Joy in the Journey

Someone recently asked me to share how I have learned to find joy in the journey, amidst the stresses of everyday life with raising a large family and dealing with adversity in life. She said it should be something like a take-home message to my children, my posterity, similar to the young man who sent home a message to his family while a prisoner of war in Asia. Here goes:
To start off with, many of you know a bit of what happened with my son just under six years ago. It was a searing-ly painful experience, emotionally and mentally, from which I learned a great deal. One of the lessons I learned was about trials and hardships. I had someone come up to me after this experience with my son and say, "I used to think you always had it altogether and couldn’t relate to anyone because your life was so perfect. Now I feel that I can relate to you." That shocked me then, and I continue to marvel at the comment, innocently said, yet so wrong. For years before I had struggled with depression, and, having experienced both a "more visible trial" and those years, I believe firmly in the truth of the quote I memorized years ago that goes something like this: "The greatest battles we will ever face will be fought in the silent chambers of our own souls."
I wonder if sometimes it is not harder to struggle with something that is not seen and therefore receive little external support than with a, like I said, "visible trial". The take-home message to me is, we just can’t compare. That being said, I want to say we all experience trials in this life and need the message President Monson has in his talk, "Finding Joy in the Journey" (Ensign magazine, November 2008).
The way that I may find daily joy is best captured in the context of the "Serenity Prayer":
God grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change
The Courage to change the things I can;
And the Wisdom to know the difference.
First, to accept the things I cannot change.
Thinking in our lives, there are many things we "cannot change": the one year old unpotting a plant into his crib (the dirt was everywhere!); traffic–the other drivers on the road!; on a more serious note, family member’s attitudes and actions; and, my personal favorite, hormones. (They are real!) So how can we find joy, the "Serenity", to accept these things?
First it helps to realize that trials have a purpose. C.S. Lewis states it best:
"Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is just that He is building quite a different house than the one you thought of–throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace."
We are truly being made into "palaces" yet we don’t know how to build them. We need to trust that He who sees all things knows what He is about.
Second, attitude and humor are essential. I love the anecdote told of a man traveling on a path who comes to a town. A group of old men are sitting along the side of the road as he enters the town, and the traveler asks them, "What are the people like in this town?" The men look at each other then answer the strangers question with one of their own, "What were the people like in the town you came from?" The traveler thought for a moment and then said, "Well, they were alright, enough, I suppose, but were pretty vicious and mean...the standoffish type, if you know what I mean." The old men said, "They’re pretty much the same here," and the traveler continued on in a hurry. Another traveler came along later that day and asked the same question of the group of men, to which they responded with the same question, "What were the people like in the town you came from?" The traveler’s eyes lit up as he said, "Oh, I am sure they had their faults, but they were the best kind of people you could find once you got to know them." The old men promptly responded, "Well, they’re pretty much the same here." Attitude can be everything.
Humor is the balm of our existence. Laugh, take pictures those moments when you’d like to scream and pull your hair out. I have photos of kid’s cribs full of dirt, with dirt smeared across their faces, Lily eating the flowers in my front flower bed as a baby, Drew standing on top of a table strewn with Cheerios, while his older brother Isaak quickly eats as much as he can of the ones spilled on the floor before mom comes to "find out", kids practically naked in the garden busily digging up my freshly planted vegetables, and many more. Of course there are many times when I chose the angry, frustrated route, but those times I chose to laugh stand out as precious to me. A little while back, Piper, my two-year-old came up to where Quinn, our sister Tasha, and I were lounging on the couches talking to each other and proudly handed me a towel covered in poop! Ahhhhhh! I quickly thanked her for it and retrieved it, and then hurried it out to the garbage can....sorry! I didn’t want to face dealing with that! Then we went on the "treasure hunt" to find the rest of it, after Quinn carefully helped me strip her, clean her in truth, and put her into a bath. What a sweet little independent girl! We found the "treasure" shortly after, and I took on the "honor" of eliminating it. Tasha just laughed and laughed. While I didn’t take a picture (the immediacy of the towel took precedence), it was so good to laugh.
The third component of accepting things we cannot change, I believe, is to realize that life is the journey, not just the destination. C.S. Lewis says it best:
"The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions
of one's 'own,'or 'real' life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are
precisely one's real life-- the life God is sending one day by day."
We need to enjoy the snuggles, the books, the moments with family and friends. We need to stop looking ahead to the life "we hope to live someday" and expect that it is then that we will have joy. As President Monson has stated so many times, if we store up enough tomorrows, all we will have is a bunch of empty yesterdays. We also need to stop and literally smell the roses or take those "time outs" to be in nature, to witness ourselves surpassed as Thoreau suggested. Doing this enables us to recognize the hand of God, His glory and omnipotence, and can restore our faith in His ability to watch over us.
The next step in the prayer of Serenity is to change what we can.
The first essential part of this process is to change our concept of "perfection". We often start our days with an ideal of "the perfect day", with a huge list and the ambition to check it all off. Well, that doesn’t always go that way....does that mean our day is perfect? When our child falls and skins their knee right when we are off to do visiting teaching, making us late, does that mar our day? When someone calls and desperately needs a visit or a chat, and we don’t get the bread made or the laundry rotated, does this make our day a failure? What is perfection? Perfection is living the life we are meant to live. There are a few key ideas that I have found help me be proactive in affecting those things in my life over which I do have control.
First and foremost is the need to take ownership over our attitude and agendas. So many times we feel overwhelmed, yet we conversely feel that if we let "anything" go, life as we know is will not go on the way it was "meant" to. We need to remember that we ultimately have control over our lives, for the most part. For example, I have a friend who decided to leave her husband and her children and go and "find herself" in San Francisco. We could do the same at any time. Of course there are consequences, but that example provides a sharp illustration of just how much we have to do. So we choose the life we are leading, in large part, and, even if we don’t have control over some things, we ultimately have control over the attitudes that we have. Look at the examples of Corrie Ten Boom, of Victor Frankl, of Gordon B. Hinckley. Each of these individuals made a choice in their attitudes. We can do the same. Often, Quinn will come home and find me frazzled and frustrated, yet when he asks how I am, I grit my teeth and growl, "Great! I am choosing to have a good day!!" :)
One way I have found to exhibit this control, this choice, is by (1) putting on that ofttimes fixed grin (the power of suggestion is just that...powerful!) and (2) serving. Nothing heals, nothing soothes, nothing puts things in perspective the way service does. When I am miserable and depressed, I can always attribute it to selfishness. I am just too focused on myself! The best way to combat this is pray that I may find someone to serve.
This leads to my next tool for taking ownership over our lives: prayer. Elder Eyring, in the April 2007 conference said:
"The God who gives us each day as a treasure will require an accounting...This day is a precious gift of God..." A morning prayer and an early search in the scriptures ca set the course for a day. We can know which task, fo all those we might choose, matters most to God and therefore to us...such a prayer is always answered if we ask and ponder with childlike submission, ready to act without delay to perform even the most humble service...All would be possible for the humblest of us...The temptation to delay will come from...two feelings...one to be complacent...and the other to feel overwhelmed.
"Lovingly pray: ‘Please let me serve this day. It doesn’t matter to me how few things I may be able to do. Just let me know what I can do. I will obey this day. I know I can, with thy help.
"Hard as things seem today, they will be better in the next day if you choose to serve the Lord this day with your whole heart...when your burdens become too heavy, the Lord, whom you have served, will carry what you cannot. He knows how. He prepared long ago. He suffered your infirmities and your sorrows when He was in the flesh so He would know who to succor you."
We need to have faith that we are enough.
We are not sent down to fail. He sent us that we might have joy. It is a CHOICE: the price has been paid for our joy (see Romans 5?) despite our imperfections. It is for us to accept that gift.