coming to my little house and it has my brain spinning, mostly when I should be sleeping. Scraps of beauty, words, and feelings are flying around my hurricane's eye and I'm worried sick I'll lose one. Where do I put these things?

My blog has become my ultimate record; the proven winner in a race between office supplies, lined pages (college rule, never normal), fluorescent sticky backs, and memory. It's the only place I can quickly find what I once vowed to never forget. It is my safest safe place. It is the hallowed ground I bury my paper clippings, sentiments, skeletons, and petals in so they'll fossilize. How can I know what will go extinct? There will be layers of life after this, but for now I am pressing and preserving everything I have left into the stratum of 680 West.

Drawing detailing the best sample I've ever eaten at a grocery store, and that is saying a lot since 1) Meiers regularly samples their red velvet cookies and lemon bars, and 2) I once went to Costco the day before the Super Bowl and ate 38 different appetizers. Thank you, lady at Smith's, for pushing the $10 jar of garlic pickles. Loving the layers and strata on this toothpick! And the pita wasn't a pita chip...you couldn't poke a toothpick through Stacy's Pita Chips if you tried. It was a lightly toasted fresh pita. Details matter.

One other thing I don't want to forget but don't know where to put it: The "Y" on Y Mountain in Provo is 380 feet tall, so since 1 inch = 72 points the Y is a 328,320-point letter. (BYU Magazine)

Stand in Holy Places

As New House inches towards completion, I have begun snapping photos of the things I'll miss in dear old American Fork. The temple, the amphitheater, the rose stencil on the electrical box across from the cemetery, the stained glass in the library's atrium, the pioneer cabin. The Presbyterian "Footloose Church" built in 1877 and its bells that ring on the hour (I went in and they let me manually ring the bell...pretty sure that puts me one degree from Kevin Bacon). The art deco clock at Sweet Pea Floral's old Main Street location, the AFFC's pool and red slide; RE was the first person to slide down it after "bubble removal" in 2011. The train tracks RE and I walked on so many times to catch the bus and have adventures (and the same tracks I made her walk on to buy me gas station Cheetos when I was pregnant).

The crabapple on 500 North that has taken shape over half a century; the prettiest tree in the city. The robot mailbox on Ticket Hill (Junior High hill). The black and white Boley Building that reminds me of the Toot Sweets scene in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. I went to photograph the fake deer at the post office but apparently they just cracked and got thrown away (after all those years! Max used to sniff them like crazy). I did, however, film the spider that drops from the ceiling every time you push the door open in October. That thing is a legend I copied in my own home. FYI, Draper Post Office has a thousand furious reviews and no decorated workspaces with pictures of grandchildren, Easter grass, or kitschy mementos. Sadness.

I captured The Glass Slipper's manicured English garden, the marquee at The Sticky (our two-show movie theater named for the feel of the floor), and the giant rooster guarding American Fork Pawn. Perfectly parallel rows of Mitchell's pink peach blossoms. The trickling brook behind our fence where RE and Archer have been Boxcar children. American Fork Hospital, where all three of my babies gave their first fisted wails and home to some of the greatest cuisine around (no joke). The compass pressed into Launa's concrete that Archer knows so well.

And this porch:

It was on this porch at dusk I told Blue-eyed Becca I was expecting Everett. She screamed and heaven's ceiling cracked. Then she began weeping and we embraced each other. We hugged at length while she repeated my name over and over. In that moment, I thought This is how Mary and Elizabeth must have hugged after their babies leaped. I still refer to it as my "Bible hug." Becca had screamed loud enough that little fingers and eyes began to pull and peek through the slats of the blinds. Matt came out to make sure things were okay. Then Matt got a hug and a piece of the crying action. I stood on these steps with two of my pillars and gushed about healing and miracles. It was a circle of safety, of heavenly love, and of mega cheerleading.

I know that once upon a time Becca wanted to re-pour these steps. Maybe she thought they needed a sprucing but I love them just as they are. I look at them as a historic landmark, for it was here I realized I was standing on my promises* with two people who never gave up on them being fulfilled.

Happy Birthday (and Mother's Day) to the one and the only Blue-eyed Becca! The woman who utters only kindness, the chorister with fitness instructor arms, and the person who is petite, polite, and perfectly postured. I love her granola, her Hyde Park honey cookies, her vibrato, her soul, and yes, her steps.

"Standing on the Promises"

Russell K. Carter, published 1886

Standing on the promises of Christ my King,

Through eternal ages let His praises ring,

Glory in the highest, I will shout and sing,

Standing on the promises of God.

Refrain:

Standing, standing,

Standing on the promises of Christ my Savior;

Standing, standing,

I’m standing on the promises of God.

Standing on the promises that cannot fail,

When the howling storms of doubt and fear assail,

By the living Word of God I shall prevail,

Standing on the promises of God.

Standing on the promises I now can see

Perfect, present cleansing in the blood for me;

Standing in the liberty where Christ makes free,

Standing on the promises of God.

Standing on the promises of Christ the Lord,

Bound to Him eternally by love’s strong cord,

Overcoming daily with the Spirit’s sword,

Standing on the promises of God.

Standing on the promises I cannot fall,

List’ning every moment to the Spirit’s call,

Resting in my Savior as my all in all,

Standing on the promises of God.

I just discovered this song thanks to an old replay of Music and the Spoken Word. Last night's double date in the freezer aisle at forty minutes to midnight confirmed Matt and Becca already knew it. Of course the conductor and the song bird knew this song. Well, it's our song now!