Happiness

Last night, I had laundry to fold and Ben had things to do on the computer that were not really conducive to family time, so in a rather non-creative attempt to make it a family activity, we put on Les Miserables (1998? version), one of my favorite movies.  To me it's very much a humanist story, about the potential in every person and about the ability of the Atonement of Christ to transform us.

In all of the reflecting I've gotten to do this past month and in all of the fond memories I've found, I've also stumbled across some memories of which I'm anything but proud.  Growing up, I always knew that I was the 'difficult' child, and truly I was a piece of work.  As a teenager, I didn't sow my wild oats in the way many other teens do, but it wasn't exactly smooth sailing.  As I transitioned to adulthood, I could feel myself growing tremendously in some aspects, but I also experienced some of the most turbulent times of my life.

I've spent a lot of time looking back on those years and on the people I knew then, wondering, 'why wasn't I as good or kind or [insert virtue] as [insert name - probably your own if I've ever known you ;)]?'  Yes, I know that everyone has their own challenges, and I know that many of the people who knew me growing up, found it hard to believe that I could ever be out of line.  Nevertheless, I know my faults very well, and have known them for a long time and, like many people, I'm a harsh critic when it comes to my shortcomings.  But as I listened to the Bishop admonish Valjean, "Now don't forget, don't ever forget you've promised to become a new man," and then watched his subsequent transformation, I remembered all over again, the peace.

I remembered that, because of the tremendous gift that my Savior has given to me, and to each of us, I can let go of my regrets.  I can let go of the moments - so many of them - which I destroyed in passing.  I need not relive the unkind things I've said or done, my vanity, or my impatience.  Thanks to that gift, I am able to stop ruing that I never was the person I wanted to be, and instead can focus on becoming the person I want to be now.

This may be my last post before Thanksgiving.  In all my efforts to express gratitude this month, I will have failed if I do not acknowledge this most important thing: that every good thing - yes, every good thing in my life has come to me and comes to me still, by way of my Savior, Jesus Christ.  I too seldom mention it, but I must do it now.  His was the supreme and all encompassing gift and more than anything in my life or anything I have power to comprehend, I am grateful for that.  It has taken years for me to begin to understand what the apostle John meant, in saying that "We love Him, because He first loved us" (1 John 4:19, KJV).

I do love Him.  I am glad for the words of prophets, ancient and modern, that testify of Him, so much more powerfully than I can do.  And I am grateful for those moments of clarity, when the 'thank-you's come like a heartbeat, not for His sake, but for mine.  When I feel truly grateful to Him, it is my sustenance, and it flows over.  And that is true happiness.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Remembering

Today, I am fondly remembering.

I'm thinking about the trails that used to take me high above campus and above the vast valley when I was in college.  I'm thinking about the road that took me through canyons and farmland (which is kind of like over the river and through the woods) to my grandparents' home.  I'm thinking of the job that I once worked in a shoe store (my friends all laughed about it then, as I used to go to great lengths to avoid wearing shoes) and about the people who made it a wonderful time.

And, sitting on my bed, on the quilt that my mother-in-law lovingly stitched together as a wedding present for us, I'm remembering the home that was ours six months ago.  I'm remembering a morning when I smoothed this quilt over this bed and a strange thought popped into my head.  Someday, I realized, I'll look back on this time, and it will be a sweet, pleasant memory.

The thought seemed a little strange, because I was attempting to wade through my last semester of school online.  I was becoming very proficient at single-handedly (and I mean that literally) filling page after page with research and reports.  I was learning to care for a new baby, having started the semester when she was less than a month old.  Our house was warmed only in one room by an enormous, propane-powered space heater.  I had passed many an hour pecking away at one assignment or another, or nursing, with cold, cold, cold feet, willing that heater to roar to life (which really was an impressive sight) while temperatures outside dipped and dived below zero.

Yet when I stopped to think about it, it was not hard to imagine the whole semester as a happy memory.  And it is.  I would not do it over again, given the choice, but I love the hours I got to spend with our little Cricket, watching her wake up from naps, giving her baths in the kitchen sink, and having her fall asleep on my lap while I typed.  I still pine for the view from our kitchen window that I enjoyed while doing the dishes.  I even faintly miss the feeling of pulling together my research into a paper and compiling my APA-formatted bibliography at the end.

The view from our kitchen window.

Now, it's just as easy to see this chapter of my life, even with its uglier days, as a happy memory in the making.  I'm grateful for all of the things I have to look back on.  I'm grateful for pleasant and happy memories, not to live in, but certainly as a place from which to leap - especially on difficult days when I need a pick-me-up.  I think that we have memories for a reason and I believe that this is one of them.
So, sitting here, surrounded by the aftermath of our second (glorious!) snowfall on this little mesa, I'm watching blue and gray battle to color the sky, and personally, I'm rooting for gray this time.  I probably will forget this precise moment and even this morning, but I will not forget the period of time that is now being formed, the tapestry of which today is a thread.  And, the way I figure, I will never have to look back on my life and regret the way I lived it, so long as I can look back, and shamelessly and fondly remember.

A Not-Quite Fruitless Day

Happiness is...

A long road, flanked with junipers,
with a warm home at one end
and an adventure at the other,

the sounds of patti-cake coming from the back seat,
Handel's 'Messiah,'

and the rain at our heels.

Home and Homesickness

If I wake up early, sometimes I'll see horses wandering through my backyard.

It's one of the very unique charms of this place.  Free-range horses are not uncommon and we're constantly dodging piles of manure on the roads (I should mention that I rather like the smell of manure...in some strange way...  I'm not describing what I see to be a bad thing, in other words).

We spent this weekend with my in-laws who took the time to visit us, and took time to really explore the place where we live.  We finally ventured out to the scenic desert, and were pleasantly surprised.  Ben and I kept stopping to look at the sky.  We've seldom seen one so...big.  Deep.

The communities around here have also been celebrating Native American Heritage Month, so while we were exploring, we also had the chance to attend some cultural celebrations and demonstrations.  I find myself growing fond of the rich heritage that is tied to this land.  It's beautiful and I loved feeling saturated with it this weekend.

It's amazing to me, that I can so dearly love this new home and be so homesick at the same time (no one told me that it could ache like this either!).  I'm grateful to be here and to be learning.  And I'm grateful to have another home to welcome us as the holidays draw near.

Life and Poetry...

Yesterday was, well, stressful.  It was a Monday on which I woke up to a very long to-do list, without a really solid plan about how I was going to attack and conquer said list.  I tend to be an anxious person, to let stress get inside me and gnaw at my nerves, and I'm sure that my blood pressure was a little above where it should have been.  The worst part was that I couldn't seem to put my finger directly on the problem.  It's like there was something in the air that was forcing me to live on the verge of an emotional sneeze.  Not a good feeling.

Yet, as I whittled away at my list of things to do, managing to wedge in just a little bit of me-time during the (glorious) afternoon nap, I found myself approaching evening.  We were having company over for supper and my husband arrived home early to help me get ready.  A mere forty minutes beforehand, I finally began to throw together a soup and found out, to my surprise, that I felt...happy.  It was like a warm, fuzzy, almost euphoric quality had made its way into my day and had just been waiting there to be recognized.

I have noticed in the past year or so that those moments happen quite frequently.  As my own, somewhat scientifically-minded, overbearing psychoanalyst, my natural reaction is to go back through everything that was said and done throughout the day to pinprick the exact cause that brought about this feeling of peace.  Often, I can do it, but there are also quite a few days, like yesterday, when I can't.  More importantly, I can sometimes quell the 'why?' and 'what happened?' questions, to simply enjoy the sensation.

It took me back to a beautiful, gray day, toward the end of my fourth semester of college.  I was doing well in my classes and I had recently been accepted to the program that would carry me through the next two years of school.  It had been a season of self-discovery for me.  That was the time when I had learned that I could decide to be happy, and I had been.  As wildly happy as I knew how to be.  And yet...that anxiety hung over me like a cloud.

I had gotten the opportunity to spend the semester studying a variety of things unrelated to my major, among them, the works of Pope, Johnson, Shelly and Keats, and loved every minute of it.  But on that steely-gray day, crossing the campus, I found myself thinking, your life isn't a novel.  It's not a poem.  You've got to grow up.  This is the way life really feels and it's time to get used to that.

I was wrong.  It has taken me all of the years between then and now to begin to see the cadences to which life flows, the lovely words that lie beneath breaths and between sunsets, and the repetitive phrases that make sense of heartbeats and heartbreak.  Life is poetry, though sometimes it's difficult to find and keep the rhythm.  Someday, I might revisit this thought, to explain what made the difference in my perspective and how I discovered what I now know, but for today, this much is sufficient.  

Looking back at that moment of confusion, I'm so grateful that I was wrong.

Mommyhood

The other day, I was in the library and instead of just checking out the handful of board books for storytime, I decided to allow myself a (tragically) rare privilege, and began to browse the adult fiction section for a relaxing mommy-book to read.  I have to admit that these days, despite my best efforts, I don't get through a lot of books.  Furthermore, I have several at my house that I haven't finished and I have been pretty disciplined about not getting more from the library to further slow my efforts to read those.  But I was in the mood for something else.  I was ready to allow myself to forget about all of the books that had come to my living room from a variety of 50 cent or 10 cent book sales for a few days.  (You would think that after accumulating so many books, I'd learn to curb my book-owning fetish or something...)

Our library is small and has little variety to offer, but there are several books there that I haven't heard of before and several more that I've always seen and often considered reading, but have never taken the chance.  I was browsing the titles arrayed before me, my daughter balanced on my hip, just far enough from the shelves that the books were beyond her reach.  Eventually, she turned away from the display shelves and nuzzled her face into my arm.  And then sunk her teeth into my shoulder.

I was somewhere between indignant and laughter and spent the rest of my short browsing time with my free hand protecting my shoulder from those little teeth and scolding unconvincingly through my own giggles.  In a lot of ways, motherhood has made me ridiculous.  Every time I watch a video I've taken of Addie doing something cute, I hear my own voice from behind the camera and think there's no way my voice is that high.  Or annoying.

And then there are those moments when life hands me a laugh while reminding me, at the same time, that I may not be quite as proficient at this mother-thing as I think I am.  At church a few weeks ago, on older lady turned to me and said, "You remind me of me when I had my first baby.  I was twenty-eight and I had no idea how to handle a baby."  I did not miss the implied 'just like you' and the end there.  I guess I'm something of an awkward mom.  I can't count the times that I've wished that I had a third hand to keep a diaper change contained or to manage holding a baby and getting my work done at the same time.

Let me share a final depiction of my motherly dignity:

After attacking a runny nose with a length of the dreaded toilet paper, I tried to explain to Addie why I was being so cruel.  "You see, there's just that booger sitting there, calling out to me, saying 'Mom!  Mom, come clean me up!  Don't leave me here sitting in Addie's nose.'"

From the kitchen, my husband, who I didn't think was listening, asked, "Boogers call you Mom?"  Yes.  Boogers call me mom.  At least they do if they are my baby's.

So today I'm taking a few minutes to be grateful for the chance to be my daughter's mom, even though it makes me look and sound ridiculous, cuts into my productivity, decreases the number of books I read and the number of days on which I actually do my hair.  At the end of the day, all of that is a small price to pay and I'm grateful that I get to pay it.

I know that not every woman is blessed to be a mother and not every mother is blessed to have a supportive father by her side to allow her to enjoy these little moments.  I am trying to remember these things, especially on the days when she won't let me get anything done because everything interesting happens to exist around the level of my waist or higher, or on the days when it's hard to sit down without seeing finding dirty dishes or unfolded laundry materialize in front of me.  All of this exists for my girl, for the sake of creating a safe and pleasant place for her to call home.  I am glad to be at the heart of it.

Cliches

I've noticed lately, that I'm a sucker for cliches.  I do love sunsets, rainbows and the smell of rain.  I've never really had a chance to spend a lot of time on a seashore.  All of the beaches of my childhood were perpetually jammed with tourists and I was more interested in finding seashells or swimming than weaving through the masses, but I'm sure that I would more than like taking long walks on the beach, if I had the chance.  I can go through Maria's list of favorite things, and heartily agree with every one of them.  Well, I think so.  I really have no idea what 'schnitzel with noodles' is.  Oh wait - according to Wikipedia it's a thinned, boneless meat, breaded and fried, essentially.  OK, then, schnitzel with noodles probably wouldn't make my list of favorite things, but it sounds pleasant enough.

When I was a teenager, I came up with a theory that cliches come about for one of two reasons (mind you, I have yet to reevaluate this from my adult and semi-mature perspective to see if it really holds water, but here it is).  The first possibility is that people just have too little imagination.  They heard or saw or tasted something somewhere, it agreed with them, and, voila!  A cliche is born...again and again and again.

The second possibility is simply that the original - the stars on a clear night, the smell of cinnamon, the laughter of children - really is something inherently beautiful, meaningful or fascinating.  Maybe something about them communicates with us on a level that surpasses our physical senses because of who and what we are.  If there is any truth to this conjecture, I would say that the list of favorite things and other cliches that make me happy fall into the second category.

I'm not really sure where I'm going with all this, and since I'm working with a very slow computer and have a munchkin who recently woke up and is intent on helping me with the post, I should just say that I'm grateful for raindrops on roses, whiskers on kittens, sunny days, rainy days, chocolate, bright colors, and the myriad of other things that season my life and my memories with pleasantness (assuming that's a real word).

Happy Monday!

So...I decided that if I can start doing the listing-things-I'm-grateful-for after the beginning of the month, I can stop using the silly 'grateful-vember' heading half-way through too.  Haha, can you tell I'm tired today?  Someday I'll figure the whole blogging thing out.

Today, though, I'm grateful for a weekend's end.  I am grateful for the rhythm and repetition of my life, from sunrise and sunset, to the swing of seasons.  I'm glad to be returning to a very full-scheduled week with its responsibilities and routine.  I'm grateful for the opportunity to attack my goals with renewed energy.

My dad lent us an audio copy of 'The Screwtape Letters,' by C.S. Lewis, for our most recent drive down here, so the devil's words are rolling around in my head, admonishing his nephew to 'work on [the] fear of the same old thing.'  Through that perspective, Lewis points out that we have been given an inherent love of both change and constancy, hence the repetitive nature of days and seasons.

Yikes, this is starting to sound like a  book report.  My point is, that life is a constant effort and the way in which time itself is organized makes room for us to catch our breath, get back on our feet and try again.  Right now, I feel like I'm standing, rather bandy-legged and shakily, waiting for the next onslaught to begin.  Don't get me wrong, the 'onslaught' of which I speak is something marvelous and something I wouldn't miss for the world, but, well...  I guess it just feels, at times, like life isn't something I'm incredibly good at.  This is, after all, my first one.  Right now, I'm feeling so grateful for second chances and for renewal within the spectrum of the 'same old thing.'  Here's to the beginning of another week.  May it be a good one.

Grateful-vember: Looking Forward

The other night, I found myself hurrying down a very dark, very empty closed road.  I felt haggard after a long day that had not concluded with the usual respite of my husband walking through the door in the early evening, and I was very much awake to the cold.  It seems like just a couple of days ago, I was wishing that it were jacket-weather, and suddenly, my worn hoodie was not enough to counter it.

Not in the best of moods and anxious to get to the warmth that awaited me at the road's end, I broke into an awkward, shuffling sort of run, the kind that you do when you're wearing shoes that really aren't meant even for serious walking and seem eager to jump right off your feet.  Semis and cars rolled past on my left, their headlights casting a wan, evanescent light to my feet.  I began to notice the smell of new asphalt (the reason for which I was walking in the first place), but even stronger was that dry November smell.  Drawing in and releasing that gusty cold, in steady puffs, it occurred to me, not for the first time, but for the first time in awhile, to feel grateful for my body.

I have hesitated to post this, because I know that several of my friends, some of who read this blog, don't enjoy the same health that I've taken for granted almost every day of my life.  It used to bother me that I didn't have the athletic talent to carry me to the Olympics or the miniature waist on which Hollywood sets such a high premium.  Then, of course, teenage insecurities have gradually given way to adult complacency.  Something about the cold and dark and solitude of that moment brought back the realization that not every pair of lungs can enjoy this exchange that were so casually repeating, and not every person has a pair of legs can, without adverse effects, propel them over the four-hundred meters or so that I had come.  I know this should be obvious.  It seems that all of my epiphanies these days are re-runs.

A pervasive little voice, which I mentioned a couple of days ago, whispered to me that I should not write this, that I have to right to write it.  I know that I am a stranger to pain, that physical hardship and the mental and emotional struggles that often accompany it, are at this time quite beyond my comprehension.  Still, I can't help but believe that to ignore the blessing of my health, even while I can't yet fully appreciate it, would be to belittle the physical hardships that others face and to show contempt for a very profound blessing.

Moreover, I believe in and look forward to a physical resurrection, in which our bodies, flawless and whole, will be reunited with our spirits.  Even in the health I've enjoyed, I have sensed little fore-warnings of my mortality, the promise that age will someday brittle my bones, dull my thoughts and wither my muscles.  So I celebrate the sensations I savored that night, not only as a gift, but also as a promise.  

That was the second realization to which that dark road brought me - that gratitude is not confined to the present or the past.  It is akin to hope, which casts its seeds into the future and the unknown.  I am grateful for the promises in which I hope and for whose sake I am learning to live patiently and happily now.

Grateful-vember: Silliness

OK, I am short on time today, but here's what's on my mind:

Sometimes (I admit so many embarrassing things online) I wake up in the middle of the night and anxiously mull over what I would do if, say, a Bengal tiger or a crocodile or a giant spider (Lord of the Rings, anyone?) were to stroll into my bedroom.  I'm not kidding.  I do lose sleep over this issue.  How would I get out?  How would I get my family out?  What if I forget the car keys and end up trapped in my thorn-filled yard with nowhere to hide and nowhere to run??

So today, I'm taking a few moments to be grateful that I have never been attacked by a large predatory animal.  Or any predatory animal, for that matter, unless you count mosquitoes (but the day of reckoning is coming).  And I'm grateful that those large predatory beasts don't live around here anyway, so that my fears are totally irrational.

There's my little slice of grateful profundity for the day.  Hopefully it made you smile and to anyone else out there whose overly active childish imagination tends to run away with them, you're not alone.

Grateful-vember: Your Words

This one is specifically for my friends and family.  It is to any person who takes the time to leave a kind comment online and to people who approach one another as strangers, just to give a word of encouragement.  This post is to those who go out of their way to say something kind: I dare not say that you have no idea the effect of the words you write or speak, but you never cease to amaze me with your capacity for spreading happiness.

After much deliberation and many years of analyzing myself to death, I have come to the conclusion that I struggle with an inferiority complex.  Whenever there's a competition involved, I somehow feel sure that I have no chance of coming out on top.  Therefore, I am grateful that, when that ever-present, diabolical little voice pipes up in my thoughts with, "No, you can't," a dozen exterior voices always seem to chime in with "Yes, you can!"

I have a husband who has been nothing but supportive, especially in those times when support has been the thing that I needed most and deserved least.  I have a mom who has always made a big deal of my talents, abilities and interests.  I have so many friends who take time to point out positive attributes in me that I have never acknowledged in myself, or to say, in their own ways, "I love you."  I could go on, but then I would be here all day and then some.

So today, I thank my family, my friends and many treasured, transient acquaintances with whom I've lost contact, for the words you speak to uplift me and one another.  To them and to anyone I've never met who may be reading this, I thank you for the little acts of kindness that you do and for the inherent goodness within you.

Grateful-vember: Making a Choice

I remember seeing on Facebook last year, that a lot of my friends had decided to do a 'grateful November' challenge, every day posting, in their 'status' bars, something for which they felt grateful.  I thought that it was such a great idea, but somehow - maybe even subconsciously - I felt like I couldn't participate, because I hadn't thought of it until the third or fourth day of the month.  This year, I decided not to let that hold me back.  It's November 4th, and I'm going to make an effort to post (at least several times) this month about things for which I am grateful.

Last weekend, one of my best friends in the whole world came to see me.  While she was here, we went to the Snowflake Arizona (LDS) Temple.  It was a marvelous experience and I got to revisit a realization that I had forgotten.  That is that happiness is a choice.  At some times, it's a more difficult choice to make than at others, but it is a decision.  Furthermore, happiness and gratitude go hand in hand.  They are inextricably linked.  At least for me, this has been the case.  I have noticed that I am happiest in the moments in which I can see just how blessed I am; in which I realize that someone has done for me what I needed and could not do for myself; in which I decide to enjoy what I have and to feel glad that all that has happened has brought me to where I am today.

So today I am grateful to be in this place at this time, living this life.  I am not regretting that I haven't traveled the world, that I am not prettier or more educated, or that I don't have more friends than I do.  I came, utterly vulnerable, as a stranger into a strange land - and I don't just mean to this Somewhere - but when I have hungered, I have been fed.  When I have thirsted, my thirst has been quenched.  As I have walked into the darkness, I have been led.  I never could have imagined, a few years ago, what my life would look like in the latter end of 2013, nor that I would or could like it so well.  I am grateful for the gift of agency,  by which I can choose happiness in seeing the divine hand that has given me everything from the air I breathe to the home enjoy to the family I love.     

Trick-or-Treating on the Res.

When we first moved here - no, maybe even when we first came here to look for a place to live - one of the first things our neighbors told us was this: prepare well for Halloween.  The trick-or-treaters come here in flocks.  The reason for this was, supposedly, that the houses out on the reservation are very spread out.  Obediently, Ben and I stocked up on otter pop-type goodies by the hundreds and waited for the predicted onslaught.  Two days ago, on the eve of candy collecting night, I got to see for myself, why the little teacher housing loop, with houses right next to and across from one another, was so popular.

Helping Mom with the Halloween treats

I was being led to the house of a friend of mine, whom I hadn't gotten the chance to visit before.  About a mile from the freeway exit, the road was no longer paved and smaller dirt roads appeared frequently on either side of it.  We turned off on one of these, which was uneven and muddy from the recent snowfall.  The Elders who serve here have told us stories about getting their truck hopelessly stuck while driving form house to house.  I began to understand how that was very, very possible.

After about thirty yards, the road forked - not a ninety-degree angle, geometrical fork, as I'm accustomed to, but a very narrow fork, so much so that, as we veered to the right, I half-expected the left road to re-merge with us.  It didn't.  And thirty yards later, it forked again.  And thirty yards later, yet another split.  If I hadn't been following someone who knew the way, I would easily have gotten lost.  On the way back home, I finally put the pieces together, realizing that so many kids flock to the teacher housing neighborhood, not just because the houses on the reservation are far apart, but because they're each on their own little road.

Personally, I found it charming in a way I can't exactly describe, but I see why it's not exactly conducive to door-to-door trick-or-treating.  All evening, Ben and I got to enjoy the parade of costumes as something like three hundred kids knocked at our door.