Small Matters

Well, we made it through January by the skin of our teeth.

I look back at the goals and feelings I had at the beginning of the month and I am humbled by reality and exhaustion. My goals need a serious reassessment. Why, I wonder, was there more than one thing on that list in the first place?

I got a call from Caleb on Friday afternoon.

He just wanted to say hello. I can’t tell you how much fun it is to have adult children. Like I made my own personal posse of friends. Well done, me.

It was a newsy phone call full of updates on classes and work and his love life and left me grinning. I remember thinking that life is just so good.

The very next day I was reminded just how painful life in a fallen world can be when we heard news of more than one wonderful family suffering through real trial and loss.

Tonight I wonder how to make sense of it all: the struggle, the joy, the excruciating pain. All of it part of life here in mortality. It’s nearly overwhelming.

I had to give the opening prayer in sacrament meeting today. I asked heaven to look down on us—their children in a lost and fallen world—and send their help. Because, oh how we need it.

This week I was reminded of God’s words about suffering—that it shall be “but a small moment.” But nothing about it feels small. The requirements for improvement, the magnitude of the blessings, the depth of the grief and pain—small is not the word I’d choose for any of it. In the face of the enormous depth and breadth of the human experience, the only thing that feels small is me. I feel vulnerable and powerless and yes, very small.

All I can do is send my prayers heavenward: Have mercy. We are weak. Rejoice with us. We are unworthy. Save us. We are irreparably broken. And then I make my tiny, miniscule efforts to change, to appreciate, and to ease. It is not much. I can see that clearly. But I do what I can. Small and insignificant as it is, I do it anyway. Try, try, try.

On Necks and Iron Sinew

This week I went to a Relief Society meeting.

Before I left, I asked David, “Do you think I need to wear a dress?”

“Probably,” he said.

“But I don’t want to wear a dress. I’m not wearing a dress.”

A few minutes after I arrived at the meeting, I send David a text:

So ya, should have worn a dress. This is

how it’s going to feel on judgement day…

regret for my neck of iron sinew.

I’m a slow learner. With a stiff neck. A lethal combination.

Today Ethan broke the bread and blessed the water of the Lord’s sacrament for the very first time. I was overwhelmed as I watched his thin, familiar fingers tear the soft slices into bite-sized pieces as we sang the words, “Oh remember what was done, that the sinner might be won.” He tore piece after piece and they piled in front of him like a mound of miracles. One of those pieces was for me and my neck of iron sinew.

I sat there, stunned and fully aware of the eternal patterns at work in front of me—my son, born as a baby and held in my arms, now grown and thoughtful, providing and participating (in a small way) in his own mother’s redemption, which made me think of Mary, of course, and all the other mothers from the beginning who were not enough of what they wanted to be. A long line of mothers, as fallen and flawed as me, all in need of their own miracle.

A couple of years ago, we went to the Grand Canyon. On one of the walls of the visitor’s center there is a quote by Enos Mills that reads: “Given enough time, there is nothing more changeable than rock.”

Today as I put my piece of the miracle into my mouth, I was grateful for one more week. A little more time. Because given enough of it, even my stony heart and neck of iron sinew has a chance at change.

Perhaps that is all any of us need: enough time. Here we are in the longest month of the year. We start with so many plans for transformation and growth, and the days drag by without any visible evidence of real change. The work is so hard that it seems like I should be fundamentally and irrevocably different just from the monumental effort involved. But here I am in the same body with the same brain with the same recalcitrant heart. It feels like the fourteenth week of the January and I am no closer to who I want to be than I was in the first one.

But don’t worry, I tell myself. Rock takes time to change. A few billion years of steady progress and voila! It’s only the fourteenth week of January, after all.

We just have to take it one bite-sized miracle at a time.

The Joys of Joy Club

Did you hear? I started a club. EVERYONE’S ALLOWED. Do kids still do that?

This week we had our first official meeting of “Joy Club.” Twice a month, a bunch of amazing ladies from my neighborhood (and across town) are getting together to learn about thought work and how to direct our thoughts to get the results we want in our lives and our relationships and our work.

And I know one thing for sure: I got the name right.

Because it was sheer joy to teach. When David asked, “How did it go?” I said, “Well, I don’t know about everybody else, but I thought it was amazing.” Which was a first for me. I never give myself good reviews. Notoriously stingy with self-praise, over my lifetime I’ve given loads of bad reviews, my share of scathing reviews, and I’ve even managed a mixed review once or twice, so I dare say, this one bordered on a “rave review.”

To be fair, my expectations were low going in. I woke up on Tuesday morning with sweaty palms and a stomach that had bottomed out. I was nervous. I asked myself, “Why am I doing this? It’s totally unnecessary. Why make your life harder? You wouldn’t have to be nervous at all right now…this was totally optional.”

My nerves quickly turned into recrimination and despair. This is going to be terrible. What what I thinking? I’m totally unprepared. How can I possibly help anyone? Did you forget you’re a mess yourself? (Don’t worry, I never forget this.)

My brain is like, so helpful at times like these. Thanks, brain.

My brain was just doing its job, selling me the front cover of a magazine that was all about how I was going to teach this class and how I was probably going to die. But the thing is, I don’t have to buy it. I don’t ever have to buy what my brain is selling me.

And so I thanked my brain for doing it’s job and then I coached myself instead.

I told myself I was totally prepared. I had been studying for six months. I told myself that it was going to be amazing. Because I had the model. I had all the tools, and I don’t have to be perfect because the model is perfect. The model always works. No matter what. It didn’t matter that my workbooks didn’t arrive or that I had never coached anyone that wasn’t related to me, or that this was the first time I’d ever tried to teach what I have been learning. None of it mattered because I managed my brain.

And it was amazing! Like really amazing and at the end we had sugar cookies with thick pink icing. See? It’s a really good club.

Late that night, as I lay in bed grinning in the dark, hopped up on adrenaline and frosting, I thought about it all again. It wasn’t perfect. I could see where I could have explained this better or helped someone see that differently. But, remarkably, it was still amazing. It was exactly as it should have been. And where normally I would have spiraled into self-loathing and mental flagellation, I saw the things I can improve from a place of joy and appreciation and wonder at what I had done anyway.

And that’s what I mean by amazing. If only for me—to see the peace and progress that is available to me, to see the work I’ve been learning work in a real way in my own life. It was amazing because I thought it was amazing. What? You mean I’m the only limiting, determining factor in all of it?

Lightbulb.

Kinda makes you wonder what else is possible, doesn’t it?

You're Totally Fine

On Wednesday night I was at the church in the middle of a meeting.

I saw David’s face appear in the little rectangular window in the door. He grinned at me.

Then he came in, interrupted the meeting and asked to trade car keys with me. I was surprised to see him and confused for a second, but handed him the keys.

On his way out the door he turned and said, “Oh, and don’t worry. The gas light is on in my car, but you’re totally fine. That car can go forever without gas. Okay? You’re totally fine. See ya.”

I stared after him.

The women around me started laughing. However, I did not think it was funny. If they hadn’t been there, I would have flipped him off. (It’s a bad habit. Like mini marshmallows. Don’t worry. I have made my New Years’ resolutions.)

(I hope you can see the irony here…I was at church, trying to improve my discipleship to a God of long-suffering and endless love…and I was having a very hard time loving and long-suffering my own husband. It’s clear that all these people and their humanness are getting in the way of my holiness. Sheesh.)

The whole week kind of went like that. Me, ticked off. Him, assuring me, “You’re totally fine.” Me, flipping him off, both in my mind and otherwise. We ran the whole scene again this morning from the top. Different beginning, slight plot changes in the second act, but the end was the same. Double birdy, I think they call it, for a big finish.

It is pure bliss being married to me. Obviously.

The thing is, he’s right. I’m always totally fine. It just takes me a few hours or a few days to figure out that he’s right. But in the meantime, it’s kind of miserable.

I have some writing meetings out of town this week. Tonight he met me at the door as I was leaving and kissed me goodbye. And gave me a long hug. “You’re totally fine,” he said again.

And I wondered how my life would be different if I could believe that all the time. Not just days later after the damage has already been done. What if I could believe it right away?

I spent most of last year, working on my brain, learning how to redirect the thoughts that were not serving me. One of the things my coach always says is, “Did you know you get to believe whatever you want?” Apparently not.

Did you know you get to believe whatever you want?

When I step back, I can see that I mostly just like being right. Being right is somehow more important even than feeling good. “I’m not totally fine,” I think, and then set about proving how not totally fine I am and how much harder the other people in my life are making things—if they would change, then I could finally be “totally fine.”

Eventually, I get to the place where the storm has blown itself out and, (surprise, surprise!) I’m totally fine, but I never get there without a lot of drama and gnashing about first. Which means, that I might be the one making my life harder and not the other people in it. Wait…what?! I might be giving everyone the bird, but it’s myself I’m totally screwing.

Tonight, as I look back, I can see that I could just skip that part. I could just believe whatever I want, including, “I’m totally fine.”

After the week I’ve had, I’m thinking it might be worth a shot.

Exchange Rate

Tomorrow morning looms like the guillotine. I am nothing but dread and terror. A sickening combination.

The alarm will go off at five, and we will be back at it.

I know people who love the routine, who relish a return to normalcy with its predictable schedule and sensible eating and reasonable bed times. I am not one of these people. At my core, I’m a hedonist, just trying to make it from one long weekend to the next. (The next is 12 days away. If you’re counting. Which I am. And I’m eating mini marshmallows straight from the bag as consolation.)

Caleb and Olivia are already back at school. (Deep sigh.) David points out that they were here for three full weeks. I point out that they were here for nineteen full years before that and it still wasn’t enough.

As I sat in church today, seeking solace and answers (How can I face tomorrow? How can I feel better?), I remembered a post I read a few years ago in which the author created visual representations of our life experiences. He noted that during the first 18 years of our lives, we see our parents about 90% of our days. And after we leave home, that daily contact diminishes greatly. He estimated that as an adult, he only sees his parents 3% of his days. He then extrapolated that figure out, generously estimating his parents would live into their nineties, and produced a visual representation of the days he had spent with them and the days he had left with them. It looked like this:

The author, Tim Urban, concluded: “When you look at that reality, you realize that despite not being at the end of your life, you may very well be nearing the end of your time with some of the most important people in your life. If I lay out the total days I’ll ever spend with each of my parents—assuming I’m as lucky as can be—this becomes starkly clear. It turns out that when I graduated from high school, I had already used up 93% of my in-person parent time. I’m now enjoying the last 5% of that time. We’re in the tail end.”

Right. No amount of mini marshmallows is going to solve for that.

Oddly, though, as I have thought about this sobering visualization, it has arrested my mental nosedive. The truth is, the limits of time and space create the preciousness in our lives. All good things must come to an end or there wouldn’t be “good things.” The end is exactly what makes the good so good. It is finite. It is limited. It is over. And that is exactly why it is so sweet.

It turns out, I’m willing to make the exchange after all.

And, miraculously, with this picture in mind, I can even see that in a life filled with a limited amount of days, tomorrow is one of them. I get another one tomorrow. And I get to make whatever I want with it. Even the first Monday after a holiday is a gift. A chance to connect and love and grow and try again. There will be minutes to talk and feed and clean and knead and write and console and encourage and change the sheets. There will be time to lift weights and nurse Ethan through the stomach flu and text my older children about the first day of the new semester and kiss my husband fresh from the shower and crumble bacon over the bean soup. Come to think of it, I can hardly wait.

Fear not, the angel said. Good advice on the very first Monday of the year.

(throat clearing sound) Is This Thing On?

I have a new goal for 2019: A blog post every week.

Considering I haven’t posted since 2016, this may be too ambitious. Plus it took me 15 minutes to remember my password and log in.

(Not a good sign.)

But not to worry, I have figured it out. Should be smooth sailing from here on out.

I woke up this morning, slightly panicked the the year was ending. Did I do what I needed to? Did I accomplish what I wanted to? “It’s a little too late to worry about that,” David said, reasonably.

A good point. So I turned my attention to worrying about the future instead. I haven’t figured out what my goals should be and the new year is coming—inevitably, relentlessly, one minute after another.

The truth is, I’m never ready for it. Beginnings are not my strong suit. (This post as clear evidence.)

So, I will leave you with my Christmas letter from the year. (My apologies to those of you that have already read it. Let’s just pretend it’s going to get better from here.)

***************************

Dear Loved Ones,

With our children growing up and out, I decided maybe I ought to get a job. Not a real job, mind you, as I am still on call occasionally to deliver forgotten lunches or soccer cleats or drive people to and from college. I told David, “I need a job from 9-2, three days a week. How do you get one of those?”

So, I got a job doing transcription, where I got paid by the audio hour. The first week I had to do training first and then I completed a couple of jobs, painstakingly reviewing my work to avoid any mistakes. This took longer than I would have liked, but I reasoned that I would get faster with experience.

The following Monday my paycheck appeared in my account. $12.53. Seriously. I had worked all week and earned $12.53. The company was encouraging though. “Keep going,” they said, “Once you log 1000 audio hours, your audio hour rate goes up by 3 cents.” You can imagine my consternation. How long would it take to transcribe 1000 audio hours? More than a week, I guessed.

Later that day I pulled all the sandwich stuff out of the fridge for lunch. I glanced down at the package of turkey. On the label it said: $12.53. I stood there frozen. I looked at the knife in my hand and the loaf of bread on the countertop, the lettuce, the tomatoes, the mayo and mustard, an entire block of cheese. I heard the air conditioning click on and looked up from the countertop to my kitchen table and the light hanging above it, the couch, the television, the wood floors underneath me. And in one overwhelming moment, the reality of my situation came immediately into focus. “Oh,” I sighed. “Oh, oh, oh.” I saw what I had never seen before. There I was, the naïve recipient, standing in my beautiful kitchen with a solid roof over my head, fully clothed, with a sandwich and a full jar of pickles winking up at me.

Left to my own devices, with my very best efforts, all I could produce was enough for one package of turkey. If it was up to me, we would be living naked in the desert with 3 pounds of deli meat to share between us. As I stood there, wave after wave of understanding and wonder hitting me, a little phrase slid into my mind: And I will be an husband unto you. Oh, wo is me.

In a flash, I caught of glimpse of my own nothingness, as it were. Just as David had consistently provided turkey and mayo and air-conditioning without our slightest notice, I saw that Jesus Christ had been filling the enormous gaps between my need and my meager efforts all along as well. I stood there equally awed by my vulnerability and lack and by His astonishing generosity and merciful kindness. All my paltry efforts to obey and to love and to choose God and to repent and to try again wouldn’t even add up to $12.53 in eternal terms, and yet Christ graciously provided the full price of salvation anyway. Without resentment or grudge or counting the excruciating cost. He’ll come and make the blessings flow, Far as the curse was found.

This summer Caleb returned from his mission to Italy. David and I and Ethan went to pick him up. After two years apart, climbing the steps of the mission villa in Rome to embrace my son, felt as joyful as the day he was born. After a whirlwind tour of his mission, we headed home. Savannah, who had spent a month in France, and Olivia, who was in college in Idaho, were simultaneously on their own flights home. We landed within minutes of each other in Terminal 2 at Sky Harbor on July 3rd. It was a moment I will never forget. Far flung and home. Scattered and gathered. Divided and joyfully reunited.

Here’s the thing: even with our very best efforts, reunion at the end is impossible. We are slow and stingy and flawed. We are hard-hearted and selfish and wrong. All the time. We can’t put it all back together by ourselves. Without a Savior, all is well and truly lost. And I cannot bear the thought of missing that reunion.

This is why the angels were singing that night so long ago in Bethlehem. In the face of such an enormous and undeserved display of charity and love, what can we do but sing “Hallelujah?” Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill to men. Hey you, down there on earth, all you who deeply love and all you who also inevitably muck it up, there is a way—a sure way to reunion. God himself has come to help. Good news for all of us for whom $12.53 is really stretching ourselves.

And so, we join those choirs of angels in singing hosanna, hosanna to God and The Lamb. We believe and are sure that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world. He came to earth in the meridian of time so that we could be together for all of time and all of eternity. He is the Mighty God who overcame creation’s doom that we might live—together—forever. This Christmas and always, we worship Him, the Great Provider of salvation and redemption and every glorious, eternal reunion, with all our awe-filled hearts.

With all our love,

David, April, Caleb, Olivia, Savannah and Ethan

Map of a Miracle

My doctor reminds me of a college basketball coach.  He looks like just after he excises my kidney he's got to run because his team is playing in the Final Four and he's got game tape to watch.  Whenever we finish an appointment I feel like he's going to slap me on the butt and tell me to show some hustle.  I imagine his operating room with lots of whistles and huddles and yelling: "Retract and show some defense out there!"  He's the kind of person who makes you feel like he's in charge, he's got a plan, and he's going to win.

It was disconcerting then, when he called in early January and said they wanted to try something in interventional radiology before they did surgery.  He was going to pass me to another doctor who would perform a "super select embolization" to try and shrink the tumor.

I liked the idea of "super select."   A little star-warsy, marvel-comicy, super-duper magic treatment for tumors.  But I did not want a new doctor.  I wanted Coach Andrews.  We were going all the way to the championship.

My new doctor's name was Dr. Grace.

Which turned out to be fitting in every way.

The idea was to follow my arteries like a map all the way to the kidney, and then follow the smaller paths of other arteries from there to the tumor.  Once the right road to the tumor had been located, she would block it off so that the tumor would no longer have access to the blood supply.  The hope was that she would be able to find the bad arteries just feeding the tumor and differentiate them from the good arteries feeding my kidneys.  (Apparently all arteries sort of look alike.)  Once she found the smallest and most selective branch that fed the tumor, she would block those arteries, effectively killing the tumor and sparing the good kidney tissue.  I told you:  Star Wars.  

On the first day of February, Dr. Grace and her team performed the embolization.  I had to remain semi-conscious throughout the procedure because they were adding dye and taking pictures as they traveled the artery road to my kidneys and kept giving me instructions like "Hold your breath" and "Okay, don't move."  Where was I going?  At the tightest artery turn, I heard them quietly strategizing.  I could see the artery like a black bobby-pin, dark and curved and narrow, on the screens around me.  It wasn't going to work.  They were having trouble finding a way in.  I heard "Try a 16.  Okay, backout.  Try a 20."  I drifted out.

When my nurse wheeled me out he confided that at one point they almost abandoned the procedure, but somehow found a way to continue.  "We got it," he whispered in my ear.

It's hard to tell in the picture above because it is an "after shot."  The arteries feeding the tumor have been filled with some sort of Star-warsy-tumor-killing-gloop (official name) and so they are no longer fluorescing.  The big dark paths of arteries you can see are feeding my kidney, and I marked with arrows where the dead, tumor-feeding arteries used to be.  You can see just the shadow of them in the picture.  But in my mind, I can still clearly see the dark outline of that restricted hairpin turn, that tiny, curving road where a miracle happened and changed the course of my life.

And I know, because I was there, that only Grace made it possible.

That, and the fact that I am an excellent road-tripper.

I saw Coach Andrews again this afternoon.  "Good game, Price.  I'll see you in three months and we'll take another picture of it and see where we're at.  It's as good as gone."

And just like that, it's the off-season.

Fishing Metaphors and a Reprieve

I thought I was going to die.

In December they found a mass on my right kidney.  Mass.  The perfect word.  Heavy and thick and weighty, full of enormously devastating potential.  A tiny little word that slowly starts to take on a mass of it's own as it rolls around in your mind.

The first surgeon we talked to refused to do the surgery because of the complications.  I saw this as a bad sign.  Not only that, but he said he didn't know anyone in David's hospital system capable of doing the surgery without "speed bumps."  He used air quotes.  I stared at his fingers.  There was an entire world of foreboding possibilities hanging between them.

The very next Sunday, our bishop took a few minutes at the end of the meeting to talk about "callings" on the other side of the veil.

My heart dropped.

It felt exactly like the moment David told me about his job opportunity in Peoria.  Dread and certainty all at once.  It felt like fate, and a warning: "Get ready."

Only I wasn't.  Ready, I mean.  Not even close.  And I didn't know how to get ready.  I didn't know if I should clean out all my drawers and closets or put meals in the freezer or spend my hours repenting or teach my children all the things on that endless list of things I still hadn't taught them or help David  memorize all the online passwords and teach him when he had to pay the electric bill and the violin teacher or make lists of who had to be picked up when.  

There was no way to prepare.

My sister, Emily, who is a teacher, compared it to making a list for the substitute.  I was making a sub list for the rest of forever.  Impossible.  I read once about how Elder Richard G. Scott and his wife had prepared for one of them to be able to live without the other by learning all the jobs the other one did, so they could still manage if one of them passed away.  "Why hadn't we done this?" I asked myself a million times in the middle of the night.

But this was only the beginning of the rehearsal of regrets.  

Unbelievably, this wasn't the first time they found a mass on my kidney.  I had been living on borrowed time for forty years already.  And what had I done with it?  It was hard to think of a single worthy thing.  Let's be honest:  My children have pretty much raised themselves, my marriage is the simply the product of all of David's patience and goodness, and the house I have tried to keep actually will not keep and would, in fact, be thick with dust and grime the week after they put me in the ground.  I started to feel like maybe God had simply run out the line as long as he could, given me as much time as possible, received nothing for his trouble, and was finally reeling me in.  Obviously he wasn't going to to catch anything on my line.  "Let's call it.  Time to reel that one in."  

Time passed.  We were referred to the best doctors in the valley.  They met and discussed my case and we celebrated Christmas.  A new year brought a new treatment plan and we waited for insurance approval and muscled our way through Caleb's music school auditions.  David continually talked me off the ledge.  And we prayed.  Oh, how we prayed.  Every breath felt like prayer.  We asked other, far more worthy, people to pray as well.  

And I promised myself that if I was granted another reprieve, I would make the most of it.  I would stop asking "What do I have to do?" and instead ask "Who do I need to connect with?"  I would stop gritting and enduring and start appreciating and enjoying.  I would stop telling heaven what I was going to do each day and then whining for help and instead I would just finally shut up and listen.   

I've spent enough time in my life as Jonah, dictating my will to heaven.  And recently, I've spent some quality time in the belly of the whale. 

Graciously though, I have also been spat out again on dry ground.

Now, which way to Nineveh?

Ad Nauseum

I get nauseated when I get too tired.  

It's like a built-in early warning system to alert me that my body is being overtaxed and is slowly starting to shut down from exhaustion.

"This is a test of the exhaustion broadcast system.  This is only a test.  If you had actually been tired, you would be throwing up now.  We now return you to your regularly scheduled life."

It's awesome. 

I started feeling green around the edges late Wednesday night, "Danger, Will Robinson!", but there was no help for it.  Despite the flashing lights and warning beeps and waves of sickness rolling in, there was no way or place to stop.  And so by the time I woke up this morning the fog of nausea was so thick and heavy, I briefly considered taking a pregnancy test.  Danger!  Danger!

Then I remembered. 

It has just been a very long week. 

And I wanted to lay right back down, but I am chaperoning Caleb at his regional music festival today. It will be a day full of Copeland (oh, Copeland!) and Berlioz and Rimsky-Korsakov (oh, the Russians!). Sick and tired but accompanied by a gorgeous soundtrack.  

When I finally reunited with David last night at 10:30, I pointed out that we haven't sat down across the dinner table together even once this week, trying to emphasize the calamity and grief I was feeling.  I know there are greater tragedies, but in the haze of war, drained and battle-weary, it was hard to think of one. 

Last night before I took Ethan to his baseball practice that started at 8:30 and went well past ten, Olivia reminded me that she had to turn in her NHS application today.   I nearly started bawling as we tried to recreate a record of her service hours from the last two years, which felt especially impossible since I can't even remember what happened last week.

"Let's just bag it, Livy." 

"But I need to do it for my college applications." 

I wavered.

Savannah had me sign her report card earlier this week.  There were plenty of B's and C's, with a couple of D+'s sprinkled in to remind me that I am not spending anywhere near enough time helping her with Algebra and Physics.  

Apparently college may be a long shot for several of us.  "Danger, Will Robinson!"  We're going to need a plan B.  

For his part, David has spent the week bailing water out of his own boat, and when he wasn't in late meetings or staying late to finish projects, he was running to the stake center to go to other meetings or hang lights for a youth dance.  (There happens to be a youth speed-dating activity that he is helping to put on this Saturday.  I am thinking of going just so that I can have 2.5 uninterrupted minutes with him.)

I tell myself that there's got to be an easier way, there's got to be a way to do less. Only I'm not sure what to eliminate: church or school or work?

This is the true dilemma of modern family life.  How do I help everybody fill the measure of their creation, be successful and accomplish all the things they were sent to earth to do, and then still find time for us to eat and talk and connect with each other.  Oh, Anne Morrow!  Tell me what to do!

I have severe rope burns from the constant tug-of-war: Pull!  We must "work while the sun shines," "put our shoulder to the wheel," make the most of the talents God gave us, set goals and make a difference!  Pull! But also, somehow, someway, simplify, be still, and find a place for the peace and joy of simply being together!  Pull!  Pull!  Most days it feels like I'm not pulling hard enough, but maybe it's because I'm pulling in two different directions. 

Worst of all, I have some notion that it's my own choices (Danger! Danger!) that have brought us down this overcommitted path, but when I look around for a better way, it feels like I have no other choice.    Whatever happened to the quiet life in the middle of the woods?  When did that stop being a viable option?  Oh, Thoreau!  Take me with you!  

It is always the same old wrestle and I'm not too proud to admit that the schedule pinned me to the mat this week.  But it's my doubts that really fight dirty. 

Uncle!  Oh, Uncle!

Our Show Must Go On

Last night David and I stayed up late to watch the Westminster Dog Show. 

I know. 

The terriers were the last group.  And by then it was so late, I thought I might as well stay up for the ending.  And plus...I was enjoying it.

I know. 

What is happening?  Even I think this is ridiculous.  And I'm the one who did it.  This either means I've completely lost my mind or I'm a total nerd.  

Probably both.

On Saturday, our family had to perform a role play for our Stake Conference, which is a meeting for all of the LDS congregations in our area.  We were asked to take fifteen minutes to demonstrate an ideal family council. 

In front of 650 people. 

Act natural, they said.

Just be yourselves, they said.

But we're the worst, Ethan said.

I can't believe we're doing this, David and I said to each other, about a hundred times.

I told David we should make it funny.  He said we should play it straight, stick to four main points, and teach correct principles.  Olivia refused to entertain the idea of having a script and Savannah refused to be serious.  Caleb just looked at us like he couldn't believe he was associated with any of us.  We had three rehearsals.  The first two ended early, on account of complete frustration.  The last one ended in tears.  Sounds about right.  (Keep in mind that one of the principles of having family council is:  Keep it Positive!)  Finally, I just said a prayer begging for help, we had a group hug, and we went for it.

It was about as horrible as you can imagine.

It was about as humiliating as you can imagine.

I told David we were not going to have any friends when it was over.  Because how can you make that work and still be nonchalantly cool?  Which is what I'm going for, didn't you know?  Okay, maybe not cool, but at least not THAT family.  You know, the "perfect" one, that not only has all the answers, and is living all the answers, but is happy to tell you all the answers as well.  Gah. 

It's mostly a blur now, but I do remember that somewhere in the middle we ended up having a five minute discussion about not feeding Auggie from the table and how we need to cut off his nightly popcorn fix.  He and David have a serious problem.  They're just enabling each other.  And now the whole stake knows about it.

On Sunday morning we had several people come up to us and say that they thought Auggie should be able to get popcorn every night, and that his voice was not represented at our family council and that hardly seemed fair.

If that was the take-away, clearly, we did a spectacular job teaching correct principles.