:Naiahdot

No way. This is *so* not what I signed up for. I mean, seriously. If I had known it would be like this, well, I don’t know if I’d even be here. This is ridiculous. I mean, seriously. As if I didn’t have enough to deal with already in the course of a day. Are you kidding me? I mean, seriously. You’ve got to be kidding. There is no way I’m gonna deal with this. Absolutely not. I mean, seriously…

Sound familiar? I find myself up against this kind of thinking a lot lately. I’ve come to call it “resistance.” Because that’s really all it is—resisting the very truth of some aspect of my reality. I don’t like it. I wish it weren’t there, and so I butt myself up against it. The visual of it for me is of something like a large pane of glass, against which I find myself pressed, not unlike those videos you see of those people at the front of the crowds who have been waiting outside a Wal-Mart or some such glass-doored uberbox anxiously awaiting the holiday-inspired early-bird special whose bargain-devoted punctuality earns them the reward of a face-full of glass as the throng begins to press in anticipation.

The neat thing about glass is that it shatters. That’s actually how the image came to me. I’ve gotten pretty caught up in this kind of resistance on a few occasions recently, and on a couple of them, the resistance grew stronger and stronger and stronger until *crash* it just broke. Funny how my visual implies that the resistance is something external to myself, but I totally know that it’s all me. I put it up, in my own way. The glass is clear, of course, and so I can see where I could go if it weren’t there, but still I find myself sticking it there, again and again.

There are inconvenient and even uncomfortable truths in our lives, whether we like it or not. Sometimes there are even devastating and debilitating realities to be dealt with. We may not want them, and, if it were up to us, we certainly wouldn’t choose to have them there, but they come anyway. We can so easily get lost in the indignance of feeling that it’s not fair, that whatever-it-is just should not be. We can waste time and tears and dump milligrams upon milligrams of unnecessary cortisol into our bloodstreams chasing our tails with such ‘shoulds,’ pushing ourselves harder and harder up against our panes, locked in a semi-masochistic ego-battle with reality. In the end, though, reality usually wins, as it is wont to do, and all we’ve done is seize ourselves up tighter and tighter and tighter until in one tearingly, tearfully painful, spasmodic shattering we finally burn out and let it go, grudgingly accept the state of things, and deal with it.

With the glass gone, the view hasn’t changed, but now we’re free to move forward on into and through the whatever-it-is to the whatever-lies-beyond. Only now, we’re heading along, already run-down and in a defeated state of mind. We have to ask ourselves if this is the best state to be in when there’s an elephant in the living room or a crisis to be dealt with. With decisions to be made and consequences to be weighed, we want to be clear-headed, centered, and in possession of hearty reserves of energy and emotional resources to see us through.

Truth is the answer, as it is in so many things. What has happened has happened, and what is is. Like the old serenity prayer: “grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” If you ask me, the serenity and the acceptance are a little like the chicken and the egg. We have to find a sliver of serenity in order to make the acceptance, but having done so, we open ourselves to the abundantly peaceful wave of serenity that inevitably engulfs us in the wake of true acceptance, of dissolving the pane instead of shattering it.

In that state of acceptance, we are in a position to take all the time, energy, and feeling that we would have spent on fussing about it into dealing with it in the way that is kindest and healthiest for ourselves and those around us.

That’s what I want to do, and so, whenever I feel the cold, flat caress of that pane begin to creep in, I’ll just close my eyes, breathe in, make a quick, quiet reality check, breathe out, and release it. I may not be able to change the unpleasant reality before me, but I can choose to open myself to it so that I can do my best with it, whatever-it-may-be.

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You want to know what I’m thinking, do you?

That could sound really egotistical, but for the fact that you clicked on the link that brought you here.

It’s ok, I’ve been blogging long enough to know not to take it too seriously.

So what? No big. You want to know what I’m thinking.

Well, really, I do, too.

This was once a place for me to be mentally naked and emotionally raw—a glimpse into my own head, for me and whoever else was feeling voyeuristic enough to want to look. Then, somewhere along the line it became a pulpit, and ‘duty’ adulterated and diverted personal honesty. Truth is what it’s about. Making sense of it all. Sure, in the end, a lot of it is just storytelling, but there’s truth in the telling. Rather, there’s often very telling truth in the stories. At least, I hope there is. Ay, there’s the rub.

I tell you now, my judge and jurors, my intentions couldn’t have been purer, whether I was opening my head and heart or just my big mouth. Done is done. I did what I did, and now I’m doing what I’m doing. I offer my sincere apologies for your discomfort to those of you for whom this will be alienating. It’s not the first time the light has shifted and illuminated another facet, and it certainly won’t be the last. I am not static. Neither are you, y’know? At least I hope you’re not. Well, really, that’s not really possible. I just hope that you don’t labor under the misassumption that you are, as I sometimes do. Every day, every moment we are different than we were in the one before. Always.

New antitheses are constantly invading and altering our syntheses and subsequent theses, whether they be in the form of blog posts or the sound of a dog barking at a crow. Even the breath you just took just now changed you, as did reading this sentence, not to mention your dreams last night, or the last conversation you had. Truly. You are changing, and so am I.

Familiarity breeds comfort; we’re funny creatures that way. We’d best become familiar and comfortable with the flux, for it never ends. To be lithely fluid and adaptable, that is the only true comfort-state. Change is the only constant, and we’d best learn to flow with it, lest in our obstinacy we subject ourselves to the inevitable buffeting that comes from denying the flow.

Change is coming.

Change is here.

Change has always been.

Let’s embrace it.

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In a month it will have been a year since I wrote why I hadn’t written in half a year. I’m thinking it’s really time to lay this site to rest. Over the years I’ve grown and changed, and my readership has shifted again and again. I’ve alienated and offended people. I’ve baffled and bemused. I’ve also scared, confused, touched, and, undoubtedly bored.

Though I have not chronicled it here, I have gone on growing and changing in the ensuing textual silence. A whole new chapter has begun in my life–more like a whole new volume after many new chapters have come and gone–one so new and so different as to be utterly incongruous with any old thread that I might pick up from here. It is a happy new chapter, the happiest of my adult life–well, really, of my life, period. So, you needn’t worry about my signing off. I am on to sweet new horizons.

My sincere thanks for all that I received from having done this-my own increase in personal clarity as well as the support and feedback that so many people have given me over the years through this medium. I’m grateful for all the doors that were opened to me through my efforts here, even if I never did quite step through many of them.

I have no desire to be any kind of a public figure, a writer or a blogger or anything else, as I fade into my life of delicious ordinariness–filled with love and art and beauty and growth.

Wish me luck, and please know that I sincerely wish you well.

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For months now, I have wrestled with varying degrees of resistance to writing here, ranging from my own reticence for fear of pride to outright stupor of thought those times when I’d made up my little mortal mind to just roll my sleeves up and have at it. I’ve called up screens and stared at them until the words “Write Post” were burned into my retinas. A few times I’ve managed to tap out a bit, but never anything inspired, in any way worth sharing, or, occasionally, even coherent.

As the subtitle of this site states, I write here to make sense of it all, to process all the various theses, antitheses, and yes, even my own varying syntheses as they flow through my life and mind. Sometimes I write to process. Sometimes I write to proselytize. Sometimes I write to persuade. Even then, though, when I think I have scrap of understanding that I wish to share, in the process of writing, that God-given ephemeral abstract pursuit of condensing the myriad sensations of existence into linear text, even then I am further cementing the order of my thoughts as I experience their verbalization.

I could not begin to make sense of the last several months of my life if I had two research assistants, a team of experts, and the Oracle of Delphi to help me.

I live in a small town. I like living in my small town. I don’t like leaving my small town. In fact, as a rule, I just don’t unless I have to. Well, last summer, I packed up and left town for quite a while and had what was safely one of the richest life experiences of my 30-odd years. I was blessed, together with my children, to get to spend a month of our summer living with some of the displaced FLDS mothers and children down in Texas. Yes, I went all the way to Texas. Yes, I went to stay with the FLDS in Texas. What a priceless cross-cultural experience!

You see, I had been very moved by both what I had seen of their plight in regard to the YFZ Raid of 2008, as well as what I had managed to learn of their lifestyle previous to it. I wished publicly that I could live among them and learn from them, and that wish was granted. I learned more there than I could even begin to quantify.

That one month is still being processed some six months later. (Has it really been that long?!?! I hadn’t counted until now.) Sure, I said above that sometimes I write to process, but there’s a fair level of pre-writing processing that has to take place before I can even begin to piece together a sentence, and, being a busy mother, I really don’t have anything close to the time to relax and peacefully ponder a body of experience of such depth and breadth and height. I have, at times, impatiently begged for understanding, but I was met with nothing but a quiet admonition to patience. And so, I wait. If He meant for me to have it, I would have it by now, but I don’t, and I’m ok with that.

I, myself, wait rather patiently on the Lord these days. He has kept me plenty busy with volumes more life experience in arenas much closer to home, and so, like a lovingly distracted and redirected toddler, I find myself not even thinking much about the lack of recent posts on my blog. All my concerns about yesterday, and all my fears about tomorrow are remedied by living today as best I can (a spectacular truth that I picked up from my FLDS friends), and so I find myself staying in the moment. So much so that, apparently, six months have gone by before I could even stop to reckon them up on my fingers. All through this time, though, I have been receiving such kind and sweet encouragement to begin writing again, from such different quarters of my life, that I felt I needed to offer some explanation for my silence.

So, there you have it. I’ve been blessed with one of the most priceless experiences of my mortal sojourn, but without the corresponding capstone of understanding. If anything, I’ve learned how little I know, especially when I think I know something (and really that train of thought can get me chasing my tail so long I’ll never write another public word again if I don’t break it off). Perhaps I will need to just set that all aside, and accept that, contrary to what seems like the obvious thing to do with such an exceptional life experience, I may need to just set it on the shelf, and go on writing without having actually made sense of it all.

I do like writing. I love words. Next to flowers, they’re one of my favorite aspects of this world the Lord has given us. Mostly, though, I like the thinking and the moments of clarity and understanding that come along as connections are made and truths are realized, but really, in the end, like flowers, such things are gifts, and it’s not up to me whether I am to be a receiver or not, and so I just wait and cheerfully tend to my work elsewhere.

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Wednesday morning, a three-week-long trip to Ohio to visit my father’s family drew to a close. At the thought of leaving my childhood home to fly the 2,000+ miles to return to our home in Washington state, something in my heart just crumpled. I cried like nothing else. I just couldn’t imagine being away from that place. Ohio was my home. Only a few hours later, though, I was driving north on I-5 through Seattle with my family in our car, feeling ever so deliciously glad to be back home.

Which one is my true home? Ohio was, and in a way still is home, with family and memories. Yet Washington, too, is home, as well, with the roots that we have put down here. They say that home is where the heart is, but in that moment, I honestly could not have told you where my heart was.

As we were driving, I telephoned my father to let him know that we had arrived safely and to ask his opinion of my quandary. He mentioned that I’m just very adaptable, and I agreed, saying that wherever I am, I am with my whole heart.

After we hung up, I was still turning the idea over of where my true home was. What makes someplace home? Is it just where the heart is? Or, is it more empirical than that? Which counts more, where I was born, or where I live now? Then, suddenly, it hit me, and I couldn’t help but smile at the irony. It’s funny, but it’s neither Ohio, nor Washington.

I was born there, long, long ago (way longer than my 32 mortal years), and whenever I stop to think about it, my heart is really and truly there. Caught up in day-to-day living, though, it can be easy to forget. Our true home, you see, is nowhere on this earth.

While here, though, our truest home is the place (both on the planet and in our hearts) that brings us closest to that celestial abode.

It’s up to each of us to find the earthly home that will help us make it back to the home that counts. I can’t help but ask myself if that’s Ohio, or Washington, or somewhere else entirely…

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Seeking to live God’s ways in man’s world often entails a certain amount of sacrifice. Some of the pleasures and delights of the mortal moment are foregone in favor of eternal light and love. Thus a greater joy is achieved in a lesser sacrifice. While we may know this truth and understand the logic of it, we often do not live it. Sacrifice and sin rest on either side of us like the ever-shifting pans of a scale that we must seek to keep in balance. (more…)

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I’ve been pounding through something of a tandem realization together with the sister of my soul recently. We have noticed that we each tend to divide the events and situations of our lives into “life” and “stuff that disrupts life.” I couldn’t even count up for you the number of times that I have lamented “it’s so unfair that as soon as I hit my stride, something knocks me off again!!!”

We have this idea that ‘real life’ are those quiet moments wherein our houses are humming, the laundry’s all done (very, very brief moments…), and we’re quietly having our well-planned out, perfectly taught Family Home Evening lesson that neatly ties up the week’s daily family scripture study before getting the kids to bed not just on time but early for what will make for the 8th day straight. I don’t know about everyone else, but those brief moments are just those–BRIEF moments.

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We are always fiercest with others when it is ourselves with whom we are really upset.

This occurred to me just yesterday in one of those moments where the truth of some aspect of human nature just pops up to give you a quick slap in the face, where a pattern is finally evident and you crack just a little bit more of the code. (Is there anything so encrypted as human behaviors and motivations??!?)

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In the comments to my last entry, a couple of people mentioned that their various trials and pains did not compare with mine, and I replied that I once learned that you can’t compare suffering. This is how:

About 5 years ago, there I was, three days into an ICU stay at Children’s Hospital for my daughter who had an asthma attack that just wouldn’t break.

Having spent all but a few hours at her bedside, I had finally hit the wall. I just couldn’t look at her with all those tubes and lines anymore.

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