It's not fair . . . to compare

I just reread my last post. Which was almost 11 months ago. Let's just say it's been a very intense year. And maybe sometime I'll post some stories, because they may be useful to other people who are going through challenging things. Maybe when the stories aren't quite so close to home.
For tonight, it's a general, personal reflection. In reading my post from last April, I can see how I was at the beginning of a long health journey that isn't over yet. I wrote of feeling tired and lacking energy. Well, the bad news is that the fatigue hasn't gotten better you. It's worse. So much worse. I have good days and even good weeks, but I also have weeks when I wonder at what point I need to talk to someone at work about cutting my hours back. I go to choir rehearsal and feel exhausted at the thought of doing that for seventeen more years. Some days, there's no energy to be friendly even, I have to save all the energy for myself and my functioning. I can't send it on other people.
And this is hard. It's partly hard because there are no answers yet. I have almost a book of lab results telling me that I am very healthy. I have four hours' worth of MRI scan telling me my brain and spine have no abnormalities. I eat a very clean diet. And yet I feel this way. (I will add that I am continuing to work with a couple of doctors on additional possibilities. I am even a little hopeful right now that I may have some new test results back on Monday that may tell me something). But it's cruddy. It's not who I want to be and it's not who I am. But it's my reality right now.
So sometimes little things can put me over the edge. Sometimes all it takes is a Facebook post from a friend who is elated that they were able to run X miles, bike x miles, lift X amount of weights, or any other kind of challenge. I get mad. I cry. Because it's not fair. It's not fair that I want to do those things so much, and I can't.
and then I cry more, because images of other people come into my mind. People like my mom, who have even less freedom and autonomy than I do. Because when we get down to it, I'm still very mobile. I can still take care of myself. I can still do things and live an okay life. And then I get more mad, because I'm upset at what I can't do, but so many people can do even less than I.
And you know the only way that it doesn't drive me crazy, this train of thought? It's coming around to realize tha I'm right- it's not fair. But what's not fair is the comparison. What's not fair is ranking people in any way like this. And the ranking can go either way- it's possible to be active and energetic and think that makes you better than other people, and it's also possible to be very limited or handicapped and look down on others because they don't know how hard life can be.
And so I work on having a quiet heart. On knowing that no matter where I'm at, no matter where those around me are at, it's not fair to compare. It's never fair and it's never productive.
It's been a good but challenging week. And coming to this realization may be one of the best parts of it. Isn't it interesting how we learn lessons over and over? And yet it's not even fair to compare myself now to myself in the past and what I knew then, because the Maria today is a different person than the Maria then. And isn't it better to re-learn than to never have known at all?

Just a little finger exercise

It's spring in Utah. I know this because the weather can't make up its mind. I think it snowed last week, just a little. But this morning it was full light outside when I felt for choir at 6:45! I had to check my clock and make sure I wasn't an hour late!
I realized something recently. I've been in something of a survival mode lately. Some burnout has hit me, and I think it's time to slow down a little. I'm sure Charles, the chief man in my life right now (okay, okay, the only man in my life- okay, fine, my boyfriend), would laugh if he heard me say that, because he thinks I don't know how to slow down unless forcibly made to. And there may be some truth to that. All this last week when we were Skyping at night, I had a large embroidery hoop in my hands with a baby blanket on it that I was working on. Amazingly, it was completed in time for the baby shower yesterday. And I get restless if there's an evening with nothing planned and before you know it, I've filled it up with projects. There's always sewing projects to work on or, this time of year, yardwork to do, or meals to prepare for the nights when I'm gone until 10 PM. I do kind of want to slow down. The problem is finding that happy medium between keeping myself so busy that some days I am exhausted and being so relaxed that none of the things I need to do get done. And how do I define things that I NEED to do? See my conundrum?
I think part of it is an intense internal drive to create. It doesn't necessarily matter what I'm creating or how- creating a garden by planting seed in my indoor nursery, or digging up grass so there's more room for flowers, or even putting in hanging pots. Creating clothes, blankets, and other projects by browsing through a fabric store, running my fingers over silks, cottons, polyesters, suedes, seersucker- finding patterns that interest and excite me, or being really creative and a little crazy and creating my own. Creating beautiful (hopefully) music either on my own, in voice lessons, or with the choir. Creating a healthy body for myself by swimming, jogging, biking, and weight training (yes, triathlons have completely rewritten my exercise regimen). Creating beautiful spaces inside by arranging furniture, pictures, and knicknacks. Creating beautiful memories on hikes, bike rides, and campouts. How do I slow down without losing precious experiences and memories? It truly is a puzzle. I'm working on meditating more and such, and if I keep it up long enough, some of what I'm doing will stick. And that will be fantastic.

Six months

Well, I'm back. At least for today. My drive to write has been significantly diminished lately, and I'm working on reviving it. It's tricky, it used to be so intuitive for me to just sit and write . . . I write a lot less when I feel the weight of challenges on my shoulders. I wish that I used such times to pour out my soul onto a page, but I seem to be wired the other way. It's wiring I can change, and am working on, but rewiring human impulse does take time and effort. I thought back and forth about writing this post today. I felt like it would seem like I was trying to say "look at me, look at my story! Everybody should pay attention to me because of what I've been through!" It felt like I almost should ask my family's permission to write this post, too, in a way, because it's a situation that involved the whole family. My brain came up with so many reasons that I shouldn't write, but deep down, something quiet and steady inside of me persisted in telling me to write the story. It persisted in telling me that there is no competition, that in sharing my story I am not diminishing anyone else's experiences or trying to say that I am any better or worse than they are. Which, interestingly, is a concept that I normally feel that I have a very good grasp on. I've had six months' perspective on this story now, but at the same time, it continues to unfold. It's the kind of story that, in a way, happens all at once with a single stroke, but in a different way, will color and impact the lives of those touched, well, probably for the remained of their lives. Because six months ago today, my mother passed away. It was hardly a shock to anyone who knew her at all. She had been physically ravaged by multiple sclerosis, a disease that attacks the central nervous system, and slowly but surely wears down a person's ability to use first their fine motor skills, then eventually any motor skills, their ability to use each of their senses, especially touch and taste, but also vision. Emotions are heavily regulated by the nervous system, so they are affected as well, and ability to reason and remember starts to go. And fine motor skills includes the use of the tongue, so speech is slurred. My mother was seventeen years into her diagnosis of MS by the time of her passing, and her speech was often unintelligible to me, and even to those family members who lived with her and spoke with her on a regular basis. So when I got a phone call from my dad telling me that my mom had passed minutes before, I was not surprised. My brother Mark put it very well when he said that the news had been so expected for so long that it was unexpected when it actually came. She'd been clinging to the tattered remains of life for so long, continually slipping a little further down in her functionality, that it wasn't a surprise, but it was almost surreal. It was surreal to walk into my parents' house and see my mother sitting in the same green chair that she spent her days in any more. Her ability to move her limbs at all was so limited by the end that I kept expecting when I looked at her face to see her eyes open and watching me, proof that there was still some vitality in that frail, powerless body. But now her body was not still because of her disease. Now it was still because she was no longer inside of it. It's a curious situation in so many ways. Because really, my mother got her death sentence when I was twelve. That's when the years of disease began, and so many of the changes came on so slowly that I feel like I adjusted to them as they came, and it rarely occurred to me to contemplate how different my life would be if I had an active mother instead of filling in her role for her in many situations. In fact, the amount of mourning and grieving that I went through in the years before my mother's death far outweighs what I've experienced after her passing. There have been times in the last six months that I've felt a sudden sadness out of nowhere or cried at the thought of my mom, or had a sleepless night, but it feels like nothing compared to the moments I had in high school realizing that she wouldn't be able to walk on her own, in college realizing that I'd supplanted so many of her roles in taking care of the younger siblings, the yard, and some cooking, and the slow, bitter realization that as her ability to be emotionally healthy diminished, I no longer felt comfortable of safe confiding in her or sharing my hopes, dreams, and fears. That was when I really mourned the loss of my mother. So losing her physical body was actually, in many ways, a sense of closure. It was a release, knowing that her pain was over, her intense suffering done. I looked forward to working on my relationship with her now that she was no longer bound by the warped, twisted reality that existed in her head. And I realized something today. I felt her physically nearby several times shortly after her death, but I haven't been reaching out to her lately, and I haven't felt her. It's time to recommit and work on being close to my mom. Because the beautiful thing is that she's still my mom, we're just in different lands right now. And she'll be waiting for me.

On being a single LDS girl

I’ve been in a few situations lately that have reminded me that a lot of people my age, or older, who are single- and often LDS, although that’s not requisite- are very frustrated and rather jaded for being single. And while a lot of it can come from their own internal desires being frustrated, it seems like a lot of it is visceral reaction to the attitudes of others and their rather humorous attempts at conversing with said single people about their singleness. Honestly, I find it kind of off-putting. Conversations that focus on moaning and discussing with a kind of cynical superiority (because all those people who got married at 22 have no idea what they’re even talking about when they say “I know how you feel”) leave me squirming for an exit. Because I just don’t feel that way. I know that a huge chunk of that is due to my amazing family and fantastic friends. Maybe due in part to the fact that my own parents were 25 and (a day short of (27) when they got married, which in the 70’s was a later age than now, and both had master’s degrees and had both worked, I never felt any pressure from them. In fact, I feel like they are some of my biggest supporters. When I joined the Tabernacle Choir, I think my dad was almost more excited than I was, and he has always been enthusiastic about my interest in genetics. My siblings likewise are very good at being supportive and not feeling the need to push talk about relationship statuses. And for whatever reason, I get the same positiveness from all the other people in my life, too. So I guess when I hear a friend talk with frustration about their mom getting on their case for still being single at 28, I can’t relate, and I’m glad. So that’s a huge chunk, but the more I ponder over it, the more I realize that my own personal attitude and decisions are also a huge chunk of the fact that I am single and happy. It wouldn’t matter how supportive my parents were if I had made up my mind to be miserable or to just mark time until Mr. Right showed up. I remember actually a very pivotal moment in my decision to live my life to the fullest, regardless of when dating or marriage came up. It was a Monday evening, just over five years ago, and I had been napping in my room after a long day at school. My phone rang, and I was surprised to see my brother Tim’s name on my caller ID. Tim and I get along great, but he doesn’t call just to chat usually. This was no exception- he was calling to let me know that he was engaged. This didn’t come completely out of the blue, but I was still surprised- I didn’t realize that he was that close to proposing. I congratulated him and told him I’d come up to the parents’ house to congratulate him and Tina in person. Then I hung up the phone and stood in my room and felt my world shift. Tim is two years younger than me. I learned a lot about my perception of how things should be in those few minutes. Younger brothers aren’t supposed to get married before older sisters. That’s not how it works. My mental paradigm of a lot of things had to be rearranged. It was hard, but at the same time, I felt the beginnings of a sense of liberation. “All the rules just changed,” I thought. All the rules that I made up for myself in my head about what should happen when somehow got altered because of that brief phone call. And while I did struggle to be cheerful all the time during Tim’s engagement and on the wedding day, that sense of liberation continued. And I discovered that I could do all kinds of wonderful things, because the rules had changed. I went to Kenya and worked in an orphanage. I moved to Salt Lake and took up new hobbies and worked on old ones. I resumed voice lessons and auditioned for the Tabernacle Choir. I went back to Africa and discovered I could make my way from Rwanda to Uganda by bus. I went to China. And those are just the big, noticeable things. So many other things, too. During that time, two more of my younger siblings got married, too. Now I have five married siblings, and three of them are younger than me. Does it bother me? Well, yes, but only on days when something else is already eating at me, and maybe once every other month. Do I want to be married and have kids? Of course! But it’s not worth ruining my life over. When first Mark and then Laura got engaged, I decided that there wasn’t going to be an elephant in the room, and I had frank talks with both of them. I told them I was very happy for them, that I might have a few bad days when I was sad, and that it had nothing to do with them as people or my love for them. And I felt so much better after that! I am a daughter of God, and guess what. He has a different plan and a different path for every one of us. That’s the beauty of it! This may sound counterintuitive to the culture that we build in the LDS church sometimes, but I find so much happiness by focusing on me and what the Lord has give me, rather than focusing on all the married couples around me and what the Lord has given them.

Discovering the *Real* True Meaning of Christmas

Today I was going through some old files and happened across an essay I wrote while I was in grad school. I was visiting my favorite guys' apartment in the ward, where most of my best friends lived and where I had many amazing and involved conversations. On this particular night, I was talking to Josh when his roommate Brad came in, in the midst of some new insights about the atonement that he wanted to share and discuss. After some very good conversation, curfew came around so I went home and went to bed. However, it must have still been on Brad's mind, because he ended up writing an essay on his thoughts and sharing it with Josh and I. It was a very good and interesting essay, but I don't have his permission to post it, so I won't. However, he ended with this paragraph:

I haven’t figured out the mechanism behind the application of grace, nor how the Atonement supplies the “infinite grace” (Moroni 8:3) that was “made possible by his atoning sacrifice (Bible Dictionary). I’d also like to learn how to “tap into” this grace more. Please send me any insight into these three matters.

I was so intrigued by this line of thought that I wrote my own essay and sent it to him and Josh:

First, a quote from "The Broken Heart," Elder Bruce Hafen’s excellent commentary on the atonement, which I really give a very high recommendation. This is from the introduction, on page 7: "I once wondered if those who refuse to repent but who then satisfy the law of ustice by paying for their own sins are then worthy to enter the Celestial kingdom. The answer is no. The entrance requirements fro Celestial life are simply higher than merely satisfying the law of ustice. For that reason, paying for our own sins will not bear the same fruit as repenting of our sins. Justice is a law of balance and order and it must be satisfied, eiher through our payment or His. But if we decline the Savior's invitation to let Him carry our sins, and then satisfy justice by ourselves we will not yet have xperienced the complete rehabilitation that can occur through a combination of divine assistance and genuine repentance. Working together, those forces have the power permenantly to change our hearts and our lives, preparing us for Celestial life . . . the 'natural man' will remain an enemy to God forever- even after paying for his own sins- unless he also 'becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ and becometh as a child' (Mosiah 3:19)." I believe this is the general idea that you are getting at in your grace essay. So, the general question becomes then, how does the atonement give us that infinite grace that allows us to become like the Father, so that the atonement is a rehabilitative thing instead of just a restorative thing? To answer this question, I think we need to take a step back in time to the Garden of Eden. Before Adam and Eve partook of the fruit, there was no death in the world. They were both spiritually and physically intact. (2 Ne 2:22-23). They had physical bodies, but they were not truly separated from God the way we are today. But they were incapable of progressing. Without the fall, “all things which were created must have remained in the same state in which they were after they were created; and they must have remained forever, and had no end” (2 Ne 2:22). It was only after the fall that Adam and Eve had the necessary knowledge to know good from evil and to make conscious, informed decisions that would either bring them closer to God or farther away from Him. As we know, this agency is a critical part of the plan of salvation. No man can be saved in ignorance, it is only by consciously making good decisions and intentionally turning our hearts to God and allowing Him to change them for us that we can achieve Exaltation. However, it was also the fall that created the first real spiritual distance between God and His children on earth. For the first time, they really needed Him, His wisdom and guidance and love, but since God cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance, they were cut off from Him- they were spiritually dead. From this, I can see two important ways that the atonement provides grace for us. First, it provides us access to God. Because of the fall, or because of Adam’s transgression, we all undergo spiritual death with our physical birth. We are separated from God and He can no longer come to us and assist us because of the unclean state in which we live. Christ and the atonement are a critical part of our contact with the Father. We pray to Heavenly Father in the name of Jesus Christ because He is literally our contact between earth and heaven. Although I do not understand how, the atonement bridges he gap of spiritual death for all men who will merely come unto Christ and allow Him to open a window to heaven. Now comes the second point. The atonement overcomes spiritual death, and by so doing, allows us access to God’s goodness and blessings- or what we might call this grace. Grace, ennabling power, that which compensates for our imperfect attempts and sanctifies us. Another quote from Elder Hafen: “Consider the life and experience of the Savior himself, because His own development was marked by his receipt of the Father’s grace. His experience shows us also that being free from sin is not quite the same thing as attaining divine perfection. ‘Though he were a son, yet he learned obedience by the things which he suffered; and being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him’ (Hebrews 5:8-9)” Even the Savior Himself learned things and attained perfection through mortality and grace. Now, how does one access this grace, this power that allows us to take what we have, and through the Lord’s assistance, become so much more than we could on our own? Honestly, I think the answer to that is much more closely tied to the basic teachings of the church than most people realize. When we are asked to read our scriptures and pray and ponder on the solemnities of eternity, we are doing those things which bring us in line with the will of God. Another way of saying this is that we are coming to Christ. It is by grace we are saved after all we can do- and what we can do is come unto Christ. You may find, as I do, that the nearer I come to Christ, often the less satisfied I am with myself. In these instances, I take comfort from remembering Ether 12:27: “And if men will come unto me, I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto all men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me.” See the connection? As we come unto Christ, He shows us our weakness. He shows us things we could not see before and helps us correct them- through His grace. It is sufficient to perfect us, but only if we are humble. Any man who is absorbing the gospel through constant study and conversing with the Lord through frequent prayer should be on the right path. One other principle that I find to be quite applicable to accessing grace through the atonement- we must offer everything we have to the Lord if He is going to be able to do anything worthwhile with it. He asks for our hearts- our whole hearts, not just part. He asks us to love him with all our minds, not just half. Only when we can give our whole selves to Him can He really start to make a masterpiece. We must consecrate ourselves to Him, consecrate our actions and our desires and ourselves, so that “he will consecrate [our] performance[s] unto [us], that [our] performance[s] may be for the welfare of [our[ soul[s]” (2 Ne 32:9). For further edification, I strongly recommend reading “The Broken Heart.” I have a copy in my apartment if you want to borrow it (you’re welcome to it also, Josh). Also, for something a little shorter but also loaded with lots of insights on the atonement, Elder Hafen wrote a conference talk that covers many of the same basic ideas, “Beauty for Ashes.” It can be easily found on the church website. Thanks for giving me an excuse to write this out. It’s a lot longer than I anticipated, but it felt good.

I'm so glad I happened across this today. Isn't this what Christmas is really about? Celebrating the beginning of a life that would end with the greatest act in history? Merry Christmas to you all, and remember that the true spirit of Christmas is not about giving each other gift of merchandise, no matter how selflessly given. It's about changing our souls from the inside out and rejoicing in the atonement that makes all men free. This is the true gift of Christmas.

Today was amazing- we visited gorillas and the Rwandan Genocide Memorial in Kigali. I want to write my thoughts on the Memorial before I forget. [p] I've been reading Paul Rusesabagina's autobiography as well and I'm in the middle of reading about his experiences hiding over a thousand people in the Hotel Milles Collines in Kigali during the Interahamwe bloodbath. He had been in Brussels with his wife and two-year-old son on a vacation a mere week before the genocide's official and intense beginning when the president's plane was shot from the sky. Through a truly amazing set of events, Paul and his family stayed safely- although not comfortably- in the hotel with their refugees. [p] Paul notes several times how he wished he had stayed in Brussels a little longer, and not come back when the trouble started. I read that last night. Today as I walked from exhibit to exhibit, I thought about Paul and what he went through to save those lives, and his periodic regrets of having returned to Rwanda. And the other thought that kept popping through my head was from Music and the Spoken Word this past summer- "a ship in a harbor is safe, but that's not what a ship is made for." [p] Paul Rusesabagina and so many other brave people like him were ships on the ocean during the genocide. They risked their own lives to protect the lives of others. Paul wished that he was safely in Belgium- in his harbor, as it were, but it's hard not to believe that this particular ship's voyage was perhaps one that Paul was assigned before he came. [p] Like Paul, we all long for our safe harbor on some level. It's different for each of us, but each of us deserves to reflect on what that harbor is that's keeping us off the high seas- or perhaps a better approach is to identify the high seas when they arrive and sail into them without looking back at the harbor. [p] The other mail idea I took from the memorial was a theme I saw throughout the building. There were allusions to "how could we let this happen?" and "we must prevent this from ever happening again." And there was one very powerful plaque that related something like this: "The Nazis did not exterminate six thousand Jews and the Hutus did not kill a million Tutsis. They killed one, then another, then another, a million times." [p] As Paul writes in his book, there was no magical switch on April 6th, 1994 that caused the Hutus to suddenly hate and turn on their Tutsi neighbors and friends. It built up slowly, over years of propaganda and decades of racial division encouraged by foreign powers. It was done one toxic idea at a time, as people played on wrongs, real and imagined, , that the Tutsis had inflicted on them as the ruling class. [p] And then I pondered how those small grudges and divisions built and built until they created a genocide. [p] Last year, I had a powerful conversation with someone about a close friend of mine who I'd been having some trouble feeling close to. As we spoke, this man asked me what I had done to create the distance between us. I reflected and confessed that all I could think about were the thinks she had done to me. [p]I was gently reprimanded as the man stopped me and said, "no, no, that's not how you go about healing a relationship. Can you see that really the conflict between you and your friend is no different than the conflicts that we are at war over? They all start with a misunderstanding that goes deeper and deeper until a relationship si broken, or a war begins." [p] So, as I read the plaque that stated that until we truly learn from the past, "never again" will stay "again and again," I concluded that the way to prevent a genocide is at the very roots of a society. If we can set aside our pride for humility and allow love to swallow up our differences, if we can have the courage to be honest with each other and live the mantra that we are all on the same team- if my friend loses, I also lose in some way- then we need never fear another genocide. However, if all we are relying on are the band-aids of law enforcement, armies, and the UN, then who's to say it won't happen again? [p] So, for myself, I choose to take a stand against genocide and other atrocities by living my principle. I chose to take a stand by eliminating prejudice from my life, and living so there are no strangers in my life. I choose to love, and to feed that love so there is no room for hate. If I do this, if we do this, how many lives can we change? [p] perhaps you'd like to reflect on yourself and make your own personal resolution to stand with me.

'Twas the night before Thanksgiving . . .

And all through the house, the nephews kept stirring around like a mouse. The sisters were cooking in the kitchen with care, in hopes that good dishes soon would be there. And I on my sofa was trying to sleep but near me were young boys who kept making peeps. There's an interesting trend the last couple of years when I spend the night at the family house if my nephews are there. They magically gravitate to wherever I'm sleeping at night. And since I long since lost the privilege of having a dedicated room to stay in (which is very appropriate), often that means that there are three of us piled on couches and on the floor. We've had some adventures, including the time that I was planning on staying in the room with two twin beds and both T and K wanted to join me. I gave them a little explanation about how there were only two beds but three people, so one of them would be sleeping on the floor, when K piped in, "that's okay, you can share my bed." So I ended up sharing the bed with a five-year-old. Tonight we are downstairs, with T and I sleeping on the leather sofas and K sleeping on the floor in a little low fort that he made himself, mostly consisting of blankets draped over upside-down banana chairs. It completely reminds me of something I would have done at his age. He spent a long time adjusting it, until it was time to pull out the stern aunt voice and tell him that it was sleeping time. Then he ran upstairs for a drink of water and I'm almost positive he snuck a fresh Thanksgiving roll from the rack while he as up there, because I can hear him quietly smacking on something under the blankets and chairs. At this point I'm not sure it's worth it to fight that battle, though. Time to go to sleep so I can be awake for the family Turkey Trot tomorrow morning. And have a good Thanksgiving before heading off to Rwanda on Friday. Hooray! Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!