The Rains Came Down

Have you been worried?

Don't worry.  We are still here.  (We have cupboards full of beans, remember?)  We are still happy.  (We have each other, remember?)  We are still believing.  (We have seen the hand of God too many times to forget, remember?)

Ethan came home from school the first day after David lost his job and asked, "Did Dad get a job?"

I smiled at him.  And told him it might be a while.

I am trying to tell myself the same thing.  And trying, hardest of all, to be patient. 

Last week we had a monster thunderstorm.  Hail, even.  Whole rivers coming off my roof.  And in the middle of it, I was a witness to this:

Shelter from the storm.

I know just how Caleb feels.  Unaccountably grateful.  For shelter from the worst of it, for the thought and the gesture most of all.  From several of you.  (You know who you are.)  I got a note just yesterday afternoon (thank heavens my cousins married so well!), when I was discouraged and depressed.  It was a balm, a solace, a pink-trimmed, plastic umbrella as the rains came down. 

The View From Space

Last weekend when we went camping, when David and I were the only ones awake in the tent and the night was filled with soft snuffles and deep breathing and a whole lot of quiet, I tried to say how I was feeling.

It was nearly impossible.  (Bear with me.)

I tried.  And said sentences about just how much space was really up there, how up here on this high mountain, spinning around an axis, you could almost catch the breeze of the universe as it spun past.  It was like sticking your head out a car window, but with stars and milky ways and supernovas streaming past.  All that was above us was the deepness and vastness of space!  I felt so exposed and vulnerable. 

And yet at the very same time, I could hear my children breathing beside me, dreaming birthday dreams, melted smores smeared on their cheeks and cool mountain air on their eyelids.  I felt charmed and blessed, I felt endowed with the greatest gifts that vast universe had to offer.  I felt completely known and seen and watched by heaven, like maybe this night with my little family was just what heaven had in mind when they did all the work to create this mountain.  

It was a jumble.  It was a feeling...of being both big and small at once.  I could picture myself from space, our very blessed tent just a tiny dot on a globe turning its way from dark to light, slowly, slowly.  I waved.

David uh-huhhed beside me and put his face in my neck, his way of saying he had no idea what I meant, but he likes my company anyway.

I felt like I was on the very precipice and in the hand of heaven at the very same moment.  I lay there in the dark, feeling the slow rotation of the earth underneath me, unaware of the changes that were just a few rotations away.

Last Saturday, Olivia didn't wear make-up.  This Saturday she wore both mascara and lip gloss and the tiniest bit of light blue eyeshadow.

Last Saturday, Olivia had the hairy, happy legs of a child.  This Saturday she had the smooth, freshly shaved legs of a young woman.

Last weekend, Olivia had never been to a young women's meeting at church.  This weekend, her first beehive activity made it onto her "list of highs" around the dinner table.

Last Friday, David was late getting back from work and so we got a late start and set up our tent in semi-darkness.  This Friday, David and I went to a movie in the middle of day because he had no where else to be.

Last Friday night, we packed the car with the campstove and sleeping bags, and spent the night howling around a campfire.  This Friday night, we cleaned out David's office and loaded the car with ten years of memories and work accumulation, and spent the night sobbing into our Oregano's meatballs and making lists of states we'd always dreamed of living in.  (It was some consolation.) 

Last week, David and I had separate work spaces.  This week, we are sharing.

Last week, David had a job.  This week, he doesn't.

I have had the same feelings that I had that night in the tent.  So acutely aware of the vastness of space...aware of the gaping maw, the loss of the ground under my feet.  And an even deeper awareness of the gracious hand of heaven that is watching over us and providing a new way in the darkness.

One of my very favorite scriptures is in the book of Luke:

If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? 

Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?

If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give good gifts, through the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?

 

I have said that to myself a hundred times since last weekend.  Our Father in Heaven does not give evil gifts.  I am a witness to the absolute goodness of his gifts. 

Always.

Mercy Me

I spent last weekend in Utah while my family tried to get by without me.  (They thrived of course.)

While I was there I met these two lovely lambs and we took a blurry self-portrait.  (I offered to hold the camera since I was the newbie, but I was so excited I couldn't hold it still long enough to get a decent picture.  I'm publishing it anyway...proof I am friends with blogging celebrities.)

On Monday morning I remembered how to do this.  (And had Rachel take this picture as proof for David that I look hot in any weather.)

It was a fast trip at the end of a long week, and by the time I arrived home on Monday afternoon I was exhausted and had only enough energy and willpower to start one load of laundry and make a lasagna for dinner.  Everyone stepped over my suitcase and the other ten piles of laundry I left on the floor, sat at the table for dinner, and told me how good it was to have me home.

Tuesday meant digging out.  And class.  And by two in the afternoon I was more overwhelmed than when I woke up.  Which is really saying something.

I knelt down in my sewing room.

Help me, I said.

The doorbell rang.

That was fast, I thought.

I was secretly hoping it was my Aunt Jane in her rubber gloves, who, I hear, is better than any emergency response team when laundry and filthy bathrooms are on the line.

It was the UPS man.  He wasn't wearing rubber gloves.  He didn't want to stay and help me muck out the sink.  He left his package and ran. 

I opened the box.

Inside was a tiny miracle made out of colored paper.  And just the help I needed on a difficult day.

My sister, Emily, did what I could not and made me a paper chain counting the days til summer. 

I stared at the chain, at the box, at the postage, at the thought, at the grand gesture.  And then stretched it out across my family room.

I thought, That is a lot of scissors and glue, That is a lot of time and energy, That is a lot of love and encouragement.

And then I thought, I can do this.  And I went and put another load of laundry into the washer and found the courage to clean out my suitcase.  Which is is proof that simple is not insignificant.  It is also proof

that (once again) my sisters are among the best blessings of my life,

that even when I'm drowning all I really need is a little encouragement (I'm not saying no, Jane)

that when all else fails (especially me) kindness doesn't.

Mercy me.

A Glimpse of Eternity in My Fridge

It is the last week of January.

I can tell because the oranges on my trees are ripe and ready for juicing.

It is the last week of January.

I can tell because David took calls all night long, all weekend long from the hospital.  They are busy and so is he.

It is the last week of January.

I can tell because my body has its own special kind of pain it serves when I am stressed and last night it was in rare form.  After the holidays and a brief reprieve, the stress is mounting.  The last week of January is always the week when reality hits (I committed to what? when?) and panic sets in.

It is the last week of January.

On Thursday, Rachel came for lunch.  (Well, technically, Rachel brought lunch but I hosted and provided plates and water bottles.  Scratch that.  I think it was just water bottles.  But that's something, right?)

At the end of the conversation the FedEx man arrived with a package full of transporter swabs.  Rachel said, "Oh, it must be that time of year."

Indeed.  It is the last week of January and science fair is upon us again.

Caleb and I spent a good part of our Saturday preparing petri dishes for their little colonies.  Water baths and bleached countertops and rows upon rows of future prokaryotic houses.  I had to clean out the fridge, which I found amusing.  Cleaned out the fridge to make room for bacteria.  Reminded me of my college days and the fridge full of cow hearts and the freezer full of dead insects I used to keep before they saw the knife or the pin.  Hard to believe I'm still friends with those roommates, huh?

On Saturday night David and I went to dinner and after I talked his ear off about my writing class he asked me again, "Now why weren't you an English major?"

I shrugged, as baffled as he.

But this morning as I drove Caleb around town and acted as instructor and assistant as he collected aseptic samples of the bacterial flora at different offices, I thought there might have been a reason after all.

Perhaps only so that someday I could mother this particular boy in this particular way on this particular last week of January.

It is the last week of January.

I can tell because this morning I remembered that nothing happens by accident.

Succor for the Darkness

Last night David gave the lesson at Family Home Evening.

It was just what I needed.

He said it was for the kids, but I think we all know better than that.

After a full day of adrenaline and cortisol on Sunday, I was crashing yesterday.  Emotionally.  Physically.  Spiritually.  We had a wonderful fireside on Sunday night, but after so much anticipation and energy and prayer, I was spent, and just as unsure about what it all meant and what happens next.  David called me a little after noon to check on me.  He knew the crash was coming.  I have no secrets from him.  (I wish he'd share a few of them with me because I am only mostly baffled by myself.)

After flying home, I made a meager attempt at starting the laundry and made a simple (and delicious) Wimmer Truc dinner, but couldn't manage much more than that.  (At the bottom, when there is little faith in myself or my plan, there is still faith in baguettes and sirloin steak and the succor of breaking bread around my table.)

And so last night after we sang and prayed, David had us listing our blessings.  I don't mind saying, he topped my list.  I cried of course, when he had us share them out loud.

Also on the list,

my parents who traveled with me and Rachel to Salt Lake on Sunday afternoon, paid for our room and board (I don't know when a cheeseburger has ever tasted so good), drove us to the stake center where we were speaking, and then sat on a bench and smiled their prayers and good wishes at us the whole time

my two lovely aunts and one gorgeous cousin who came only to give bolstering hugs (I don't know when one has felt so good)

and my sisters, the bravest women I know.  It was because of both of them that I was there in the first place.

Add to that list the kindness of friends: one showed up on Sunday night, another wrote a heartfelt letter from Paris that I have reread a dozen times already, one left a message on my answering machine, one promised to pray for me (and she always keeps her promises), and still others wrote and left their good wishes in comments.  They all blessed me more than you can know.

And so this morning, I awoke with a headache, but a much lighter heart.  Succored, as it were, across another dark pass in my journey through the wilderness.  I awoke brimming with a quiet determination to do what I can, where I can.  I intend to scrub my house down, and finish the laundry, and put the flannel sheets on the beds in anticipation of the coming holidays.  And to be still about everything else.  

I awoke with Henry James in my head,

"We work in the dark.  We do what we can.  We give what we have."

I made hot chocolate and toast, and packed the leftover Wimmer Truc into sacks for lunch, and then we sat and read the scriptures.  We were at the temple with King Benjamin and he reminded us that we are all beggars before God. 

And I knew exactly what he meant.

Yes we work in the dark, we do what we can, we give what we have, but we don't do it alone.

The Jet Stream and the Finger of God

At long last the jet stream has finally gone our way.

(According to this map we're as cold as Wisconsin this morning and my joy can hardly be measured.)

After months of high pressure systems and sweltering temperatures, it is not too much to say that I think the dip in the jet stream looks like the finger of God and the reprieve feels a lot like grace.

I opened all the doors and windows in my house this morning to give it a proper welcome.

My girls pulled out their scarves for the winter walk to the bus stop and Ethan and I climbed back into his bed for a Scooby Doo retrospective.

I took Ethan to the doctor yesterday who told me that his "influenza" is actually just strep throat and started him on a course of antibiotics.  This is probably the first time in my life I've seen strep throat as delightfully good news.

Strep throat as grace. 

Strep throat as tender mercy.

I know how to count my blessings, and this morning jet streams and bacterial infections count.

Like a Fire is Burning

Last week we fall-breaked.  Which meant games and "scary" movies every evening (tis the season).  And late night runs to the store for supplies to make cheesecake and pumpkin pie just because they sounded good.  Caleb and I worked on merit badges while the girls had sleepovers with their cousins and their dolls, and we ate dinner on the patio every night.  David is nearly drowning at the hospital these days and arrived home late every night, but it didn't matter since bedtime had been suspended for the week.

On Friday we went camping and played games in the tent and cooked our meals on the campstove and s'mores over the fire.

It was a good week with my children.

Last night on our way to a meeting I told David, "I hate Sunday nights."  He laughed and admitted the same thing.  It's like being born again every Monday, ripped from heaven and thrown back into the lone and dreary world, blinking and blinded by reality and to-do lists.  A feeling made worse last night by the fact that I had had my children home all week and knowing it would be another nine weeks until they were all mine again.

The meeting we were headed to was the dedication of our new stake center, as our old one had burned down nearly two years ago.  I went to the meeting out of duty, aware only of my looming week and temporal worries.  I left the meeting transfigured.  I had no idea that it was going to be a gift from heaven.  I have rarely felt such an outpouring of the spirit, and I have never heard such a beautiful, powerful prayer.  As we rose at the end to sing "The Spirit of God" I was reminded of the rededication of the Manti temple that I attended as a child. 

I felt like I was standing in front of the burning bush.

And I was on fire too.

David put his arm around me to prop me up in front of all that heat and love.

I was overwhelmed by the love of heaven, by the palpable presence of God and his angels, the truthfulness of his work, but mostly by the mercy and kindness of my Savior, Jesus Christ. 

And that fire burned through all the choking anxieties and paralyzing demands of earth life, scorched my burdens and my fears, and left me joyful and stronger and brimming with faith.

I sobbed most of the way home, which wonderfully, did nothing to quench those flames.  The fire is still burning this morning, as David noted with a smile as he kissed me goodbye and I smiled up at him.  I don't think he's seen one of those on a Monday morning since school started. 

Transfigured, indeed.

Now We Are Six

I made breakfast sausage this morning.  At the request of the birthday boy.

He has the menu planned out for the entire day.  For dinner he wants spaghetti and mashed potatoes. 

(As you wish.)

This morning as he played his new harmonica, I asked him if he could remember the day he was born.

"Yes, the girls carried me around everywhere and dressed me up like a girl."  (He is still affronted about this treatment.)

"Yes they did, but not on the day you were born.  On the day you were born you were all mine.  Do you remember what happened?  It was a Wednesday morning."

I waited while he finished a few bars of his next harmonica solo.

"Yep.  And then all the water came out."

"So I called to Dad and he got the other kids up fast because you were coming in a hurry."

Then we had a brief discussion about exactly where babies come out.  And since he was six I explained.  He said his friend had it all wrong, and then played a few more harmonica measures, this time "Happy Birthday."

I finished the story with the usual quaver in my voice as I told him about his dark eyes looking up at me and he gave a big finish on the harmonica at just the right moment, because he knows the story by heart.  And then he chattered all the way to find his backpack and out the door, about dinosaur cakes and parties and the presents dressed and waiting for our celebration tonight.

I watched him run to catch up with the girls.

A few years ago David and I went to talk to my doctor about having another baby.  He was quiet for a while and then confided that he hadn't been able to sleep after Ethan was born.  He said that in his thirty years of practicing medicine he had never gotten that close to disaster and still had a good outcome.  That it was a very close call.  For both of us.  He said it still scared him when he thought of it.

Someday I will tell Ethan the rest of the story.  How heaven's hand was in his life from the beginning.  How the day and hour of his birth were known and watched by heaven, because if everything hadn't been just right, it all would have gone terribly wrong.  How there is no such thing as a coincidence.  How there are no "little" moments.

But today, I only tell myself.  Over and over again.

And this morning, as I watched this fourth and final miracle run down the street, I thanked heaven again for the life of this extraordinary boy.  Especially today, now we are six.

"But now I am Six, I'm as clever as clever,

So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever."

Word of the Week: Stolid

stolid  /adj./  not easily stirred or moved mentally.  unemotional.  impassive.  matter-of-fact.  inert.  wooden.  uninterested.  unmoved, unresponsive.  lumpish.

stolid  /adj./  1.  I can tell that I'm out of practice at this.  In the past, the word I chose would shape my destiny for the week.  I picked "stolid," not only because Ms. Estes used it several times in her book and it caught my fancy, but because I could use a bit of stolid life.  I have talked to several people this week who said, "I read your blog.  Sounds like you're having a hard time."  And I needed a bit of unemotional, lumpish days to counteract all the internal upheaval.  I'm not sure if it was just wishful thinking or if an eight-month hiatus from word-of-the-week has changed things, but the week was not stolid in any way.  In fact, there were moments when I thought, "This is the exact opposite of stolid.  Where are you 'stolid'?"  And so in the midst of change, even word-of-the-week has failed me, and I feel as though I have lost my bearings altogether. 

stolid  /adj./  2.  On Friday David came home for lunch and asked me about my word-of-the-week.  He told me he'd never heard of it.  I assured him that it was an actual word.  "Well, what does it mean?"  I told him.  He looked skeptical.  I asked him if he was teasing me.  He grinned and denied it.  I asked him if he wanted to fight about it.  He said no and tried to kiss me.  I told him just for that I was only going to kiss him stolidly.  I tried as hard as I could to remain impassive (I had a point to prove, see?), and it worked for about ten seconds.  Then I gave up.  After the kiss, knowing that I failed, I asked, "So how'd I do at stolid kissing?"  He told me that he didn't marry me for my stolidness.  Which was some consolation, I suppose.

(It has come to my attention that there may be far too many kissing pictures on my blog.  More evidence that stolidness is not one of my strong points.)

stolid  /adj./  3.  After several days of tears about the length of the school day, Ethan has resigned himself to his fate.  This morning he sat on the couch, staring out the window, and said stolidly, "Today is the 11th day of school," and then asked quietly, "How many more days of school in this week?"  Caleb told him three if you count today.  And then he gave a stolid little sigh and went to dump the sand out of his shoes.  I almost prefer the tears to this stoic, subdued surrender.  It was like something had died in him.  (I told you, I can't be stolid for anything.  Melodramatic, however, is no problem.) 

(This un-stolid picture was taken at our annual back-to-school brunch.)

stolid  /adj./  4.  Tonight David and I are going to the viewing of a friend.  He died unexpectedly on Sunday morning and left behind an amazing wife, four children and a baby on the way.  I can imagine that he did not want to leave them on any condition.  And still, heaven called him home.  My heart is broken for his wife and children.  I have wondered several times this week at how God bears it, He who is full of perfect compassion and boundless charity, how He can stand it, and how His heart must break at His children's unimaginable grief.  I do not believe in a stolid God.  I believe he weeps right along with them and with us, who know and love them.  I believe in a God that aches for us, that suffered every pain and tragedy.  All I can do is pray.  But I pray to a God that knows what is best, that knows it will be alright in the end, and sends comfort and angels in the meantime.

(More about that comfort here.)

Through A Glass, Darkly

This morning Caleb said the prayer.  It was longer than usual. 

Over the weekend our prayer list grew.

And he was reminding heaven about each of our loved ones by name, one by one.

On Sunday we went to church fasting and praying with the rest of our congregation.  I walked into church behind a good friend and thought about the comfort of worshipping together as I watched her Sunday heels enter the building.  I thought about what it means to pray together when tragedy strikes.  Of asking for help when we feel helpless.  And the comfort of belonging.

This weekend we received the news that one friend had died unexpectedly, and another two had come very, very close. 

And suddenly, in a flash of awareness, I remembered that one breath separates this life and the next.  That ordinary life is a luxury.  That asking your husband to take the garbage out is a gift.  That being irritated that he's in a meeting and late for dinner is a grace.  That most of the time, I am living blind to the real situation:  that anything and everything can change in a moment.

I thought about that all day.  I went to church and prayed with my family.  And in between my messages for comfort and healing for our friends, I asked heaven to also help me remember that regular, ordinary life with its dishes and homework and socks left by the side of the bed are evidence of the kindness of heaven.  That being able to wake up next to David and then blearily make pancakes for six is the tenderest mercy of all.

I thought about that all day.

And then we went to bed and had a fight.

(Technically, it was really just me fighting because David never participates, despite all my goading.  He'd rather kiss than fight.  And sometimes that, in and of itself, makes me want to fight.  I don't need a good reason, see?)

He rubbed my foot while I railed.

He rubbed by back while I got it all out.

And then I fell asleep and after a while, David's snoring woke me.  I pushed his heavy arm from around my waist and I thought about the luxuries of my life.  Of fighting over nothing.  Of an arm thrown over me in the dark.  Of someone lying next to me, waking me with their snoring.  Of how dark the glass I am peering through must be.  And how between that and the blindness of my mind, I must be nearly always lost.

And for a long time after that, I thanked heaven for my blessings. 

Especially the ones I can't see.