What's a Family For?

“Sometimes we want to have growth without challenges and to develop strength without any struggle. But growth cannot come by taking the easy way. We clearly understand that an athlete who resists rigorous training will never become a world-class athlete. We must be careful that we don’t resent the very things that help us put on the divine nature.” Elder Paul V. Johnson of the Seventy, General Conference, April 2011

His tiny face is dominated by the largest eyes I have ever seen on a baby and the thick shock of shiny yellow hair is a delightful contrast and surprise. His perfect head lay against the pillow on my lap, so that we could interact face to face while we rocked. It was our first opportunity to have a real interview – just Grammy and Little Boy Blue.

Of course, I had lots of questions and I asked them, but he was reticent to answer just yet. He knew I suppose, that his recollections of the home he’d left a week before were too brilliant for my dull brain; I might explode if he revealed too much. So instead, he kept his intelligence under wraps -- only he couldn’t keep the glow of it from spilling out of those huge, black eyes. I rocked, basked in his glory, and took up the slack in the conversation.

Grandma banter covers a lot of ground. For instance, Little Boy Blue is now oriented to nearly every Merit Badge. (I think he’s excited about Cubs.) Yet for all the talk, most of our bonding time was spent silently appraising one another; just staring; just considering the possibilities.

I must admit, when Old meets New like that, the bulk of “possibilities” are on a grand scale: what grandma doesn’t wonder if she is holding a future President of the United States or the genius who may cure cancer? On the other hand, and maybe because I had just attended Sir Henry’s memorial and graveside service, I realized with a slight shudder that “the possibilities” also included a great deal of loss and pain.

All of a sudden, I wanted to protect my Little Boy Blue from real life. And then I wanted to protect his parents. My imaginary umbrella grew and grew until it ballooned big enough to cover an entire group of people – the ones I call “family”.

What really saddened me momentarily was the thought that my umbrella was not made of some heavy Indian rubber, but was more of a parasol made of paper. Nothing I could do would ever shield my loved ones, especially Little Boy Blue, from the risks associated in the Plan of Salvation, nor would/should I desire such a thing. The prospect of growth, of growth all the way to perfection, over-ruled my natural instinct to squelch trouble and tribulation from having their sway.

And then there’s my baby girl, who will be married next Saturday. Talk about risk! I envision she and her Little-Boy-Blue-nephew jumping feet-first into very deep water, while I wait, somewhat helplessly, at pool’s edge to see how long before they come up for air. Each of them are surrendering all illusion of control, giving themselves wholly into the hands of others, with no other strategy or defense or protection other than love.

With that picture, the things I had been studying and musing about recently, finally all came together and sunk deep into my heart. The essence of it is this:

The rain and the sun in Father’s Plan of Happiness, his Plan of Redemption, our tailor-made Plan of Spiritual Maturation, is obviously not about deflecting pain. It’s about absorbing pain; greater and greater amounts of it. With each new addition to our family, through marriage or birth, the risks may be increasing, but from where else comes the joy of progress? Family life is not a way of hiding or shading from suffering, but a way of suffering purposefully. No family will ever come into being, or become ultimately successful,  who doesn’t accept that reality and relinquish control over life and one another, which, in fact, is precisely how love wins in the end and fills our lives with the peace and abundance we all crave.

I wanted to explain all that to Little Boy Blue as he lay on my lap: I wanted to teach him that instead of fearing “the possibilities”, he should completely and enthusiastically embrace them, even relish them, and that we, his family, would love him through every eventuality. But just as I was formulating the words, those great, dark eyes lit up, a quiver of a smile passed his lips, and I heard a petite voice say, “It’s alright Grammy, I’ll take good care of you. It’s gonna be so much fun.”

Related Musings:
Imagine a Life
What You Don't Have of Have Lost

The Windows of Heaven

"Tithing is an ancient law from God. He made a promise to His children that He would open the windows of heaven, and pour...out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it." Face the Future with Faith, Elder Russell M. Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

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The United States Dollar (USD) and the Great British Pound (GDP) used to be on friendly terms. Times, as they are however, have strained the relationship, so that Mr. Dollar taps rather weakly at the door of Sir Pound. During our thirteen months in London, I gave up converting the difference in my head with every purchase - it became too depressing. I liked to imagine they were on a level playing field, but the truth knocked us about with every visit to the bank. Living in London is one of the most expensive propositions in the world!

Besides straddling households on two continents (with three trips back and forth "across the pond"), we had two-plus-one in their senior year of college, and another marrying and buying his first house. When I think of the impact of our European travel on the family balance sheet, I have to use self-talk like smelling salts: 'It was worth it.'...'once-in-a-lifetime'...'think of the memories!'. However, the best antidote to sticker shock I've found yet is to "remember, remember"... (Alma 5:5-7 and Pres. Henry B. Eyring)

One of my jobs as a young mom was the household budget. I kept it and I spent it and I sweated over it (my husband sweated for it). Paying the rent, the car, the credit cards, the utilities, etc. was never a piece-of-cake -- it was more like eating mushy peas and liver -- but the hardest check to write each month was the one to the church. Neither of us had grown up in active families, so we weren't accustomed by experience or example to paying our tithing.

I can recall a couple of miraculous episodes -- obviously orchestrated by angels to bolster my faith -- when immediate blessings popped up after a squaring of the shoulders, a squeezing of the eyes, and a thrust of tithing into the hands of bishop.

One of those times left us short $200 for an upcoming trip to Philadelphia for Ashley's therapy program. Another meant we had $100 less for desperately needed groceries and baby supplies. In the first instance, we learned the next day that a group of our friends (who were oblivious to our predicament) had taken up a collection for us covering the deficit exactly. In the second trial, believe it or not, I found $100 wedged into the pages of my Old Testament! But those kind of Red Sea Partings, though absolutely true, are not typical testimonies.

What IS typical happened years later when our little kids were a little older.

In consternation I had wrestled over the bills for hours, finding no way out of the basic fact that we could not cut everyone a piece of the action. Like the proverbial elephant in the room, I was also cognizant of the fact that our tithing went unpaid. The check was written, the envelope stuffed, and the stamp affixed, but it had sat in "outgoing" for weeks.

With calculator-blisters festering on my fingers and wads of paper piling up at my feet, I sat at the kitchen table and bawled for a good fifteen minutes. Then -- with just a drop of resolve left -- like the stricken boxer who can barely manage to crawl back to his corner, I picked up the tithing envelope, opened the front door, walked down the driveway, and stood in front of the mailbox. It might as well have been Abraham standing there, looking at Issac on top of the alter: the incomprehensible thing I was about to do would either kill me and my family, or save us from annihilation. Believe me, it felt just that dramatic.

I left it there and went back inside. The mailman came and went and so did the days and weeks to follow. I can't even remember how we survived the crisis. What I do remember is that we never missed another opportunity to pay our tithing. It got easier and easier over the years, even though our contribution, by virtue of the 10% standard, got bigger and bigger. And that's the whole point, isn't it? The family prosperity-index climbed steadily up and up and up until today our grown children are virtually independent (three graduating from their university studies without any debt) and we can afford a credit-free year overseas and a big-fat Mormon wedding this summer.

Tithing is a spiritual, not a financial principle. Our maturity in the gospel has increased in direct proportion to our obedience. Growth however, has made us deeper, not taller. We still find the windows of heaven too high to see through, but we know now that they are positioned just that way so that blessings can flow from them with all the more force.

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"To develop enduring faith, an enduring commitment to be a full-tithe payer is essential. Initially it takes faith to tithe. Then the tithe payer develops more faith to the point that tithing becomes a precious privilege." (Ibid.)

Muse with me: What blessings have you received from paying tithes?

You're Home Now

“This was a real, truly live place….I remember that some of it wasn’t very nice…but most of it was beautiful. But just the same, all I kept saying to everybody was, I want to go home. And they sent me home… And this is my room – and you’re all here! And I’m not going to leave here ever, ever again, because I love you all! And – on Auntie Em! – there’s no place like home.” Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz

Raising children in one corner of the United States, when everything I knew and loved best was 3,000 miles diagonally in the other corner was hard.

When parenthood overwhelmed me, I needed my mommy but this was before MMB, FB, AOL or IM (“long-distance” meant an expensive phone call and “leavin’ on a jet plane” was still exotic enough that the radio played songs about it).

And where were my friends? After high school or college, we’d scattered like the children of Israel.

Not only was this emotional terrain challenging to me, I refused to get comfortable with the physical environment. Palm trees, in my opinion, could never replace evergreens, and water in the air could never compare to water from the sky.

It scared and dismayed me--being so far from “home”.

This sickness turned toxic when it began to affect the precious relationships that had taken me to Oz: my in-laws, my children, my husband. At that point, Heaven knew it was time to intervene for their sake as well as my own, so a good fairy was sent on the errand; an angel named Aunt Athlene, my mother’s sister.

We talked for a long time over the phone —I mean, I talked for a long time, and she listened. After my whimpers were extinguished with just the right dose of sympathy, she turned me upside down with this profound perspective:

What you need to understand, darling,” she began gently, “is that you do not have “A” home. Rather, you have many homes -- or you WILL have many homes -- as a woman. There will always be the “home” of your childhood, but you also have the “home” of your college years; the “home” of your early married life; now another “home” of your young family life; and perhaps another in your mature years. They may even put you in a “home” when you’re an old grandma like me!”

She laughed.

“You will see with time,” she continued, “that each “home” in your life becomes saturated with its own memories, its own traditions and its own purpose. Think about this: your babyhood home must have felt very strange -- so different from the one you left in heaven – but aren’t you glad you made THAT move?”

I have mused a lot this week over that advice from long ago: in ten days we are leaving this little London flat for our three-story house, and I can hardly believe it was thirteen months ago I was leaving the U.S. for a place called England.

Experiences still too fresh to be called 'memories' are flooding me like the waters of the Red Sea on the armies of Pharaoh; I could almost drown in them. It is comforting to know that most of those experiences have been packaged in words and photos, blogs and journals. Even so, it is discomfiting that the flesh of it all, the people, cannot be shipped with the furniture. The only place for them is in my heart.

Aunt Athlene was right: life is all about creating a home, wherever you are and for however long, and the sooner you accept that and get on with it, the faster you can grow and the more love there is in the world.

So say it I must: good-bye wonderful London --you're (another) “home” now.

“I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.”
Maya Angelou

Muse with me: are you "home"?

Click on the ruby slippers to watch a music video you may get as hooked on as I have:
"There Is No Place Like Home"

Imagine a Life

Imagine life in poverty. Imagine life without a mother, or with an alcoholic father, or with family imprisoned. Imagine life with an abusive spouse or as a single mom. Imagine life after rape. Imagine life as an illegal immigrant, or with no food in the cupboards, or without education. Imagine life with mental illness. Imagine life in an arranged marriage, or as a series of co-habitations, or on the verge of divorce. Imagine life with disabilities or living in a hospital room. Imagine fearing violence in the street or dying from cancer.

Imagine life fighting for life and you can imagine my sisters.

As their Relief Society President, I’ve been given a tour of what used to be a plastic globe to me, but is now flesh and blood, lots of blood, too much blood. Women have washed themselves of it in the waters of baptism and now keep the commandments in a life that may be new and improved, but a life that cannot compare to Sister Mona’s charmed existence as an American. Or so they imagine. They love me for for my empathy (which gift I sometimes have too much of for my own good), but deep down, believe it can only go so far, which is true.

One day, while discussing the purpose of suffering in Relief Society, I made a dot in the center of the dry erase board and then drew a line all the way to the edge. I walked around the perimeter of the chapel, continuing an imaginary line, marker mid-air, until I came back to the dot on the board.

“Imagine this line as eternity,” I said. “And imagine this dot representing our mortal probation. As we agreed earlier in our discussion, we can only internalize many important lessons while on earth, through opposition, to prepare for all the rest.” I swept my hand around the room. “Is it any wonder then that with so much to learn in such a short time [pointing at the dot], that life is a crash course?”

They looked thoughtful.

“Yet we expect our ‘dot’ to be a smooth line in and of itself, with only occasional blips,” I continued the line metaphor, using the board to draw what looked like a healthy EKG; praying I was making sense to them.

Suddenly, a voice from the back rang out: “That may be YOUR life Mona,” (referring to the smooth line with a couple of hiccups), “but it’s not mine!”

The room froze at the mockery in her voice. If we’d been in a Wild West saloon, everyone would have backed away, clearing the space between us.

“That’s not my point.” I answered carefully. “This little line is not MY life. This line is NOBODY’S LIFE.”

It got very quiet.

“Would you like to see MY life?” I raised the pen impulsively. “This is MY life.”

Then with emotion that startled everyone, including me, I drew an EKG that looked like a woman having a heart attack.

“That’s MY life!” I finished. They were stunned.

Earlier in our stay here, I had listened to a sister for thirty minutes on the phone. She told me about an incident in the ward years before that had wounded her feelings so deeply she found it impossible now to trust the sisters. “I worry for YOU,” she said, turning the conversation in a surprising direction. “I watch how happy you are, and I think, she is going to get hurt.”

The next day I got an email from another sister (one whom I knew was under terrific strain) that read: “Thank you for your example, dear Mona. I watch how happy you are and I think, WOW – she can only be that happy because she's been through a lot.”

Wow is right. One sister assumed I was happy because of the ABSENCE of adversity in my life and the other thought I was happy BECAUSE of it!

I mused over that for a long time and ruminated on the conversation in the classroom (which spawned tears and hugs afterward.) If our happiness quotient is directly related to a lack of tribulation, how realistic is it that we could ever go up the scale? Do we imagine our plastic twin living on a plastic globe with nothing to disrupt her tranquility? When I imagine my Eden-Eve, I realize she couldn’t be anything like Flesh-and-Blood-Me, and actually, I don’t think I'd want her kind of contentment. Our Little Dots, our ”small moments” (D&C 121:7-8), may be going haywire more often than not, and may sometimes be filled with even terrible things, but I believe it’s the only spot where we can become strong enough, or deserving enough, for a FULNESS of JOY (D&C 122:5-8), which IS coming.

And imagining THAT life is what makes me happiest of all.

"The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me…he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted… To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord…” (Isaiah 61:3)

Photography by Dreamstime

Beautifully related post by fellow Muser, Momza at MMB:
Growing Roots

Muse with me: What do you imagine life is about?