small, Medium, LARGE

"Hi, my name is Teresa and I'm a psychic medium."

Yeah, I caught the fever.  I watched the marathon catch-up of Long Island Medium.  I've always liked psychics.  I always watched John Edward when I could find him.  It intrigues me.  I think that it could be possible for someone to have that gift to sense spirits, maybe even communicate with them.  After all, we are taught by Brigham Young that the spirit world is here around us.

I even like the idea that somebody could bring me a message from Ian, Duh.

But,  the new episode that aired this week crossed the line--my line.  She sat down with a couple of women; a mother and her adult daughter.  They had lost someone close to them and she had something very interesting to tell them.  She said it was a rare occurrence but their loved one--the other daughter, had come back in the body of the granddaughter.  Whoa!  Whoa!

Spirits.  Connection.  Communication.  Love lasting forever.  Yep.

Reincarnation.  No.

The Wise Man

I sat in on (out, in my office) my first institute class.  It was a New Testament class.  They were talking about the wise man and the foolish man.  The teacher asked what the difference between them was.  He got a lot of different answers  I couldn't hear them all.  There were noisy kids in the lobby--it's an adult-friendly class.  Then he read the verse.

Matthew 7:24-27

Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock:

I heard it in a new way.  I thought about it all day. 

You're wise if you're obedient.  If you do more than just hear.  If you listen and actually do something.  That's what makes you wise.  It's like the parable of the ten virgins.  It's not about who knows or believes;  it's about who acts.

 ²⁵ And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.

²⁶ And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand:
²⁷ And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.

I also thought about the fact that whether you're wise or foolish, the winds still pound you.  Being wise/obedient doesn't prevent the storm, it just gives  you refuge during the hard time.

Keep the Sabbath Day Holy

Can anyone ever keep the Sabbath day too holy?

I'm a long way from that.
I really tried today.
It felt good.
I need to focus on it for a while.
There's a lot more to it than what I shouldn't do.

Start to Finish

Wow, today was a remarkably bad day.  In fact, I guess it started last night.  We went to a wedding reception.  It was for a young man we care for.  We are happy for him and glad he's heading in the right direction in life. 

I want that for Ian.  I'm painfully aware that I don't get to have a wedding reception for my son.  No tuxedo, no cake, no pretty girl.  It sucks.  To make things worse, one of Ian's pretty girls was there and she came and sat down right next to me.  I hate seeing her.  It hurts.  She's getting her patriarchal blessing and talking about how old she'll be when she has her big wedding day.  I can't stand it.

Then, this morning, I had to get up early for a faculty meeting at the institute.  On the way there I thought about how I should've been strong enough to do the heart walk this year.  It was today.  I had to drive right past the campus to get where I was going.  I hope Ian doesn't care that I couldn't do it.  I just couldn't.  It's not going to bring him back;  it's not going to help him;  it doesn't get me any 'strongest mother of the year' award--so why bother?  When I thought about the shirts a month or two ago, all I could think of was  "Ian's Team--He's gone and walking won't bring him back."  So we decided not to do it.  Then,  when I actually got to UOP, there weren't balloons, no signs, no crowd that I could see and that made me even sadder.

After my meeting, I had some errands to run.  I turned on the radio so I wouldn't feel so alone in the car.  The Bee Gees came on singing "Stayin' Alive."  I sang for 5 seconds or so and then thought about how it's the CPR song and then in my head I saw the doctors gathered around my son doing CPR, unable to save him.  I quickly changed the channel to spare myself the agony, but the next station was Queen,  "We are the Champions."  One of Ian's faves.  Second bawling for the day. 

There was a baptism after that.  The intermediate songs were "I am a Child of God," which Keith can't sing  (that's his story to tell, not mine) and  Families Can be Together Forever, which I still feel like is a form of brainwashing.  No family gets to remain intact forever--because forever includes now!!!  Then the closing song was "Army of Helaman."  It made me cry right for the third time today--right there in the meeting.  Nobody wanted to be a missionary more than my Ian.  He listened and learned and obeyed as well as any member of Helaman's Army.  God didn't spare him.  I think it would be just as good a story if 2 or 3 of them had perished.  Would it mean they had less faith if God took them--if their time on earth was over?  Would their mothers have been less effective teachers if they had died?  The story gives the false impression that we have some control over when our time is up and if we just trust enough, we can make it through anything.  Bah!

No the day's not over at this point, but I was past the point of no return.  I cried while Lucy got a haircut.  I cried on the way home and then I shut myself in my room and did crossword puzzles.  My family got no dinner and I had to really psych myself up to go to a HP social.  I sat by myself and felt pretty mellow.  When we got home I gave in to the day.  I surrendered.  I put on Parent Trap--one of Ian's "I don't feel good movies" and cried some more.  Nothing like a little Lindsey Lohan to help me wallow in what could have been and finish off a perfectly horrible day.

Good Read

I've read some really good books over the past few months.  Some not so good ones too.  I finished one today.  It's called Have a Little Faith by Mitch Albom.  I got it because I read The Five People You Meet in Heaven and loved it and Tuesdays with Morrie was so good.  He's an engaging writer, I think, because of the subject matter he chooses both with fiction and nonfiction.

Have a Little Faith is nonfiction like Tuesdays.  It's about his Rabbi who asks him to do the eulogy at his funeral.  I folded down several pages because I thought some of the thoughts were profound.  I'm going to share a few.

The first describes one of the rabbi's sermons where he brought a squash and a piece of wood as visual aids to the pulpit.  He stabs each with a knife and then talks about how things that grow quickly are more easily destroyed than things that grow over time.  That's all it says.  The author goes on with other things, but that's a real thought provoker to me.  Faith, trust, commitment, love are all things that grow like a tree and don't really produce wood for a really long time.  Whereas the squash plant sprouts in a few days and blossoms in a few weeks and has so much squash you hardly know what to do with it--but only for a very short period of time.  (Unless you are me and then you can't even get zucchini to grow.)  Anyway,  I think that's a really good lesson.  One of those Our time vs. God's time things.  One of those life is but a small moment things.

Here's another tidbit.  "Faith is about doing.  You are how you act, not just how you believe."  For a Jewish rabbi, that's about as close to a New Testament quoting of "faith without works is dead " as you can get.  Again it made me pause for a minute and fold the page.

The next one I'm going to include the whole thing:

It is 1974 and I am in my religious high school.  The subject is the parting of the Red Sea.  I yawn.  What is left to learn about this?  I've heard it a million times.  I look across the room to a girl I like and contemplate how hard it would be to get her attention.  "There is a Talmudic commentary here,"  the teacher says.  Oh, great, I figure.  This means translation, which is slow and painful.  But as the story unfolds, I begin to pay attention.  After the Israelites safely crossed the Red Sea, the Egyptians chased after them and were drowned.  God's angels wanted to celebrate the enemy's demise.  According to the commentary,  God saw this and grew angry.  He said,  in essence:  "Stop celebrating. For those were my children too."  "What do you think of that?"  the teacher asks us.  Someone else answers.  But I know what I think.  I think it is the first time I've heard that God might love the "enemy" as well as us.  Years later, I will forget the class, forget the teacher's name, forget the girl across the room.  But I will remember that story.

I've never heard this--why would I have?  It's in a Talmudic commentary.  But when I see the Ten Commandments movie or read bits of it in accounts by later prophets talking about the miracle,  there's always a bit of cheering in my mind when the Egyptians get covered by the water.  I'd never thought about how it wouldn't be all joyful for God to see that many of his children destroyed no matter the circumstance.

I don't know how much I want to write but at least one more. 
The rabbi talks about when babies are born their fists are clenched because they want to grab everything in this world and hold onto it.  But when we die, are hands are open because we know we can't take anything with us. 
I don't have a lot to say about that except I like it.

This is the last one.  It's a Buddhist parable.

A farmer wakes up to find that his horse has run off.  The neighbors come by and say,  "Too bad.  Such awful luck."  The farmer says,  "Maybe."  The next day the horse returns with a few other horses.  The neighbors congratulate the farmer on his reversal of fortune.  "Maybe,"  the farmer says.  When his son tries to ride one of the new horses, he breaks his leg, and the neighbors offer condolences.  "Maybe," the farmer says.  And the next day, when army officials come to draft the son--and don't take him because of his broken leg--everyone is happy.  "Maybe,"  the farmer says.

Isn't that just like life.  We can never be sure which things are best for us and which things are just brought on by our own stupid ways.  At least I can't.

It was a good book.  I highly recommend it.

Little Pieces

We bought this orange sofa today.
Lucy started taping Animal Cops.
Mikey got out plaid shorts and tie-dye shirts to wear.

It would be so great if all the little pieces of Ian that we try to have around the house would add up to a whole Ian around the house.

Pow! Pow-pow

I heard a great thought today. 
Just a little thing I jotted down at church and want to remember.

"Contention isn't like a gun.  You can't point it just at one person. 
It fills a whole room and affects all there." 

Isn't that great. 
Sometimes I'm contentious and I see how it affects Mikey even if he has nothing to do with what I'm upset about.    I hope I can remember this little tiny quote.