A Poem

See...here is a Poem I wrote: 

So, here's the deal. I'm not a poet, In fact, I typically avoid writing poetry, but I woke up with these words in my head and I had to write them down. That was a couple weeks ago, and I've hesitated to post it because I was afraid how it would be seen. 

Not because I'm afraid people won't like it, I don't really care what people think regarding my poetry skills; I'm amateur at best. But I was afraid to post it because it gives the impression of sadness and while there is a sadness in grief, over the past year I've also learned the beauty in grief. 

I miss my parents, and that's a good thing. I want to be missed when I'm gone as well. But the emotion of grief has also taught me so much this past year. It's so much more complex than I ever thought it was before. I used to think that grief was just being sad, but I have learned that it's not just that. I'm not even sure that they are sort of the same thing. 

I think that grief is the bridge that helps us cross over from sadness to moving on.  

In my psychology classes over the years, I learned about the stages of grief, and we can categorize them if you want, but it doesn't really work like that for every person. If I had to define my grief, I would say that it is memories. Little memories and big ones too. When they come, especially through everyday little things, I've started to record them because I want to always be able to remember those things. 

For example, at a fireside Sunday the speaker talked about the old church primary song, "Little Purple Pansies" and I realized that the song I thought my mom had made up (She had a knack for making up silly songs) was real. Whenever she saw Pansies - and most especially in the fall and winter time- she would sing that pansie song. I wrote that down to remember her and the pansie faces she loved.

I have a knack for getting paper cuts, the hazards of a lot of filing at work, and for some reason, I seem to get paper cuts in groups and usually just on one hand at a time. This last week, my right hand was all bandaged up with cuts when I got another cut. I shook my head at my own clumsiness and in that moment I thought of my dad, who when I was little would tease me about always injuring one side of me. One time when I stepped on a upturned nail, he pulled it out of my foot and while I cried, he comforted me by saying, "well, at least it wasn't on the side with all your other injuries!" Which made me giggle and forget some of the pain I was in. 

I think those memories are grief. They are at times tinged with sadness, but most often than not, they bring a peace that lets me know that everything is okay. 

But as my poem says, there are days that the grief comes hard and fast and not in slow and trickling memories.I've learned to appreciate those days as well because they are human days that we have to have in order to get stronger. 

Grief doesn't go away in just those well defined stages-grief stays with you and turns you into something more. It turns you into the person that those lost loved ones know you truly are-who they see you as. And that is why it is so important. And so, as you read this poem, remember, it's not in sadness that it was written, but in growth and in grief. 

And don't forget:

Exceedingly Great Faith - Alma 13:3

I had just a few weeks left in my mission when this scripture (Alma 13:3) wormed it's way into my thoughts, my study and probably my teaching as well. If you get a chance to read it, do! It talks about the great war in Heaven before we came here and how the war was won.

It was Brother Carpenter, the father of a family we were really close to, who first asked me the question that made me look at this scripture so differently. The scripture talks about the 'exceedingly great faith' of those who fought on the Lord's side. Brother C. asked me, "What did they have faith in? How can they have exceedingly great faith in God and in Jesus Christ when they were living with them? They were taught by their presence. So, what does it mean in this scripture that they had exceedingly great faith?"

This question made me think. It made me study and research. I wanted to find an answer for Brother Carpenter. In the end, I came up with a few reasons.

This is what I think it meant to have "exceedingly great faith" in the context of those living with God before they came to this early life.

There were two plans presented in Heaven, there was God's Plan, the Plan of Happiness that centered on Christ and his Atonement for all mankind. His plan was also based on our agency, our ability to withstand the trials and temptations of this world and to make the right choices. To repent when we made mistakes and to accept Christ and his gospel in this life.  The other plan was presented by Lucifer, it was a plan that he said would ensure that every single one of God's children would make it back. There would be no agency, there would be no choice. All of God's children had to make a choice right then and there as to which plan they would support. Two-thirds of those children chose God's plan and those two-thirds are here on this earth. Those two-thirds are those who exercised our great faith. But HOW?

There are three things I came up with:

1. We had faith in our Heavenly Father that his plan was the right one for us. We had faith that agency was the only way we could learn and make our own choices-even our own mistakes. We had faith that his proposed plan was the only way that we could become more like Him-which is what we really, really wanted.

2. Once we had faith in the plan, we then had to have faith in Jesus Christ, our older brother. We had to have faith that he would fulfill His earthly mission. He would come to earth, he would be sinless though tempted, he would teach and minister, he would suffer for our sins and all our hardships on earth, he would die for us, and then He would be resurrected so that all of us could one day be resurrected. We had to have exceedingly great Faith that he would be able to do all of that because of his eternal, and unsurpassing love for each of us.  

But again, although there was a war in heaven over this decision, we were there and we saw and were taught the Father's Plan by the Father! We saw, and we knew of Christ's love for each of us! We still exercised our faith and choose the plan, but there is one more thing that we had to have faith in.

3. We had to have exceedingly great faith in OURSELVES. The plan in opposition the plan of happiness said that every person would make it back to live with God. That sounds very easy.

But we had heard the Father's plan, we had faith that he was right. We heard Jesus say he would go and be our Savior, we had faith in him. That final and maybe most hardest part to accept was to accept that we would have to go down to earth, away from our Father, and we would have to make choices, face temptation and trials, and make the right choices that would get us back to God. We had to have faith that we could do it. We had to look inside ourselves and ask if we could do it, if we could make all the right decisions, if we could give our will to the Father so that he could make us into the person that He knows we truly are. We had to exercise 'Exceedingly Great Faith' in ourselves.

But guess what? You did that. I did that. Because you and I are here, I know that we had Faith that we could do it. 

Sometimes, I forget that. Sometimes, life is hard. But then, luckily I'm surrounded by people who remind me that I am a Child of God and that He loves me, and He also has Faith in me. That makes a big difference. Whenever I come to this scripture in my study of the Book of Mormon, I'm reminded of Brother Carpenter and his question, and I'm lucky that he asked it and that it stuck with me. And just when things start to get stormy in life, sometimes Heavenly Father reminds me of this scripture. He did that this past weekend and I'm grateful for his constant love for me.

I know that sometimes I get caught up in everything going on around me, but there is so much more to life and to eternity than what is just right here surrounding you. There is so much more to the Plan of Happiness that we don't understand yet. But it is a plan of Happiness. So if you're not happy right now, remember that you can be and that it will all be okay. 

A Grief Observed

I saw this on pinterest and it struck my heart. In my 28 years, I admit I haven't had a lot of grief, for which I am grateful. But this past few months losing my mom and dad was just really, really hard. And in those moments, I realized the truth behind the words C.S. Lewis wrote.

I'm sure that there are different feelings of grief for anyone, but for me, this hit it right on the head and I'm going to come back to it. But first, let me set this up.

I made it my goal to take care of my parents, it just felt like what I was supposed to do. When I decided that, I didn't know what the future held for my parents or for myself. I remember there were times when my dad told me not to worry about them, and I know he worried that I was giving things up to be with them.

But on the days when it felt hard, I remembered a quote that I heard on my once favorite TV Show Smallville. I'll be honest, I cried when I heard it. In the particular episode, the young Clark Kent has decided not to go away to school, but to go to a local school and live at home to help his father on the farm in Smallville. His father is pretty upset with him for decision and says, "Clark, I just don't want you sacrificing your potential because of me." and Clark looks at his father and says, "Dad, it's not a sacrifice, it's a choice." I can recall mirror conversations just like this held with my dad. And I'm not saying this because I want praise for my choice, but simply I want to put out there, it was a choice. And when you make a choice, you should always be able to go back and ask yourself why you made that choice, if the reasons are still there, your choice should still stand. And my reasons were always there, and that is why I stayed.

The amount of help I gave to my parents varied on any given day, I still had a mostly full time job, I still had a social life, and I had a great apartment in my parents basement. That all changed in a matter of a few months this year. I don't think many people realize the amount of changes I've had this year, it's easy to forget when you aren't the one experiencing those changes. Besides losing my parents, the smaller and yet still life changing things have included a move in my job location and a move to a new place to live. It's safe to say, the ground has felt a little shaky under my feet for several months now, especially with the big, "What's Next?" question looming overhead.

That question leads me back to that fear. And the grief.

I was talking to a friend who said to me, "You can do anything you want now!" And she's right. I have a freedom now to do the things I always thought about doing but never felt I could fit in before. But there is that fear. Because as I thought about her words, I said to her, "I know you're right. But the hardest part to overcome is the feeling that if I try and fail, I won't have that security of coming home again. I won't have those two people who never really let me fail before. Because if I fell, they were there to pick me up."

To me, that is the fear in grief. I know with all my heart that my mom and dad are far better off where they are now then where they were just a few months ago. I know that I will see them again. But I have realized that all in all, grief is a selfish emotion because you miss that person in your life so much. Grief is wanting them back to fill that hole in your heart that won't ever really go away. And fear is that you don't know where you belong anymore, your world is altered and shaken up as to be unrecognizable and it's hard to want to pick up the pieces."

I think I have started too though. Try to piece back together what my parents always wanted for me to be.

"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing. And other times it feels like being midly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take in what anyone says. It is so uninteresting." C.S. Lewis 

June 2013-Strawberry Days Parade

Not Fair

Somewhere, somehow, in those first year of our life, we come up with a concept that life should be 'Fair'. So let me put this out there, what exactly does 'fair' mean? Does it mean equality? Justice? Mercy? In a family, doesn't it mean each sibling gets treated exactly the same? Does it mean that the good and the bad should be handed out equally, without individual reguard?

Whatever it means, it teaches us that we should expect to have the exact same, or at least not less then another person. If they get a piece of cake, we get a piece of cake. It doesn't matter if we ate our dinner. You know what I mean, right? 

I remember reading 'The Princess Bride' in High School, and a quote from the book says, "Life is not fair. It's just fairer than death. That's all." But even then, I still didn't fully understand the fact that life is not fair.

I went on a mission to California for 18 months, I met people who had everything they could ever want, and I met people who lived the smallest of homes and had so split rent between three different families to afford living there. That doesn't seem fair, but still, I believed that fairness had to exist out there. 

This year, I learned that life is not fair. I've been ejected out of my comfort zone and into the line of fire, the line of decision, the line of action. In my mind, that is not fair.

Yesterday, as I sat in church, thinking about this year and what I have learned, I had a thought come to me. I hope you'll understand it, take it at face value and chew it around in your mind until you can make your own sort of sense out of it. 

My thought was this: This year I have thought and prayed, "Heavenly Father, this isn't fair!" And every time I expressed this, in thought, in writing, in prayer, the thought and answer has come back to me from my Heavenly Father, "I know. I know that it is not fair, but it will be okay." -and although that doesn't seem like much of an answer. I can accept that far better than any other answer that people have tried to give me. It's so validating to have someone recognize that IT IS NOT FAIR. And once that has been acknowledged, I'm better able to listen to what I need to hear. I'm not blaming God for all the trials I have this year, and I know that he is not punishing me for the mistakes I have made. I'm just learning and growing and that is what I am supposed to do. And He is there to bind up wounds and keep me safe. 

I know that is true. In Preach My Gospel, in teaching of the atonement it says: "As we rely on the Atonement of Jesus Christ, He an help us endure our trials, sicknesses, and pain. We can be filled with joy, peace, and consolation. All that is unfair about life can be made right through the Atonement of Jesus Christ." 

Life is not fair, it's time that we get that thought out of our head. What we want and what we need are sometimes things and experiences so vastly different than we think, but we can't learn because we can't see past the unfairness of it. So I'll challenge you, when you think something you're going through is not fair, I want you to get down on your knees and tell God just that. "Father, this is not fair." and I am sure that He will agree with you and that as you continue to turn to Him, He will help you realize what you need to learn.