Maybe summertime will facilitate more reflection and writing and all that goodness. Today though, I just want to write a short list of good things I'm thankful for:

• sunshine
• wind blowing through the trees at night (best soporific ever, and it reminded me of Rotterdam)
• summertime and, well, time!
• wonderful friends
• my little brother coming home from his mission soon
• bikes
• home cooking
• color
• bubbles
• my adorable nieces and nephew
• the sound of little girls laughing
• travel
• mountains
• green mountains!
• flowers
• wonderful friends getting married
• life. so much life.
• old favorite books rediscovered
• Tamora Pierce (no shame!)
• live shows (Memoryhouse and Washed Out, oh my!)
• traipsing around SLC with Shawn
• old journals

Christmas peace

After a lovely dinner with wonderful friends, Shawn and I decided to watch at least one talk from the LDS Church Christmas devotional. We settled in bed, listening to Elder Uchtdorf, and before I knew it Shawn had slipped off to sleep. This is the peace I've been longing for. No, not a husband muted by sleep. I'd really rather he were awake so I could watch with him. But this reminder from an apostle that Christ was there for a reason, that the Savior can help us transform ordinary life into extraordinary spiritual experiences. Things have been awfully stressful with school and illness and all that jazz. All I really want is to lie under a Christmas tree to look up into the bright lights, the way I used to do as a little child.

It's been a day full of snarky experiences, tears, laughter, friendship. When my rather socially uninhibited neighbor pulled up behind my at stake conference, I dreaded getting out of my car. True to form, he said, "Hey, come here. Is your husband inactive?" I'd had it. I doubt he understands my Southern upbringing and that sir is not said by me now in any way but sarcastically, but I said, "No sir, he has a chronic illness."

"Well, do you feel like a widow?"
"Only when people ask me that."

I think this man really meant well. He said I could sit by his family. I excused myself to wander into a spectacularly pink and salmon ladies restroom to text my sister and then cry to her on the phone. [I am never so aware of a socially constructed femininity as I am at church, which is usually benevolent enough but sometimes too bizarrely pink, like this bathroom.] I really hope he stops feeling like he needs to yell across the cul-de-sac or corner me before stake conference to check up on our activity level. He means well, I think. Only he and snarky matriarch neighbor (who asked why I was mowing the lawn and then informed me that was my husband's job) have been a pain about the whole illness issue. So I shouldn't feel like the whole ward is crazy. Nonetheless I just want a new start. We may look for a congregation that starts at 2 pm so Shawn will be more likely to feel well enough to go. A fresh start (where people don't know the relative who's been gracious enough to let us house sit) would be marvelous.

It's all a deep reminder that we don't go to church for other people, and an eye-opening gift of empathy for all those who don't darken a church door for fear of the people in it.

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”
~ Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum

Beautiful.

Laura Veirs - Song My Friends Taught Me. Beautiful lyrics and guitar I want to learn.

God's sense of irony

At church yesterday, I was confronted by the elderly matriarch of the ward (despite my best attempts to avoid her). She happens to be across the street and kitty corner from the place we're house-sitting for a year. Her first words to me were, "So why were you mowing the lawn yesterday?" Per usual, I was taken aback by her abrupt critique and a little confused so I mumbled, "Uh, just timing?"

Her classic response? "That's your husband's job!" And then she moved on. She seems to lie in wait to give snarky criticisms and then move on without a single word about how are things or what'd you think of the Relief Society meeting. I'm really curious if she does this to everyone or just to the new granddaughters-in-law of her longtime ward "pals."

I'd like to pretend I can just laugh at this situation. Unfortunately it was a rough day. Every weekend, when my husband rallies for a couple of days and then gets ill Saturday night or Sunday morning, it tastes like an inevitable, Sisyphean defeat. Given this woman's previous criticisms of his church absences (in explaining he was sick, she responded, "Oh, must be those Sunday headaches"), one more tiny criticism of my lifestyle and my dear husband was a breaking point.

So here's the saving grace: I must have been scowling more than I thought during the Relief Society lesson because my visiting teacher made a point to ask me how I was doing and not settle for a passe answer. Though I hate tearing up in public and haven't done so since my mission, I greatly appreciate her sensitivity. Later that evening, a women in the ward dropped by with a card and a homemade Elmo fuzzy craft.

So what do I choose to hold onto in the end? Acts of kindness or barbs of spite? I know, of course, what the answer should be. But here's what it has become:

hello world

I think I'll be here more because I need community more. I'm surprised at how many people instantly commented on yesterday afternoon's post (thanks to RSS feeds?). I found that while editing a paper for the scholarly journal I help out with. It got me thinking a lot about church and faith. And while I do believe in absolute truth, I feel that sometimes we stop there. Mostly this is cued by the one truly negative Relief Society experience I've had (pitted against so many wonderful RS lessons that literally saved my spiritual life, especially on my mission, that singling out one seems a little unfair--and yet), the one I've ranted to almost everyone about, when we discussed how "the family is under attack" and nearly the whole lesson was spent discussing the evils of the world and Them. Hardly at all did we discuss what we as individual women can do, despite the best efforts of the teacher. Having truth is not enough. Even sharing it is not enough. We have to be the change we wish to see in the world, like Gandhi said. The whole Us vs. The World attitude is good for teaching teenagers values (maybe) but horrible for actually working with people outside of our faith to better the world. Because we are the world. Literally. We can't separate ourselves out from that, and good thing too, because the last thing we should do is put ourselves upon a false rameumpton and point fingers as things get worse and worse. Wow. I did not expect to be so grumpy this morning. What are your thoughts? How do we build instead of tear down? How do we really build Christ-centered homes and reach out to our neighbors, be a light on the hill that illuminates? I'm an optimist, and one less-than-spectacular lesson won't stop my idealism.

Good health is worth the fight. I just wish I knew the rules of engagement. I feel lost in a haze of scanty information and folk remedies.