Never Fully Dressed

Eventually, it's going to come back, I tell myself.

The happy, I mean.

The heaviness is going to leave my heart and my head and life is going to return to normal.

Something really good is going to happen again.

At some point, it's not going to take superhuman strength to leave my bed in the morning and superhuman resolve not to want to crawl back in there and have long talks with FPM in the middle of the day.

Eventually, it will be fun again.  And funny again.

(Admit it.  That picture is already a little bit funny, right?)

But as of today, one month in (exactly), it still feels like I banged my head on an open cupboard door.  I'm a little bit surprised, a little bit hurt, a little bit mad, a little bit ashamed of my own carelessness, and I still feel a little bit like swearing or a little bit like crying.  Dang, that smarts.

Mortality is hard.  As you know.

A couple of weeks ago, at the end of the day, I told David, "Guess what?  I didn't cry once today."  He said, "I did."  Which made me cry of course.  On the first Monday of unemployment, David put on a suit and tie.  I laughed when I saw him.  Overdressed and ready to impress.  Yesterday, he wore his pajamas the entire day.  Today, the same thing.  And yesterday, nearly a whole month away from one of the worst days of his life, David sat on a chair while I folded the socks and the rags, and still teared up while he talked about it. 

And so yesterday, because I just couldn't stand it anymore, I wore Savannah's bat clip with the googly eyes in my hair the entire day.  (When Ethan came home from school he asked, "Did you get a haircut?"  I said no.  He said, "Something's different."  Also a little bit funny, right?) 

And after dinner we watched Hocus Pocus.  On tap next:  The Addams Family and Wait Until Dark.  My older kids are still debating if they're ready for the latter one.  I've got my fingers crossed because there is nothing quite so fun as the scare in that movie.  (I'll be honest, I get a little bit giddy just thinking about it, despite everything else.)

And then today we went in search of these. 

And in a couple of days we are going to carve them up and drink apple cider and stuff our faces with homemade donuts and Hungarian "ghoul"-ash and pumpkin soup and we are going seriously celebrate this minor holiday.

Because even though things aren't fun, we're going to pretend they are.

Boo to you, mortality.

Never Forgetting

This one is for my family.  Every single one of you. 

But especially for Maika.

Yesterday, I went to my mom's house to help sew quilt blocks into a tiny, pink and white quilt.  Meanwhile, my cousins and aunts in northern Utah and my cousins and aunts in southern Utah were doing the same thing at their mothers' houses.  We already knew the pattern.  Nine-patch and snowball blocks, this time in soft pink rather than blue.  Tragedy has come again.

For days I've thought my heart would break.

There at my mother's house with my fingers filled with fabric and my eyes filled with tears, I sat across from my Aunt Tori who read a text message from her daughter, Melissa.  Melissa wrote a note about how quickly our family can mobilize in a crisis.  If you want two hundred people fasting and praying for you within the hour, just call Aunt Jane.

We got the call on Saturday night.  And so we went to our knees.  All of us.  We gathered in circles in homes and in bedrooms all over the country and went to our God, for help, for miracles, for peace. 

By the next day, it was clear that we would need even more help, more miracles, more peace because Maika's little girl was taken home to heaven.  We went to our knees and cried.  It was all we could do in the face of so much grief and so much heartache. 

The day after that, we quilted. 

In that place, where the pain is so heavy and so hot, we try to comfort in the only way we know how.  One stitch at a time we try to bind up the wounds that cannot be bound.  One block at a time, we add our pleas for solace and our tears to hers.  In this small act of love, we try to to say:  See this?  In this snowball block, see that you are not alone.  In this nine-patch, see our love and prayers.  In this beautiful border, see us encircled tight around you.  See this?  In this finished quilt, see our faith in an eternal plan that is bigger than this terrible moment.  In this binding, see the sure hope of our covenants.

The fabric we used is called "Elizabeth's Letters."  It was designed by my Aunt Jill, who created a fabric line using a letter that our great-great grandmother wrote to her daughter when she left Switzerland for America.  The soft pink fabric in the quilt has the very words of that letter, in our great-great-grandmother's handwriting.  It was a letter written by a mother as her three girls left their homeland forever, unsure if she would see them again in the flesh.  It read in part: 

Memory and farewell words from your never forgetting mother.  This is written to you, Margritha.

If I didn't know that you are going to Zion, and also taking Zion with you, it would break my heart, but I know and am convinced that you are going to Zion.  Pray for the ones who stay behind...

A goodbye letter from a mother to her daughter, stitched into a quilt for another mother who must now say goodbye to her very own daughter.  Our hearts would break were we not convinced she was going to Zion.  See this?  In this fabric, see your heritage of faith in the face of loss and fear.  See this?  In the lines of farewell, see the evidence of your nobility, your bravery, your destiny.

This morning as I stood in the shower, I sobbed.  For my cousin's pain, for her unbelievable grief, for her unfathomable loss, for both she and her husband...the ones who stay behind.

And as I stood there crying, I remembered another letter.  One which my own grandmother had written as a farewell to each of us.  It was read at her funeral and these words came like fire to my heart this morning:

There is only one thing I will hate about leaving--I will hate to leave all of you here.  I will miss you so, but we will be watching over you and trying to help you over the rough spots.  My Dear Ones, I'm sure that many of you, or your little ones, will be tested sorely as the scriptures are fulfilled about the trials of the last days.  I can give you one bit of advice which I have come to love:  "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding.  In all thy ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct thy paths."

Sorely tested, indeed.  Remembering her words only made me sob harder, because I could feel her love and care.  "Yes," I prayed, "help us over the rough spots."  I could feel heaven's hand and the powerful reassurance of eternal covenants.  I trust that the heavens are full of our "never forgetting mothers."  Those who see our pain.  Who see our grief.  Who try to help us over the rough spots.

This morning I begged heaven to send an army of angels.

I am certain I know who will be leading that charge.

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.