Why limitations help us learn what matters most

Middle of the night musings once again.

Yesterday morning, I began the day by listening to my "conference talk of the week," an idea I got from a friend at church.  As the talk I had selected finished, I was still working in the kitchen and my hands were busy so I went onto the next one,..and then the next one.

Elder Bednar's voice, that calm and powerful voice, began to speak about his brethren who had died, paying loving tribute to them.  He then brought up the concern of many that our Church is led by old men.  His response was thoughr-provoking:

President Hinckley [said], “Isn’t it wonderful to have a man of maturity at the head, a man of judgment who isn’t blown about by every wind of doctrine?” (broadcast on Apr. 7, 1996)...

Several years ago I spent a Sunday afternoon with Elder Hales in his home as he was recovering from a serious illness. We discussed our families, our quorum responsibilities, and important experiences. 

At one point I asked Elder Hales, “You have been a successful husband, father, athlete, pilot, business executive, and Church leader. What lessons have you learned as you have grown older and been constrained by decreased physical capacity?” 

Elder Hales paused for a moment and responded, “When you cannot do what you have always done, then you only do what matters most.” 

I was struck by the simplicity and comprehensiveness of his answer. My beloved apostolic associate shared with me a lesson of a lifetime—a lesson learned through the crucible of physical suffering and spiritual searching. 

The limitations that are the natural consequence of advancing age can in fact become remarkable sources of spiritual learning and insight. The very factors many may believe limit the effectiveness of these servants can become some of their greatest strengths. Physical restrictions can expand vision. Limited stamina can clarify priorities. Inability to do many things can direct focus to a few things of greatest importance. 

 Yesterday, I was faced with so many of the limitations that I face:
-many demands on my time and attention
-a idealistic vision of what I want to happen for my children and homeschooling and continuous inability to do it all, however well-meaning, inspired or necessary I feel it may be
-exhaustion from being up some of the night with a teething baby
-children who have dreams and visions of their own that don't always coincide with mine at the moment
...basically not enough time and energy to do "it all."  Yah.  Go figure.  Maybe this sounds familiar?

Bednar's words floated around in my head as I busily and earnestly went through my day, trying to stop and meet a need here and meet a need there in my quest to "get it done."

In the evening, Liliputian came up to me and cheerfully said, "Should we start packing for the Moores' house (our Thanksgiving destination)?"

"No!" I snapped abruptly.  "We are out of time.  I have spent all day trying to help and work and now we simply don't have enough time."  She walked away, crest-fallen.

Now my Lily is a treasure, one who takes care of others and (for the most part) works hard at her many stewardships.  She is soft in her answers, loving in her support of those who are hurt in our home, and one who continually reaches out to me to make my perceived burdens lighter.   My answer (and attitude!) were utterly unfair to her. But I didn't leave it at that!  I went into her later and continued to dump on her my grown-up frustrations with my limited time and ability, my intuitive guilty recognition that, somehow, I had missed the point of Bednar's message making me upset...and I was taking it out on her sensitive twelve-year old heart.

Seeing her tear-rimmed eyes at scriptures later that night touched me to the quick, and I strove to heal what I had hurt.  Loving soul that she is, she forgave me, but I could still see lingering doubts as to her self-worth and value in my eyes.

As I sat up nursing my baby in those precious, reflective nighttime hours later that night, my thoughts wandered back to Bednar's message.  What was truly important? Or, to rephrase Elder Hales poignant statement:

“When you cannot do what you [would like to get done], ...what matters most?” 

The Spirit gently whispered, "What matters most is to nurture your children. Not make pies.  Not make rolls.  Not rearrange and paint and clean the house.  You will always have something more to do.  I gave you endless possibility of what you could do with your time so that you could discover and practice at and learn what truly matters most. 

"You can use those activities as canvases to include your children in, to teach them and spend time with them and inspire them.  But they, your children are the reason why you are doing it.  And when you are doing it at their expense, you are not doing 'what matters most.' 

"They are what matters most."

Whirling thoughts

Last night as I lay awake after nursing the baby at 2 am, my mind exploded with ideas about the next day, upcoming events and other odds and ends.  Fabulous ideas.  Ideas that often disappear by morning.   

Yet, as soon as I wake up, I seem to lack that clarity, that focus, that vision.

There is something about those midnight hours that are time-less for me, that allow me to step outside of the weight of driving accountability for how I spend each minute...a weight that often creates anxiety within myself as I obsess over the "good, better, best" of each moment.

I don't like obsessing,  I don't like anxiety.  I like the calm stillness, the peace within that I feel in the middle of the night that steps outside of the whirlwind advance of daytime hours.

Hmmm...want to figure out how to do that.  Daily magnesium supplements has definitely helped. :)

Perhaps I got my answer yesterday as I listened to 2 Nephi 9 during the "organizing" hours before church.  Jacob goes over the span of the world's existence, from the opening powerful scenes of creation to the wind-up victory of Christ and God over the world.  Trust in God.  Trust in His power.  We know the end and that should give us hope that as we put our trust, our faith, our focus on Him and how He would have us live our lives, we can know the end will be amazing.

Isn't that why I stew and fret? Fearing that by some action today I may set in motion destructive sequences in the future?  If I act with charity, submissiveness and faith, the outcome will be for the best, even if "the best" doesn't look like I initially thought it would.  Perhaps we need to not only trust before we take action, but, having moved forward trusting God, we can trust that the outcome was what it needed to be.

Why isn't it easy to trust in the surest thing, surest power, surest course ever proven...

the hand, power and plan of God?

Why the rice experiment WORKS and what it taught me

Love.  Love is what it is all about.

As I have been trying to apply the "rice jar" experiment I mentioned a couple of days ago, I find myself in a frustrating situation with someone, realize my feelings toward them are generating "bad rice," picture white rice inside of them, love the rice, and then insert their face.

Crazy?  Perhaps.  But it is amazing how it changes my focus, motives and thoughts.

I have been pondering why in the world this would work and I think I got it:  the only way to love a jar of rice is unconditionally.  It gives nothing back and will show no immediate gratitude or response to your love.  The love you give it is from the heart and has to be genuine because there is no feedback to know if you are doing it "right" and certainly no one to impress.

Try it. It is crazy. But sometimes crazy is all we have left to try in a relationship.

And, if we use this method, we are truly loving someone for themselves.  It is what love really means.

 

Are My Kids Innards Turning into Moldy Rice?

Good question, eh?  Perhaps it is not the typical question a father or mother may ask themselves.  How about a teacher, mentor or grandparent?  Still no?  Maybe it should be.

It is now one that I ask myself every day and almost every time I have one of those moments of choice as a parent:  how should I respond?

Why in the world would I be asking myself this reflective question about bacterial growth and grains? Let me just say that it is one of God's most unusual yet powerful answers, and it came in response to a question I asked on Sunday.

That question?  How can I help my sweet Papaya, my beautiful five-year old daughter.  I have been struggling with my little Papaya.  She has been lashing out severely, extremely, violently. I have heard the phrase "oppositional defiance disorder" and that seems to fit, although I tend to shy away from generic labels.  I have tried many things but it seemed she was still struggling.

And as I held her and watched her on Sunday, I had a flash of insight.  My little girl was battling, not me and the rest of the world like it appeared, but she was really battling something within her.  She was hurting; she was crying out for help.  Her little five year old brain just didn't know how to communicate it.  Later that night, as I sat awake nursing little Zsa, I wept. I wept for my little girl as I saw that we as a family were all lined up against her in many ways, prepared to fight back, prepared to protect ourselves and our belongings, prepared to be strong in response to whatever she threw at us.

And there she was, precious little soul, facing this army of family, friends and community who were all armed and ready to fight.  Sure, "fight" may be a strong word, but it seems to fit.  Even if we were "seeking what was best for her," we had labeled her without words, identifying her difficult and often disturbing behavior as "just Papaya."

And her mother was at the forefront, battle gear ready.

As the tears flowed, I humbly opened up my heart to my Father and pled with Him, pled with Him so that I may know how I could reach her and help her.  His answer was to spend every possible waking moment with her, watching her, loving her, helping her, and to ask the rest of the family to pray for her.

Remember the rice?  I will get to it, I promise.

The next morning, I spread the word gently. "Please pray for Papaya.  She is little.  She is hurting and she is scared.  Don't worry about changing how you treat her.  Just pray for her."  Even that petition, just to pray for one of our number that was suffering, has softened the attitude and language towards her from her siblings.  Just pray for her.

As I continued along, seeing glimmers of improvement and thinking of ways I could help Papaya, I still felt a little helpless in moving forward.  On Tuesday morning, almost as an afterthought, Avot brought up a video that a friend had shared with her that Avot felt applied to what we had watched and discussed for devotional: the rice experiment.

Just looking for this experiment online brought up example after example of people who, like me, probably thought "Really??"

As my skepticism battled with the "evidence" before me, I thought, Why not?  Why not believe it enough to accept that how I think about something (or someone!) affects them?  I knew that was true.

Months ago I was really struggling with one of my children.  They were bitter, battling and antagonistic...and so was I.  No matter what my husband and I did, we weren't reaching them.  The child was dark and I felt dark too.  The child was aggressively anti-everything we had to do and say.  Many times I wondered, what in the world am I doing wrong?  And, even as I knew I loved this child, I was at war with them and sometimes in those desperate moments many parents experience wished either they or I would leave so that the battle would be "over."  It was horrendous.

As I prayed for what I should do one frustrating night, I had one of those flashes of insight.  My child was hurt. My child was tired. My child was bruised.  My child was suffering.  And they needed my love.  What?!  How could I show love and still be the strong parent I felt like I needed to be? It felt so fake sometimes and this child could see through fake.   And yet...God opened to me a glimpse of how He saw my child and my heart was overwhelmed with love. I knew that I needed to change my thought processes from battle-mode to "see the genius and beauty"-mode.  I knew, deep down, that my child's emotional life, their future life, depended a great deal upon my choice at that moment.

How to do this?  Flash of insight.  Inspiration. I started by buying a notebook.

I opened to the first page and wrote down: "You were born for greatness and I see it everyday.  Today I saw it as you..." Then, I wrote down something that I saw that was good in that child's behavior.  Everyday, I would write down on a new, dated page, "You were born for greatness and I see it everyday. Today I saw it as you..." and then follow it with a new specific observation. Some days it was very, very hard.  We still fought.  We still didn't see eye to eye.  Sometimes I wrote a lot and sometimes I wrote one line.  But it was always true.  And it was always every day.  Every once in a while I would miss a day, but I always went back and wrote down something for that day.

Over time I would see him leave it out where I could find it easily in the dark, or see some pages turned back from where I had left it.  No matter how hard the day had been, I would find it.  It was never mentioned.  Never discussed.

One notebook became two.  One was lost during one of the many moves we experienced earlier this year so I bought another one.  When the other one was found, I went back to the first and finished up that one then continued on the new one.

Every day.

I saw some softening, some glances of pondering: Does she really mean it?

My mind went back to this experience when I saw the moldy rice video.  Through some additional challenging times for us all, my husband and I continued to imperfectly love and reach out and our child continued to imperfectly try to make things work at home.  However, over this time I had seen that my attitude toward the child had become not one of  "Oh no, what are they going to do next? How should I prepare for the next battle?  The next challenge?" to "I know they will get it eventually; I just need to keep loving, praying and hoping; they are awesome and I love them so much!"

The miracle was the softening of my own heart.

So when I saw the rice experiment, I decided to accept it as a truth, because my application of that truth has already changed my family and my parenting.  As I looked at little Papaya, I saw the years since our move to Hungary when her assertive, confident behavior began, the years full of thoughts of darkness, frustration, anger and even (horribly!) moments of hate directed at this spunky little body.  Hate at what I felt she was making me become, when I knew it was me.  Hate at myself and my behavior and thoughts that I directed at her.  I thought of the rice.

I thought of how I looked at her when I was upset.  How did that lady look at her jars, the one labeled "hate," the other labeled "love"?  I thought of the rice.

Yesterday, as she thrashed and yelled in my arms, I directed thoughts of love at her.
When she threw toys and ran away from me, I directed thoughts of love at her.
Late last night as she finally dropped off to sleep, I directed thoughts of love at her.

Since then, I have taken so many moments with my children to think thoughts of love their direction, shaping their "rice," their hearts, with their mother's love.  And do you know something?  I am less abrupt, less forceful, less coercive, less demanding, less critical already. It is hard to feel despair and criticism when you are directing thoughts full of pure love emotion to them.

Imagine the jar. Imagine what someone would have to do to the jar to "give love." Look, talk gently, think love to it.  Seems corny but, hey!  What are the fruits? Is there any possible way that doing this to our children, our spouses, our friends would produce a negative outcome?

Not that I can think of.

So what if it did make a difference and the only thing we had to change was how we directed our thoughts?

For the last 36 hours I have been looking at my children as jars of cooked rice, and I may say, as Robert Frost did in his poem, that this has made all the difference.

Road less taken, baby.  

Powerful stuff.  

Just think "rice" and the power of your thoughts.  

Anyone can think "love."

Try it.

Adorning the heart

...and I am not talking about pinning a corsage onto the internal organ of our body. :)

I am referring to the phrase Peter uses in 1 Peter 3 when speaking to wives (although the application would obviously bless us all):

3.  [Your] adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, and of putting on apparel; 

4. But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.

So how do we adorn our hearts?

What a beautiful and deep image...would love some feedback below and I will muse about this concept as well.

 

Thy waste places will blossom...

Get this ugliness out. I am frustrated this morning because it feels like every step forward I try to take I run into all sorts of complications:

-make breakfast: have to wash the bowl first
-read my scriptures: the garbage has to be run out to the curb before the garbage man gets here at 7 am
-ponder: the baby boys need diaper changes
-write in my journal to vent: the kids are fighting up where the baby is sleeping
-try to start a new, private blog/journal to download "garbage"...getting out those negative, probably unreal emotions, blaming and frustrations per Kirk Duncan's advice: have no idea how to operate wordpress.com.

Whatever!

My mind wanders to my scripture reading I WAS able to get in: "Thy waste places will blossom."  Feeling pretty wasted.  Grateful for the Spirit that is now descending to help me find peace in the middle of garbage.  Crazy!  Glad I was able to get in what I got in and that God's power is truly enough to make these waste places (my emotional place!) blossom...how He does it is beyond me. 

Moving forward.  Time to go and do what I can with laundry on the kitchen table, 2 year old playing with toilet in the bathroom and three little girls who seem to need, need, need.  Breakfast must happen soon or emotions will erupt!

Think blossom.

Musings about happiness and complacency

My mind is awash with different emotions.  Part of me is soooo excited that I have countertops!  And then there is that ugly negative side of me: the whining side :(.  "But what about the sink?!  It is not hooked up yet!"

Really?! 

I am quite frankly getting a little tired of hearing myself whine.  I am sure Quinn is, but he just smiles, hugs me, and gives up even more of what non-existent "free-time" he has to work on anything he can in the kitchen, which inevitably means going to the store for more parts or trying things one way and then another. 

So I took a minute and just looked at my counter-tops, my kitchen, my beautiful new kitchen and realized something.  As happy as I am to have a place to prepare food, store it and clean it up without doing it over dirt, it is not a happiness that is deep in my soul.

Maybe that is my problem. I am seeking for external indicators to make me deeply happy and that will never work.

On the other hand, when Papaya was flying off the handle last night after I turned off the videos they were watching, I took her gently in my arms and soothed her. I opened up a book to read to the little ones at night which I haven't done for a few days and instead of putting Spooner in bed, I set him on my lap and snuggled while I read, "Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?"  I smiled as the words of the book reminded me of all the blessings I have.  I did get tired and grumpy when Baby Zsa was up most of the night and I did the semi-comatose nursing, but as I looked at my beautiful sleeping Papaya and Spooner, my soul warmed with that deep, true happiness that reaches everywhere.

What is it about human interaction and service that can do that?  Crazy.  These little ones also fill it deeply. As I called my dear friend Angie and we discussed Thanksgiving plans, she brought up how wonderful that it will be to have little ones around.  Yes, they can be noisy and mischevious, we both agreed, but there is something about having them around that makes holidays and life in general just a little sweeter and more magical.

Another thought that I brought up with Quinn last night was "what is the difference between contentment and complacency"? I have been doing the vision board of Kirk Duncan and an interesting side effect for me: I find myself seeing more of the beauty in my life.  I want to just be content. I want to slow down the moments, enjoy the snuggles, smile at my kids more and see their faces light up with the knowledge that in the moment, their mother loves them. It is amazing to see the effect of geniunely shown love...and it's ugly opposite of selfishly driven scorn and harsh judgement.  Unfortunately I have seen both, both the lighting of the eyes and the crushed spirit following unjust or overly harsh or critical chastisement.

Back to the issue, though: at what point does contentment become complacency and how do I determine which is which?  Sigh.  I know the answer :).  Follow the Spirit.  Why "sigh," Mary!!  You will know it is true and you will recognize when to act on it.

More of a rambling entry, I suppose, but if anyone has any thoughts or responses to my musings, I would welcome them!

Too Much Beauty?

The other day, we were driving around on some errand and I took a moment to really look at the beautiful barns, fields and forests of this beautiful upstate New York area.  Once again, it took my breath away.   But how often do I acknowledge or even get think about it?  Do I forget or does it become less beautiful?

When we are surrounded by beauty and blessings, we tend to get used to them, to take them for granted.  As I thought about this, I realized that perhaps this is one of the advantages of trials, deprivations, tribulations...it makes us appreciate the beauty and peace of what was "normal."

If we truly lived in beauty all the time, would we acknowledge it?  Would it take our breath away after the 100th morning of waking up to it?  Or would we take it for granted and still find ways to be discontent and ungrateful?

I do.

These thoughts sent my head spinning into new directions: how blessed my life is with healthy children, a husband that not only is faithful to me but honors and respects me, a roof over my head, food to eat, clean air to breathe, water to drink, friends who smile when they see me, fingers that work, hair that is thick and curly...yes!   It may seem crazy, but how many times do we miss the things that are beautiful in our life because we are so preoccupied with our expanding waistlines, our missing countertops, the unfinished floor, the arguing, our busy schedules,...the many things we don't have and think we should have?

What would we do with all that beauty, if we had truly beautiful, perfect lives all of the time?  Would we see it? Do we see it now? 

Maybe God really knows what He is doing when He saves beauty for the moments that matter most...or maybe He is waiting for us to acknowledge the beauty that he has already placed in our lives.  Hmmm...

...and sometimes the greatest beauty is found in the heart of a trial...

or in the heart of a friend's sorrow as you mourn together or grow together to a deeper level of friendship on the other side of a storm...

What is my work?

"I will give unto him a commandment that he shall do none other work, save he work which I shall command him."--2 Nephi 3:8

How often do we spend our days, busily looking sideways to compare our paths with those around us as some kind of "measure" of how we are doing?

How can we do that when they are doing their own work?  We cannot possibly do the same work as everyone else, so why do we use that as a measuring stick?

What is my work?  Hmmm...so fun to think about!  I can think about a bunch of things I wish it would include: fencing (the sport, not building ones in my yard :)...),...well.  Strange.  I guess that is my only "love" that has not fit in somehow or other during this "work of motherhood"!  

Maybe I just want more time to do all the little things I do get to do: art, reading, snuggling with cute kids, scrapbooking, spending time laughing with and loving my best friend Quinn, discussing, visiting, walking, playing basketball, traveling.  How wonderful that my work could include fantastic tidbits of all my loves!  How many hours have I spent wishing my "work" looked different!  The other day I was even watching Mormon Messages and all I could think about was how beautiful the lady's completed kitchen looked :).  Silly.  How easily Satan can get us distracted from what matters most.  

May I move forward and look at the work that is before me with joy and anticipation...and content.