Category: Motherhood

Prom, Primary, Diamond Fork, Big Bad Mama, Anniversary

I made some new friends this week, three women I did not know before, but felt inspired to choose to serve with me at church. I spent time with each of them, one by one, talking about important things like families, dreams, and testimony and felt my heart warm. I’m not surprised that I love them. I’m surprised how quickly it happened.

I worried and prayed for a sister-in-law.

I enjoyed a date night with Richard for our anniversary, which included two restaurants and lots of roses. Then, lucky us, we had another evening together later in the week, each of us dressed in Scout uniforms, matchy-matchy. I thought I was through with my uniform, but I am delighted at some good memories that came when I put it back on.

I watched Timothy play in an ultimate Frisbee tournament and helped him with Prom preparations. I had a lot of time with Tim this week, and I am so grateful for that.

I disabled the family computer last week, which was mainly being used to watch YouTube videos. When the kids were little, there were times I would chant, “I’m a big bad mama and I’m not afraid of you,” (I know, I am ridiculous) aloud or in my mind when I had to do the hard things that young parents have to do: enforce bedtime, deny requests for sugar, insist on car seats, clean up messes, and react in a positive way to tantrums. Not even that mental chant helped boost my morale over the computer drama. The reality is, a teen tantrum is much more painful to endure than one from a three-year-old.

Richard came home with the best pictures of a Scout campout in Diamond Fork. He brought his smokeless fire pit and Chip brought his guitar, and the boys and leaders sang around the campfire and roasted marshmallows and biscuits as it got dark. Mark came home from the camp, hugged me, and asked what he could eat. Balance is restored.

Just little happy experiences

There are just little happy experiences that writing about doesn’t do justice. Pictures or videos don’t capture it. Memory isn’t exact enough. But there’s an eternity of those ahead… -Elder Daniel Ross

This is something Daniel expressed to me via text this week and I have thought about it again and again. Tiny interactions and connections, the evidence of humanity and goodness, can cut through differences and keep us afloat.

I walked several steps behind a little Muslim family into a store this week. The five or six-year-old son stayed behind to hold the door open for me. They weren’t speaking English, so I just smiled and gave a small wave to the boy, who had thrown his might into keeping the door open as a kindness to me. My thoughts about this family’s differences as I walked behind them in the parking lot just seconds before this interaction felt so shallow.

A different day, during school and work hours, a young father, with a daughter and a son, no older than ten years old looked at a wall of religious art. The daughter had taken an expensive framed print off the display wall and was cradling it until her arms. This was the one she loved. Later, at the cash register, I stood behind the family, the father now holding a few inexpensive prints similar to the expensive framed edition. He offered to buy a piece of candy for each child, but the children seemed content with the slips-of-paper-Jesus hugging someone. When it was my turn to step up to the register, I couldn’t speak or see clearly for a few seconds for what I had just witnessed.

The middle school kids swarmed the entrance to the public library as Mark and I drove into the parking lot after school. I offered to stay in the car as Mark found some books, since our path was through a sea of peers. He said no way. If somebody had a problem with his mom, he’d beat them up. He figured he was taller than most of them, so he had the advantage. In other words, he knew that walking with me would take courage, and he was up for it. You will be relieved to know that no violence ensued during the walk, and there were just a few loud hellos. The strong empathy in my personality made me feel insecure along with the preteens, but Mark and I made the walk together. I loved him for it.

Yesterday Tim went out to take photos of the sunset. He said he was trying to take more pictures like Daniel did. Then he mentioned that he wished he could look at Daniel’s photos of our vacations last summer, thinking there was no way he could see them. In covert sentences and expressions, Tim lets me know he misses Daniel. I pulled up Daniel’s albums on my computer and Tim was delighted, and in his understated, earnest way he enjoyed every one.

With a Smile

I think when I look back on this time in my life, I will be thankful that I was present when Tim came home from Frisbee practice, muddy and smiling. I will not regret being home and available to video chat with Daniel for the first time since Christmas. I will smile when I think of the jokes I made with Mark about the DWISBA as I drove him home from school. I will remember the texture of each boy’s hair in my fingers as I gave haircuts and the smell of starch while ironing shirts. I will smile at the memory of the beautiful home I worked to create. I will remember the souls I loved and the ones who loved me. I will remember that this was a sweet time. Sometimes I feel weary, unwanted, and stagnant, too, but that will not be the melody when I look back at this time with the perspective of age. I can see myself looking back with a smile. These little moments make me smile today.

Hello, Elder Ross!

We had a nice text exchange with our missionary for the first time today.

With a home centered focus at church, it makes sense that home and missionary work should mingle more often. Home and family are central to God’s plan. They can add strength. If they don’t, we can trust the missionaries and mission presidents and families to figure things out.

A few weeks ago, Daniel wrote to me, expressing that he wished he had talked to me more. What a blessing it is that we can now. Who else is excited in our house about this? His two brothers. This will bless their lives. Amen.

Dinner fails

On Monday I warmed up leftovers for dinner: two bowls of Chinese food, smoked chicken, vegetables, fried potatoes, and more. It was a varied and impressive sight, but we ended up running to McDonalds for some cheeseburgers when the boys were still hungry.

The next day, I cooked for hours: my best soup, a favorite sausage dish, colorful spinach salad with fresh strawberries, and homemade chocolate chip bar cookies. Tim walked in and asked, “What’s wrong?” (Has someone died?) The boys had a dentist appointment and came home with instructions not to drink hot liquids. So, this was another dinner fail for the boys and they didn’t eat my masterpiece.

Wednesday I threw a homemade quiche in the oven as I raced out the door to a parent meeting for Frisbee and a family history class. I was gone for four hours and by the look of the leftovers, I don’t think this meal was a hit, either.

Tonight I went for the tried and true spaghetti. Mark and I didn’t finish because by the time we were all home together to eat, we had to go to piano lessons.

They were lovely meals for those who could eat them.

I just looked through my last few posts and I want you to know I am not sad. I have arrived at some understanding and wrote it out. When I am not writing serious posts, I am dancing in the kitchen, chuckling at James Herriott stories, eating lemon bars, and drinking in the sunlight.

Margins

I have always had meaningful work at church until five months ago. Even after out-of-state moves, I was busy at church within a month. I count these last five months as some of the most trying of my life. I have continued to minister to people on my own, and that has been sweet and saving, but there was a dread that crept in every Saturday night when I remembered that church was the next day. I wanted to partake of the sacrament, but I was sad to have nothing to do at church. (I was given a church job but I had to wait several months to act.)

For the first time in my life, I was experiencing what it feels like to be the marginal person whom people do not ask for help. Sure, I had a husband and children on the bench with me, so I looked like the model church goer, but my spirit was living on the margins.

Meaningful work is one key to mental health. The timing of school starting and no longer home schooling, Daniel going on a mission, and being released as RS president meant that I lost almost every piece of meaningful work in the same month.

I am coming out on the other side of that pain now and I am glad I went to church each week, even when it was hard.

I am glad I followed the prophet’s 4 tasks given to the women of the church, even though I was so angry at the time. Those tasks weren’t token acts to show I was being good. This was preparation for meaningful work in a home centered church.

The other night I was looking at pictures from the last five months, and you know what? I don’t look the way I felt inside. I actually have a bit of a glow in my smile. Where was God during all of this time of pain? His Spirit was right inside of me, holding me up and teaching me. I had a private tutor, guiding my thoughts and giving me courage to keep going. I see it now. At the time, I thought I was living on the margins of the flock, unnoticed, but I was actually being upheld by God. There is no better inclusion than that. I know God a little better now, and he is with the people on the margins.

Snow, Words, and Studio

Klondike Derby with the Boy Scouts
I spent some time at BYU for a New Testament Commentary conference (yay Julie) and stopped by Paige’s studio.

I have spent an insane amount of time looking at short videos of Mark’s Scout Troop playing in the snow at the Klondike Derby this weekend. It brings me such delight to hear the boys’ voices and see them trying to run in snow pants and colorful parkas against a snowy background. It is the end of childhood and they are playing. My heart!

We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.

Anais Nin

Simple, uncomplicated me, just dipping my toes into being a mother of adults, wonders, “What do I know?” Very little. Nothing at all. But I delight in hearing my friend Julie Smith speak, whose book, The Gospel According to Mark, A New Rendition, was just published. I delight in seeing little boys happy, in seeing Paige’s actual palette of paints, in hearing Tim’s friends laughing in the basement, and watching Richard enjoy the lemon bars I made. There is depth and validity in those delights. It was a good weekend.

Witness

Building after evacuation

Today Daniel’s apartment building caught on fire in Santiago, Chile. He escaped, thanks to living angels who stopped to warn, guide, and unlock doors. Feel free to join me in prayers of gratitude for his protection. He grabbed his scriptures, wallet, keys, camera, and photos which were already prepared for travel. He already had his shoes on when the call came to escape. He and the other elders had to abandon a smoky stairwell with hot handrails for a different route out. When they were trapped on the roof, with only locked doors to stairs going down, someone came up to open a locked door to a safe stairwell. A quote from his message today:

Needless to say, that was an intense experience. Maybe we were never in real danger. But my mindset changed. As a missionary, I already have very few personal belongings, but as I stood there with reminders of my family and my scriptures with all my markings and couldn’t think of anything else I would want to save I realized how easily we can get distracted by things that don’t last. There are a lot of things I left behind that don’t matter, and now that’s especially clear to me. 

God really does protect us, guide us, answer prayers, and puts people, thoughts, and when necessary angels in our lives to help us return to live with him again. The Savior truly understands us, and through his infinite sacrifice and atonement we can be cleansed from sin.

-Elder Daniel Ross

I was very unwell all morning before I heard about this. Maybe I knew on some level he was in danger. I also felt complete peace when he announced his call (mission assignment) last April. I don’t need any more assurance that all will be well, whatever things look like at present. I don’t think he has his “cloak,” but he does have his “parchments,” (2 Timothy 4:13), and knows the value of them.

And last of all, here is a link to the journal page for our study of Matthew 2 and Luke 2 at our house for the week of January 14-20.

Some good memories from December

We visited Temple Square on one of the warmest December nights we have known. We were able to listen to the Nativity narration outdoors and noticed for the first time that there is a star mounted on top of the Tabernacle. We had just fed the missionaries dinner before we came, and their message was to “Look up!” Amen.
Timothy and I played a medley of German Christmas carols at church and for family. He is a great pianist and accompanist.
Timothy got his license.
We had a birthday party for Tim and my parents came.
Mark made raspberry jam for his dad’s Christmas present. 😍
I shopped for stuffed animals. The giraffe!
Christmas morning fun

We were able to do a video call with Daniel and we didn’t need all of those questions we planned to ask. He talked non-stop, with enthusiasm, zeal, and happiness pouring forth. I didn’t know how much I needed to just see him and hear him speak. I didn’t take a picture of the screen, but imagine light, clothed in the Christmas tie that I was told he probably wouldn’t receive in the mail, a short haircut, sunburned neck, and speaking a mixture of Spanish and English, really fast. That was Daniel. Nothing sad about that.

Paige is with us, and moves from her room, where she is catching up on some reading, to the piano, every few hours throughout the day. Chopin, Debussy, and Jane Austen scores are now in the mix played on our piano. She is all things lovely.