Error Code

I finished reading the Book of Mormon again last week and then promptly started over.

I don’t know if it’s just what I’m going through right now in my own life, but it seemed like there was a lot of talk of errors at the end and beginning of the book. The prophets at the end of the book apologized for any mistakes and acknowledged that if there are any errors in the text, they are theirs alone.

Nephi does the same thing at the beginning of the book, noting that they are weak in writing and that if they had been able to write in Hebrew, then it could have been perfect, but they were using reformed Egyptian and he felt there were consequently going to be flaws in his account.

I feel for these men. As a writer and as a human. I feel for them and the inadequacy and deficiency they surely felt to keep the records accurately for their entire people and to acceptably express the workings and instructions of their God. No pressure.

This week, my sister’s book was published. The first copies are already in people’s hands. I have spent the last seven months helping her with the manuscript and checking it for errors. I have read it dozens of times. She has read it many times as well. We’ve had other people read it. She hired a professional proofreader who read the manuscript and whose job it is to find the errors we didn’t.

And after all that, yesterday I got two notes from people who helpfully told me they had each found a typo. Two separate errors.

The worst part is that I know there will be more. There are over 60,000 words in my sister’s book. If we’re being honest, there is the chance that there will be many, many more. As hard as we tried, we couldn’t find them all. It kind of breaks my heart a little.

It reminds me of when Caleb was auditioning for music school with the Wieniawski Concerto. As he practiced for months, I remember thinking there must be hundreds of thousands of notes in that one piece of music and that also meant there were a hundred thousand ways to mess up and make a mistake. It seemed like an utterly impossible task.

As I sat in sacrament meeting today, I thought about how many possible errors there are available to me in my life. When I think of all the days and all the thoughts and all the interactions and all the moments where I come up short and don’t show up in love the way I want to, it breaks my heart more than a little. I am overwhelmed by my power to get it wrong. Most of the time.

What I want to say is that I know there are errors.

I also want to say that I know there are errors I don’t even know about.

Wo is me.

I have wanted to curl up in a little shame ball and die after finding out about the typos in my sister’s book. And these are the tiniest of errors in comparison with the mess that is my life. It’s enough to make me want to give up completely. But did you notice how Nephi and Mormon and Moroni, just did their work anyway, even in the face of their errors and inadequacy? Yes, they said, it’s far from perfect, but the errors are ours and here is what we have to offer anyway. They gave their gift the best way they knew how.

This is what I’m trying out this week too. Here is what I have: My whole life is a crappy first draft. It’s full of errors and mistakes, confusing plot twists that don’t belong, and far too many adjectives and passive verbs. But it is what I have to give. You’re going to find an error if you look. I’m going to find an error everywhere I look. And yet, I’m here to try and I’m in for all of it anyway.

We are all doing our best. It’s just that there are so many ways to screw it up. 60,000 words in a book; 100,000 notes in a concerto; 39,420,000 minutes in a lifetime. There’s gonna be an error or two. Maybe even more than 39 million.

And even then, I’m telling you, it’s totally going to be okay.

Make no mistake about it.

Scenes from the Last Battle

The awards banquets have started.

All the thank you’s and slide shows and farewell speeches are rolling.

We are down to the famous, final scenes. Graduation is coming.

Savannah just finished her third and final, culminating Winter Guard season. Her team took the State title for the third year in a row. Then they travelled to Dayton, Ohio for the World Championships where they competed and made it to the semi-finals—an achievement that no other Arizona Winter Guard has ever earned.

It’s possible my fierce little warrior has already thrown her last rifle in competition.

For me, it feels like it all went as fast as it takes her to toss her rifle into the air, watch it rise, arc, and spin back into her waiting hands. Just one long breath.

Weeks ago, as Savannah stood waiting behind the towering black curtains for her team’s turn to take the floor in Dayton, my heart was beating as hard as hers high in the stands of the arena. As I sat in my seat, I said a silent prayer that she could have her moment. As I looked around me at all the other mothers and fathers in that arena, I knew that they were surely saying the same prayer for their own children. Help them. Help them do their best. After all the hours and tears and bruises and sacrifices and energy and effort, help them to have a moment where it all pays off.

That’s all we want as parents.

On Friday, I went to the temple. One of the young women I taught and loved was going through for the first time. She leaves on her mission in a matter of weeks. As I stood in the celestial room watching her embrace her parents, I thought about that prayer again: Help them. Help them do their best.

And I was overwhelmed by the love of a Father, who knowing of our incredible need beforehand, provided the perfect help and a sure way back. As I watched the morning sunlight stream through the stained glass around me, I was overcome by the tenderness of his concern for each of us and the magnitude of his foresight.

He knew what my friends would want and need for their daughter. He knew what I would want and need for mine: Help. Please, send help. We cannot do this alone.

He’s just like me after all. He’s a parent, who loves his children. His heart beats and hopes and loves as hard as mine.

Don’t worry, he reminds me. Help is always on the way.

Waiting for the Dawn

Most years, Easter sneaks up on me.

Because the date changes every year—sometimes it’s in early spring and sometimes it feels like it’s nearly summer—I never feel fully prepared for it.

With Christmas, it seems like there is a long build up of physical and spiritual preparation. But Easter always surprises me and I never feel that I was quite as spiritually ready for it as I wanted to be.

On Saturday night as I was vacuuming through my house and madly trying to pick up and prepare for the rapidly approaching Easter Sabbath, I thought again how I had been caught off-guard and unprepared. Resurrection dawn was coming fast and I was not ready.

My mind went to Mary, who on that Saturday night so long ago was probably willing the dawn to move closer as quickly as possible. She only wanted to get to Christ’s body and do what she could to honor his life by anointing his discarded mortal frame. I imagine for her that night lasted forever. She probably didn't sleep, didn’t undress, just sat waiting and watching for the slightest hint of color change from black to deep indigo in the night sky to leave for the tomb “very early in the morning.”

She was waiting for it.

This morning as I sat outside in the early sunshine, listening to the birds in the orange trees around my house, I thought about how she was not alone. The whole world had been impatiently waiting for four thousand years for that first miraculous resurrection morning. It didn’t sneak up on anybody. It was the reason for all the sacrifice and all the worship and all the signs and all the prophecy that had been given for millennia.

I thought about how for four thousand years, lambs had been place on altars, again and again and again. Thousands of times. Maybe even millions of times. Unblemished lamb after unblemished lamb, placed in the stead of another who was still coming. Generations of sacrifices. Thousands of years of place holding, until the precious Lamb of God came:

“And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling to the ground.”

From Adam’s first careful steps out of one garden to Christ’s heavy steps into another garden, a long line of lambs had bridged the gap between God and man and allowed the fallen access to the divine. But the only reason it worked, the only reason those sacrifices had the power to close that enormous chasm, was because of the blood of him that had yet to be spilt. In that great, last sacrifice, the blood of the Lamb would reach back through time to rescue and flow forward into the future to save the whole fallen earth.

The whole plan hinged on this sacrifice. And all our possibilities depended on the sacred dawn that followed three days later.

It occurs to me that in every area of my life, I am behind and unprepared. The wretchedness and shocking depth of my fallen nature is always sneaking up on me. This is the state of things. I’m always madly trying to clean up the messes of my life and appear presentable so God can come into it.

But the truth is, I am incapable of ever achieving a level of acceptability to meet that holy standard on my own. If he left it to me, to my faith and my works, we would be separated forever.

Instead, God sent a Lamb.

And given the depth of my need, it was not a moment too soon.

Relativity

I just got home from Quilt Retreat. Four days away to reconnect with my cousins, my aunts, my sisters, my mom. It is like a long, deep breath for my spirit.

Quilt Retreat was in Utah this year so on Saturday night I got to drive up to Logan and see Caleb perform with the Cache Valley Symphony, pushing his bow as fast as it would go to keep up with those gorgeous Russian composers.

At dinner afterwards, he talked to me about his latest studies in relativity, how space and time change and bend relative to the person experiencing it.

When I am with these women that I grew up with, who have seen me then and know me now, I understand a little about what he is talking about. Time and space are bent around me and I can see it all at once:

Sitting together on Aunt Jane’s porch in summer dusk while the homemade ice cream churned noisily and the mosquitos nibbled our sweaty necks.

Running through the woods around the cabin and building club houses out of moss and logs and pine needles.

Acting out the Nativity with memorized parts (“I am the sheep with the curly horn”) and performing annual talent shows at the house on the hill and variety shows in Amy and Karen’s closet.

Going to music camps and ski trips and reunions in Yost.

Eating bread and milk and frozen fruit salad and dried apricots hot from the dryer.

Making bread and muffins and the A&A Newsletter and “Welcome Home” signs out of construction paper and glue.

Standing next to these women around quilt frames, and cleaning projects, and prayer circles, and wedding cakes, and caskets.

They have seen me grow up. They have seen me make a mess of things. They have seen me when I get it right. They have seen me angry and hurt and joyful. They have cried with me and rejoiced with me and laughed with me. They have seen me sick. They have given me relief.

For my whole life.

There is no time or space in my life that they are not a part of. When I see them, I see my whole life: who I was—who I am—who I will be. And they not only let me be it all, they love me for all of it. Which makes it easier to love myself.

Tonight when we were studying the New Testament, I read this passage:

“but if thou canst do any thing, have compassion on us, and help us.”

And it reminded me of these incredibly capable women in my life who can do so many things and have done so many things for me to ease the pains of earth life, but above all, they have endless compassion for who I am and who I have been.

And then they just keep helping me become who I want to be.

The Dirty Liar

I have been wrestling with a decision for a couple of weeks, round and round, back and forth, pinned into inaction by my confusion and doubts.

For about a year I have been talking about and inconsistently working on a book project with some friends. One of my goals this year is to finally buckle down, finish it, and get it published. And so I have been steadily working on it—giving myself weekly goals and doing my best to keep my commitments to myself. It’s been amazing to show up for myself this way.

A couple of weeks ago my friend sent me a text, suggesting that maybe we tell the story in another way, and change the first-person perspective into third. Now about 45,000 words into the project, my brain seized up in fear and confusion, as my thoughts ricochetted back and forth between the options.

But that means starting over.

It might be better.

But it might be worse. And that would mean potentially starting over again…(again).

What we have is really good and we don’t want to lose that.

But is it really the best way to tell the story? I might totally be worth rewriting.

But how?

All these thoughts swirled around in mind mind, chased by the real problem thought: But what if I can’t do it? I don’t know if I can.

I talked it over with anybody who would listen. David. Caleb and his girlfriend. Olivia. Auggie. They all thought the solution was obvious. Except Auggie. He looked as confused as me. But then again, for dogs, everything is in first person.

I stewed in confusion, unable to proceed.

Late last week, I talked to Caleb on the phone. He was confused about a decision in his own life. He told me, “I don’t know what to do. I just feel so lost.”

I explained to him that he was feeling lost and unsure because of his thought “I don’t know what to do.” That thought had become his result. “I don’t know what to do” made him feel anxious about making the wrong decision, which left him spinning in inaction, resulting in being lost and not knowing what to do. His mind was making the thought “I don’t know” true for him.

Sound familiar? Unbelievably, I still could not see it in my own life.

That’s the thing about confusion.

Confusion is a liar. It tells you you don’t know what to do and believing that thought only leaves you not knowing what to do. Sneaky, self-fulfilling, little liar. Your mind—in an effort to keep you safe and to keep you from expending more energy—tells you that you don’t know what to do. It proves it by offering a rousing game of “thought ping-pong,” the tiresome back-and-forth of a thousand thoughts with so many alternative scenarios that the truth becomes muddy and obscured. Suddenly, you are well and truly lost.

The next morning, I had a session with my coach. I told her my first-person, third-person dilemma. I told her that while I wanted to rewrite it in third-person, I did not think I had the ability.

She said, “You know that’s just a thought right?”

“What?”

“Just because your brain is offering that you aren’t capable, doesn’t mean it’s true. It is only a thought.“

Wait, what?! Say that one more time.

And suddenly, I could see what was happening. My brain, in an effort to avoid dying (making bad work and being rejected) and expending energy (rewriting 45,000 words) offered confusion as a way out.

That all sounds scary and hard, how about some confusion instead?

And that is what brains do. Confusion is always a dirty liar. It turns out that we always know what to do. We’re just scared to do it.

And so I opened my computer and started again. And you know what? It turns out that my brain was wrong. On both accounts. I know what to do and I am perfectly capable of doing it.

The Pillars of Eternity: Caribbean Edition

David and I took a little Caribbean vacation.

As per usual, I went kicking and screaming. Now, I’m begging him to skip our flight tomorrow and disappear with me for good. I’m nothing if not consistent.

I have eaten seafood morning, noon, and night for four days straight. Well, that’s not quite true. I’ve carefully interspersed the seafood smorgasbord with generous pieces of perfect key lime pie. To counteract the mercury poisoning, see?

It’s been kind of perfect, really. If it makes you feel any better I did get a couple of mosquito bites, though they are the delicious kind that itch just enough to remind you how lucky you are to have mosquito bites covering your warm, brown, sugar-sand coated legs in the middle of March.

Today I told David we need a new family motto: “Work hard, play hard.” I think for too long it might have been closer to: “Work hard. Make sure everybody knows how hard.” Or maybe “Work hard. Martyr harder.” That’s it. Like I should get extra points for how much I’m suffering.

I’m finally starting to see that there is a difference between pain and suffering. The pain is an inevitable consequence of the fall. It is a part of our human experience. The suffering, on the other hand, is always my own creation. More importantly, the suffering is always optional.

David and I haven’t been away on a vacation together for over four years. Our last attempt was a complete disaster. I often refer to it as our most expensive fight. David spent most of it sick on the bathroom floor and I spent all the rest of it resenting him for it. Like I said, the suffering is always my own creation—and I always get better at what I practice. Over the years, I have become a freaking suffering expert.

Which makes finally figuring that I was the source of all of it, nothing short of miraculous.

Here’s the thing: We are a mess. And we make the mess. And all of it is okay because we are just learning, figuring out how to love and how to have compassion and how to see the truth, all while we’re living inside a natural, human body. That’s gonna take some practice.

Today as I was sitting on the beach, watching people of every race and shape and language swim and play around me, I wondered what it must be like to be the God of all these people, with all their needs, and all their heartaches, and all their mess. The weight of all those gaping, cavernous needs seems so enormous and impossible and overwhelming, I don’t know how he can possibly bear it all. And yet he does. He takes all our pain and all our suffering (the stuff of our own creation) and bears it all. Without an ounce of resentment and without creating his own suffering as he does it. There is the true miracle.

Creation. Fall. Atonement. I am here on earth. On earth there is pain. But because of Christ, the suffering is always optional. I am finally beginning to see.

Everybody Hates January April

I am in no state to write this post. My self-pity and self-loathing are too high to write anything worth reading. But I set a goal, remember?

(I really hate January April. She is too ambitious by half and all the other Aprils hate her. January April acts like a beneficent, but self-righteous cheerleader whose got everybody’s best interest at heart, but she’s really just a terrified dictator with way too much power at her disposal. August April just flips her the bird; but I am March April and I’m a people pleaser, so I’m still trying to be a team player.)

Ahem. Anyway…

This picture of Ethan represents one of the best moments of my week. Wednesday, 5:42 p.m.

6:36 p.m. on Friday night was pretty good.

Come to think of it, 1:45 on Saturday afternoon was completely delightful too.

Other than that, it felt like a difficult slog.

There was pain caused by the fall. There was suffering caused by myself. There were moments I disappointed others and plenty of instances where I disappointed myself. Late on Friday night, David and I found ourselves at Costco. I told him, “I think if you’re at Costco on a Friday night, you’re just doing it wrong.”

We are. Doing it wrong. For sure.

We are human.

Dang it.

The problem is that I am definitely human but the sacred part inside of me that is divine would like me to live better, higher, and holier than my wretched humanness. If only it were that easy.

Instead, the part of me that beckons and pushes me to be more, do more, love more, comes smack up against my obvious humanness and the disparity and dissonance between the two is almost too much to be borne. This is, I think, why we hate ourselves. I simply want to be better than I am. Because that eternal part of me whispers that I can. But to do it I have to overcome my own self, my humanness. Which is proving nearly impossible. And so I hate myself.

The problem is, this doesn’t help. It doesn’t make me want to be better. Resistance only makes it worse. I can’t love more from a place of hate. I can’t become more from a place of staggering insufficiency.

Somehow I have to love every part of me: Self-righteous January April—I love the me that I thinks I can be better. Self-disparaging March April—I love the me that thinks I can’t and even creates evidence to prove it.

Oh, April. You’re so freaking awesome. And you are such an awful mess. And I totally love all of you. Never change. Keep changing. They are both 100% okay. Do you see?

Well, that’s it. I warned you. Never mind, I blame January April for all of it. Isn’t she the best?

Kiss Your Worries Goodbye

On Friday night, David and I were talking over pizza. Every Friday night, actually, we are talking over pizza. We have a standing date and a standing order.

David was telling me how worried he was. About lots of different things.

As I sat there listening to him, I realized I’m not worried about anything. (Well, almost. We’ll get to that.)

But for the most part, I have given up worrying altogether. Worry pretends to be necessary and effective, when it is neither. It has never once prevented something bad from happening and it has never once improved any future scenario in any way. All it has ever done was rob me of present joys.

I thought about how I used to worry all the time. I remember when Caleb was applying for college, for example, I was so committed to worry, I would wake up in the middle of the night to do it. Ridiculous, really. It didn’t change one moment of his now glorious present.

As we sat there on Friday sharing our thoughts over the arugula and mozzarella, I realized how amazing it feels to have given up worrying as a way of living.

Err, almost.

Today I had to speak in a different congregation in our stake. It was a talk about love. The pancake apocalypse was heavily featured. I said “listeth” a lot. (Which isn’t easy.) When I sat down, I felt horrible about all of it.

What was I thinking?

When I related my failure to David he said, “What was it about?” I said, “It was about how we came to earth to learn how to love and it how it takes practice. And it was about pancakes.” He said, “Sounds perfect.”

Only it wasn’t. Perfect, I mean. It probably wasn’t even passable. The only good thing to say about it is that probably people feel a lot better about themselves in comparison to me: Hey, it could be worse. We could be her. Now I’m just a knotted ball of regret and rumination. Which is the worst combination ever. Round and round and round you go, where it stops nobody knows.

Earlier in the week, I had a similar bout of the same toxic cocktail after Joy Club. What was I thinking? As I look back, I realize that I have given up worrying about everything except the basic and fundamental worry that something is wrong with me, that I don’t measure up, that I just really don’t have anything to offer.

But tonight, I can see that that deep-seated, underlying worry about my worth and capability is just as optional as any other worry. It is neither necessary or effective. It only robs me of my present joys

What if I decided not to worry about it anymore?

Yes, I’m a mess and yes, I mess up. I give talks about pancakes and say “listeth” too much and people wonder what in the world it all has to do with them. What is she thinking? No, I am not enough and I will always fall short, but what if it didn’t matter in the least. What if, in fact, that was exactly how it was supposed to be?

Well, then I’d have nothing to worry about.

Love, Actually

It was a really good week.

My kids are happy and apparently living their best lives.

Ethan made the varsity volleyball team.

Savannah got admitted to attend BYU in the fall. (Cue the surprised choirs of angels.)

Caleb called me for some coaching about some big decisions in his life. (I love every word in that sentence.)

I got to spend an hour on the phone with Olivia while I shopped at Target and she provided the running commentary and all the jokes. (She is my favorite person to shop with.)

David and I went to dinner on Thursday night and there was belly dancing. (Ooo, la la.)

On Friday, I spent the day with really good friends learning from one of the world’s very best coaches. (Oh, how I love you, Jody Moore.)

I’m telling you, it was a very good week.

Which brings us to this morning.

David hosted a bishop’s youth “morningside” at our house this morning, complete with pancakes, scrambled eggs, piles of thick bacon, and about three gallons of syrup. From my bed, I heard the mixer running early. They ate, they talked, they sang, they prayed, and they left.

When I walked into the kitchen an hour later, all that was left was the aftermath.

Every mixing bowl we owned was piled on the counter, with dried and crusted pancake batter in every one. There were skillets with the smeared, greasy remains of scrambled eggs sitting abandoned on the stove. Orange juice and syrup puddled on the tables and dripped slowly onto one of the chairs. There were griddles smeared with pancake batter, while every spatula we owned and several we don’t, lay lonely, splattered and plastered with batter and eggs and bacon grease. It looked like that scene from Sleeping Beauty before they pull out the wands. Tsp? Tsp? What’s a tsp? Note: it’s funnier when it’s not happening to you.

I walked right back out and lay down on my bed in dismay.

I wrote a letter to my Joy Club friends earlier this week. It read in part:

“When you choose to think about the people in your life with love and compassion, you feel good and you show up differently around them. You show up as your most authentic self when you feel love. When we act from that place of authenticity and love, everything we do creates the kind of results we want in our lives.

“Remember on Sunday night when Sister Nelson said President Nelson is becoming more and more his real self every day? I think that’s because he is full of love and that love is a result of what he thinks about God and what he thinks about us. He is becoming his best self through love.

“The more we choose loving thoughts about the people in our lives, regardless of their behavior or actions, the better we feel. Something I like to remind myself is “love is always an option,” meaning that no matter what the circumstances are or how others might act, I always get to choose how to feel…and as long as I’m choosing, love feels better than anything else.”

And looking around that kitchen this morning, that is when I knew once again that choosing love in theory and choosing love, actually, are two very different things.

And standing there among the paper plates and the cold, stale piles of pancakes, I asked myself softly, “What would love do?”

I told myself I didn’t have to do it. And that if I was going to do it with resentment, then I shouldn’t do it all.

My brain offered me a million reasons why it wasn’t fair. It told me how if I cleaned it up then my husband would be off the hook and he’d think it was just fine to leave pancake apocalypses in my kitchen any time he wanted. It helpfully reminded me of all the dishes I had already done that week without notice or acknowledgment from the people I live with. It noted how my husband has time and effort for everyone else but me. My brain was on a mission to prove me right.

And then I asked myself again, “What would love do?” And I reminded myself that regardless of what choices my darling husband makes, I always get to choose who I want to be in any situation and I asked myself how I really wanted to feel. Resentment, already building and festering, felt terrible. I wanted to feel amazing…and it turns out, I always get to choose.

And so I told my brain to settle down. There is no problem here. There is no hook and there are no patterns of pancake permissiveness being established. That’s just my brain trying to talk me into resentment. As bad as that feels. It’s crazy but my brain only cares about being right. And the poor thing thinks it’s in mortal danger if the love of my life decides to use fourteen bowls (I counted) to make a hundred pancakes for the youth in our ward. It just happens to be wrong about that.

And so this morning I chose love, actually. Which looked like a lot of dish soap and hot water and a huge beach towel littered with drying, dripping dishes.

I’m telling you, it was as good as one of those magic wands.

Critically Acclaimed

I feel like I should start with a joke.

A priest, a rabbi, and a bishop walk into a bar. But the bishop was so busy he blew the punchline. Yea, it’s not very funny. But it’s also my reality. (My coach says everything can be a laughing matter, so I’m working on it. )

Did you ever notice how bishop’s are busy…

Nope. I still don’t get it.

Knock, knock, who's there? Not the bishop.

Gah.

The best part of my week was the front row seat I have in my kids’ lives. Best show in town. The plot has it all: there is a love story, there is drama involving serious wig emergencies, there is a hero’s tale that looks a lot like a scene from Lord of the Flies set to music and choreographed with flying sabers, and, of course, a coming-of-age story about a novice DJ demonstrating some sweet dance moves at the spring daddy-daughter dance.

I don’t even have to pay for a ticket. I just wake up and it all unfolds in front of me. Curtains up, people. It’s time to entertain me.

You should see their bit about inversely related demand curves. It kills every time.