Sunday, November 21, 2010

Make new friends, but keep the old . . .

(One is silver and the other is gold.)

I’ve been thinking a lot about friendship lately.

In short: I’ve been alive for 40 years now, and I’m still not sure I know how to be a friend.

I remember how badly I wanted someone new to move into the ward when I was a kid, always sure that my best friend was the one I hadn’t met yet. Once I was at college and looked back, I saw that I was pretty blessed with a group of friends around me for most of my growing-up years. Why, then, didn’t I feel it at the time?

It wasn’t until my freshman year in college that I really started to learn how to have a more intense relationship with a friend, and it was because I was blessed with an amazing roommate who patiently stuck with me as I stumbled along (all over her feet) learning how to be a friend. I’ll be eternally grateful to and for her. I still feel her in my heart like a sister, even though we aren’t really active in each other’s lives on a daily (or even monthly) basis.

When we were away at grad school, I had similar experiences with some of the women who were in the same situation. The intensity of being poor students and young mothers living in the same complex threw us together much like a room-mate situation, and my friends from Berkeley are still some of the dearest.

But now that I am living all-independent-like in my house, I find it harder to have (keep?) friendships that influence my daily life. I can’t figure out what I’m doing wrong. Maybe it’s that I feel so shy on the phone, always, even with my own relatives. Maybe it’s because I don’t know how to call people up “for no reason.” Maybe I’ve been too judgmental of others in my life, and have pushed people away. Maybe we’re all just too busy.

Usually I don’t mind this lack too much, because I have some people in my life that I really enjoy conversing with—electronically. (And you, dear blog reader, are probably one of them.) And I am very busy with my family, who get more and more interesting and friend-like to me every day. But sometimes I just miss that real-life, CafĂ© Rio- and canning-peaches-together female bonding that women need.

Do you have a best friend, someone you talk to, on purpose, at least once a week? How did you get close to her? What can I be doing to try to turn my new (ward, blog) friends into golden old ones?

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Just Kickin' Down the Cobblestones

So, I’ve been slowing down.

I’ve mentioned here before how strange it is that my life seemed to be emptying out this fall. My ESL gig ended when my student moved away. My cub scout calling went away. I’ve passed off some of my AML responsibilities. I didn’t get into grad school. My schedule seemed to be clearing out, and I assumed it was because Something was Coming.

Turns out, the thing that was coming was Nothing. And the sort of creepy thing is that it has been OK.

I have had opportunities to put things back into my schedule, but I have had that sinking, dead feeling whenever I considered them. I’m not always great at being guided by the Spirit in my life, but one thing I learned rather early on (when I was deciding where to go to college, in fact) is that when something is right, I feel interest in it, can’t stop thinking about it, start getting itchy to make it happen. And when it’s wrong, it keeps slipping my mind, and, when reminded, I drag my feet, dreading it.

And I haven’t felt like doing a darn thing lately. I have been a blob at home, managing my duties but nothing else.

But a strange thing is happening. When I don’t have any reason to hurry through my duties, I find myself settling into them, actually (brace yourself) ENJOYING them, feeling like I’m living life right there and then, instead of hurrying to get to the next thing. I used to feel like I needed my writing (for example) in order to reward myself for getting through the other, boring things I needed to do. And now, without the reward, I’m starting to enjoy the doing of the tasks. (Well, except for planning and cooking meals. There’s no enjoying that for me.) I feel like, maybe, this slow time is teaching me how to live.

I recently got a very beautiful blessing from my next-door neighbor, who is in the stake presidency. He even mentioned this—that this is a time for thinning out my schedule. That I’ll be able to do the things I must, but many of the extras will go for a while. This is comforting to me because I have moments of guilt, especially when I’m around my very accomplished writer friends who run marathons, etc. “Is it really OK that I’m not doing a thing in my life?” I wonder. “Am I just being lazy?” I used to care so much about AML, Segullah, ESL, WIFYR, etc. and now I feel so apathetic about them.

But, rather than paralyzing myself with guilt about this, what if I see it as a gift? What if I decide that this apathy is God’s way of helping me to slow down? Because I know that if He really wanted me to be involved, he’d send me that energy and interest, right?

Which is why it’s so confusing that I felt so sure that it was right to apply for grad school last year. I’m finally to the point where I am actually glad that I didn’t get in (because that two-week flu last month would have forced me to drop out. Seriously.) but why did it feel so right to apply?

One possible answer came to me the other day: if God knew it wasn’t right for me to be in school this year, but wanted to send me the message that I’m capable of doing it, that I’m not a complete loser as a writer, having me be #1 on the waiting list was a pretty good way. I got to feel like I was at least good enough to BE there, without having to drop out later. Hmm, it’s a thought.

Friday, November 12, 2010

Parenting Mistakes

After some conversations I’ve had with friends—well-meaning, diligent, loving, heartbreakingly earnest friends--I think that most parenting mistakes—maybe even all—fall into one of two categories: 1) thinking you don’t have control when you do, and 2) thinking that you have control when you don’t. Both failings are dangerous, to the children and to the parents. Both require repentance.


People who fail in Category One are the ones who fail to put in the time with their children, give up on establishing expectations and consequences (or on enforcing them), or possibly aim for being buddies instead of an active force in the development of personality and good habits. On one end of the spectrum they might be just well-meaning people who, when they experience difficulties, give up on doing what they know they should (perhaps because they don’t know what else to try). On the other end of the spectrum are the people who simply put their own pleasurable desires ahead of their family’s needs (such as working more than they need to away from home or at home, or pursuing hobbies out of proportion to what’s needed at home).

Category Two also has a broad spectrum, with authoritarian abusers at one end, and, at the other, people who take undue pride in having produced “good children” (which leads, when their children finally do make bad choices, to the parents’ taking responsibility for those choices to the point of making themselves miserable with grief and guilt).

Many of us have been in this situation for short periods of time when our children are having rebellious times. It’s only normal to evaluate ourselves, asking, “What can I possibly do differently? What factors CAN I influence in my child’s choices?” And, of course, we should make what changes the Spirit prompts.

What I worry about, though, are the righteous, well-meaning parents in Category Two who, out of fear, take on themselves more responsibility than they need to, making themselves sick over trying to control things that they truly have no control over (their children’s choices). When the Holy Ghost is behind a prompting or even appropriate guilt, it feels positive, hopeful, energizing—not fearful and debilitating. Too many people are in danger of mixing these things up.

I worry when I see people take more credit than they should for their children’s choices. This is harmless enough until one of the children makes a bad choice. Sometimes this doesn’t happen until all the children are grown up, and then the parents, who have taken credit for raising “twelve kids and all married in the temple” are suddenly faced with the responsibility for taking credit for the screw-up, too (which, of course, they shouldn’t).

The truth is that we are all on this earth in part to make mistakes and experience the process of repentance. There is no way we can raise our kids in a way that will prevent them from doing so. The thing we are all to learn is that there is only one true, real mistake, and that is failing to repent when you fall short. Even if we could prevent our children from learning this while they are in our care, that wouldn’t be helpful to them in the long run, would it?

So what CAN we take credit for, then? How can we ever feel satisfied with our efforts? The answer is that we should be accountable only to God and only for the things He prompts us to do. If we can answer that we have done our very best, repenting when we’ve fallen short, then we are successful parents. Regardless of how our children turn out. We cannot compare ourselves to others who, perhaps, received different promptings than we did about how carefully to monitor their children’s eating habits, internet usage, etc., or how many hours they can spend on the internet themselves (or scrapbooking, or cleaning scrupulously, or returning to school) without being guilty of neglecting their children. We can never know the differences in temperament our neighbor’s children were born with and how, comparatively, our children might be harder or easier than theirs. We should never take pride in how our children turn out just as we should never take responsibility for their poor choices. We can, however, take pride in following through on what the Spirit has prompted us to do, regardless of outcome.

p.s. I said it is wrong to compare ourselves to others—and it is, if we are doing it to judge others. But I think it is perfectly healthy to be observant about what others are doing around us. It’s how we learn. It’s so hard to learn how to parent, and I don’t think people should feel guilty about observing what others are doing and then evaluating it for possible use in our own homes. The trick is to do it without feeling superior or inferior to the others you are observing, and with the understanding that you can never know all of the factors involved in their decision to act that way. There could be, oh, say, chronic illness in that family that leaves them with less energy. Or mental illness. Or a difficult spouse, etc. “Prove all things,” but never let go of charity.

End of sermon.

Sunday, November 07, 2010

Dear Dr. S.,

I just want you to take a moment today to be grateful for your wonderful health. I could tell today that you have never spent a significant amount of time ill, or struggled with an illness that is difficult to diagnose. Do you know how I could tell?

Because you kept calling me sweetheart.

I am 40 years old. I don’t believe you are much older than 45, if even that. Granted, I look younger than I am. But I am not a young girl.

But something about our relationship made you think of me that way, and it is exactly the thing that I find most frustrating about most of the doctors I have seen in the last four years. You see me as a child because I am ill, and because I am paying you lots of money to help me find my way through this maze. Somehow, that makes you feel older than me, and makes you talk down to me. You forget that I am a whole universe, just as you are—-a complete person with passions, skills, intricacies, a sense of humor, opinons.

And, yes, fears.

One of which is doctors who make me feel ashamed or less than a whole person for being ill. Doctors who seem to think that a failure in my physical self indicates an immaturity or shortcoming in my actual self which, believe me, is not in any way the same thing as my body.

Nver, ever mistake a person's body for her real self.

But you’ll learn all this someday. That’s one thing I know for sure—everyone, even those who are so proud of their vibrant health as you are, will someday sit with their feet dangling off an examining table and feel like a slab of meat. And maybe you’ll remember us, your patients, when that day comes for you. Trust me, sweetheart, you’ll know this feeling someday.

Wednesday, November 03, 2010

Repenting

I’m a big advocate of journal writing, though I don’t do it as steadily as I wish I did (and blogging interferes with it, but then I print out my blogs and put them in my journal to ease my conscience). When people tell me they are too overwhelmed to journal, I tell them that’s because they are believing, falsely, that they need to tell everything or—heaven forbid—catch up before they can benefit from it.

So I have to chide myself for putting off blogging with the excuse that too much has happened and I can never move forward until I report on the past. Not true.

So I’m going to listen to myself and move forward.

But, since I can’t resist, let me just say that big things have been happening for me, mostly in the form of a renewed encounter with the medical establishment that proved, well, devastating. But not in the way you might think—I have no bad news to report. Just dashed hopes.

Moving forward . . .

I remembered something suddenly the other day. Several years ago when I was last redefining my testimony, I formulated for myself a new definition of faith. To have faith in something, I decided, is to put trust in it. Trust like a financial trust—where I let something of value be held for me because I believe it is a safe place. And so for me, having faith means that I invest in it, put my belief (value) in that thing, and then ACT AS IF I KNOW WITHOUT A DOUBT THAT MY TRUST IS SECURE (justified). The key word there is act. It is integral to my definition of faith. Faith is an acting upon belief as if it were sure knowledge.

I can’t believe that I had been forgetting this definition of faith in situations regarding my health. It took a comment from my wise friend Angela to remind me. She said that “fear is a temptation to be resisted,” and that it is wrong to view anxiety as an acceptable response to things. (In her defense, I must point out that she said these things are reminders to herself, not to criticize anyone else.) I realize that I have been indulging myself when I succumb to fear about what my symptoms mean, instead of investing my faith in the blessings I have received that tell me that all will be well. Each time I act afraid, or dissolve into frustrated tears again, I have not been ACTING as if I truly believed in these promised blessings.

Also, the fear has made me way too self-centered.

I am repenting.