Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Would I Change It?
Saturday, December 19, 2009
The Gift Mary Gave
I have traveled many moonless nights. Cold and weary with a babe inside and I wonder what I've done.
Holy Father you have come and chosen me now to carry your son.
I am waiting in a silent prayer. I am frightened by the load I bear, in a world as cold as stone
Must I walk this path alone. Be with me now. Be with me now.
Breath of Heaven hold me together, be forever near me.
Breath of Heaven.
Breath of Heaven, lighten my darkness, pour over me your holiness,
For you are holy, Breath of Heaven.
Do you wonder as you watch my face if a wiser one should have had my place.
But I offer all I am, for the mercy of your plan.
Help me be strong, help me be, help me.
Breath of Heaven hold me together, be forever near me.
Breath of Heaven.
Breath of Heaven, lighten my darkness, pour over me your holiness,
For you are holy, Breath of Heaven.
I teach Tai Chi and I am often telling students that to let go of control is really to gain it. Mary had to turn herself entirely over to Heavenly Father and His wisdom and His plan. I find it difficult to let go of control over even the smallest things sometimes. it It is hard for me to imagine someone so humble as to allow her life to be given to someone else for the greater cause of mankind. However, in my years on this earth, I have learned that to give myself over to my Heavenly Father's plan makes things so much simpler. Even then, I often choose not to do so.
At this Christmas time, I would hope that we all, myself included, can come to a place where we let go of our selfish impulses even for a short time and remember the Gift that Mary gave, the gift of self, to bring about a better world.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
To My Awesome Children
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Simple Courage
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Finding Ones Resilient Self
Friday, October 23, 2009
Blessings
Sunday, October 11, 2009
A Choice to Learn and Change
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Children-A Choice
I teach a Marriage and Family Relations class and I believe one of my prime responsibilities is to try and get each person in the group to think about the choices they make before facing the situation in which that choice will be implemented. It constantly amazes me how few people think about their choices before the choice must actually be made. This seems especially true in the choice to have children.
Let see, it goes something like this. Boy meets girl. He/she is cute and funny and fun. I like to be with this person. Maybe I would like to be with them for a long time. I will marry this person. I don't know, maybe we should have children. They are so cute and they will love me no matter what. That would be fun! Whoa! What happened to challenging, tons of work, frustrating, heart breaking, joyous, funny, expensive, time consuming etc. It never enters some of their minds that when they make this decision, they are choosing to alter their lives forever. Also, they are choosing to shape another life that is in their care.
In class, we spend a lot of time on the things that most don't think about. We talk about things like what do I want my children to learn from me. What qualities do I want to instill in my children. What natural talents and abilities does my child have and how do I enhance those. Do I really want to push any child to do the things I didn't have a chance to do. Where is the line that defines how hard I push or what I should let go. Many young people have given virtually no thought to most of these questions.
What they don't understand is that when you choose to have a child, many of your other choices go straight out the window. Let's face it, if you are a good parent, junior's good comes first. Good bye to going wherever I want and doing whatever I want. Mary has a play that I will need to see. Jonny has 10 football games this year. Do I need to be to all of them? Should I let Sandy take Karate or should I push her to do ballet, after all, I didn't get that chance. I know George has been taking piano lessons for 3 years and doesn't seem any better but...... How do we answer those questions? Especially in the world as it is today.
Could it be that quality is not enough? Could it be that I need quantity enough to get to know my child like he/she really deserves to be known. YES!!! The only way to find the answers to all those questions is to take the time to really know your child. You must ask questions and you MUST LISTEN TO THE ANSWERS. My daughter has 6 beautiful, talented and highly individual children. They were raised in the same house but they were not raised in the same way. There must be adjustments for each child's personality, their likes and dislikes, their talents and abilities, their tastes and choices. This is a time and labor intensive undertaking. If you do not do it, someone else will but maybe you won't like the outcome.
Each of my children has turned out amazingly well! This simply proves that sometimes in spite of parental errors, things work out ok. The one thing I did do right was sincerely love each of them and give them my time. I learned to swallow hard and say, "I'm sorry. I was wrong!" I learned to wind cords for various machines whose purpose I didn't understand but which apparently made the band practicing in my basement sound "cool". I didn't necessarily love their music but I knew where they were. I did find too, that the songs they were playing had some tremendously meaningful lyrics. I learned American Sign Language. You would be amazed at how many parents of deaf chidlren choose to not learn to communicate with them. I had multiple before and after Prom events. I was chauffer to many. I listened to all and when my nephew who lived with us said to me, "Even the bad times here are good!" I never forgot it.
If you don't have children yet, make the choice to think about it first. If you do have children, make a choice to give your all to that awe inspiring task. I promise you will never regret it! Remember, you can are the one that can choose to make "even the bad times" seem good!
On Cory
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Mom Again
Mom's Choice
Most other days for her were spent at home. She was never a "social butterfly". She loved her family, her house and her garden. Her passions were her family and a "white tornado" clean house and yard. That was her work and her glory and she did a pretty terrific job with those things. Many of her days were lonely. She made choices that isolated her from the world. She would not call anyone for the simplest request. She would not initiate a visit with anyone. She would not go with the ladies who invited her to lunch or club meetings or just a ride or movie. She quit going to church because she might not look right and later because she could not hear it. She was so afraid of "looking stupid" that she would not even avail herself of the simple safety devices that could have made her more comfortable as she aged, walkers, alarm systems etc.
I had a particular gripe in this area. I am the mother of 3 deaf kids and thier spouses are all deaf as well. 3 of them really benefit from hearing aids but 3 are so deaf that it makes very little difference and in a sense is actually sort of annoying. Mom started to lose her hearing many years before she died. We dutifully went and got her a state of the art set of hearing aids at no small expense. She wore them for a week or two and then straight to the jewelry drawer they went where they remained useless for the rest of her life. She refused to make the effort to learn to live with them. I would have given anything for my kids to be able to benefit from similar aids and the fact that she would not use them gnawed at me. The plain fact of the matter was that mom did not like to try anything out of her comfort zone and she also thought they made her "look stupid". Did that mean that my kids looked stupid because they wore aids or did they look stupid because aids did them no good so they chose not to wear them? Though she didn't mean anything by not wearing them, I got the message that her feelings about herself applied to my children as well. I'm absolutely sure she never understood the pain this caused me. Why? Because no one, including me, told her.
I learned a powerful lesson from this little hang-up of moms. I learned how little we know about how our choices sometime affect others without our even understanding that they do. A pair of hearing aids did not come between mom and I because I made a choice not to allow that but her world was altered by that choice in ways she did not know. I still have those hearing aids where I can see them occassionally to remind me of this lesson.
Thanks mom. You were a terrific mom and I learned so much from you even if you did have some hangups! The fact is that I even learned from your hang-ups!
Monday, September 28, 2009
Not Another Prospective Author!
I have had a few of Dr. Phil's defining moments in my life. I have had more than a few of those days when I truly didn't think I could make it and honestly didn't care. You see, I have this funny point of view about the "alternative". You know, the "alternative" that everyone says doesn't look so good to them when they are sick, discouraged, wasted or just plain tired and don't want to face another day. I kind of think the "alternative" looks pretty good. That is not to say that I would deliberately choose "the alternative". It just means that I don't think it sounds so bad. I choose to stay here with my family and friends right now but I haven't as my husband so delicately puts it, "fallen in love with this world." I don't think I ever will. Today is my birthday and as I get each year older, I fall less in love with the world, especially as it is today. You see, I can clearly remember being 15 or 16 and having these moments when I felt like this was not my real life. Those moments were so vivid and I remember thinking I was living a dream. Not an amazing, wonderful dream, not a nightmare, just a dream.
I live here because of my amazing family. I graduated from college and yes, shortly after that, I got a tall, dark and handsome, kind, gentle and virtuous, returned missionary college student for a husband. We followed the advice of a prophet and didn't put off having a family. Our first daughter was born 9 months and 2 weeks after we were married. Thank goodness for those 2 weeks or every old lady's tongue would have been wagging instead of just a few! 12 months and 10 days later, we had our second child, a son. My husband worked 30 hours a week on 2 jobs, took 18 hours of credit every semester of school until he graduated and we built a house during that time. Kids now hear us say that and they think we were just plain crazy or lying. It is the plain and simple truth. Funny thing is, we just thought we were the average normal couple because all our friends did pretty much the same.
My world then began to fall apart. One piece at a time I began to lose my idea of what a perfect life was. I have since redefined that "perfect" world. At the time though, my world was defined mostly by pain and anger. Actually, my world was coming together in a different way than I had planned. Don't all our worlds do that? I was about to learn some of life's most valuable lessons. Looking back, I have changed my choices and my passions and my definitions have become more broad. Now, I find "perfection" is what is perfect for me and see that all these elements of the past have come together to make my life "perfect" for the person it has made me. Paraphrasing Eleanor Roosevelt, "The lives we lead are a result of the choices we make."