1st
Dirt
Dirt. I love dirt. I love seeing a field with dark soil all in lines, just turned over with a tractor. The sight of it makes me happy. I love the way it smells, specifically in April when my husband tills up the dirt in our garden. The hard crust of the earth mixing and coming out new again. Dark and cool, and still sleepy from the long winter. With rocks un earthing and worms sticking their heads out for a brief second of sunlight before diving back into the world in which they know. My husbands pushes and walks the tiller back and forth, back and forth, until the land is fresh and scented. Its the greatest smell in the world. My husband tells me I should refer to it as soil. But because I don't have a degree in biology I will call it dirt.
Dirt. I love dirt. I love seeing a field with dark soil all in lines, just turned over with a tractor. The sight of it makes me happy. I love the way it smells, specifically in April when my husband tills up the dirt in our garden. The hard crust of the earth mixing and coming out new again. Dark and cool, and still sleepy from the long winter. With rocks un earthing and worms sticking their heads out for a brief second of sunlight before diving back into the world in which they know. My husbands pushes and walks the tiller back and forth, back and forth, until the land is fresh and scented. Its the greatest smell in the world. My husband tells me I should refer to it as soil. But because I don't have a degree in biology I will call it dirt.
We bought our home about 5 years ago, when we were house shopping the only thing I really wanted was a front porch and a space to garden. The first time I saw our home, without even walking inside I knew it was the one. We had made a list of addresses of homes for sale in our area. On a Sunday afternoon we loaded the kids in the car and turned on a movie for them, then we drove around to all the addresses to get a first look at the homes before talking to our realtor. As we turned the corner into a cul-de-sac and came upon this house I knew I loved it. Of course it wasn't anything spectacular but it just looked like home. There was a front porch that was big enough to have chairs on each side of the front door, it had places to hang baskets of flowers. Its not fancy at all, but its the perfect place to sit on hot summer days and watch the kids ride their bikes on the drive way. The day we finally got to walk through the house it felt different than the others. Out back was the biggest, emptiest corner of land, it had a strawberry patch in one corner, but the rest was a clean slate. I knew it was going to be the place my children ran barefoot, where we would sit in the evenings and eat fresh vegetables, while the chickens pecked the ground around us. The front porch and the big garden lot sold me on the house, everything else was just fluff. But those two things were essential.
We made an offer on the house and after a little bit of back and forth we settled on a price. Thirty days later we were moving in. On moving day I went out to the sad excuse of a garden that we had worked on at our rental house and clipped the only things that really grew that summer. Three mini jack pumpkins. I held them on my lap as we took the last load of furniture and boxes to be unloaded into the garage of our new home. And before I even walked into the house I sat those pumpkins on the front porch. It felt good to be home.
We moved in just as winter was hitting, but the next summer we got right out in the garden area and got to work. I cold go on and on about how beautiful my pumpkin patch looks in early September when its huge leaves are greener than anything I've ever seen, how my sunflowers wake up in August and how they remind me of giants waking up. And how my zinnias bloom the most brightest, beautiful colors all summer long. I can tell you about my little girls bent over, picking strawberries in the strawberry patch, blond hair glowing in the summer sun. I can tell you about our tomato bushes, just bursting with little cherry tomatoes quicker than we can pick them. Its work that most have forgotten, but its an art that I find fascinating. I cant think of a better way to raise children than in a garden. I recently read The Secret Garden, by _______. My favorite line in the whole book says
"Give her simple, healthy food. Let her run wild in the garden. Don't look after her too much. She needs liberty and fresh air and romping about."
This speaks volumes to me, especially being a mom to three untamed and strong willed little girls. That little back corner of our yard has become our own secret retreat. We gather there in the mornings and evenings, to start the day and end the day in the garden.
Have I talked you into it yet? Have I convinced you that you need a garden? Well this next part might change your mind. If you want to garden you need to be okay with the idea of getting dirty. Because the garden wouldn't be possible without the dirt. I've come to love dirt, others don't want to bother with it. For one, its dirty, dirt and dirty to kind of go hand in hand. For another thing, it tends to get everywhere and destroy our clean clothes, get tracked into our clean floors, plant itself into the carpet and is impossible to get out from under your fingernails. Its no wonder everyone fills in every square inch of their property with either cement, blacktop or grass. Dirt is hard to keep in a neat little box, and its been given an ugly reputation over the past few years.
Did everyone forget that everything we eat and wear comes from dirt. The grass that feeds the animals that give us meat comes from dirt, the trees that grows the wood that we build our homes with grow from dirt. The cotton that grows that makes our clothing comes from dirt. I had a middle school science teacher that would tell us, look around, everything you see comes from dirt. We would yell out different items, trying to prove him wrong and he would break that item down and down until he traced its history back to dirt.
Maybe you live in the country with agricultural fields all around you. Maybe you live in an apartment in a big city and dirt is only in the cracks of the sidewalks. Where ever you live, whoever you are, if you are living on this earth, I would almost guarantee that every single person we have ever met and will ever meet has their own personal dump truck of dirt. Some of us have already struggled and climbed until we are standing on top of that pile of dirt. Some of us are stuck, with the heaviness weighing down on our heart and mind. And some of us, those few fresh faces, who have yet to encounter their own truckload of dirt who are still walking among us. Bless them, and hopefully they don't loose all of their sparkle when the dirt piles up over their head. Some of us have lines of dump trucks full of dirt, just waiting in line, ready to add more and more to the already overwhelming tower. And some of us have maybe just a few trucks, with some big loads and some little loads.
It sounds exhausting and depressing. But here's the thing. The thing that keeps me climbing and struggling up out of the dirt. The thing that helps me look to the future and expecting more loads of dirt.
Dirt contains nutrients.
Every flower must grow through dirt. - Laurie Jean Sennott
The dirt in my garden is packed with nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. It also has minerals like calcium and sulfur that helps little seeds grow. I love mixing the old frost bitten leaves and plants that are yellow and no longer standing tall into the dirt each fall. And then shoveling loads of manure from our chickens and rabbits, which is not the cleanest job in the world, But its such a sweet and natural way of preparing the soil Okay, now if I have not lost you by now, this next part is really going to make you wonder what kind of book you are reading. I want you to, for a moment, imagine yourself as a seed. Yes. Stay with me. Imagine you are a little seed, you are living comfortable with all your friends and family. Then one day you get dropped into a hole and get covered with dirt. Its dark and heavy and your not sure how to get out.
Have you been there? Have you found yourself in the dark, all alone, with weight on your shoulders? You're searching for the way out but there does not seem to be a lime green glowing exit sign? And no matter which way you turn, you're just stuck? I have. I have been exactly there.
The way my husband and I plant seeds is we usually prepare the soil, and then prepare the spot in which we plant the seed. By either digging a mound, or just making a little hole in the soil. Our preparations are very much specific to that individual seed and what we hope for it to grow to be. Then, with our hands we take the seeds out one by one and carefully place them in the earth, and cover them up. My children are with us as we plant our gardens, and we usually talk to the seeds as we plant them, telling them to "Grow little seeds, Grow!" and "please make your way out! You will be a giant sunflower in a few months!"
You are not at your full potential as a seed.
Should I say that one more time, just to make sure we all read right? We are not at our full potential as a seed!
It might be comfortable being a seed, but we are absolutely not who God intends for us to be. So like the gardener, God allows for us to be planted, or in more specific terms, lets trials bury us. I love the idea of him preparing our trial, specifically for us. Similar to the way we prepare the holes for our seeds. God holds us in his hands and carefully places us in our "hole". And He whispers "Grow! Grow! Grow! You will be beautiful, just grow!", as the dirt covers us up.
Holes
I was born in August of 1986, and I had dirt waiting for me even before I was born. Doesn't life feel that way sometimes? People make choices generations before you were born and it creates this never ending line of dump trucks, ready to dump on all posterity in this particular family? Generational holes that no one completely climbs out of before its too late and now their children are standing in the same hole. One thing I have learned, is when people find them selves in pile of dirt that seems to heavy, sometimes instead of finding the way out, they find addictions. And instead of climbing out of that pile of dirt, they stay there and just get comfortable.
My dad was an addict. Addict to what? Anything that numbed the pain best. This is the pile of dirt that we were stuck in. And no one had climbed out of this particular hole for generations. Addiction is a heavy and deep pile, and sometimes it seems easier to just unpack your bags and live there. My dad's grandfather committed suicide in his home when my grandfather was just a child, and the addictions just settled and never left. When I was born, it was just the way of life. Drinking, parties all night, drugs, loosing jobs, pornography, money problems and fighting. It was all just your average Wednesday evening.
I think I was aware of the hole I was living in even as a very small child. I remember even at 5 or 6 years old having nightmares about my dad. They were not all exactly the same, but they all were on the same line of events. In my dreams I would be walking around my house alone, when I find my dad's dead body. I feel terrified but I cant do anything other than stand and stare at him. I remember once he was dead on my toy box, and another time hanging in the shower. And he was hanging by a regular clothes hanger. This just goes to show how innocent my mind still was, I wasn't even old enough to know how people died from hanging, it must be from a white plastic hanger like I have in my closet.
As an adult I can look back and see that its no wonder I was having dreams like this. I couldn't have been older than 6 when I first saw my dad chasing my mom out of the house. She was running from him to the neighbors house. I don't know if she was yelling at me to call the cops, or if she was screaming for anyone who could hear. I remember I was playing on the grass in our yard with my toys, and as I heard them come around the porch I froze and could do nothing but watch as she ran to the house next door. That same year our phone kept getting ripped out of the wall, and I finally understood why one day when I saw my mom reach for the phone to call the cops and my dad ripped it from her, and out of the wall.
My parents met when my mom was living near his hometown for school. She was working at a fast food place. My dad would go in or lunch and one day he asked her out on a date. They were married three months later in the LDS Temple. My mom was raised in the same town that we live in now, and I think she thought that if they were getting married in the temple then everything would be great. But now she looks back and can see how he probably just stopped drinking and smoking for a few months before they got married. I'm not sure there was any time when they had a healthy relationship. But my mom was patient and kind and just kept thinking he would grow out of his bad habits.
I am the oldest and only girl, my parents had 3 boys after me, one of which died at 40 weeks gestation. I'm not sure if it was because I was the oldest, or if its because I was the only girl but my dad was more strict with me that with my brothers. I'm not sure if my brothers would agree with that. I think some of the reasoning for this had to do with his level of addiction, and when I was young he was in the earlier years of life too. Strangely enough he used to call me over to him, this would happen when I was between five years old and eight years old. I would drop whatever I was playing with and walk over to him. He would be sitting in this old brown leather recliner that we had at the time. It was probably nice once, but now had rips and the cotton stuffing was coming out. He would be smoking a cigarette and he would pull me close and ask me if anyone had ever asked me to smoke before, I would shake my head no. He would look me straight in the eyes and ask me if I was sure. I would nod yes. Then he would start into this whole lecture about how if I wanted to smoke I should come to him. He told me he would let me smoke and smoke and smoke until I was sick to my stomach and turning green.
At the time this was the most confusing thing I had ever heard but I would just sit quietly and watch him talk and talk, and wonder why I would come to him and want to smoke. Then I would watch him put his own cigarette between his lips and blow out a big cloud of smoke. His lectures would vary between smoking to drinking to drugs and even to steeling. One night he even got on a tangent about school, and started telling me about how he got kicked out of his own house when he was sixteen years old and he had to live in his car. He said it was because he was smoking marijuana. "Have you ever seen marijuana", he would look at me sternly then pull me in so that I was right in front of his face and he told me "You can be anything you want to be. Do you hear me? If you want to be a doctor, be a doctor. If you want to be an astronaut be an astronaut." I winced a little as he said this, being so close to him I could smell the cigarette on his breath. But I believed him. Even though he was telling me one thing, and living a completely different way and most of what he was saying was just confusing to me, I believed him when he told me I could be anything.
It wasn't until years later when I learned about how my dad started smoking and drinking at such a young age did all of these conversations start making sense. Its amazing how much I don't know about my dad, but I've heard from my mom and some of his child hood friends that he was still just a child when he started smoking. Now, In my adult mind, I can almost see that he was giving me the talk that his 10 year old self needed to hear, but didn't get the chance to hear. I think my brother just younger than me got a couple of these lectures given to him, but by the time my youngest brother was old enough for them my dad was deeper into his addiction. I don't think my younger brother ever got any sort of council from my dad. And even though he was drinking a beer and smoking a cigarette as he talked to me me... it was still council from a dad.
Evenings all started the same. My dad was comfortable with all kinds of substances, in this circumstance I would put music in the category as a substance for him. We couldn't pay for groceries and the power bill, but you better believe we had a stereo system and speakers that could blast the roof off of our house. My dad had a box of cassette tapes when I was really young, full of plastic tape boxes with pictures of men in black clothes and big curly hair. And later he had a cd stand, with proably 100 cds. I cant even listen to led zeppelin or some old band called Sweet, without feeling like I'm a child again. My mom would lead us back to our rooms, read us a book and then we would kneel around our bed and she would help us say our prayers. "Thank you for our home, and please keep us safe", once finished we would jump into our beds, and she would stack blankets on top of us.
We lived in a home that was almost 100 years old. When the house was built there was no insulation, or maybe it was a luxury instead of a necessity? Either way our house was just brick walls, that were later covered up with plaster. Money was always a stress, so to save on money my mom would use our wood burning fire place instead of the propane heater. But the bedrooms were so far down the hall that the heat had a hard time making its way back to us. Cold heavy blankets were piled so heavy on us in our cold water beds. I don't remember sleeping in sheets with a blanket and comforter, it was just a big pile of blankets, over and under you. Even before we were in bed the music would start playing in the living room, sometimes my dads friends would make their way over, and sometimes not. One night I remember waking up and hearing our foosball table being played in the middle of the night. I could hear the music still playing, and the familiar voices and laughs of some of my dads friends. That next day my mom told me that she had gotten up to go to work at 6:30 that morning and my dad and his friends were still playing. They had played all night long, obviously a drug induced all-nighter.
Another time my mom was working a night shift, I was 5 or 6 and my little brother was around two. We were home with my dad that night which had turned into a party. I don't remember anything other than one of my dad's drunk friends, who I will call Chris, noticed what time it was and noticed I was still awake. He mentioned this to my dad and asked if it was past my bedtime. I was young so this is a fleeting memory, but next thing I know Chris is helping me get in pajamas. He helps me get into bed and I think he asks if I need to say my prayers. I only remember this because in my mind I can see him helping me say a few lines to a prayer. He turns on my tv for me before he leaves and shuts the door, I think part of this was for white noise so I don't have to try and fall asleep to the party happening just down the hall. I lay awake in the darkness wishing my mom would come home, and wondering when she will get off work. The next morning I told my mom that Christ tucked me into bed last night, and after that she only worked mornings. I have no idea how my brother got put to bed that night. I hope that he was already asleep in bed before friends started showing up, if not I would guess Christ had put him in his bed. I realize now that I'm older how lucky I am that Chris was decent enough to get me to bed. But it also terrifies me that I was at the hands of a house full of drunk men, and my dad was not aware enough to keep me safe.
Other nights when there were no friends it always ended in fighting. I could hear my dad just getting madder and madder. No matter what my mom did or didn't do, there was always something he was violently mad about. He was a happy drunk with friends. He was a mean drunk with out friends. The sun would go down and the music would get turned up, and it was the same thing every night. I probably should have been used to it, it was the air that I breathed. But every night I still was so terrified in my bed that I could hardly move. I would panic as I was being smothered by a pile of blankets, and cling to my doll. His screaming would go on into the night.
I am very thankful to have been kept as safe as I was. Why one of the drunk men did not find their way down the hall and into a little girls room is something I question and wonder how I didn't end up in a different pile of dirt. I will not say that I was blessed or that I had angels looking over me, because my heart goes out to children who had this as their pile of dirt. I will just say that it never happened, and I am very thankful that that pile of dirt never found me.
Each time we would wake up the next morning to a dark and quiet house. Yes it was dark because the sun was still down, but it would have felt dark even if it was high noon. Mom would be at work, I would help get my little brothers ready for school, dad would drive us to school, and the merry-go-round would continue. Always the same circle. Sometimes with different events like - Dad gets arrested, or dad moves out. But always landing back on the same track.
My mom told me a couple years ago that my dad's friends would come to her and ask "why did Merrill end up in Jail? We dropped him off that night and although he had been drinking he was in a perfectly good mood." I don't know what my mom told these friends of his but she did start to realize that it was like he snapped right when he walked through the front door. Happy drunk Merrill stayed out on the porch and mean, angry Merrill came in the house. We later found out that he had been having an affair on her, something he confessed to her after their divorce and after his stay in prison. I also had one of his probation officers tell me, just a couple years ago, that he never once mentioned kids. When he had to come in for class he would talk about "the divorce" but he never really talked about my mom or us kids. I don't know for sure but I can only guess that his guilt was heavy. I do believe that he was dealing with his own personal pile of dirt or daemons. But add guilt of a wife and three children waiting for you at home when you have been out all night at a party and I can imagine it was a recipe for fierce feelings of guilt.
Guilt is a strong tool that Satan uses. Its what makes people feel like they are not worthy to get out of the hole they are in. Giving into that guilt only makes you dig yourself deeper and deeper in, because the only thing to numb the heaviness is reaching for the addiction. So the addiction becomes less of a coping mechanism and more of a life line.
The worst night I can remember was when I was in 5th or 6th grade. I cant remember a lot, but I do remember waking up to the fight, instead of falling asleep to one. It had been Halloween night, and we had been out trick or treating. My dad had been with friends, pretty normal night. I think my mom had even been in bed or asleep when he got home. I woke up to screaming, his screaming. Angry and horrible. Crying coming from my mom. I wanted so badly to jump out of bed and go find a phone to call 911. But I was so terrified. My memories from that night still haunt me, and are too dark to write. I was young but old enough to feel deep hatred for my dad. I decided right then that I had no love for him and I started praying that my mom would divorce him.
The next day after school my mom called me into the kitchen. I had a feeling that she had called my little brother into the kitchen before me. She told me that Dad was moving out for a while, and it was because he had hit her last night. I had already known that last night was bad, but usually we left to go to my grandmas house for a few nights when they needed a break. My dad had never moved out before, I was relieved that he was gone.
Later that week my mom moved her bed out of her bedroom, and into the dining room. Her bed sat about 3 feet away from our dining room table and about 5 feet from our front door. That Halloween night must have been so horrible that she could not get herself to even sleep in that bedroom anymore. My dad stayed with some of his friends for about three months. I don't remember what this time looked like for my mom, I don't even know if he went to jail for the domestic abuse. About a month after he moved out we went to see him. He was staying in his friends run down little grey house. We showed up and he hugged us, and was quiet. I stepped inside to see where my dad had been living and the house felt cold. Soon a couple men from our bishopric showed up, I thought it was strange that they had on church clothes and it wasn't Sunday. Conversations of "I will do whatever it takes", and "Stop drinking" are attached to that memory. We folded our arms as he was given a blessing. Moments later everyone shook hands and thanked each other and the men in church clothes left. Were things really going to change? No. I knew it even then as a child, I heard my parents discuss the when's and how's of him moving back in. There were stipulations, of course. But as this conversation was happening I felt sick inside that he would be coming back. My brothers, being little had sat too long in a little house and were starting to get rambunctious. I saw my dad look over at them a few times, before he snapped. "You two sit down, quit running around, stop it!" And there he was again, it had been a month since I had seen his anger. But there it was again, could my mom not see it?
My mom's grandpa had been an alcoholic. His wife, my mom's grandma had given him chance after chance and eventually he was able to quit drinking. Of course my mom wasn't born yet while all of this was going on and all she knew him as was a sweet, kind, good man. So this is the story that my dad would bring up each time mom was threatening divorce. He threw in her face the idea of what would have happened if her grandma had given up on her grandpa. This is called manipulation, and my dad was a professional.
Dad moved back in and we went on a family trip to Disney land a few months later. A fun family trip that would hopefully set us on a new direction. My dad didn't have a drivers license because of DUIs, so my mom had to do the driving. My dad's frustration with not driving and trouble navigating the city in the years of paper maps was rough, but add his new sobriety to it and it was scary. His sobriety lasted not even 6 months, and my moms bed stayed in the dining room.
That wasn't our only family trip. A couple of times my parents decided to go on a family trip to lake Powel. This meant we borrow my grandmas car, ours wouldn't make it out of town, and drive down to lake Powell - play on the beach and set up a tent for when it got hot. Then spend a night or two in a motel in Page. It started out great! We would put on our swimming suits and run to the edge of the water. Find sea shells and make sand castles. My dad would nap in the tent and my mom would read her book.
We would get back to the hotel after dinner and watch cartoons on the tv. Our cable stations at home had been shut off years ago, which meant we only had the 3 or 4 channels that you can get with an antenna. So the Disney channel and nickelodeon was really exciting. My mom would run out to get milk for my bothers bottle or something and I remember looking over at my dad opening up a small bottle of something. He seemed really tall as I was looking up at him from the bed that I lay in. He asked me if I knew what was in the bottle, to which I shook my head no. He told me the name of it, then he opened it up an put it to his mouth. He tilted his head back, drinking it all, and stumbling a bit as he drank. I looked back at the cartoons on the tv.
Later that night I woke up to fighting. We were in a hotel room so if I couldn't sleep through it at home, of course I wasn't sleeping through it here. I feel my little brothers warm body next to me, he lay motionless. Was he pretending to sleep too?
I heard another voice in the room, an Indian man. And arguing, the frustration seemed to be towards my mom. My dad had gone down to the bar after we fell asleep and had started drinking. There he had met a man from the reservation. The man also didn't have a drivers license but needed to get back to his home. After having a few drinks with this man my dad decided my mom could just drive him out to his house on the reservation, it was probably after midnight by now. So he brought this man up to our hotel room and demanded that my mom drive him home. Of course my mom, had been asleep and with three small children in the room told him no. And so it began... When I woke up my dad was very frustrated that my mom wouldn't take him, and I think the Indian man was getting nervous because of my dad's anger. I could here him telling my dad "Its okay, I will just go down stairs and try and call someone". My dad was screaming and telling my mom to just give the man a ride.
After a few years of family vacations that always ended up like this, I told my mom I don't want to go on any more vacations to lake powell. She must have mentioned this to my dad one sober day, because not long after I walked into the kitchen one day when my mom was cutting his hair as he sat on a stool with a bath towel around his shoulders. He asked me if I said that I didn't want to go on family vacations anymore, and I just smiled shyly at him. It was hard to say anything to him because I never knew how he would react. I saw sadness in his eyes, and the words "things will get better, I promise" were whispered.
Darkness
“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.” - Mary Oliver
When I fall, I shall arise; and when I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a light unto me. Micah 7:8
Darkness is more than just shutting off the light switch and trying to let your eyes adjust. Its the panic feeling that starts in your mind and grows until you feel it in your heart and sometimes in your stomach. Its the heavy weight of it that comes in with the pain and just lingers. I am not a doctor, I don't have a degree in phycology. I can only talk from my own experience.
When I was 8 or 9 I remember coming home one evening and seeing my dad passed out on the couch. It was early, probably 5 or 6 p.m. Maybe I was supposed to be used to this by now, but this kind of event still scared me. I had walked into the living room and paused when I saw him laying there. I looked away, but stayed frozen in place. Something was different this time, or maybe I was just getting old enough to notice. I slowly raised my eyes to look at him without lifting my head. There was something there more than just my dad. His eyes were closed, he was for sure asleep (or passed out), but there was something else there. It was more than just a feeling of another presence, I could almost see it. This darkness, sitting or hovering right above him. I could almost feel its eyes on me. I looked away and left the room.
This darkness is a real. I don't know what you call it, and I'm not here to tell you what to call it. But I put it under the category of evil and Devil. That day it was so present in my home that I could almost see it. But I don't think its usually so obvious.
I believe darkness is real. Its part of the reason why I believe God holds us close and whispers "Grow", because he knows trials are necessary to our becoming. But the darkness is so heavy that its hard keep standing. It says in 2 Nephi 2:11 Opposition in all things... that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good. If you can learn to recognize the darkness then you can start to search for light.
My teenage years at home consisted of my dad moving out and back in, and out again. This ongoing separation between my mom and dad that never seemed to make any kind of difference. Even when he wasn't living in our home, his presence was still there. He was very angry and was almost obsessed with controlling my mom and us, even though he had restraining orders to stay away. He would call our house non stop, If you picked up the phone it was just never ending yelling and screaming on the other line. Usually my mom would just set the phone down on the table, instead of hanging it up so that he couldn't call back. More times than not my dad would just yell and yell for an hour or more before even realizing that there was no one listening to him. This was really annoying for anyone trying to get ahold of us because the phone was never on the receiver.
While my dad was in and out he lived in just a little house that was on the back of the property that we had. My grandparents had purchased a corner lot that had 3 houses, one main house and 2 little houses. All three were pretty old, and after a few years of no one living in the two little houses they became more like sheds, with no electricity or water. My dad had lost his job in Salt Lake city 4 years after my parents got married. My mom was 9 months pregnant with me, and having no plans and a baby on the way they headed back to the town my mom grew up in. I can imagine that they moved into the home with the assumption of it being a temporary place until my dad could find a job and they could get their own home. Their own home never happened, and although I'm sure this situation might have been frustrating for my grandma, I am thankful for this house, because at least we had a house. Its the one bit of structure that was dependable, a house without my dad's name on the title.
When things would get unbearable at home my dad would move into one of these little "rental" houses. Usually he was there for a month or so before moving back in. As I got older he stayed in the little house more than he was at our house. My dad would find a job and work for about a year or 18 months, at first he was a good worker, he was friendly and willing to help. But once he got comfortable in a job, and as the months went on he would get more and more relaxed. I never knew exactly why he lost each job. At first I was just too young to realize there must be a reason, and later on it was just normal for him to jump from job to job so I never asked details. Even if I asked he probably would not have told me the truth, this was just how it went. But I know now that his addiction always had something to do with it. He would get comfortable in his job and either start showing up drunk or just start coming in late. When I was a junior in high school my dad had lost his drivers license due to DUIs. One afternoon I had just got home from school, he walked around the side of the house and asked me if I would give him a ride to the gas station. He sat in the car with me and we rode in silence. I pulled into the parking spot at the gas station and he told me he would be right back. I waited a minute and then saw him walk out of the gas station doors a few moments later. He held brown paper bags that were clinging around some sort of bottle inside. I just felt sick and angry. My blood just started pumping through my body and before I knew it he was opening the car door. Something snapped in me that day and I told him he would have to walk home. He questioned why, and I told him I was not allowing that in my car. I cant even believe I had the courage to do it that day. I'm not sure what he was feeling. I'm sure all of the talks about not drinking and saying no to drugs that he had told me years ago went through his mind, and I'm sure he felt about as low as anyone can, having their teenage driver telling you to walk home. He shut the car door and tucked the paper bags under his arm and started towards the side walk.
My last year of high school was just like any one else's, preparing to leave home. My mom and me shared an old red car that wasn't trust worthy to take out of town. So getting me a car for college was a concern. My mom had planned on taking a couple thousand dollars from her tax refund in march or april and using it to get a reliable car that I could make out of town in. My dad was always getting in trouble with the law this year, and when the tax refund was on its way my dad also got his truck impounded. He was living in the house behind our house at this time, which had no water. So he would come over every day and shower. One day I had just got home from school and I could hear my dad getting out of the shower. He came out moments later and called for me, he walked into the room I was in and asked me how much money I had in the bank. I had a summer job since I was 11 years old, to help with school clothes and my sr. year I worked during the school year to save for sr. activities and the sports I was involved in. I told my dad I had just over a thousand dollars in the bank. He started bargaining with me. He told me that he only had one hundred dollars and he needed to get his car out of the impound. He told me that if he gave me all the money I had so that he could get his car out, then he would not take my mom's tax refund. But if I didn't then he would take most of it and I wouldn't be able to get a car for college.
Things were weird with my dad this year, because I was finally old enough. After that incident in the gas station parking lot, things had changed. And now when I knew things were getting out of control when he would start yelling I would call 911 myself. He had a dark countenance about him. His addiction was no longer a young party lifestyle. It was now heavy and troublesome and expensive. And while the friends that he partied with when I was little were now growing up and growing out of that lifestyle in order to have more important things like family and a job, my dad never grew out of it. So his friends were just getting younger, or darker. We lived in a small town, but some of the houses that I would see his truck parked at I would have no idea who even lived there.
One after noon afterschool I was in my room getting ready for work when I heard my dads truck pull up. I just sat in my room pulling my hair into a pony tail when his heavy footsteps lead him down the hall. His voice was dark. And he called for me, I answered. And he asked me, "why did you call the cops on me last week?" And I told him honestly, "Cause I was afraid you were going to hurt mom." I looked at him through the mirror that I was standing in front of. "Have you ever seen me hurt your mom?" I had a lump in my throat, and my heart was beating so hard I almost felt like throwing up. But my new found voice of rebellion was not staying hidden. And I told him honestly, "Yes, on Halloween." He didn't even reply, he looked shocked and he turned around and walked out of the house. Earlier that week my mom had told me that I needed to meet with the police to write up a report, since I was the one who called the cops. I had told her that I wouldn't do it. Its one thing to be rebellious enough to dial 911, its another thing to meet with officers and make it official. I just wasn't brave enough. Later I found out that if I, being under 18, would have made a report on him he would have been facing a felony instead of just time in the county jail. At the time I felt relieved that I hadn't done that too him, and now I can see how silly my thinking was.
A few months before I graduated I tried out for Homecoming queen. Its basically a beauty pageant with 8-10 girls. We had practiced for months and when your 17 its basically the only thing that matters. The night of the pageant I scanned my eyes on the audience. My mom, my grandma, my little brothers, and aunts... would he show up? Will he be drunk? I took the stage for the evening wear and the audition, 30 minutes into the pageant and he still wasn't here. It was half relief and half confused. It was my turn to go on stage for the talent portion. I was performing a solo dance, that my team mates and friends from the drill team helped me choreograph. I walked out on the floor and waited for the music. It came on and with counts in my head I began, It wasn't until half way through my performance that I noticed a dark outline standing in the doorway way in the back. I continued dancing but glanced over at this shadow of a person every chance I could get. It looked like him, but I was also only getting quick and blurry looks at it. My music ended and as I held the ending pose and listened to the audience clapping I watched the dark shadow leave the door way and walk down the hallway to the parking lot.
I never asked him, but I knew it was him. Had he been drinking? Did he drove there drunk? I don't know. But I can imagine him shaking, and watching the clock, pacing the floor and waiting until just about 7:30 to leave his house and make his way to the high school. A building packed with townspeople who talk, and who talk about him a lot. Seeing a full auditorium he just stands in the back and quietly waits. Saying Hello and smiling to anyone who makes eye contact with him, but inside he is living his own hell. Just waiting until my routine is over and he can go home and find something to numb overwhelming feelings with. I felt as much love for my dad as I could that night, it wasn't a lot but I was thankful he had at the very least just stood in the door way at the back.
The next year when I moved away for college my dad became even more distant. He called me once or twice but every time it was a phone call so he could inform me of everything happening in his life. By now he was never not drinking or using. So he was different every few months when I would hear from him. Sometimes he was very very down, and sometimes he was happy and talking fast. He had moved out of the little rental house behind my moms house, to a trailer house. The owner of the trailer house had hired him on to work construction, and must have given him a good deal on rent for him to live there. When I came home from school for Christmas my brothers and I drove up to see him. . It was awkward being there, but since it was obvious that my mom was trying to get a divorce I thought it necessary to try and start these type of visits. I was doing my best trying to support each parent in the mess we were sitting in. As we walked up to the front steps, which was just a dirt path with a slab of crumbling concrete I noticed the old cigarettes in a coffee can near the door. I knocked and waited. He opened the door happy to see us, and let us in. His house was clean, not surprising. That was one thing that made him so extremely angry was a messy house. In one corner of the room was a couple electric guitars, my dad never knew how to play, but loved to pretend to play after he had a couple drinks. His tv on the other side of the couch and posters of girls hung up on the walls. It looked like a dorm room from the 70s, all it was missing was a lava lamp. I tried to just visit, isn't that what normal people do? Just sit and visit. He almost seemed normal to me, and I almost thought we were pulling it off but then I glanced into the kitchen. Above his fridge and cabinets were lines of empty liquor bottles. I tried to just look at him and continue our conversation. He was telling me the story of how he got one of the guitars that was sitting in the corner, some bet he had won against a drinking buddy. But no matter how much I tried to just focus on him my eyes kept looking back at the pile of empty bottles. Out in the open, as decoration, on display. I felt sick in my stomach although I just tried to just ignore it. Had he drank all of those ? By himself or with friends? Was he proud of them? Were they like souvenirs to him? An accomplishment of how much he could drink? Or was it more like memorabilia from a party?
So there I sat. I was 18, sitting by my 14 and 12 year old brothers, in my 45 year old fathers dorm room of a trailer. Pretending to be just nice, normal people, while the reminder of the truth lingered in the background. Those alcohol bottles always seemed to be in the background.
He put on a good face for us that day, we left and he hugged us goodbye. I went back to school and my dad got fired from that job, and also had to leave the trailer. After almost 20 years in the same community its amazing he could find job and job for so many years, but now he was causing too much trouble. The cops were being called too much and he was being put in jail a couple times a month. My mom was going forward with the divorce and he was very very angry. He was threatening and stalking her non stop. The cops got sick of getting phone calls about him so often that they told him he needed to leave town. My dad's family lived around Salt Lake City Utah, that is where he grew up, so naturally he went there. I didn't talk to him much or see him much, but every time I did he was with a new girlfriend and going to some concert. During this time I got married. We had a reception in my home town, and got married in the temple a couple hours away. I was terrified of what might happen if my dad showed up at my reception. I knew he probably wouldn't come to the temple grounds, but I didn't want to have to call the cops at my reception. But he would be even more mad if I didn't invite him, So I sent his invitation in the mail and just hoped for the best. For as long as I have known my dad, these few years might have been the darkest I have ever seen him. Trying to navigate his new single life, full of bills and rent payments - something my mom had always just taken care of, and being forced out of a quiet, sleepy, town straight into Down town salt lake city. I think he just fell into his addictions full force. He never did show up at my wedding, his mom and siblings came down so I know he could have caught a ride. But I was far past feeling sad that he wouldn't be there. Relief was all I could feel.
While in Salt Lake he caught up with an old high school friend who lived in Arizona, the friend knew of work and offered him a job. While he was in Arizona he ended up doing prison time for almost a year. I never asked what for. I knew him well enough to not need to know.
February of 2017, I am 30 years old and in my home in Idaho when I heard my phone ring. I looked down to see my dad's name on the screen. I hesitated on picking it up, but I just took a deep breath and answered anyway. I said hello and just expected the normal 30 minutes of him telling me who he was dating, where he was working, what concerts he had been too or what bar fights he had been in. But instead he told me that he was sick. I knew he had not been feeling well, and I had heard rumors of him taking jobs for half the money that others were making because he was not able to keep up. He said he had gone to a doctor because he was in so much pain and the scans showed cancer. He was now crying on the phone, he didn't have any answers yet, he was going back to the doctors in a couple days to get more information. At this time he was living in his car in Salt Lake City. It was an old monte carlo, that usually didn't start. But he had to have a car to keep his job, so he just barely kept it running. He told me stories of him trying to find a parking spot for the night so that he could sleep and the cops wouldn't find him. If the cops found him at night they would knock on his window and tell him that he couldn't overnight park there. About once a week he would rent the cheapest hotel he could find so that he could shower and sleep in a real bed. As he was telling me this I was sitting in my baby girls bedroom, watching her crawl around to her toys as I sat with her on the floor. And I felt nothing. Looking back now, I realize how heartless that makes me sound. I am even a little bit shocked that I didn't feel even a little bit more compassion for him. But I had been taken down the road that got him there. I had lived it and later watched it. The hole that he had been born it, was the same hole I was born it. And he hadn't been able to find the light to climb towards. The most I had to offer after being a part of it all was just answering my phone and listening to him. That's all I had left to offer. He ended the conversation saying " I just wanted to let you know, just incase they find me dead in my car. You will know what happened".
I had heard my dad threaten to commit suicide a few times in my adult life, so I wasn't a stranger to him talking about death. And to be honest sometimes I thought it would just be easier if he was gone, he was always in so much trouble all the time, and his lifestyle was devastating. I thought I was beyond the point of feelings on this particular subject. I thought I had been through enough to handle the next 9-12 months without any problems. But I was so wrong. This phone call struck something inside of me that was the beginning of a very dark year, the darkest that I have gone through. I felt like I had climbed out of the hole that I was born into . I had found my way out and had stayed away from anything that might even resemble that sort of living. But the truth was I was still just a seed, and that phone call had signaled a dump truck, with a heavy load of dirt, and it was starting to dump right on top of me.
Most of my dad's family wasn't talking to him. This is what happens with addicts, they use and take and use and take until they have pushed everyone away. My little brothers were not talking to him, as well as most of his siblings. I admit that my brothers got the mean phone calls from him once we were adults, and I think its because my dad wasn't comfortable enough around my husband to call and yell at me. So I never shut him out entirely, but I cant say that I blame everyone who did. I also just didn't have the energy to stay mad at him, I was busy enough with three young children, so I figured I could answer his phone call every 6 months and listen to him talk. Then I could hang up and wouldn't hear from him for another 6 months. It seemed like a lot less trouble than trying to be mad at him.
But this put me in an interesting place, because whenever my dad needed to talk to someone it was either his brother, Ross or me that he called. Ross probably got more of the report on court dates and fines. I got more of the emotional side of him. His sister had let him live with her for years, and was willing to help when needed. But I think she was just over used by him and couldn't handle the every day-ness of it all.
He called me enough that I started understanding his patterns of living. At the first of the month he was good! Drunk. Happy, laughing on the phone. Near the end of the pay period he would start to run out of money, so he wouldn't be able to afford the drink or the drugs, so that is when I would hear the fear, and the worry and regret. I could hear him shaking and he would cry on the phone and tell me how scared he was to die. He never got into what he did or didn't regret, I just don't think he had the brain capacity to see how he had got here. I would sit and listen to him, he was usually sitting at a park bench, just waiting for the sun to go down so he could go find a place to park his car to sleep for the night. On the nights that he was crying and so low I would almost find it in me to tell him to come to Idaho and stay with me. But within a few days he would get paid again, and he would call me high as a kite or as happy as a clam. And I would remind myself that he was not safe to bring into my home near my daughters.
During this time I really started trying to prepare for him to die. I warned my brothers and made sure they knew what was going on, so that they could prepare. I wondered if there was anything I should ask him before he died. I really don't know very much about my dad's childhood, or who he really is. All I know is his addiction. I had exactly one million questions. But when I thought about how to ask him my questions I realized that I couldn't. He is not the most honest person and he has been an addict for at least 30 years. I just didn't trust that I would get any truth out of him, so I decided to just let my questions go. Which was upsetting for me, it was the one last chance to actually understand. Or get to know my dad on any other level than the one we were on.... and the one we were on was not anything special. Knowing that he was still alive on this earth, but he was enough gone that there was no chance for anything different, it was heartbreaking.
The few weeks and months after that first phone call in February I found myself in my own dark hole. It came on just a little at a time until I was mentally kicking and swimming just to keep my head above water each day. At the time I was trying to push it away, but depression was setting in. And because of that little bit of darkness settling in, other aspects in my life became very stressful and threatening. Things that I used to love, now seemed scary. I avoided people and things that used to be just my normal happenings. I really tried to just ignore it and just keep smiling and pushing it away. Depression is something that my mom and grandmas have all struggled with, so I'm sure this all had to do with my chemical make up, especially since I was watching the life of my father's end in darkness.
One night, after the kids were in bed and my husband was asleep next to me, my thoughts got so far away from me, I had been feeling the sadness all day, but when I lay in the dark, trying to sleep my thoughts just went down a rabbit hole. Further and further down I went inside my pile of dirt. Darker and heavier it gets. Until I felt the pain and darkness move from just in my mind, down through my heart and into my stomach. And it settled there. It felt like it was in my whole body now, not just my mind. I felt the physical pain of darkness, it wasn't just emotional pain anymore, and it was as real as anything I had ever felt. I tried to stop my thinking before it got any worse that night, so I forced myself to try and sleep. Usually after stressing about things in the middle of the night, I can wake up with a clean clear mind, and recognize how silly my worrying the night before had been. But the morning after this particular night, I woke up with the darkness still inside of me. The dump trucks were lining up, there had to have been more than one, this was something heavier than anything I remember.
Days became fuzzy, I went through the motions of taking care of the children, but there was always this darkness in the back of my mind. Just sitting there, reminding me, waiting for me. I would help the kids get dressed and take them to school, and the darkness was there. I would go home and get dressed, clean the house and get some work done, and the darkness was there. I would pick up kids from school, greet them with smiles and ask them about their day and the darkness was still there. I would feel so weighed down and lost, I remembered the person I used to be and she seemed like a fairy tail. I missed her, but it seemed impossible to even pretend like I could ever be her again.
I started clinging to anything that would make me feel a little bit of peace, and I would go in my bedroom closet, shut the door and beg for God to just give me a few hours of happiness. Heck, I didn't even need happiness, just lift the darkness for a few hours today - just give me a break from the sadness inside of me. I would snap at the kids and was not nearly as patient as I usually am. And I would pass the afternoons by cleaning out the seams of the hardwood floor in my kitchen with toothpicks. The little tedious tasks, that made me feel like I was getting something done. Outwardly I don't know if very many people noticed I was sinking. My family realized I was struggling, and of course my husband saw it.
One night my husband sat me down and told me I had to talk. He sat in a blue arm chair, and I sat on the couch. The kids were in bed and he told me, you have to tell me what your feeling. I had no idea what I was feeling. But he made me talk anyway. I told him that I feel like there is someone outside the house with a knife, and that person never leaves and wants to kill me. Of course I knew that there was no one outside our house with a knife, but that's the best way I could explain the fear I was living in. Everything seemed scary, my friends seemed scary, I had a great photo studio in my home that has been the best stay at home mom job, and it terrified me. Social media was scary for me, everything was scary.
We went through everything that I felt was threatening to me. And as we went through them a bucket came to my mind. Imagine a bucket, like you would take to the beach, or use in the garden. In my life I have used this bucket, I have tried to fill it up with things to make me feel more worthy. If I can just join the high school dance team - and add that to my bucket. Then maybe I wont look and feel so empty. If I can just do the beauty pageant, hold a job, look pretty, then I can add all of those things to my bucket and I wont be so empty. And I was still doing it. If I can just start my own business, inside my home. Balance work and being a mom, balance the busy schedule, and do it with a smile on my face. Decorate my home and keep it clean. Then people will think I am a good person, then they will want to be my friend. Then I will be worth of love. Then I can hide the dark hole that I grew up in.
That night I mentally found that bucket. I could see it. As I was talking to my husband I was imagining me taking out all of these things from the bucket. I had some great things in that bucket, things that I had been packing around in the bucket for years and years. And some newer things that I was proud to finally get into my bucket. I removed 'kind' and 'happy' from my bucket. It was just too much to carry around at this time. I removed 'financially stable' and ' loving parent' from the bucket, I removed all of my friends, and all of my family from the bucket, I removed my home and every complement that I had ever received, I removed my garden, I removed all the service I had done for others, my ambition, my talents, my hobbies, and I removed photography. It hurt so much to remove photography, because I had received so much praise and recognition from it. I had loved photography and I had finally felt like I found my calling in life, I was good at it, it made me feel loved. But I removed it. I removed my wonderful marriage and how proud I was that my husband and I were so great together. I felt sick, I felt empty, the darkness had won. I sat there for a moment, imagining this empty bucket that I had just tossed everything I had valued out of. But now what? Where do I go from here, with this newly empty bucket? And in my mind, I looked into the bucket to see if there was anything left.... And the words "You are God's child" were printed at the bottom of the bucket. That was the one thing that was in my bucket , it had always been in my bucket and it was permanent. I couldn't remove it. My heart opened up to God's love, without any numbers in a bank account, without friends or followers online, without my home, without any material possession, he loves me without my front porch and garden..... and yes, he loves me without my camera. That night my husband helped me unearth my self worth. I had a lot of self confidence, don't worry, I had filled that bucket right up until my confidence was just spilling over. But my self worth, I have never once recognized. I wasn't just the daughter of a man who kept the county sheriff busy. I wasn't just the girl who tried to be the best mom and wife, who tried to be a good daughter and friend. I wasn't just the girl who had the garden and cute chicken coop and who could take the beautiful picture. Take away the accomplishments, take away the great marriage, take away everything I had once considered to define me. I was God's. My love was inherent. No matter what I accomplished or didn't accomplish, God loved me and gave me worth just the same. My feelings of emptying the bucket that night went from the lowest low to a feeling of I'm enough. Just me, without having to carry anything in my bucket. Freedom.
This was the first little stretch of growth for me. I was in a hole deeper and darker than anything I could remember. But what I hadn't realized is that God had prepared this hole especially for me.
Love
A couple days before the first phone call in February I was sitting in my living room folding clothes. I was thinking about valentines day and wondering what kind of cards I should have the kids make for their grandmas.
And in the simplest, but most impactful way my mind just opened up to the idea of Love. Almost as if God had clicked the "download" button on my brain and I was receiving spiritual knowledge about love. It lasted for ten or so minutes I during these moments I completely understood the importance of Love, and how powerful it is. I realized that Love is one of most important lessons we are on earth to learn. I just felt it. And I could visualize the power of loving everyone around us, no matter how different they are. And even if they are making wrong choices or choices we would have done differently , I felt the healing power of them loving us too. Healing and powerful for both them, and to us. I imagined the world still with all the different opinions and ideas of living, still with different cultures, religions, sexual orientations, political opinions, and also with people making bad decisions. The world in my mind wasn't perfect and it was still full of the things that make people uncomfortable or unagreeable with each other. The only thing that was different was that everyone was showing love to everyone else, no matter their circumstance, and I saw peace.
That day I realized what interesting and out of the ordinary thoughts I just had, and I absolutely wanted to remember them, but I kept folding clothes and went about my day. It wasn't until my dad called a few days later that I recognized my thoughts on love as being from God. I decided to try and let love guide me through the remaining months of my dad's life. But now I see it as God holding me in his palm right before I was about to be planted, whispering "Grow! Grow! I have bigger plans for you, but you have to grow!" and holding me close, just like we do with our seeds, before the dirt piled around me. I like to think that God probably knew that this pile of dirt was different than any of my past trials, and he saw the darkness that was waiting for me. I think of my insight on Love as a little bit of miracle grow, or just a little added extra to help me find my way. God had prepared a trial for me. He had chose how deep I would be planted, he had determined all of the details, just like my husband and I prepare the ground for the seeds. But he also knew that satan would be showing up in these moments of weakness. God had never intended for me to stay a seed, he had bigger plans for me. But in order for me to grow, he knew I had to be planted.
After the experience with the bucket and self worth, as well as an insight about love, I consider it as the first step of germination. Germination is a gardening term, and google will describe it like this
ger.mi.nate
verb
(of a seed or spore) begin to grow and put out shoots after a period of dormancy.
come into existence and develop.
synonyms: develop, take root, arise, emerge, evolve, mature, expand, enlarge, advance, progress
I like to imagine the sunflower or pumpkin seeds that I plant each spring, They both have this hard outer shell, when you plant them and water them they begin to crack open and a tiny little sprouts that look like strings begin to find their way out of the hard shell. These little string like things are tiny and fragile, but will eventually become this tiny plant's future roots.
That's what was happening to me the night that I emptied my bucket only to find the only true thing that mattered. God was in my bucket, and he had always been there, he was a permanent fixture and couldn't be taken out or put in. He just was there, never moving, for ever present. No matter what you decide to put in your bucket, it never gets too full or too empty for God. My bucket had become too full, and I was learning that we don't need things in our bucket. Of course its great to work hard and become good at different skills, and learn new things. But when you place your worth on these things they become a lie. And light only dwells in truth. We moved in just as winter was hitting, but the next summer we got right out in the garden area and got to work. I cold go on and on about how beautiful my pumpkin patch looks in early September when its huge leaves are greener than anything I've ever seen, how my sunflowers wake up in August and how they remind me of giants waking up. And how my zinnias bloom the most brightest, beautiful colors all summer long. I can tell you about my little girls bent over, picking strawberries in the strawberry patch, blond hair glowing in the summer sun. I can tell you about our tomato bushes, just bursting with little cherry tomatoes quicker than we can pick them. Its work that most have forgotten, but its an art that I find fascinating. I cant think of a better way to raise children than in a garden. I recently read The Secret Garden, by _______. My favorite line in the whole book says
"Give her simple, healthy food. Let her run wild in the garden. Don't look after her too much. She needs liberty and fresh air and romping about."
This speaks volumes to me, especially being a mom to three untamed and strong willed little girls. That little back corner of our yard has become our own secret retreat. We gather there in the mornings and evenings, to start the day and end the day in the garden.
Have I talked you into it yet? Have I convinced you that you need a garden? Well this next part might change your mind. If you want to garden you need to be okay with the idea of getting dirty. Because the garden wouldn't be possible without the dirt. I've come to love dirt, others don't want to bother with it. For one, its dirty, dirt and dirty to kind of go hand in hand. For another thing, it tends to get everywhere and destroy our clean clothes, get tracked into our clean floors, plant itself into the carpet and is impossible to get out from under your fingernails. Its no wonder everyone fills in every square inch of their property with either cement, blacktop or grass. Dirt is hard to keep in a neat little box, and its been given an ugly reputation over the past few years.
Did everyone forget that everything we eat and wear comes from dirt. The grass that feeds the animals that give us meat comes from dirt, the trees that grows the wood that we build our homes with grow from dirt. The cotton that grows that makes our clothing comes from dirt. I had a middle school science teacher that would tell us, look around, everything you see comes from dirt. We would yell out different items, trying to prove him wrong and he would break that item down and down until he traced its history back to dirt.
Maybe you live in the country with agricultural fields all around you. Maybe you live in an apartment in a big city and dirt is only in the cracks of the sidewalks. Where ever you live, whoever you are, if you are living on this earth, I would almost guarantee that every single person we have ever met and will ever meet has their own personal dump truck of dirt. Some of us have already struggled and climbed until we are standing on top of that pile of dirt. Some of us are stuck, with the heaviness weighing down on our heart and mind. And some of us, those few fresh faces, who have yet to encounter their own truckload of dirt who are still walking among us. Bless them, and hopefully they don't loose all of their sparkle when the dirt piles up over their head. Some of us have lines of dump trucks full of dirt, just waiting in line, ready to add more and more to the already overwhelming tower. And some of us have maybe just a few trucks, with some big loads and some little loads.
It sounds exhausting and depressing. But here's the thing. The thing that keeps me climbing and struggling up out of the dirt. The thing that helps me look to the future and expecting more loads of dirt.
Dirt contains nutrients.
Every flower must grow through dirt. - Laurie Jean Sennott
The dirt in my garden is packed with nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. It also has minerals like calcium and sulfur that helps little seeds grow. I love mixing the old frost bitten leaves and plants that are yellow and no longer standing tall into the dirt each fall. And then shoveling loads of manure from our chickens and rabbits, which is not the cleanest job in the world, But its such a sweet and natural way of preparing the soil Okay, now if I have not lost you by now, this next part is really going to make you wonder what kind of book you are reading. I want you to, for a moment, imagine yourself as a seed. Yes. Stay with me. Imagine you are a little seed, you are living comfortable with all your friends and family. Then one day you get dropped into a hole and get covered with dirt. Its dark and heavy and your not sure how to get out.
Have you been there? Have you found yourself in the dark, all alone, with weight on your shoulders? You're searching for the way out but there does not seem to be a lime green glowing exit sign? And no matter which way you turn, you're just stuck? I have. I have been exactly there.
The way my husband and I plant seeds is we usually prepare the soil, and then prepare the spot in which we plant the seed. By either digging a mound, or just making a little hole in the soil. Our preparations are very much specific to that individual seed and what we hope for it to grow to be. Then, with our hands we take the seeds out one by one and carefully place them in the earth, and cover them up. My children are with us as we plant our gardens, and we usually talk to the seeds as we plant them, telling them to "Grow little seeds, Grow!" and "please make your way out! You will be a giant sunflower in a few months!"
You are not at your full potential as a seed.
Should I say that one more time, just to make sure we all read right? We are not at our full potential as a seed!
It might be comfortable being a seed, but we are absolutely not who God intends for us to be. So like the gardener, God allows for us to be planted, or in more specific terms, lets trials bury us. I love the idea of him preparing our trial, specifically for us. Similar to the way we prepare the holes for our seeds. God holds us in his hands and carefully places us in our "hole". And He whispers "Grow! Grow! Grow! You will be beautiful, just grow!", as the dirt covers us up.
Holes
I was born in August of 1986, and I had dirt waiting for me even before I was born. Doesn't life feel that way sometimes? People make choices generations before you were born and it creates this never ending line of dump trucks, ready to dump on all posterity in this particular family? Generational holes that no one completely climbs out of before its too late and now their children are standing in the same hole. One thing I have learned, is when people find them selves in pile of dirt that seems to heavy, sometimes instead of finding the way out, they find addictions. And instead of climbing out of that pile of dirt, they stay there and just get comfortable.
My dad was an addict. Addict to what? Anything that numbed the pain best. This is the pile of dirt that we were stuck in. And no one had climbed out of this particular hole for generations. Addiction is a heavy and deep pile, and sometimes it seems easier to just unpack your bags and live there. My dad's grandfather committed suicide in his home when my grandfather was just a child, and the addictions just settled and never left. When I was born, it was just the way of life. Drinking, parties all night, drugs, loosing jobs, pornography, money problems and fighting. It was all just your average Wednesday evening.
I think I was aware of the hole I was living in even as a very small child. I remember even at 5 or 6 years old having nightmares about my dad. They were not all exactly the same, but they all were on the same line of events. In my dreams I would be walking around my house alone, when I find my dad's dead body. I feel terrified but I cant do anything other than stand and stare at him. I remember once he was dead on my toy box, and another time hanging in the shower. And he was hanging by a regular clothes hanger. This just goes to show how innocent my mind still was, I wasn't even old enough to know how people died from hanging, it must be from a white plastic hanger like I have in my closet.
As an adult I can look back and see that its no wonder I was having dreams like this. I couldn't have been older than 6 when I first saw my dad chasing my mom out of the house. She was running from him to the neighbors house. I don't know if she was yelling at me to call the cops, or if she was screaming for anyone who could hear. I remember I was playing on the grass in our yard with my toys, and as I heard them come around the porch I froze and could do nothing but watch as she ran to the house next door. That same year our phone kept getting ripped out of the wall, and I finally understood why one day when I saw my mom reach for the phone to call the cops and my dad ripped it from her, and out of the wall.
My parents met when my mom was living near his hometown for school. She was working at a fast food place. My dad would go in or lunch and one day he asked her out on a date. They were married three months later in the LDS Temple. My mom was raised in the same town that we live in now, and I think she thought that if they were getting married in the temple then everything would be great. But now she looks back and can see how he probably just stopped drinking and smoking for a few months before they got married. I'm not sure there was any time when they had a healthy relationship. But my mom was patient and kind and just kept thinking he would grow out of his bad habits.
I am the oldest and only girl, my parents had 3 boys after me, one of which died at 40 weeks gestation. I'm not sure if it was because I was the oldest, or if its because I was the only girl but my dad was more strict with me that with my brothers. I'm not sure if my brothers would agree with that. I think some of the reasoning for this had to do with his level of addiction, and when I was young he was in the earlier years of life too. Strangely enough he used to call me over to him, this would happen when I was between five years old and eight years old. I would drop whatever I was playing with and walk over to him. He would be sitting in this old brown leather recliner that we had at the time. It was probably nice once, but now had rips and the cotton stuffing was coming out. He would be smoking a cigarette and he would pull me close and ask me if anyone had ever asked me to smoke before, I would shake my head no. He would look me straight in the eyes and ask me if I was sure. I would nod yes. Then he would start into this whole lecture about how if I wanted to smoke I should come to him. He told me he would let me smoke and smoke and smoke until I was sick to my stomach and turning green.
At the time this was the most confusing thing I had ever heard but I would just sit quietly and watch him talk and talk, and wonder why I would come to him and want to smoke. Then I would watch him put his own cigarette between his lips and blow out a big cloud of smoke. His lectures would vary between smoking to drinking to drugs and even to steeling. One night he even got on a tangent about school, and started telling me about how he got kicked out of his own house when he was sixteen years old and he had to live in his car. He said it was because he was smoking marijuana. "Have you ever seen marijuana", he would look at me sternly then pull me in so that I was right in front of his face and he told me "You can be anything you want to be. Do you hear me? If you want to be a doctor, be a doctor. If you want to be an astronaut be an astronaut." I winced a little as he said this, being so close to him I could smell the cigarette on his breath. But I believed him. Even though he was telling me one thing, and living a completely different way and most of what he was saying was just confusing to me, I believed him when he told me I could be anything.
It wasn't until years later when I learned about how my dad started smoking and drinking at such a young age did all of these conversations start making sense. Its amazing how much I don't know about my dad, but I've heard from my mom and some of his child hood friends that he was still just a child when he started smoking. Now, In my adult mind, I can almost see that he was giving me the talk that his 10 year old self needed to hear, but didn't get the chance to hear. I think my brother just younger than me got a couple of these lectures given to him, but by the time my youngest brother was old enough for them my dad was deeper into his addiction. I don't think my younger brother ever got any sort of council from my dad. And even though he was drinking a beer and smoking a cigarette as he talked to me me... it was still council from a dad.
Evenings all started the same. My dad was comfortable with all kinds of substances, in this circumstance I would put music in the category as a substance for him. We couldn't pay for groceries and the power bill, but you better believe we had a stereo system and speakers that could blast the roof off of our house. My dad had a box of cassette tapes when I was really young, full of plastic tape boxes with pictures of men in black clothes and big curly hair. And later he had a cd stand, with proably 100 cds. I cant even listen to led zeppelin or some old band called Sweet, without feeling like I'm a child again. My mom would lead us back to our rooms, read us a book and then we would kneel around our bed and she would help us say our prayers. "Thank you for our home, and please keep us safe", once finished we would jump into our beds, and she would stack blankets on top of us.
We lived in a home that was almost 100 years old. When the house was built there was no insulation, or maybe it was a luxury instead of a necessity? Either way our house was just brick walls, that were later covered up with plaster. Money was always a stress, so to save on money my mom would use our wood burning fire place instead of the propane heater. But the bedrooms were so far down the hall that the heat had a hard time making its way back to us. Cold heavy blankets were piled so heavy on us in our cold water beds. I don't remember sleeping in sheets with a blanket and comforter, it was just a big pile of blankets, over and under you. Even before we were in bed the music would start playing in the living room, sometimes my dads friends would make their way over, and sometimes not. One night I remember waking up and hearing our foosball table being played in the middle of the night. I could hear the music still playing, and the familiar voices and laughs of some of my dads friends. That next day my mom told me that she had gotten up to go to work at 6:30 that morning and my dad and his friends were still playing. They had played all night long, obviously a drug induced all-nighter.
Another time my mom was working a night shift, I was 5 or 6 and my little brother was around two. We were home with my dad that night which had turned into a party. I don't remember anything other than one of my dad's drunk friends, who I will call Chris, noticed what time it was and noticed I was still awake. He mentioned this to my dad and asked if it was past my bedtime. I was young so this is a fleeting memory, but next thing I know Chris is helping me get in pajamas. He helps me get into bed and I think he asks if I need to say my prayers. I only remember this because in my mind I can see him helping me say a few lines to a prayer. He turns on my tv for me before he leaves and shuts the door, I think part of this was for white noise so I don't have to try and fall asleep to the party happening just down the hall. I lay awake in the darkness wishing my mom would come home, and wondering when she will get off work. The next morning I told my mom that Christ tucked me into bed last night, and after that she only worked mornings. I have no idea how my brother got put to bed that night. I hope that he was already asleep in bed before friends started showing up, if not I would guess Christ had put him in his bed. I realize now that I'm older how lucky I am that Chris was decent enough to get me to bed. But it also terrifies me that I was at the hands of a house full of drunk men, and my dad was not aware enough to keep me safe.
Other nights when there were no friends it always ended in fighting. I could hear my dad just getting madder and madder. No matter what my mom did or didn't do, there was always something he was violently mad about. He was a happy drunk with friends. He was a mean drunk with out friends. The sun would go down and the music would get turned up, and it was the same thing every night. I probably should have been used to it, it was the air that I breathed. But every night I still was so terrified in my bed that I could hardly move. I would panic as I was being smothered by a pile of blankets, and cling to my doll. His screaming would go on into the night.
I am very thankful to have been kept as safe as I was. Why one of the drunk men did not find their way down the hall and into a little girls room is something I question and wonder how I didn't end up in a different pile of dirt. I will not say that I was blessed or that I had angels looking over me, because my heart goes out to children who had this as their pile of dirt. I will just say that it never happened, and I am very thankful that that pile of dirt never found me.
Each time we would wake up the next morning to a dark and quiet house. Yes it was dark because the sun was still down, but it would have felt dark even if it was high noon. Mom would be at work, I would help get my little brothers ready for school, dad would drive us to school, and the merry-go-round would continue. Always the same circle. Sometimes with different events like - Dad gets arrested, or dad moves out. But always landing back on the same track.
My mom told me a couple years ago that my dad's friends would come to her and ask "why did Merrill end up in Jail? We dropped him off that night and although he had been drinking he was in a perfectly good mood." I don't know what my mom told these friends of his but she did start to realize that it was like he snapped right when he walked through the front door. Happy drunk Merrill stayed out on the porch and mean, angry Merrill came in the house. We later found out that he had been having an affair on her, something he confessed to her after their divorce and after his stay in prison. I also had one of his probation officers tell me, just a couple years ago, that he never once mentioned kids. When he had to come in for class he would talk about "the divorce" but he never really talked about my mom or us kids. I don't know for sure but I can only guess that his guilt was heavy. I do believe that he was dealing with his own personal pile of dirt or daemons. But add guilt of a wife and three children waiting for you at home when you have been out all night at a party and I can imagine it was a recipe for fierce feelings of guilt.
Guilt is a strong tool that Satan uses. Its what makes people feel like they are not worthy to get out of the hole they are in. Giving into that guilt only makes you dig yourself deeper and deeper in, because the only thing to numb the heaviness is reaching for the addiction. So the addiction becomes less of a coping mechanism and more of a life line.
The worst night I can remember was when I was in 5th or 6th grade. I cant remember a lot, but I do remember waking up to the fight, instead of falling asleep to one. It had been Halloween night, and we had been out trick or treating. My dad had been with friends, pretty normal night. I think my mom had even been in bed or asleep when he got home. I woke up to screaming, his screaming. Angry and horrible. Crying coming from my mom. I wanted so badly to jump out of bed and go find a phone to call 911. But I was so terrified. My memories from that night still haunt me, and are too dark to write. I was young but old enough to feel deep hatred for my dad. I decided right then that I had no love for him and I started praying that my mom would divorce him.
The next day after school my mom called me into the kitchen. I had a feeling that she had called my little brother into the kitchen before me. She told me that Dad was moving out for a while, and it was because he had hit her last night. I had already known that last night was bad, but usually we left to go to my grandmas house for a few nights when they needed a break. My dad had never moved out before, I was relieved that he was gone.
Later that week my mom moved her bed out of her bedroom, and into the dining room. Her bed sat about 3 feet away from our dining room table and about 5 feet from our front door. That Halloween night must have been so horrible that she could not get herself to even sleep in that bedroom anymore. My dad stayed with some of his friends for about three months. I don't remember what this time looked like for my mom, I don't even know if he went to jail for the domestic abuse. About a month after he moved out we went to see him. He was staying in his friends run down little grey house. We showed up and he hugged us, and was quiet. I stepped inside to see where my dad had been living and the house felt cold. Soon a couple men from our bishopric showed up, I thought it was strange that they had on church clothes and it wasn't Sunday. Conversations of "I will do whatever it takes", and "Stop drinking" are attached to that memory. We folded our arms as he was given a blessing. Moments later everyone shook hands and thanked each other and the men in church clothes left. Were things really going to change? No. I knew it even then as a child, I heard my parents discuss the when's and how's of him moving back in. There were stipulations, of course. But as this conversation was happening I felt sick inside that he would be coming back. My brothers, being little had sat too long in a little house and were starting to get rambunctious. I saw my dad look over at them a few times, before he snapped. "You two sit down, quit running around, stop it!" And there he was again, it had been a month since I had seen his anger. But there it was again, could my mom not see it?
My mom's grandpa had been an alcoholic. His wife, my mom's grandma had given him chance after chance and eventually he was able to quit drinking. Of course my mom wasn't born yet while all of this was going on and all she knew him as was a sweet, kind, good man. So this is the story that my dad would bring up each time mom was threatening divorce. He threw in her face the idea of what would have happened if her grandma had given up on her grandpa. This is called manipulation, and my dad was a professional.
Dad moved back in and we went on a family trip to Disney land a few months later. A fun family trip that would hopefully set us on a new direction. My dad didn't have a drivers license because of DUIs, so my mom had to do the driving. My dad's frustration with not driving and trouble navigating the city in the years of paper maps was rough, but add his new sobriety to it and it was scary. His sobriety lasted not even 6 months, and my moms bed stayed in the dining room.
That wasn't our only family trip. A couple of times my parents decided to go on a family trip to lake Powel. This meant we borrow my grandmas car, ours wouldn't make it out of town, and drive down to lake Powell - play on the beach and set up a tent for when it got hot. Then spend a night or two in a motel in Page. It started out great! We would put on our swimming suits and run to the edge of the water. Find sea shells and make sand castles. My dad would nap in the tent and my mom would read her book.
We would get back to the hotel after dinner and watch cartoons on the tv. Our cable stations at home had been shut off years ago, which meant we only had the 3 or 4 channels that you can get with an antenna. So the Disney channel and nickelodeon was really exciting. My mom would run out to get milk for my bothers bottle or something and I remember looking over at my dad opening up a small bottle of something. He seemed really tall as I was looking up at him from the bed that I lay in. He asked me if I knew what was in the bottle, to which I shook my head no. He told me the name of it, then he opened it up an put it to his mouth. He tilted his head back, drinking it all, and stumbling a bit as he drank. I looked back at the cartoons on the tv.
Later that night I woke up to fighting. We were in a hotel room so if I couldn't sleep through it at home, of course I wasn't sleeping through it here. I feel my little brothers warm body next to me, he lay motionless. Was he pretending to sleep too?
I heard another voice in the room, an Indian man. And arguing, the frustration seemed to be towards my mom. My dad had gone down to the bar after we fell asleep and had started drinking. There he had met a man from the reservation. The man also didn't have a drivers license but needed to get back to his home. After having a few drinks with this man my dad decided my mom could just drive him out to his house on the reservation, it was probably after midnight by now. So he brought this man up to our hotel room and demanded that my mom drive him home. Of course my mom, had been asleep and with three small children in the room told him no. And so it began... When I woke up my dad was very frustrated that my mom wouldn't take him, and I think the Indian man was getting nervous because of my dad's anger. I could here him telling my dad "Its okay, I will just go down stairs and try and call someone". My dad was screaming and telling my mom to just give the man a ride.
After a few years of family vacations that always ended up like this, I told my mom I don't want to go on any more vacations to lake powell. She must have mentioned this to my dad one sober day, because not long after I walked into the kitchen one day when my mom was cutting his hair as he sat on a stool with a bath towel around his shoulders. He asked me if I said that I didn't want to go on family vacations anymore, and I just smiled shyly at him. It was hard to say anything to him because I never knew how he would react. I saw sadness in his eyes, and the words "things will get better, I promise" were whispered.
Darkness
“Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.” - Mary Oliver
When I fall, I shall arise; and when I sit in darkness, the Lord shall be a light unto me. Micah 7:8
Darkness is more than just shutting off the light switch and trying to let your eyes adjust. Its the panic feeling that starts in your mind and grows until you feel it in your heart and sometimes in your stomach. Its the heavy weight of it that comes in with the pain and just lingers. I am not a doctor, I don't have a degree in phycology. I can only talk from my own experience.
When I was 8 or 9 I remember coming home one evening and seeing my dad passed out on the couch. It was early, probably 5 or 6 p.m. Maybe I was supposed to be used to this by now, but this kind of event still scared me. I had walked into the living room and paused when I saw him laying there. I looked away, but stayed frozen in place. Something was different this time, or maybe I was just getting old enough to notice. I slowly raised my eyes to look at him without lifting my head. There was something there more than just my dad. His eyes were closed, he was for sure asleep (or passed out), but there was something else there. It was more than just a feeling of another presence, I could almost see it. This darkness, sitting or hovering right above him. I could almost feel its eyes on me. I looked away and left the room.
This darkness is a real. I don't know what you call it, and I'm not here to tell you what to call it. But I put it under the category of evil and Devil. That day it was so present in my home that I could almost see it. But I don't think its usually so obvious.
I believe darkness is real. Its part of the reason why I believe God holds us close and whispers "Grow", because he knows trials are necessary to our becoming. But the darkness is so heavy that its hard keep standing. It says in 2 Nephi 2:11 Opposition in all things... that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good. If you can learn to recognize the darkness then you can start to search for light.
My teenage years at home consisted of my dad moving out and back in, and out again. This ongoing separation between my mom and dad that never seemed to make any kind of difference. Even when he wasn't living in our home, his presence was still there. He was very angry and was almost obsessed with controlling my mom and us, even though he had restraining orders to stay away. He would call our house non stop, If you picked up the phone it was just never ending yelling and screaming on the other line. Usually my mom would just set the phone down on the table, instead of hanging it up so that he couldn't call back. More times than not my dad would just yell and yell for an hour or more before even realizing that there was no one listening to him. This was really annoying for anyone trying to get ahold of us because the phone was never on the receiver.
While my dad was in and out he lived in just a little house that was on the back of the property that we had. My grandparents had purchased a corner lot that had 3 houses, one main house and 2 little houses. All three were pretty old, and after a few years of no one living in the two little houses they became more like sheds, with no electricity or water. My dad had lost his job in Salt Lake city 4 years after my parents got married. My mom was 9 months pregnant with me, and having no plans and a baby on the way they headed back to the town my mom grew up in. I can imagine that they moved into the home with the assumption of it being a temporary place until my dad could find a job and they could get their own home. Their own home never happened, and although I'm sure this situation might have been frustrating for my grandma, I am thankful for this house, because at least we had a house. Its the one bit of structure that was dependable, a house without my dad's name on the title.
When things would get unbearable at home my dad would move into one of these little "rental" houses. Usually he was there for a month or so before moving back in. As I got older he stayed in the little house more than he was at our house. My dad would find a job and work for about a year or 18 months, at first he was a good worker, he was friendly and willing to help. But once he got comfortable in a job, and as the months went on he would get more and more relaxed. I never knew exactly why he lost each job. At first I was just too young to realize there must be a reason, and later on it was just normal for him to jump from job to job so I never asked details. Even if I asked he probably would not have told me the truth, this was just how it went. But I know now that his addiction always had something to do with it. He would get comfortable in his job and either start showing up drunk or just start coming in late. When I was a junior in high school my dad had lost his drivers license due to DUIs. One afternoon I had just got home from school, he walked around the side of the house and asked me if I would give him a ride to the gas station. He sat in the car with me and we rode in silence. I pulled into the parking spot at the gas station and he told me he would be right back. I waited a minute and then saw him walk out of the gas station doors a few moments later. He held brown paper bags that were clinging around some sort of bottle inside. I just felt sick and angry. My blood just started pumping through my body and before I knew it he was opening the car door. Something snapped in me that day and I told him he would have to walk home. He questioned why, and I told him I was not allowing that in my car. I cant even believe I had the courage to do it that day. I'm not sure what he was feeling. I'm sure all of the talks about not drinking and saying no to drugs that he had told me years ago went through his mind, and I'm sure he felt about as low as anyone can, having their teenage driver telling you to walk home. He shut the car door and tucked the paper bags under his arm and started towards the side walk.
My last year of high school was just like any one else's, preparing to leave home. My mom and me shared an old red car that wasn't trust worthy to take out of town. So getting me a car for college was a concern. My mom had planned on taking a couple thousand dollars from her tax refund in march or april and using it to get a reliable car that I could make out of town in. My dad was always getting in trouble with the law this year, and when the tax refund was on its way my dad also got his truck impounded. He was living in the house behind our house at this time, which had no water. So he would come over every day and shower. One day I had just got home from school and I could hear my dad getting out of the shower. He came out moments later and called for me, he walked into the room I was in and asked me how much money I had in the bank. I had a summer job since I was 11 years old, to help with school clothes and my sr. year I worked during the school year to save for sr. activities and the sports I was involved in. I told my dad I had just over a thousand dollars in the bank. He started bargaining with me. He told me that he only had one hundred dollars and he needed to get his car out of the impound. He told me that if he gave me all the money I had so that he could get his car out, then he would not take my mom's tax refund. But if I didn't then he would take most of it and I wouldn't be able to get a car for college.
Things were weird with my dad this year, because I was finally old enough. After that incident in the gas station parking lot, things had changed. And now when I knew things were getting out of control when he would start yelling I would call 911 myself. He had a dark countenance about him. His addiction was no longer a young party lifestyle. It was now heavy and troublesome and expensive. And while the friends that he partied with when I was little were now growing up and growing out of that lifestyle in order to have more important things like family and a job, my dad never grew out of it. So his friends were just getting younger, or darker. We lived in a small town, but some of the houses that I would see his truck parked at I would have no idea who even lived there.
One after noon afterschool I was in my room getting ready for work when I heard my dads truck pull up. I just sat in my room pulling my hair into a pony tail when his heavy footsteps lead him down the hall. His voice was dark. And he called for me, I answered. And he asked me, "why did you call the cops on me last week?" And I told him honestly, "Cause I was afraid you were going to hurt mom." I looked at him through the mirror that I was standing in front of. "Have you ever seen me hurt your mom?" I had a lump in my throat, and my heart was beating so hard I almost felt like throwing up. But my new found voice of rebellion was not staying hidden. And I told him honestly, "Yes, on Halloween." He didn't even reply, he looked shocked and he turned around and walked out of the house. Earlier that week my mom had told me that I needed to meet with the police to write up a report, since I was the one who called the cops. I had told her that I wouldn't do it. Its one thing to be rebellious enough to dial 911, its another thing to meet with officers and make it official. I just wasn't brave enough. Later I found out that if I, being under 18, would have made a report on him he would have been facing a felony instead of just time in the county jail. At the time I felt relieved that I hadn't done that too him, and now I can see how silly my thinking was.
A few months before I graduated I tried out for Homecoming queen. Its basically a beauty pageant with 8-10 girls. We had practiced for months and when your 17 its basically the only thing that matters. The night of the pageant I scanned my eyes on the audience. My mom, my grandma, my little brothers, and aunts... would he show up? Will he be drunk? I took the stage for the evening wear and the audition, 30 minutes into the pageant and he still wasn't here. It was half relief and half confused. It was my turn to go on stage for the talent portion. I was performing a solo dance, that my team mates and friends from the drill team helped me choreograph. I walked out on the floor and waited for the music. It came on and with counts in my head I began, It wasn't until half way through my performance that I noticed a dark outline standing in the doorway way in the back. I continued dancing but glanced over at this shadow of a person every chance I could get. It looked like him, but I was also only getting quick and blurry looks at it. My music ended and as I held the ending pose and listened to the audience clapping I watched the dark shadow leave the door way and walk down the hallway to the parking lot.
I never asked him, but I knew it was him. Had he been drinking? Did he drove there drunk? I don't know. But I can imagine him shaking, and watching the clock, pacing the floor and waiting until just about 7:30 to leave his house and make his way to the high school. A building packed with townspeople who talk, and who talk about him a lot. Seeing a full auditorium he just stands in the back and quietly waits. Saying Hello and smiling to anyone who makes eye contact with him, but inside he is living his own hell. Just waiting until my routine is over and he can go home and find something to numb overwhelming feelings with. I felt as much love for my dad as I could that night, it wasn't a lot but I was thankful he had at the very least just stood in the door way at the back.
The next year when I moved away for college my dad became even more distant. He called me once or twice but every time it was a phone call so he could inform me of everything happening in his life. By now he was never not drinking or using. So he was different every few months when I would hear from him. Sometimes he was very very down, and sometimes he was happy and talking fast. He had moved out of the little rental house behind my moms house, to a trailer house. The owner of the trailer house had hired him on to work construction, and must have given him a good deal on rent for him to live there. When I came home from school for Christmas my brothers and I drove up to see him. . It was awkward being there, but since it was obvious that my mom was trying to get a divorce I thought it necessary to try and start these type of visits. I was doing my best trying to support each parent in the mess we were sitting in. As we walked up to the front steps, which was just a dirt path with a slab of crumbling concrete I noticed the old cigarettes in a coffee can near the door. I knocked and waited. He opened the door happy to see us, and let us in. His house was clean, not surprising. That was one thing that made him so extremely angry was a messy house. In one corner of the room was a couple electric guitars, my dad never knew how to play, but loved to pretend to play after he had a couple drinks. His tv on the other side of the couch and posters of girls hung up on the walls. It looked like a dorm room from the 70s, all it was missing was a lava lamp. I tried to just visit, isn't that what normal people do? Just sit and visit. He almost seemed normal to me, and I almost thought we were pulling it off but then I glanced into the kitchen. Above his fridge and cabinets were lines of empty liquor bottles. I tried to just look at him and continue our conversation. He was telling me the story of how he got one of the guitars that was sitting in the corner, some bet he had won against a drinking buddy. But no matter how much I tried to just focus on him my eyes kept looking back at the pile of empty bottles. Out in the open, as decoration, on display. I felt sick in my stomach although I just tried to just ignore it. Had he drank all of those ? By himself or with friends? Was he proud of them? Were they like souvenirs to him? An accomplishment of how much he could drink? Or was it more like memorabilia from a party?
So there I sat. I was 18, sitting by my 14 and 12 year old brothers, in my 45 year old fathers dorm room of a trailer. Pretending to be just nice, normal people, while the reminder of the truth lingered in the background. Those alcohol bottles always seemed to be in the background.
He put on a good face for us that day, we left and he hugged us goodbye. I went back to school and my dad got fired from that job, and also had to leave the trailer. After almost 20 years in the same community its amazing he could find job and job for so many years, but now he was causing too much trouble. The cops were being called too much and he was being put in jail a couple times a month. My mom was going forward with the divorce and he was very very angry. He was threatening and stalking her non stop. The cops got sick of getting phone calls about him so often that they told him he needed to leave town. My dad's family lived around Salt Lake City Utah, that is where he grew up, so naturally he went there. I didn't talk to him much or see him much, but every time I did he was with a new girlfriend and going to some concert. During this time I got married. We had a reception in my home town, and got married in the temple a couple hours away. I was terrified of what might happen if my dad showed up at my reception. I knew he probably wouldn't come to the temple grounds, but I didn't want to have to call the cops at my reception. But he would be even more mad if I didn't invite him, So I sent his invitation in the mail and just hoped for the best. For as long as I have known my dad, these few years might have been the darkest I have ever seen him. Trying to navigate his new single life, full of bills and rent payments - something my mom had always just taken care of, and being forced out of a quiet, sleepy, town straight into Down town salt lake city. I think he just fell into his addictions full force. He never did show up at my wedding, his mom and siblings came down so I know he could have caught a ride. But I was far past feeling sad that he wouldn't be there. Relief was all I could feel.
While in Salt Lake he caught up with an old high school friend who lived in Arizona, the friend knew of work and offered him a job. While he was in Arizona he ended up doing prison time for almost a year. I never asked what for. I knew him well enough to not need to know.
February of 2017, I am 30 years old and in my home in Idaho when I heard my phone ring. I looked down to see my dad's name on the screen. I hesitated on picking it up, but I just took a deep breath and answered anyway. I said hello and just expected the normal 30 minutes of him telling me who he was dating, where he was working, what concerts he had been too or what bar fights he had been in. But instead he told me that he was sick. I knew he had not been feeling well, and I had heard rumors of him taking jobs for half the money that others were making because he was not able to keep up. He said he had gone to a doctor because he was in so much pain and the scans showed cancer. He was now crying on the phone, he didn't have any answers yet, he was going back to the doctors in a couple days to get more information. At this time he was living in his car in Salt Lake City. It was an old monte carlo, that usually didn't start. But he had to have a car to keep his job, so he just barely kept it running. He told me stories of him trying to find a parking spot for the night so that he could sleep and the cops wouldn't find him. If the cops found him at night they would knock on his window and tell him that he couldn't overnight park there. About once a week he would rent the cheapest hotel he could find so that he could shower and sleep in a real bed. As he was telling me this I was sitting in my baby girls bedroom, watching her crawl around to her toys as I sat with her on the floor. And I felt nothing. Looking back now, I realize how heartless that makes me sound. I am even a little bit shocked that I didn't feel even a little bit more compassion for him. But I had been taken down the road that got him there. I had lived it and later watched it. The hole that he had been born it, was the same hole I was born it. And he hadn't been able to find the light to climb towards. The most I had to offer after being a part of it all was just answering my phone and listening to him. That's all I had left to offer. He ended the conversation saying " I just wanted to let you know, just incase they find me dead in my car. You will know what happened".
I had heard my dad threaten to commit suicide a few times in my adult life, so I wasn't a stranger to him talking about death. And to be honest sometimes I thought it would just be easier if he was gone, he was always in so much trouble all the time, and his lifestyle was devastating. I thought I was beyond the point of feelings on this particular subject. I thought I had been through enough to handle the next 9-12 months without any problems. But I was so wrong. This phone call struck something inside of me that was the beginning of a very dark year, the darkest that I have gone through. I felt like I had climbed out of the hole that I was born into . I had found my way out and had stayed away from anything that might even resemble that sort of living. But the truth was I was still just a seed, and that phone call had signaled a dump truck, with a heavy load of dirt, and it was starting to dump right on top of me.
Most of my dad's family wasn't talking to him. This is what happens with addicts, they use and take and use and take until they have pushed everyone away. My little brothers were not talking to him, as well as most of his siblings. I admit that my brothers got the mean phone calls from him once we were adults, and I think its because my dad wasn't comfortable enough around my husband to call and yell at me. So I never shut him out entirely, but I cant say that I blame everyone who did. I also just didn't have the energy to stay mad at him, I was busy enough with three young children, so I figured I could answer his phone call every 6 months and listen to him talk. Then I could hang up and wouldn't hear from him for another 6 months. It seemed like a lot less trouble than trying to be mad at him.
But this put me in an interesting place, because whenever my dad needed to talk to someone it was either his brother, Ross or me that he called. Ross probably got more of the report on court dates and fines. I got more of the emotional side of him. His sister had let him live with her for years, and was willing to help when needed. But I think she was just over used by him and couldn't handle the every day-ness of it all.
He called me enough that I started understanding his patterns of living. At the first of the month he was good! Drunk. Happy, laughing on the phone. Near the end of the pay period he would start to run out of money, so he wouldn't be able to afford the drink or the drugs, so that is when I would hear the fear, and the worry and regret. I could hear him shaking and he would cry on the phone and tell me how scared he was to die. He never got into what he did or didn't regret, I just don't think he had the brain capacity to see how he had got here. I would sit and listen to him, he was usually sitting at a park bench, just waiting for the sun to go down so he could go find a place to park his car to sleep for the night. On the nights that he was crying and so low I would almost find it in me to tell him to come to Idaho and stay with me. But within a few days he would get paid again, and he would call me high as a kite or as happy as a clam. And I would remind myself that he was not safe to bring into my home near my daughters.
During this time I really started trying to prepare for him to die. I warned my brothers and made sure they knew what was going on, so that they could prepare. I wondered if there was anything I should ask him before he died. I really don't know very much about my dad's childhood, or who he really is. All I know is his addiction. I had exactly one million questions. But when I thought about how to ask him my questions I realized that I couldn't. He is not the most honest person and he has been an addict for at least 30 years. I just didn't trust that I would get any truth out of him, so I decided to just let my questions go. Which was upsetting for me, it was the one last chance to actually understand. Or get to know my dad on any other level than the one we were on.... and the one we were on was not anything special. Knowing that he was still alive on this earth, but he was enough gone that there was no chance for anything different, it was heartbreaking.
The few weeks and months after that first phone call in February I found myself in my own dark hole. It came on just a little at a time until I was mentally kicking and swimming just to keep my head above water each day. At the time I was trying to push it away, but depression was setting in. And because of that little bit of darkness settling in, other aspects in my life became very stressful and threatening. Things that I used to love, now seemed scary. I avoided people and things that used to be just my normal happenings. I really tried to just ignore it and just keep smiling and pushing it away. Depression is something that my mom and grandmas have all struggled with, so I'm sure this all had to do with my chemical make up, especially since I was watching the life of my father's end in darkness.
One night, after the kids were in bed and my husband was asleep next to me, my thoughts got so far away from me, I had been feeling the sadness all day, but when I lay in the dark, trying to sleep my thoughts just went down a rabbit hole. Further and further down I went inside my pile of dirt. Darker and heavier it gets. Until I felt the pain and darkness move from just in my mind, down through my heart and into my stomach. And it settled there. It felt like it was in my whole body now, not just my mind. I felt the physical pain of darkness, it wasn't just emotional pain anymore, and it was as real as anything I had ever felt. I tried to stop my thinking before it got any worse that night, so I forced myself to try and sleep. Usually after stressing about things in the middle of the night, I can wake up with a clean clear mind, and recognize how silly my worrying the night before had been. But the morning after this particular night, I woke up with the darkness still inside of me. The dump trucks were lining up, there had to have been more than one, this was something heavier than anything I remember.
Days became fuzzy, I went through the motions of taking care of the children, but there was always this darkness in the back of my mind. Just sitting there, reminding me, waiting for me. I would help the kids get dressed and take them to school, and the darkness was there. I would go home and get dressed, clean the house and get some work done, and the darkness was there. I would pick up kids from school, greet them with smiles and ask them about their day and the darkness was still there. I would feel so weighed down and lost, I remembered the person I used to be and she seemed like a fairy tail. I missed her, but it seemed impossible to even pretend like I could ever be her again.
I started clinging to anything that would make me feel a little bit of peace, and I would go in my bedroom closet, shut the door and beg for God to just give me a few hours of happiness. Heck, I didn't even need happiness, just lift the darkness for a few hours today - just give me a break from the sadness inside of me. I would snap at the kids and was not nearly as patient as I usually am. And I would pass the afternoons by cleaning out the seams of the hardwood floor in my kitchen with toothpicks. The little tedious tasks, that made me feel like I was getting something done. Outwardly I don't know if very many people noticed I was sinking. My family realized I was struggling, and of course my husband saw it.
One night my husband sat me down and told me I had to talk. He sat in a blue arm chair, and I sat on the couch. The kids were in bed and he told me, you have to tell me what your feeling. I had no idea what I was feeling. But he made me talk anyway. I told him that I feel like there is someone outside the house with a knife, and that person never leaves and wants to kill me. Of course I knew that there was no one outside our house with a knife, but that's the best way I could explain the fear I was living in. Everything seemed scary, my friends seemed scary, I had a great photo studio in my home that has been the best stay at home mom job, and it terrified me. Social media was scary for me, everything was scary.
We went through everything that I felt was threatening to me. And as we went through them a bucket came to my mind. Imagine a bucket, like you would take to the beach, or use in the garden. In my life I have used this bucket, I have tried to fill it up with things to make me feel more worthy. If I can just join the high school dance team - and add that to my bucket. Then maybe I wont look and feel so empty. If I can just do the beauty pageant, hold a job, look pretty, then I can add all of those things to my bucket and I wont be so empty. And I was still doing it. If I can just start my own business, inside my home. Balance work and being a mom, balance the busy schedule, and do it with a smile on my face. Decorate my home and keep it clean. Then people will think I am a good person, then they will want to be my friend. Then I will be worth of love. Then I can hide the dark hole that I grew up in.
That night I mentally found that bucket. I could see it. As I was talking to my husband I was imagining me taking out all of these things from the bucket. I had some great things in that bucket, things that I had been packing around in the bucket for years and years. And some newer things that I was proud to finally get into my bucket. I removed 'kind' and 'happy' from my bucket. It was just too much to carry around at this time. I removed 'financially stable' and ' loving parent' from the bucket, I removed all of my friends, and all of my family from the bucket, I removed my home and every complement that I had ever received, I removed my garden, I removed all the service I had done for others, my ambition, my talents, my hobbies, and I removed photography. It hurt so much to remove photography, because I had received so much praise and recognition from it. I had loved photography and I had finally felt like I found my calling in life, I was good at it, it made me feel loved. But I removed it. I removed my wonderful marriage and how proud I was that my husband and I were so great together. I felt sick, I felt empty, the darkness had won. I sat there for a moment, imagining this empty bucket that I had just tossed everything I had valued out of. But now what? Where do I go from here, with this newly empty bucket? And in my mind, I looked into the bucket to see if there was anything left.... And the words "You are God's child" were printed at the bottom of the bucket. That was the one thing that was in my bucket , it had always been in my bucket and it was permanent. I couldn't remove it. My heart opened up to God's love, without any numbers in a bank account, without friends or followers online, without my home, without any material possession, he loves me without my front porch and garden..... and yes, he loves me without my camera. That night my husband helped me unearth my self worth. I had a lot of self confidence, don't worry, I had filled that bucket right up until my confidence was just spilling over. But my self worth, I have never once recognized. I wasn't just the daughter of a man who kept the county sheriff busy. I wasn't just the girl who tried to be the best mom and wife, who tried to be a good daughter and friend. I wasn't just the girl who had the garden and cute chicken coop and who could take the beautiful picture. Take away the accomplishments, take away the great marriage, take away everything I had once considered to define me. I was God's. My love was inherent. No matter what I accomplished or didn't accomplish, God loved me and gave me worth just the same. My feelings of emptying the bucket that night went from the lowest low to a feeling of I'm enough. Just me, without having to carry anything in my bucket. Freedom.
This was the first little stretch of growth for me. I was in a hole deeper and darker than anything I could remember. But what I hadn't realized is that God had prepared this hole especially for me.
Love
A couple days before the first phone call in February I was sitting in my living room folding clothes. I was thinking about valentines day and wondering what kind of cards I should have the kids make for their grandmas.
And in the simplest, but most impactful way my mind just opened up to the idea of Love. Almost as if God had clicked the "download" button on my brain and I was receiving spiritual knowledge about love. It lasted for ten or so minutes I during these moments I completely understood the importance of Love, and how powerful it is. I realized that Love is one of most important lessons we are on earth to learn. I just felt it. And I could visualize the power of loving everyone around us, no matter how different they are. And even if they are making wrong choices or choices we would have done differently , I felt the healing power of them loving us too. Healing and powerful for both them, and to us. I imagined the world still with all the different opinions and ideas of living, still with different cultures, religions, sexual orientations, political opinions, and also with people making bad decisions. The world in my mind wasn't perfect and it was still full of the things that make people uncomfortable or unagreeable with each other. The only thing that was different was that everyone was showing love to everyone else, no matter their circumstance, and I saw peace.
That day I realized what interesting and out of the ordinary thoughts I just had, and I absolutely wanted to remember them, but I kept folding clothes and went about my day. It wasn't until my dad called a few days later that I recognized my thoughts on love as being from God. I decided to try and let love guide me through the remaining months of my dad's life. But now I see it as God holding me in his palm right before I was about to be planted, whispering "Grow! Grow! I have bigger plans for you, but you have to grow!" and holding me close, just like we do with our seeds, before the dirt piled around me. I like to think that God probably knew that this pile of dirt was different than any of my past trials, and he saw the darkness that was waiting for me. I think of my insight on Love as a little bit of miracle grow, or just a little added extra to help me find my way. God had prepared a trial for me. He had chose how deep I would be planted, he had determined all of the details, just like my husband and I prepare the ground for the seeds. But he also knew that satan would be showing up in these moments of weakness. God had never intended for me to stay a seed, he had bigger plans for me. But in order for me to grow, he knew I had to be planted.
After the experience with the bucket and self worth, as well as an insight about love, I consider it as the first step of germination. Germination is a gardening term, and google will describe it like this
ger.mi.nate
verb
(of a seed or spore) begin to grow and put out shoots after a period of dormancy.
come into existence and develop.
synonyms: develop, take root, arise, emerge, evolve, mature, expand, enlarge, advance, progress
The darkness had become to heavy and dark that I finally let myself crack open. It was painful, but what other choice did I have? This is when I realized that I wasn't the only person who had been in a dark hole before. My dad had been in a dark hole, my grandfather and his father had been in a dark hole. I could see how scary and horrible it is in the dark, and how you are just desperate for some sort of relief or peace from the exhaustion of it all. And only then could I understand how easy a drink or reaching for drugs or the pornography. In that debilitating darkness, you reach for anything that might look like it will help you. I can say that with my prior experiences I knew better than to know that alcohol was the answer. But had I been younger or not so set in my ways, who knows what I would have reached for?
I stopped judging others and stopped questioning why or how people even want to start anything that we know is addictive. The darkness had shown me why. And I couldn't feel anything by empathy and compassion for anyone who struggles with darkness or addiction. And only then could I understand how to love people. People different than me and people who are making choices that are different from what I would choose. No judgement. Only love and a soft, "me to, I've felt that too".
A few days later I was reading in the bible, I was wondering about my thoughts on love, and wondering what the bible had to say about it. I turned to Matt 22. In this chapter Jesus is being questioned by the Pharisees. They ask him, which of all the commandments is the most important. His answer, in verse 37 is to Love God with all your heart, soul and mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second, in verse 39; thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
There it was. Love. Love God and love others.
There is a great quote that says "A deep sense of love and belonging is an irreducible need of all people. We are biologically, cognitively, physically, and spiritually wired to love, to be loved, and to belong. When those needs are not met, we don't function as we were meant to. We break. We fall apart. We numb. We ache. We hurt others. We get sick." - Brene Brown.
When I hear this its further proof that Love is needed. Its needed in our homes, for our own families. But its also needed outside of our home, for those in our neighborhoods and towns. As I was discussing this topic with my grandma, she mentioned to me that usually the ones that are hardest to love are the ones who need it most.
Self confidence, and self worth. Sometimes they seem like they should just be the same thing, but they are different. Google defines these as
Self Confidence ; a feeling of trust in one's abilities, qualities, and judgment.
Self Worth ; the sense of one's own value or worth as a person
We may feel confident doing math, we may feel confident painting a picture. But if you confuse these with your worth as a person and start putting them in your Worth bucket, that's when things get un-true.
Having self worth means knowing that you are of value and eternally loved. With nothing else, without all of your talents, gifts, physical qualities, career, material possessions, and education. To feel the truth of not needing anything in your bucket and still feel worthy of God is powerful.
Cracking the surface.
Late summer of 2017 I knew my dad wouldn't last much longer. He had a few troublesome weekends which landed him in jail a few different times and totaled his car. Without his car he had nothing. The cancer was getting more serious and I was trying to prepare myself to take him to my home when I felt like he only had a few weeks left.
After his car was totaled he had nothing. Somehow he had talked one of his girlfriends from a year or so ago to help him. I had heard that she was only with him because she was stealing his pills, so I was hesitant of her, but also thankful for her willing to help him. At least now he wouldn't be alone all the time. At the time August was coming to an end and I was preparing for school to start for my kids, I started wondering if I should try and make it to Southern Utah to see him. I had not actually seen my dad in almost 18 months, and I didn't know if he would last until the end of November when we would be going down for thanksgiving.
I was talking to him on the phone one afternoon as I wandered around the garden and watched the kids playing on the lawn. The words "we will try and make it down in the next couple of weeks" came out of my mouth and as I was saying them I was wondering if I was being honest. But I felt inside that what I just said needed to happen. I visited with Devin about it and we decided to plan a trip down.
My dad sent me the address to the hotel of where he was staying. We pulled into the parking lot and I looked for the room number. We decided that I would go up first and make sure he sober enough, then I would call or text Devin and he would bring the kids in. I was nervous for my kids to see him and meet his girlfriend.
My dad had lots of girlfriends after the divorce. Only a couple of them realized the trouble he was soon after they started dating, and broke it off a couple weeks later. But a few of them tried to stay with him for months and even a year or so. It always ended the same, him in jail for domestic violence. One girlfriend even had small children, when they picked him up because of the kids in the house.
I climbed the stairs to the hotel, terrified. I knocked on the door and I heard barking from a little dog. The door opened and the skeleton of my dad answered the door. he had on grey sweat pants and a t-shirt. His hair was grey and he was unshaven. My dad was 6'7" and had always been thin, but he was thinner than any other time I had seen him. His skin had a grey tint to it and his clothes just hung off of him. He smiled and gave me a hug and asked where the kids were. I told him they ran to get a couple snacks and they would be over in a minute. He invited me in.
I walked into a one bedroom hotelroom. A computer on the desk and a couple crocheted blankets on the chair and bed. A few groceries sitting on the counters and pairs of shoes tucked under the chairs. He told me his girlfriend had ran to get a couple groceries and should be back anytime. He sat on the bed and told me about the pain he had been in. I don't know where the cancer started but it was now all over his lungs, up his spine and into his neck. Finding money to keep up with just pain medication alone had been a struggle for them. I had been hesitant to help pay for his medication, not knowing if I could trust what he was telling me, but had called the pharmacy myself and helped pay for a couple prescriptions. He thanked me for that. He said that they had been living in the hotel room for about 2 weeks. His girlfriend had been working and made just enough for the hotel.
She walked in right then and he seemed relieved to see her. Right when she walked in he kind of slumped down on his pillow and got quiet, obviously he was wore out from our 10 minute conversation. I had gone into the hotel room not quite sure how to feel about her, but right away she gave me a hug and introduced herself as Pam. She tried to catch me up on how my dad was feeling and said they were trying to get hospice coming, and the church was in touch with them. So they didn't feel so alone. My husband and kids eventually came in and my dad tried to sit back up and talk to the kids.
My oldest girls just sat quietly and stared at my dad. They were terrified and probably not knowing what to expect. My dad tried joking with them and asking them questions, to which they just smiled shyly and nodded yes or no. Pam was ready with a couple candies and they were happy to have a treat, she talked to them like a grandma. I look back on that day and see me walking into the hotel room with a wall around my heart. Of course I was trying to protect myself, an adult child trying to be brave. But I was not opening myself up to love. Pam on the other hand was more Christ like. She had nothing to give but kindness and love, and she gave. Freely.
I had walked into the motel room knowing this was probably the last time I would see him. And I wondered if the same thoughts crossed his mind. I was half waiting for some sort of "last speech", and half not expecting anything. And I was right to not expect anything, it was a pretty surface conversation. Keeping it light and just shooting the breeze most of the time. The most serious we got was just hearing pam talk about his diagnosis and medications.
I remember looking at him, his frail long body, old and used up way before its time lying on the bed. And his girlfriend sitting on the foot of the bed , their few possessions in the hotel room. I wanted to pull out my cell phone and take a picture. But to be respectful of the situation I just took a deep breath and told myself to remember this. Remember this moment right now. This last memory of my dad, and this is what it looks like. A hotel room, a little mutt dog laying by my dad who cant even hold his head up off the pillow, and the crocheted blankets around the room - trying to make it feel like home. This is what the end looked like for him.
How do I show this to my children? How do I show them that a life time of not choosing light ended like this? I wanted so badly to take a picture just to have the proof to look back on, but I didn't.
We got up to leave about 45 minutes later, and my dad stood up with us. He asked to hold my youngest baby who was just under a year old and as Devin tried to hand her over he couldn't support her weight. Devin supported her as my dad just held his hands under her. He told the girls that he loved them and told them goodbye. They happily skipped out of the room with candy in hand. He gave me one last hug and called me "matilda", a name that he sometimes called me when I was little. I walked out of the hotel room and noticed a very old car in the parking lot. Different colored doors and old tires, rust on all the corners, the car was filled with bags and boxes. This must be where they really live, although I don't know how the engine would even start to make it out of the parking lot.
Later that night I was thinking about Pam, and all the things I had heard about her. Trying to decide in my mind if I have enough courage to love her. When a small whisper entered my mind. I received the message "You don't know what she has been through. She is trying her best". And with that message I felt maybe just a tiny sliver of God's love for Pam. Although she was rough looking and living in her car, working just to pay for a hotel room and buy beer for the night. She is God's daughter, regardless. And he loves her just as much as he loves me.
I started looking at people differently after that. The message as hit me hard enough that I couldn't pass anyone on the street without remember the message of "You don't know what they have been through, They are doing their best". And feeling God's love for them.
This idea of everyone doing their best can be argued, and not everyone is going to agree with it. I do believe that most people we come in contact with are in fact doing their best. If you ask yourself this same question, you will probably admit that even though far from perfect, you are doing your best. All of us are usually trying to do as well as we can, even though we may be in difficult circumstance or maybe we don't know exactly what we are doing. Sometimes your best is just helping the kids get to school and then going back to bed. Sometimes your best is checking off a whole to-do list. Every day is different, we are juggling different events, different emotions, and different people all the while just trying to do. your. best. I'm not talking about being perfect. I'm only talking about trying your best.
One interesting thing about life, and something I think takes years and years before we truly understand enough to live according to it. Is that we are all having a different life experience. No two people's lifes are exactly the same. Even children growing up in the same house hold will have a different story to tell about the exact same events. Does this make you feel alone or unique? Everyone will have a different answer. We also are first timers going about this personalized experience. Not too many times do we go through the exact same trial twice, so we are really just walking on un-known territory every day. Clearing a path and back tracking when we find a dead end. And even if we do find ourselves in the same trial as we have been before, we have grown enough and learned enough the first time around that we are not the same person as we were back then. Each day is moving and changing and we grow and become. We need to give ourselves a break, we need to give others a break and remember that we are all somewhat alone inside our own jungle.
It wasn't until a few years ago that I even learned about my great grandfather's suicide. One of those family secrets that was not talked about so I never knew. Once I started asking I got told a few stories, stories about where my great grandfather's family lived and some of the events that had happened prior to his death. The whole time I was hearing this all I could think was, Our family has suffered with depression and addiction this badly, and for 3 or 4 generations, and no one is talking about it? Shouldn't someone have warned me? Or had some sort of conversation that went something like this, "Hey, so just to let you know, you have history of depression on both your mom and your dads family. Oh and, your great grandfather committed suicide probably due to both depression and addiction. I'm only telling this so that if you start to feel a little bit depressed you can recognize it and be aware because it is likely to effect you sometime in your life." Instead that horrible little thing called shame steps in and shuts everyone up, and there for letting all the lies and darkness fester and mold.
I recently saw a picture of my great grandfather on a family history website. I had never seen his picture before, and I hadn't even heard his name before this. Since he died when my grandfather was a child, my dad had not known him, so I had never heard of him. I clicked on his picture so I could see it better. He looked kind. But I couldn't ignore the evidence of darkness was in his eyes even though he was smiling for the picture I could sense sadness. Had this been the beginning of the generational hole we found ourselves in? Did it start here, with him? I wanted to be mad at him, I tried to. But the sadness that I saw in his face was real. I have no idea about their financial situations, their place in the community or even what they did for work. But I could see a little house full of children, a wife who was almost holding her husband up and a tired, sad smile on his face. Was he trying his best? Did his best look like loosing jobs and drinking? I don't know. But I have felt enough depression to be able to recognize it in his picture and sympathize with the darkness he was living in and recognition of the fake smile on his face. In my heart I felt, no judgment, and a "me too, I've felt that too".
Its not our job to try and decide if people are truly doing their best. We don't know what the jungle that they are navigating though right now looks like. Heavenly father and Jesus know, they are the only ones who see our true hearts. Our job is only to love.
Sunflowers
Mid August my sunflowers start to bloom. I plant a few different types of sunflowers, ranging in size and color. The bohemian sunflowers that bloom in deep burnt red colors. Sundance sunflowers have a fussy middle, full of petals. I'm sure they have different names for the different shops that sell them, but my favorite kind is the mammoth sunflower. They have seeds like that kind that you can buy at the gas station and eat. Big, grey and white striped. Sometimes we plant them close together and sometimes we just plant one here or there to add color to the garden. We watch them poke their head out of the soil, a green little stock of green, its little leafs still inside the seed shell which is hanging on, barely. A day or so later the shell falls off and the little sprout of leaves open up, finally facing upward! Each day they grow, it doesn't seem like they are growing very fast until you leave for the weekend and come back a few days later to your sunflower plants a foot taller. The stem of the plant gets bigger around in size, and more and more leaves add their way around. The kids measure it, its as tall as their knees, now to their shoulders, now up over their heads. Up up up it grows, and then a few weeks before it blooms a green head of tightly bound green spikes of petals shows up. How can a huge sunflower head be contained in that little green bud? How will it blossom into a flower bigger than both of my hands? The whole process is amazing. This sunflower head makes it way up from the rest of the leafs, and stands tall. And what I love about these few weeks before it blossoms is the truly beautiful lesson I learned from watching it. The big green bud follows the light of the sun. At 10am, when the sun is high in the east the face of the bud is pointed in that direction. At noon the bud is staring straight up, and it follows the sun down all afternoon long until evening when the sun falls behind the mountains in the west. It continues to follow the sun until the first petals start to open up. And during these days I love to say that the Giants are waking up, because that's what it reminds me of. Big sleepy giant sunflower heads opening up, petal by petal, like yellow eyelashes, until its wide awake and staring you in the face. Once they are almost or at full bloom their heads get too heavy to follow the sun and they slump to the side.
About a month after visiting my dad, Pam texted me to tell me that he was declining. She told me to call him if I had time. I called him later that day when the kids were at school. He sounded so different from any other time. I always knew that my dad's addiction was strong and their was no way he was staying sober through all of this. Beer was as important as food or water, maybe even more so. This day he was just talking jibberish. Had he mixed his pain pills with alcohol? Was he taking too many pain pills? I listened to him for a while, and tried to make sense of what he was saying. After about 15 minutes of me listening really closely and saying Yes or No when needed, he got kind of quiet. His voice changed, he went from taking like a maniac to a calm and normal tone. And he just asked me, "Toni, are you still drawing?" I answered, "No, I haven't drawn since high school. " I felt like I was talking to a completely different person, his voice was that different. I continued with how busy I am, and photography has filled that creative need in me." He listened and then told me, " You need to start drawing again". And right after he said that he went right back to his crazy talking. But this message of you need to start drawing again pricked my heart and although he was back to talking in circles I couldn't shake the feeling in my heart that I had received some sort of message. A message that was beyond his pills and his drinking. I hung up the phone and pondered on it.
I have always had a love of art. In highschool I really loved sketching. Something that my dad and I shared, he also had a knack for drawing. Sometimes when I was little he would pull out a sketch pad and a pencil and sit for hours with a cigarette in his lips, drawing. Us kids would look stand near and watch his hands command the pencil around. He had so much talent, if he would have committed to it he could have been great. His once a year sketches were beautiful, so I cant imagine what would have happened if he would have put real time into it.
A few days later I found myself in a craft supply store, in the paint isle. I looked at the prices and realized that I would be spending about $80 just to get started. I almost walked out empty handed a few times. Why was I standing in the painting isle? I've never picked up a paintbrush in my life. A pencil yes…. but what was I doing? The day after the phone call with my dad I had seen a picture of a painting online. It was of a white horse, and it just captivated me. It felt familiar to me, the paint colors and brush strokes. So here was was in the paint isle. I decided to just buy it. If I was feeling so prompted to draw and paint then buy the paints and let God lead the way.
I left the store with a bag full of brushes and acrylics. I went home and sat down at the counter with it. Blank paper, paint, water cup, brushes. I had it all.... now what? I looked around and noticed a couple pumpkins sitting on the counter next to me. They were pumpkins from our garden and the kids and I had picked them earlier that week. I sat a white one and an orange one in front of me and just started. Mixing white with blues, yellows, grays, it was beautiful. The paintbrushes gliding wet paint onto white paper, the water cup swirling, the smell of acrylics. I sat for two hours while the kids ran around me, just sketching and painting. My mind calm, the darkness that had been in my mind was on hold. I had forgotten how good this feels. Me and a sheet of paper, I had forgotten how clear my mind becomes.
I was not disappointed with the painting I ended up with that day. I had done it, two pumpkins. Absolutely not professional, but not bad at all. And more than that, the depression and anxiety that I had been living with.... it was not as overbearing, which was worth the $80 just to feel some relief.
I decided to just draw and paint. Who cares what I put on the paper, but just show up every day at the table with pencil and brush in hand. And I loved every moment. Some days the kids would join me. The table would end up a heap of papers with unicorns and flowers, water cups filled with brushes, and spilled paint. Other days it was just me, turn on soft music and just escape into the paint enough to find myself again. Chickens, pigs, flowers, pumpkins, words, buildings, grass, sheds, deer, I wasn't picky about what to paint, I just sat down and painted.
Art work was good for me. Not just good for my mind, but I felt like I was feeding my soul. Like I was opening a door that I had shut years ago. I had shut it when the idea of "adult" started weighing on me. When I felt pressured to start making decisions like "what are you going to school for?", "what are you going to be?" Then bills start rolling in and you have to start spending your time in a more "busy" and "efficiant" way. I obviously couldn't shut out my creative soul too much because I ended up paying my bills with my camera. But then that turned into a job and I became too "adult" for silly things like drawing. What I was really shutting the door on was the spirit inside of me, who God made me to be.
I started opening up all the doors that I had shut over 10 years ago. I bought some poetry books by Mary Oliver and read poetry in the mornings. I have always loved poetry, but not many people do. If most people read they are going to read the books that suck you in and hold you hostage until the last page, who has time for poetry? I made time, because I loved feeling like myself again.
I started treating myself like I was something precious. Like a newborn baby, or like a precious jewel. Going to bed early, eating vegetables and drinking water, filling my extra time with things that made me feel alive. I said yes to silly things like cute coffee mugs to drink hot cider in, and having candles lit all afternoon. Also, Illuminating the things in my life that made me feel less than precious. Like less social media and unfollowing 200 people, stop dwelling on things I cant control, stop beating myself up at night if the house is a mess, or if the kids forgot to brush their teeth. All of these lies I had told myself, or was letting myself believe had to go.
Because God made me, and I am precious. Removing the toxic things in life and taking care of the body and soul that belonged to me became my new life line. Even if it meant reading poetry and buying cute coffee mugs. When something is special to you, you take care of it.
November 2017.
It was a sunday morning, I had been busy picking up the house and getting kids ready for church when Pam texted me again. "you should call your dad today". We had afternoon church so I decided to just call that morning so I wouldn't get to busy later. He answered, he sounded about 30 years older than the last time I had talked to him. His voice was weak and scratchy. He asked what the kids were doing, I looked out my bedroom window at Devin and the kids collecting eggs from the chicken coop, I reported to my dad and he laughed. His laugh, the laugh that comes from someone who has drank and smoked their whole life, the uncontrolled laugh, that also sends him into a coughing fit. The kind of laugh that would make "normal people" a little bit uncomfortable, but I had grown used to it. He loved hearing about the girls collecting eggs. Before we hung up he told me "I love you, sweetheart". I told him I loved him too and Pam got on the phone. She told me he wasn't eating anymore, only a few grapes that she forced him to eat. I asked if she needed money or help with anything and she said they were okay. He was so sick that they could not stay in the car anymore, and she was still working just to be able to rent the hotel. I told her thankyou and hung up with her. Right as I hung up the phone it was like someone was next to me whispering, and I heard the words "tell Asa to call him".
Since the day we found out my dad had cancer, nothing much had changed between him and my brothers relationship. My youngest brother, Cree, was a police officer in the same town that we had grown up in, and had gone and given my dad a few rides to doctor appointments when he was desperate. Our middle brother, Asa, still had not talked to him. When we were little Asa was my dad's oldest son, and had shared some of the same interests. Placing him in the "little buddy" spot. As we all grew older and things got worse my dad would play mind games with Asa, telling him lies about my mom or reasons for why things were the way they were. This left Asa pulled between two parents and confused at who to believe. Me and Cree never feed into my dad, but with the emotional connection between Asa and him it hurt him so much more as he started to see who my dad really was. As Asa got older he just was too hurt and sick of playing my dad's game of lies. He stopped talking to him years before, but I kept him updated on dad's condition so he wasn't surprised when he died.
I picked up my phone and tried to call Asa. No answer. I texted him and said "dad doesn't sound good, you should call him. I bet he doesn't make it another 2 weeks". No answer. Asa is a grown man, and his hurt is different from my hurt. I had done all I could to warn him. I put the phone down and started getting ready for church.
At about 5 pm that night I was laying in bed, watching a movie with the kids. I heard my phone ring, I looked at the screen, it said "Merrill". I got a sick feeling, and I answered the phone as I stepped out of the room. It was Pam, she was crying. "Toni, your dad just died. He is gone. I didn't know who to call, I tried calling your uncle but no one answered. " Instantly tears just filled my eyes, I tried to stay calm and be a support while I talked to Pam, she was in the hotel room with him waiting for the ambulance to come get him. I asked her if she was okay, and told her to just stay calm before my voice broke and I cried on the phone with her. She told me that they had both been asleep, he had woke her up and said "Its time for me to go" right before he died. I stayed on the line with her until someone showed up to take his body away. And then I hung up and made a few more phone calls to let my brothers and his family know.
That night I cried. I cried and I cried. Which was kind of a surprise to me, I thought my dad had caused enough pain in me that I would be numb to the situation, But the tears kept coming and their was no way to try and change the subject. I cried for him, and the way he lived his life. I cried for me, and all of the pain that I was carrying around. I cried for his mom, and the millions of prayers she must have screamed into the heavens just begging God to make him see clearly. I cried for Pam, alone with him and a voice on the other end of a phone. I cried for my mom, and how her pain was so much she couldn't even feel sad after he died. I cried for it all and then more. I cried for the darkness and depression that I had been living in for 9 months. It was like the dam broke and everything inside of me fell apart.... and I cried. The hole that I was born into , bad decision after bad decision that I watched him make, me scrabbling and climbing with all my might to get out of that hole. I cried for it all.
I turned on all the tvs, handed out all the ipads and phones to try and distract my kids from watching me as my world crashed in. Of course it couldn't be ignored, and my kids - writers and art lovers like me, drew pictures of broken hearts and frowny faces with tears flowing from the black dot eyes. I told them thankyou and then asked them what movie they wanted to watch. I lay next to them, 5 year old Finley playing my phone.
Devin called them in one by one to help them brush their teeth and get pajamas on. He leaned in the room and told Fin to come get ready for bed and as she jumped up and bounced off the bed she tossed my phone to the side. I noticed my phone screen was still on but it didn't look like a game. What had she been looking at? I picked the phone up and there on the screen, just waiting for me was the song 'Be Still my Soul'. None of my girls had ever opened up my LDS app, which had the hymn book with all the 300 or something church songs. But this night, that's what was on my screen. A message, no doubt sent from more than just a five year old angel daughter, who was only playing games a moment ago.
Devin walked in just then and I showed him what I had found. He searched for the song on his phone and found a youtube video of David Archuleta singing it. I cried. Then I read through the words.
Be still my soul.
I took a deep breath in and tried to slow my heart.
The Lord is on thy side.
God? Is he? Is he on my side?
Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain.
All of the pain from as long as I can remember, the depression I have been living in for months and months. All of this, surfacing now.
Leave to thy God to order and provide in every change He faithful will remain.
Can I just leave this all to God and trust that he has a plan for this mess?
Be still my soul thy best, they heavenly friend.
Breath in peace. And remember that I am not alone.
Through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.
Trust. Just trust him. If I don't have enough faith then just Hope and that will have to be enough for now.
Be Still my soul when dearest friends depart, And all is darkened in the vale of tears. Then shalt thou better know His love His heart. Who comes to soothe thy sorrow and they fears. Be still my soul the waves and winds shall know. HIs voice who ruled them while He dwelt below. Be still my soul the hour is hastening on. When we shall be forever with the Lord. When disappointment grief and fear are gone. Sorrow forgot love's purest joys restored. Be still my soul when change and tears are past and blessed we shall meet at last.
This night I fell asleep as tears still fell from my eyes. My face hurt and my eye lids were swollen. I made a mental note, so this is what if feels like to cry so hard that your face hurts. I woke up the next morning and went about getting the kids ready for school. I was okay if I was up walking around, but right when I would sit down or look in the mirror I would start to cry.
Looking in the mirror was very interesting. My perception had changed, and instead of seeing my outward appearance like I had done my whole life, I felt like I was seeing the real me for the first time. The girl that was brave and trying to be strong. My eyes were swollen and my skin yellow and blotchy, my hair thrown up in a messy bun. But looking in the mirror I had never seen myself more clearly. a raw, real human. I couldn't make eye contact with myself in the mirror without being overwhelmed with part love for the face staring back at me and part heartbreak for what that girl staring back at me has just went through. I saw myself as a dear friend and as a precious soul that I love.
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your won door,
in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's
welcome,
and say, sit here, Eat
You will love again the stranger
who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back
your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by
heart.
Take down the love letters from the
bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate
notes,
peel your own image from the
mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
-Derek Walcott
Angels.
The day after my dad died I stayed home, except for the trips back and forth to school for the kids. I learned that I not only lost my appetite when I was in deep sadness, I also feel exhausted. It was strange in the fact that I was all alone in Idaho, while the rest of my family was scattered about Utah. We would not be having a funeral so none of the gathering of a family was happening. Most of his family was so far pushed away that hardly anyone sent texts or phone calls of kind words, or expressing sympathy. I was just alone. Not even my own brothers were feeling the sadness I was feeling.
I sat down at the computer and looked up his facebook account. Maybe word had gotten around my home town, did everyone know now? He had a few messages on his page, mostly from his old drinking buddies. Lots of messages similar to, " Merrill, I will miss you, we had a lot of good times". I read a few of them before shutting off the screen and walking away. Anger overtook my sadness and now I was crying angry tears. Was that the only thing my dad will be remembered for? A lot of "good times". And how come I cant say that? How come his "good times" were only with his friends? Where was his family while he was out having a good time? I stayed off his facebook page for months after that. It was nothing but proof that he never chose us.
My phone rang, I look at the screen, its my ministering partner. A sweet friend that lived just down the street. I wonder if I am in good enough condition to even answer the phone. I decide instead of leaving her wondering why I wont call or text her back to just answer. "Hello" I say, she is on the line wondering what my week looks like, hoping to plan a day to go visit. I jump around in my mind, going over different excuses I could use. I've always handled my dad's happenings by myself and quietly. But as I sit quietly, knowing that when I speak again my voice my crack, I decide to dig up courage and tell her what happened. I clear my through and steady my voice. "My dad died last night, I don't know if I'm up for going this week". I cant remember how our conversation went but after she apologizes to me, she tells me "I am bringing you dinner tonight, I actually made double dinner tonight. And as I was putting it all in the oven I was wondering why I was making way more than my family would eat". My mind was so overwhelmed that I don't remember anything else I said, or even how our conversation ended. But when I hung up the overwhelming feeling that I am not alone came over me. Angels in heaven were whispering to angels on earth that day, for me. Heaven was aware of me. God was aware of me. I was not alone.
I peeled myself off the couch later that day and slipped on my shoes to walk out to the mailbox. Maybe a walk across the front lawn would stop my crying for a few minutes. I walked slow, feeling the cool November air. Holding my sweater around me, almost as if holding myself up. I opened the mailbox and pulled out envelopes as well as a box. Funny, I don't remember ordering anything. I turned the box over and read my name in the center of the box, up in the Corner the name Ashley Cooper. Ashley?
After my husband finished college our first job offer was in a small town in Nevada called Nevada. We drove out to look at the town before accepting the job, and we were in shock. Coming from Logan Utah, where we had lived for 3 years, with green grass, beautiful mountains, rivers and trees. To this small desert town in between Reno and Las Vegas, where we could have counted the amount of trees on one hand, and grass was no where to be seen. The amount of brown dirt hills for miles and miles and miles surrounding the town nothing I had ever seen before. I used the word "ugly" to describe the town. I heard my husband on the phone with his mom that day, telling her it was the worst town he had ever seen. I thought there was no way we were going to accept the job, but Devin knew better. A job offer right out of college? How could he turn it down? Grass or no grass we had to start somewhere. We moved out a couple weeks later. Lucky for me Ashley had moved in 6 months later, and after half a year of feeling alone in the desert I almost jumped on her when I saw her at church on her first day. We lived in Tonopah for about two and a half years together. She was kind of like a big sister, she already had a baby and was a stay at home mom. She taught me how to make pie and jam. I would baby sit her little boy and felt like the cool fun aunt. We both moved away from Tonopah the same month, and had stayed in touch through texts and occasional phone calls although we were states away from each other.
My fingers touched her name at the top of the box, then I hugged it to me and hurried back into the house. Once inside I ripped open the box, I was so confused. I had sent her a baby gift once but that was about it for our gift giving, I had never received just a random package from her. Inside was nothing special. A tshirt that had a camera with the saying "when life gets blurry just refocus", on it. And a note saying that she saw that shirt and thought of me, and how much she loved me.
The timing of that gift, delivered to me not even twenty four hours after my dad died was the real gift. Again the thought that I am not alone, and Heaven is close just fell over me.
After my sweet neighbor delivered dinner, I cried. I cried for the service of love that my two sweet friends had followed a prompting. They had loved me and cared for me, and I will never forget how much they saved me that day.
The next day I needed to get a few things done, it was almost Thanksgiving and we would be leaving for Southern Utah in the next couple of days. I needed to get the oil changed in my car so I drove to the closest Walmart hoping I could pick up some groceries while my car was in the shop. I cried the whole time I was driving but pulled it together as I dropped my car off. After about thirty minutes of shopping I headed back to the oil and lube center. I got in line behind a few other customers waiting to pay for their cars. As I stood there the smells of the mechanic shop surrounded me. My dad had worked at a few different tire shops, and was always helping fix my uncles tractors when I was younger. Finally I reached the register and watched as the man punched buttons on the computer in front of him. I looked at his hands. Hard, sandpapery skin. Each fingernail outlined with dark oil. My dad's own hands came to mind, he had always come home with those same dirty fingernails. I paid for my car and made it out to the car before my tears came again.
Why was I so sad? I hardly talked to him when he was alive, its not like I depended on him for anything. Now that he was gone I didn't miss him, so what were these feelings? My brothers were fine, I had even talked to his mom, my grandma and although she was sad I got the feeling that she wasn't breaking down in the oil and lube center at Walmart. I was so confused to what I was feeling.
I made it home and unloaded my groceries. I sat down on the couch as my kids ran around taking off their shoes and coats. My mind felt alone, although my house was still full of life. Was I alone? Or was he here? Was he in my house? Could he see me now that he had passed away? Did I want him around? I wasn't sure about any of it. I moved into my bedroom and laid down, exhausted from crying tears. Exhausted from trying to hold in tears. Just exhausted. I closed my eyes and searched for God. Be still I told myself. I listened to my breathing and tried to calm my heart. Be still.
In my mind the words "your dad is too busy learning, he doesn't have the time and privilege of watching over you freely. He's got work to do. " I felt this message in my heart. I felt calm. I thought back over my dads life and how every choice that was presented to him, nine times out of ten he chose the wrong path. I thought about his mentality and how he acted more like a sixteen year old than a 50 year old. He had stopped progressing long ago, probably when he was a teenager. He wasn't learning or growing on any intellectual or spiritual level in more than 30 years. Yes! If Heaven and the afterlife that I believe in is real then of course he is being taught. I remembered the love that God showed me when I met Pam. Of course God loved my dad. I tried to imagine my him with a clear mind, free from all the toxins he had allowed in for years and years. Free from the drugs and alchohol, free from pornography and lies that had clouded his mind. I wouldn't even know who he was. Who would that man be? I couldn't imagine, but I trusted that now he was progressing and for the first time in a few months I felt hope. Not for myself but for him.
The thought of him being aware of me for the first time came to me. Although he might not be in the position to be a guardian angle, or heavenly helper. I did believe that he had a better of idea of who I was now that he was out of his earthly body. My mind was filled with images of my dad finally seeing me. Not with only clear eyes but with a clear mind and heart. Could he see me being really scared but also trying to be brave? Could he see me trying to take a different road than the one that he drug me down, although most days I felt alone? Could he see me and did he feel any guilt for anything he missed out on? Could he see my brothers and my mom? If he could see us clearly could he also see the mess he created and left when he was on earth. I imagined after he passed and entering the afterlife, giving hugs to grandpas and others that had gone before him, and then feeling the relief of no more physical pain and also the sensation of a clear mind. And in my mind his smile turns to pain and he crumples to his knees as his memory re-enters his new clear mind, and everything from his life comes flooding in. Every single thing. All the pain that he caused, he can see it all so clearly. And that is his hell.
Indie bounced into the room and climbed up on the bed, she jumped over to me and snuggled close. I held her little body and hoped I could keep her safe from the many trials of life ahead of her. I looked at her cute little face as she pushed out of my embrace and jumped around the bed laughing. I heard the words "Look at that little face", only it wasn't me that said it. My dad's voice, I had heard my dad say those words, was that him? Was he here with me? I heard him. Not out loud, but in my mind. He had this voice that he talked to babies in, and that's the voice I heard. I sat frozen, feeling warmth.... and then as quickly as it came it was gone. I didn't have to wonder where he went, I knew he was busy now, he had work to do.
A few months after this experience, and message that I received I had clicked on a link online and was reading some passages from Russell M. Nelson's book, Whats on the other side. I read the following paragraph:
"What a comforting thought it is to know that we are not alone in facing our challenges or dealing with our difficulties. President Ezra Taft Benson testified that “there are people over there who are pulling for us—people who have faith in us and who have great hopes for us, who are hoping and praying that we will measure up—our loved ones (parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, and friends) who have passed on.”17 In Doctrine and Covenants 84:88, the Lord promised: “I will go before your face. I will be on your right hand and on your left, and my Spirit shall be in your hearts, and mine angels round about you, to bear you up." You have probably read that passage many times, as I have. Perhaps you have wondered too: Who are those angels? Because of the restored gospel’s teachings about the spirit world and eternal families, we know the answer. President Joseph F. Smith taught it clearly. He said: “When messengers are sent to minister to the inhabitants of this earth, they are not strangers, but from the ranks of our kindred [and] friends. . . . In like manner, our fathers and mothers, brothers, sisters and friends who have passed away from this earth, having been faithful, and -worthy to enjoy these rights and privileges, may have a mission given to them to visit their relatives and friends upon the earth again, bringing from the divine Presence messages of love, of warning, or reproof and instruction, to those whom they had learned to love in the flesh."
When I read the sentence that says "having been faithful, and worthy to enjoy these rights and privileges", I remembered the message of my dad having work to do and he doesn't have the privilege of being around me right now. I had learned this for myself, God had taught me. And here it was, the president of our church saying the same thing. I decided to start trusting myself and these lessons that were presenting themselves.
Light
We spent Thanksgiving in Las Vegas at my sister in law's house. The warm weather was a good break and we sat around the pool and watched the kids swim. Cousins and a house full of people I love was a good place to be after the heavy days I had just had. Thanksgiving dinner was wonderful, full of all the perfect food that I have grown to love since marring into my husbands family.
The day after Thanksgiving we headed out to do some Christmas shopping. With everyone packed into a few cars we hit the road. I was prepared to numb out my feelings in some retail therapy, but I had forgotten where I was. Las Vegas, and surrounded by homeless. People under bridges and sitting on benches. Holding signs for money, or just sitting on the sidewalks with their belongings around them. Why were there so many of them? They were of every age and race, both men and women. Sure I see a few in Idaho, but the magnitude of them in Las Vegas was devastating to me. I didn't wonder how they got to the streets, I had a front row ticket to that movie already. I didn't need to know the details, I knew enough. It was a raw reminder of reality. I thought of Pam again and God's love for her. I looked at all of these people and felt that same love. They are God's children, and he loves them just as much as he loves me. I looked out my window at them as we drove and I wondered about what kind of dirt had these people been born in? Had they tried to climb out? Or was the dirt too deep and too dark? Had they called out for God? Or had addiction and lies been the only thing they found when they reached out for help? Maybe their life was not always dark, but somewhere along the way darkness whispered to them in a vulnerable moment and they listened.
We came to a red light and we slowed to a stop. Out my husbands window was a girl, no older than me. She was holding a sign, asking for help. I watched her. I opened my wallet and pulled out a few dollars, I told my husband to give it to her. As she reached to take our money her eyes met mine and her face fell apart in tears. The light turned green and we were pressured to start driving again. But her eyes haunted me. What was she going through that made her crumble at the sight of three dollars and eye contact from a stranger?
I wanted to go back. I regret not going back. I even said, "we should go back and help her". But as I said that I looked back at our car full of kids and knew I had no idea how safe or unsafe that situation is. But a fire had started inside of me. The darkness. Satan. The Devil. Whatever words we have come up with to describe it. It was real. Very real. I don't know if you are supposed to have a testimony about the Devil, but I just gained one. I knew he was real, and his plan was clear to me. He finds people as a seed, in a hole. He finds them in their most vulnerable place. Or maybe he finds them at the top of their dirt hill, when they are proud and glad to be on top again. Wherever he finds them he plans to stop them from progressing. Stop them from sharing and finding light. Stop them from growing into the person that God knows they can become. Stop them in their tracks and just chain them down so the only place to go is backwards.
And it wasn't even in the extreme case of homelessness, I saw evil's influence everywhere. In the pressure of keeping up with this perfect influence of a never ending stream of pretty pictures on the internet. Women, mothers, and daughters.... my friends and family living life with this idea of how they are supposed to look and act. This new persona that they are trying to fit inside takes them away from who and what God made them to be. A distraction from the climbing and struggling out of the hole in order to blossom, has now become "Oh I'm fine!" Hardly anyone was showing me their true self, the dark and ugly along with the beautiful. How are we going to grow into who God intends for us to be when we aren't even acknowledging the dirt we have on top of us? When did life become shameful if we are living anything hard and uncomfortable?
The realness of Satan scared me. I've never been so sure of him in my whole life, and it was hard to contain something I felt so sure of and so terrified of. I talked to my husband and my mom about my new awareness of how powerful Satan is. But Its hard to bring up these conversations to other people. "Hey! How's it going? Did you know Satan is real? And he wants to get you? You didn't know that? Well I have felt him." Yes, it makes for a super awkward conversation in which your friends make up excuses to get away from you. But I wanted to scream it from the rooftops, like I could see a gas leak - that was poisoning whole countries, but no one wanted to talk about it.
We got home from Thanksgiving and suddenly it was December. Christmas was usually my favorite time of the year. Every year I redecorated the whole house, set up Christmas trees in every room, hung lights around the kitchen, baked gingerbread, read Christmas books to the kids and made sure that I had beautiful pictures of it all. This year was different. I was different. I had been feed too much truth, and felt too much heartbreaking Love.
Devin brought up the tree from the basement and I helped him string lights around it. Then instead of having my camera around my neck and getting overwhelmed about the kids not hanging the ornaments in the right place, or bad lighting for pictures, I just sat down on the couch next to my husband. And I didn't move for a whole hour. I watched the kids as they dug through big Rubbermaid boxes, pulling out old ornaments from when they were babies and watching them happily hang them on the lower branches. Be Still, I told myself. And I let a few tears fall as I just sat still and breathed.
My baby, Indie was about 19 months old at this time. She was a stubborn baby and was still getting up about once a night even though she was almost two. One night I heard her crying, I looked at the clock.... 1:46am. I tried to close my eyes and go back to sleep but I knew better. She would cry for more than an hour if I didn't go to her. I found my way out of bed and still half asleep made my way into the dark hall way, touching walls to make my way in the dark of the night. My hand found her door nob and I turned to open it. Light seeped out of the door way into her room. I stand stunned at the blinding light in her room. It takes me a minute to realize whats happening when I notice her bedroom light is on. No wonder she is awake. I get her settled down and tucked back into bed, then turn off her light and make my way back to bed. As I lay there trying to fall asleep again I am so confused. Did I leave her light on? How did her light get on? My very tired middle of the night brain even wonders if my dad is haunting us. I'm probably just loosing my mind and forgot to turn it off I tell myself.
This happens 3 more times within the next 2 weeks. Same thing everytime. I stubble through the dark and open a door to blinding light in the middle of the night.
I was not going to send out Christmas Cards. Nope. No way. Most years I had set up a whole Christmas themed background and bribed my kids with candy to let me take just a few pictures. It went back to my bucket full of lies and always trying to prove my worth. If I have the cutest Christmas pictures on the cutest card then of course people will think I'm a good person! But only if its perfect. Well, now that I had thrown everything out of my bucket I didn't feel like going through the trouble of proving my worth, plus I was just tired.
Weeks into December I had received lots of Christmas cards, from so many sweet people that I love. People who loved me while we lived in Tonopah, who I grew to know and love. And all of my sweet cousins and aunts. A little Christmas card in the mail was like a little hug from each one of them. I was thankful for these little 5x7 cardstock pictures in the mail with snowmen and reindeer printed on them. It is a very loving tradition..... and after all, isn't Love the most important thing in the world.
So I sat down at the computer two weeks away from Christmas, Devin was out finishing up Christmas lights on the roof and the kids are playing a game. Now or never I tell myself. If I am sending out a Christmas card then I am going to send out something meaningful. I'm done with perfect, I'm not perfect, my kids are not perfect... we are humans, we are Children of God. Never again will I try and hide the dirt I have been given. I had to walk away from the computer a few times because everything I was seeing just seemed …… dumb. I sat down on the couch and I opened up the lds app looking for a thought, a scripture.... something!
May the beautiful lights of every Christmas season remind us of Him, who is the source of all light. -David A Bednar.
Lights? Christmas Lights.... Light of the Savior. I though on it for a moment. The thoughts of the darkness of depression that I had gone through that year came to mind. The heavy pain that I had been living in since last February. And then I saw myself at night going to Indie's room and finding Light. I remembered the shock and the difference from darkness to light. Yes.... light! I might be on to something. I looked around my house, Christmas lights on the tree. I looked out my window and saw a few of the neighbors Christmas lights on their house. Light. The word and the idea just popped out at me! And I decided to run with it, I typed the quote on my Christmas card and got them ordered.
I started focusing on Light. Something that day had completely drawn my attention to it, and I wasn't going to forget it or toss it aside. Light. That is absolutely what I needed. The darkness was so thick, it was almost tangible. Depression and trauma is real, and its hard to get out once your in. I wanted to feel light again. I was desperate for it.
After Christmas and the new year I was in a place of wanting to heal. The truth is, its very grueling and demanding living with such dark feelings. I grew to have no judgment on addicts or suicide victims. I was never suicidal and I absolutely don't promote it, but I felt the crushing pain every day for almost a year and I can see how you would become desperate for a break from the pain. I started wondering if I needed to get on some medication or go to therapy, if I needed help getting out of this hole then that's what I will do.
It was interesting seeing my own addictions grow when I was in the middle of darkness. For 6 months before my dad died I purchased more than 300 children's books. After a few weeks of ordering books every day is when I realized that this is not my normal behavior. But the books kept coming, almost every day we would have a few show up at the doorstep. My kids would answer the door and pick them up and say to their friends "my mom goes kuku over books". I would unwrap the books and later that night snuggle the kids close to me as we would read it together. My mom used to read to us, she would take us to the city library and we would haul home a bag full of books then we would sit on the couch and she would read them all too us. Children's books felt safe. They were sweet stories and had colorful pictures. I knew that what I was doing might be related to my past, but at the time I was in such pain and ordering the books made me feel happier.... so I just kept doing it.
I only share this example of my book buying addiction to tell you that sometimes before you know it your handling things much more different than you would expect of yourself. Of course 300 books was not life changing for me but I learned to not judge anyone who addicted because that pain is real.
And still I was searching for light.
D&C 93:2 - I am the true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
D&C 50:24 - That which is of God is light; and he that receiveth light and continueth in God, receiveth more light and that light growth brighter and brighter until the perfect day.
John 8:12 - Then Spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world; he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.
3 Nephi 18:24 - Hold up your light, that it may shine unto the world. Behold I am the light which ye shall hold up.
I would go to the temple and read every scripture on light that I could find. I wrote them out and tapped them to my bathroom mirror. Everywhere I looked I was finding the word Light.
One Saturday morning in January I was in the temple when I read 1Nephi 17:13 - "And I will also be your light in the wilderness; and I will prepare the way before you, if it so be that ye shall keep my commandments; wherefore, inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments ye shall be led towards the promised land; and ye shall know that it is by me that ye are led."
It was one of those hard mornings when you feel yourself getting better but its just not happening as fast as you thing it should. I shut the book of Mormon and got ready to leave the temple. I was feeling angry. With what or who? I don't know, just everything. The whole pile of dirt that had been placed on me. I was mad at it. I was mad at my dad, now that I believed he had a clear mind and could understand what he had done I was holding him at a higher standard. While he was alive he was always in such a cloud that I never expected much from him. It was very much like if he had a medical diagnosis of mental illness and that's how I treated him and about what I expected from him. So now, nevermind that he is dead, now that he has a clear mind I let myself unleash a life time of pain and it turned into anger pointed right at him. I hope he was in his own Hell. I hope he experienced and re experienced over and over the horrible things he did to his family.
I stomped out to my car and made it out of the parking lot before hot heavy tears came. The morning was cold and grey. Clouds filled the sky with no sign of leaving. I was so mad at him. IF he only would have chosen differently things could be so much different. And now he is dead, game over, no more chances. A heavy warm feeling sat with me in the car ride home and I knew I wasn't alone. I even looked to the passenger seat in my car a few times, not knowing who was there, but knowing someone was. Warm, and loving and helping me feel less alone. I sat in the company of an angel until I reached my exit for home when the words "FORGIVE. like Jesus did" flashed into my vision. It kind of felt like a dream but then I realized I was looking at a billboard. Was that billboard new? I have drove this road hundreds of times and I have never noticed that one before. Forgive? Until this moment I hadn't realized I was so angry with him. And then light, touching my face. I saw it first out of the corner of my eye and then felt it on my skin. I turned and looked out my window, the thick grey clouds were still very thick and filled the whole sky above me. But one tiny little opening, like a deep sliver opened up right above the sun just enough to shine right onto me. Light! There it was.... not just the sun peeking through clouds but the Light of Christ. God was aware of me. God was with me, I wasn't alone and I wasn't trying to climb out of this huge pile of dirt alone either. I felt loved and this time happy tears fell from my eyes.
The next morning as we rushed all the kids into church and sat down just as the opening song was beginning. I hurry and opened my book and sang these words..Hymn #113
Our Savior's love Shines like the sun with Perfect light,
As from above
It breaks thru clouds of strife.
Lighting our way,
It leads us back into his sight,
Where we may stay
To share eternal life.
In the first line my attention was drawn right when I saw the word "light", then as it went
on talking about breaking through clouds I couldn't not notice the similarity to the experience I had the morning before. Was it all just a coincidence? I wanted to tell myself it was, but the feelings I had during it all told me different. I was being guided. And there is no way I could ignore Light now, even if I wanted to.
Weeds are just a part of a garden. No doubt about it and its frustrating. In our early years of gardening we spent our evenings on our hands and knees pulling up weeds that seemed to grow just over night. Now we lay down weed barrier and build raised garden boxes to help prevent them from getting a start. The first time we tried growing corn, we had smoothed the soil, raked it into rows and planted the seeds exactly like it instructed on the seed package. A few weeks later we had little green sprouts shooting up from the earth. We tended to the weeds, picking any little thing that wanted to grow near the baby corn sprouts. Weeks past and the corn kept growing, along with the weeds. The weeds were stubborn but we were determined to be just a stubborn and tried to keep the soil clear. But after getting back from being gone on a trip to grandma's house for almost two weeks we walked into the garden to see weeds. They were everywhere, it looked as if we had been gone all summer instead of just two weeks. They were thick and some were almost as tall as the corn. I wanted to give up. Oh well, the corn will just have to co-exist with the weeds. But my husband, being a bit wiser, told me the corn would get taken over if we didn't get rid of everything else wanting to grow. He bent down and pulled weeds from around five or six corn stock and then said, "just wait you will see what happens". Sure enough, a few days later the corn stocks that he had weeded around were an inch or two taller than the others that were still surrounded by weeds, they had started growing again. "Really?" I exclaimed, do weeds really keep the corn from growing?" He explained that the weeds take nutrients from the soil too, so when the corn is crowded it has to share the soil and nutrients so of course the corn wont grow as well.
So all afternoon Devin and I sat in the garden surrounded by corn, and pulled weeds. Some were easy to pull but others had rooted in and were not moving. One weed in particular looked almost exactly like the little corn plants. It was the same color, had the same sized and shaped leaf and stock. Devin found one difference between this weed and the corn, which was the weed had a fuzzy stock at the bottom near the ground. So we looked for that one difference and tried to remove them all. It wasn't until a few days later we noticed how many of those weeds we accidently passed by, thinking they were corn, they were standing tall, growing right along with the stocks of corn.
This afternoon pulling weeds taught me so much more than about gardening. Weeds are like lies. Knowing that takes this whole experience to a different level.
Those pesky weeds have to start from a seed. Tiny little weed seeds blow in without you even noticing. They start growing and find a place to send down roots before you even begin planting seeds of your own choice. Before you know it lies are happily living and thriving, sending down tap roots that seem like they will take a excavator to remove. Most weeds you recognize as harmful and you try remove them at the moment you notice them. Others are hard to spot, some weeds grow colorful flowers and don't seem as bad as the other weeds. These could be known as lies that look cool and sometimes seem okay. These "pretty weeds" remind me of the lies that our culture has accepted as truth, but doesn't exactly do us any good. I see gossip as one of these weeds, something that we admit to be harmful, yet it always seems to show up at gatherings with friends. Judgment for others and finding excuses why they are wrong and you are right, therefor you cannot love them. Also material and cosmetic lies. If you have anything less than granite countertops and a two car garage then you must be failing. Oh and sorry, did you think you were pretty? Your not. But here is a detailed list of services and procedures you can start working on, so that one day you can be pretty too! These are the pretty weeds that live inside me sometimes.
And now for the trickiest weeds, the ones that are hard to spot because they look so much like the truth. Like the weed that grew tall and strong with the rest of our corn crop simply because we couldn't tell the difference. They are tricky because they feel and look like truth. This reminds me of the lies we tell ourselves, like my worth is based off of my __________, I'm not good at_________, I'm not __________ enough, and I will only be happy when________ happens. These things feel true because they probably have been our thought pattern since we were kids. Maybe we even find praise and achievement in these weeds. Some seem so close to truth that its hard to decide if you should pick it or let it grow.
Leaving the weeds sometimes seems easier than going through all the trouble of pulling them out. Especailly when your trying to get all of its roots. I cant tell you how many times I've been pulling weeds in the garden and the top of a weed has broken off, leaving its roots in the ground. Instead of trying to dig them up I just cover them with dirt and hope they don't grow. Its just too much work. It doesn't seem like that big of a deal..... until harvest time. The weeds will only grow to drop more weed seeds, creating opportunity for more weeds. But the real seeds that you plant grow to produce fruit, vegetables or flowers. In the end there is a difference because a garden full of weeds and a garden ready to harvest are in fact two very different gardens.
Weeds are just a part of a garden. No doubt about it and its frustrating. In our early years of gardening we spent our evenings on our hands and knees pulling up weeds that seemed to grow just over night. Now we lay down weed barrier and build raised garden boxes to help prevent them from getting a start. The first time we tried growing corn, we had smoothed the soil, raked it into rows and planted the seeds exactly like it instructed on the seed package. A few weeks later we had little green sprouts shooting up from the earth. We tended to the weeds, picking any little thing that wanted to grow near the baby corn sprouts. Weeks past and the corn kept growing, along with the weeds. The weeds were stubborn but we were determined to be just a stubborn and tried to keep the soil clear. But after getting back from being gone on a trip to grandma's house for almost two weeks we walked into the garden to see weeds. They were everywhere, it looked as if we had been gone all summer instead of just two weeks. They were thick and some were almost as tall as the corn. I wanted to give up. Oh well, the corn will just have to co-exist with the weeds. But my husband, being a bit wiser, told me the corn would get taken over if we didn't get rid of everything else wanting to grow. He bent down and pulled weeds from around five or six corn stock and then said, "just wait you will see what happens". Sure enough, a few days later the corn stocks that he had weeded around were an inch or two taller than the others that were still surrounded by weeds, they had started growing again. "Really?" I exclaimed, do weeds really keep the corn from growing?" He explained that the weeds take nutrients from the soil too, so when the corn is crowded it has to share the soil and nutrients so of course the corn wont grow as well.
So all afternoon Devin and I sat in the garden surrounded by corn, and pulled weeds. Some were easy to pull but others had rooted in and were not moving. One weed in particular looked almost exactly like the little corn plants. It was the same color, had the same sized and shaped leaf and stock. Devin found one difference between this weed and the corn, which was the weed had a fuzzy stock at the bottom near the ground. So we looked for that one difference and tried to remove them all. It wasn't until a few days later we noticed how many of those weeds we accidently passed by, thinking they were corn, they were standing tall, growing right along with the stocks of corn.
This afternoon pulling weeds taught me so much more than about gardening. Weeds are like lies. Knowing that takes this whole experience to a different level.
Those pesky weeds have to start from a seed. Tiny little weed seeds blow in without you even noticing. They start growing and find a place to send down roots before you even begin planting seeds of your own choice. Before you know it lies are happily living and thriving, sending down tap roots that seem like they will take a excavator to remove. Most weeds you recognize as harmful and you try remove them at the moment you notice them. Others are hard to spot, some weeds grow colorful flowers and don't seem as bad as the other weeds. These could be known as lies that look cool and sometimes seem okay. These "pretty weeds" remind me of the lies that our culture has accepted as truth, but doesn't exactly do us any good. I see gossip as one of these weeds, something that we admit to be harmful, yet it always seems to show up at gatherings with friends. Judgment for others and finding excuses why they are wrong and you are right, therefor you cannot love them. Also material and cosmetic lies. If you have anything less than granite countertops and a two car garage then you must be failing. Oh and sorry, did you think you were pretty? Your not. But here is a detailed list of services and procedures you can start working on, so that one day you can be pretty too! These are the pretty weeds that live inside me sometimes.
And now for the trickiest weeds, the ones that are hard to spot because they look so much like the truth. Like the weed that grew tall and strong with the rest of our corn crop simply because we couldn't tell the difference. They are tricky because they feel and look like truth. This reminds me of the lies we tell ourselves, like my worth is based off of my __________, I'm not good at_________, I'm not __________ enough, and I will only be happy when________ happens. These things feel true because they probably have been our thought pattern since we were kids. Maybe we even find praise and achievement in these weeds. Some seem so close to truth that its hard to decide if you should pick it or let it grow.
Leaving the weeds sometimes seems easier than going through all the trouble of pulling them out. Especailly when your trying to get all of its roots. I cant tell you how many times I've been pulling weeds in the garden and the top of a weed has broken off, leaving its roots in the ground. Instead of trying to dig them up I just cover them with dirt and hope they don't grow. Its just too much work. It doesn't seem like that big of a deal..... until harvest time. The weeds will only grow to drop more weed seeds, creating opportunity for more weeds. But the real seeds that you plant grow to produce fruit, vegetables or flowers. In the end there is a difference because a garden full of weeds and a garden ready to harvest are in fact two very different gardens.
Winter and spring of this year consisted of me trying desperately to climb completely out of my trauma and depression. That was my main goal. I wanted to be healthy and happy again, I didn't know if it was possible to be back to my normal self but I wanted to try for it. For about six months during this time my 5 year old daughter, Finley started telling me that she loved me multiple times a day. We are a very loving family, and the kids hear me say I love you at least once a day. Devin loves on them too with lots of snuggles and kind words. But she was saying it more times than is normal, or at least enough times that I started noticing it was a lot. And it wasn't casual either, she would stop and grab my face or hug around my waste and look me in the eye and say "I love you moma" at least 8 -10 times a day. Some days it was a couple times an hour. The first month or so I would just say "love you too sweetie" and kind of pat her back then go back to my task. But as I noticed how frequently she was saying it I began to appreciate it more and more. And then I started thinking of it as a message from heaven. God knew that during this time I would need to hear "I love you" almost hourly. I did too. I had been through enough that I had learned to not just brush off these sweet little things that seem to show up when needed, so I considered it straight from my Heavenly father each time I heard her sweet but focused little "I love you", of course I knew it was from her too. And I absolutely started to pause what I was doing and take the moment to look her in the eye and tell it right back to her.
Mary Oliver once wrote in a poem, "do you hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden, and softly, and exclaiming of their dearness, fill your arms with the white and pink flowers, with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling, their eagerness to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are nothing, forever?"
This passage is beautiful to me, and almost everything Mary Oliver write speaks to me. I love the way she pays attention, and appreciates things that most people don't take the time to even glance at. I feel like I am most people most of the time, except when I'm in my garden and then I notice everything. A couple years ago my oldest daughter, Sailyr, and I were out in the garden. We were watching the honey bees. They were round and plump with furry design of yellows, browns, blacks and oranges. So many different bees, that I'm not sure I've ever noticed before. As we were watching them we looked closer to see that they had specks of pollen all over their furry little bodies. They would land on a pumpkin leaf and make their way into the center of the big yellow blossom. They would dive head first and powdery yellow pollen would just fall all over them. The more they worked the more pollen rustled up. Then they would walk out of the flower and rest on a leaf for a moment to wash the pollen off their faces with their little front hands. Sailyr and I giggled and delighted in how cute the little bees looked completely covered in fluffy yellow pollen, almost like a baby that got into the baby powder or something. Then Sailyr said "Look Mom!" She was pointing to the big green pumpkin leaves. I looked at where she was pointing and at first I could see nothing. But then she made me get closer and she told me to look again. And there I saw it, tiny yellow bee footsteps, making their little trail from inside of the flower to the leaf where the bee washed up a bit before flying off. "You can see the bees foot steps, all covered in pollen!" She cried as she giggled and went on and on about how tiny the footsteps are. After we saw that first little trail of bee footprints, we began to find them everywhere. Almost every blossom had a little yellow bee trail out of it and onto the leaves. How had we never noticed that before? We had just discovered something new and sweet, and now that our eyes were open to seeing it, we could find it easily.
I also made it a priority to sit down and paint a few times a week. This turned out to be not only a very therapeutic activity for me, it also helped me remember the gifts god gave me. Actually I made a list of everything that I loved. Things I had loved since I was a child but never made time for anymore, and those things on the list became my to-do list. They were more important than the other things that were ever present on my list, because this meant taking car of myself. Looking at the list I realized I loved so many things, but somewhere along the way I had tossed all of these things in the trash. It was time to do a little garbage digging and find all my tools and gifts again. No builder ever throws his tools away before starting construction, why had I thought that was a good idea? I had started to trust God, and in doing so I trusted the person he had created. Me. So to let myself be me I let myself do the things I love. Painting and drawing was one of them. A drawer in the kitchen was cleaned out and now stored all of my painting and sketching supplies. Notepads with blank paper, mason jars with clean paintbrushes and sharpened pencils. I kept reading poetry and did lots of writing. I ran and gardened, took pictures and hiked mountains, I lit candles at night, listened to soft music while I cleaned the house, picked flowers, learned to bake pie and looked people in the eye. Life. This is my only one.
I started sharing a few of the things I wrote on facebook. I still had a feeling inside of me that I needed to share what lessons I had learned about Love, God's love, Self Worth, and the realness of Darkness and Light. It just burned inside of me and at every moment I wanted to tell everyone. Writing was a good way for me to do that, without offending anyone. After I had written about the passing of my dad and my feelings on a life of darkness, I titled it Decisions Determine Destiny after a talk by President Monson, that had helped me realize the truth of why my dad's life ended like it did. The feeling I had about this message I had written was "share it", in my mind I had written it for someone, but I didn't know who. And it was shared a lot, between the small town that I grew up in I think it got passed around to everyone. And I always felt the urgency to keep it moving, keep sharing it. Until one day when a man that had been a good family friend to us contacted me. He had been our home teacher when I was young and was a very good man that befriended my dad without making him feel out of place or uncomfortable. When my writing finally got to him he messaged me, sharing with me his own childhood of an alcoholic father and a home life of abuse. He told me he left home at twelve years old and has struggled with forgiveness even today. Right when I read his message, which was vague, I felt in my heart that we could stop sharing this message. That it reached who it needed too and with that came a feeling that I had accomplished one of the tasks that I was on earth to do. I say that now, feeling like its dramatic or a very confident thing to say. But at the time I knew that I had done something that I was supposed to do. I love that man, and I find peace in God's timing of events. He showed up for us when I was little, and although I don't know all the details of what happened after my message got to him, I felt that in some what I showed up for him and was able to serve him too. It was healing for me to take my dad's dark and messy life and turn it into light. But more than that it was another piece to the puzzle that I was putting together. The puzzle of love, darkness, and light. Only after I felt the completion of a task God asked me to do, did I add it all together. We have work to do here on earth. Important work, and Satan is trying to stop the work. Addictions and Guilt are two of his key players to stop us on our path.
I never would have helped this person if I had ignored the gifts I was given, or if I had been to embarrassed to share them with others. Being my true self, and sharing who I really was with others was the only way I could accomplish anything that was designed for me. With a mask of perfection or if I had stay hidden or quiet, I would have missed the opportunity.
I've had a book on my shelf for almost 15 years now. When I was a junior in high school I remember being with a few of my friends and asking our English teacher what the best book he had ever read was. His answer just planted itself in my mind, and stayed there. I think once I graduated and moved out I found the book at a thrift store and bought it, took it home but never read it. I gave it back to the thrift store a couple years later. Only to see it sitting on a shelf somewhere a few years later and buy it again, always remembering that I should read it but never actually sitting down to read it. This book just followed me around from apartment to apartment, house to house. Each time I would start cleaning out closets I would give it back to a thrift store only to buy another copy a few months later.
In March my husband and I were getting ready to take a 6 hour flight.... without kids. We had celebrated our 10 year anniversary the August before but too much was going on at the time. So we booked a trip that would happen in March instead. I had not read a whole Chapter book for years, just because my children are young. So for weeks I thought about what book I wanted to take on the airplane with me and read uninterrupted. I borrowed a few books from my mom and grandma, but as we loaded all of our bags in the car and started to pull out of our driveway to go to the airport the book that I had been dragging around with me for years and years came to mind. So I told my husband to wait just a moment while I run into grab one more thing. I picked the book up off the shelf and we left to catch our flight.
It had been 5 months since my dad passed away. And I felt like I had finally climbed my way out of the dirt. Of course I was still dirty from the journey, my spirit was tired and sore. But I felt like I had made my way to the surface. I thing a good word to describe how I was feeling was Raw.
I googled the word "raw", there was a definition for raw when used to describe emotions. It was defined as, Strong, undisguised and intense.
That's how I felt. I was good to go about my daily, weekly, monthly tasks. But inside my heart was heavy. I felt like I imagined my soul like it was in a recovery room. Or like you might feel once you leave the hospital after a stay in the icu. Scared to move, worried about ripping an incision that needs to heal, but also feeling like you should be able to do normal life again.
When the airplane took off I pulled out this book. Finally, after years and years I opened it up.
Only a couple chapters in I found this couple paragraphs in a book, in the book the main character comes upon a woman crying at a grave in the desert. She tells the woman that she is sorry and that she must have loved this person very much.
The woman answered, "No, I wish I could say that I had, but I did not. I did not even like him."
The main character asks her why she is at his grave.
The woman answers, "because no one else is. He was shallow and unkind, but no one should be buried without somebody to know his passing and to care."
The main character asks her, then why do you cry?
And this is the woman's answer, " He had a chance to be brave and to seek the truth, to honor and defend it. He had time in which he could have faced fear and overcome it; to know himself without deceit, excuse, or self pity; to bear pain without bitterness. He had days in which to laugh, to see beauty, to fill his heart with gratitude. He could have been kind and brave and generous. Above all, there were people he could have loved and learned to forgive. He is gone, and the dry surface is already smoothing over in the wind. Now all of his chances are finished. Of course I weep for him."
Then the book goes on to say - The ultimate tragedy was not to die, but to have had life and let it slip through your hands, day by day, unused, until in the end it was gone, and you had learned nothing, given nothing, left no portion of grace or love in any soul. What would you leave behind greater than you had found or been given by fate? Whom had you loved, beyond the child of you own flesh, which any woman loves? What had you ever forgiven greater than the small things which come easily? What truth did you ever know with a white-hot passion of the soul, let alone defend?
At the end of my dads life there was no funeral, there were not lines of people in a church waiting to tell me how great he was and sorry for my loss. His grave was already being smoothed over by the wind even before he died. And that's why I cried and that's why I fell into the darkness. The tragedy of a wasted life, when God had such great plans for him. I've questioned the word "victim" over my whole life. And wondered if the word victim is a word I should take on. I think at times in my life I have held the word high above my head and hoped someone would see it and coming running to help and other times I felt strong and brushed it off. Sometimes as I wonder if I should try it on, my self worth bucket comes to mind and I realize I don't need to put anything in that bucket. I am God's child and putting anything else in that bucket just causes unnecessary weight and blocks my view of who I really am.
Late August my Garden is full. Pumpkins are ready to be picked and the sunflowers are standing tall and wide awake, staring at me with their big grown eye. I wander around, shooing chickens out of the tomatoes and watching the kids chase a frog. The flower boxes are crammed with flowers, each one reaching for the sky. The apple trees limbs are heavy with fruit, begging us to come pick. My girls ask if they can pick some flowers and I hand them the gardening sheers. They come back with hand fulls of daisies and coneflowers. I look around me at the sea of green leaves, and I am thankful those seeds didn't stay a seed. I am also thankful I didn't stay in that dark hole. It took me months to find the answer to finding my way out. Light. Just like light from the sun is needed for seeds to grow, I also needed light. The light of the Son, Jesus Christ. I think back to the year of 2017, the darkest year of my life. The year God put me in my own personal hole and covered me up with dirt and whispered "Grow!". I came out of that year a completely different person than the seed that I used to be.
Now that I am out of the darkness, can I finally say how thankful I am for that big pile of dirt. I still cry when I think about a life not used for good. I also still feel feelings of anger and confusion. But I can also sit with people who are in the dark and have a real conversation with them. I can look them in the eyes and say honestly, "yes, I know. Me too." I can notice the women at church or in my community that are showing up with a mask on, to hide whatever dirt pile they are struggling under. I can have the real conversation of God, and of Darkness. I can feel love for the addict and for the man sleeping in his car, as well as for the millionaire. Because I know the truth of whats at the bottom of their bucket. I always think back to dirt, my mind is always in the garden. We are all handed piles of dirt. we have time on earth to decide what to do with it. Similar to when we first moved into our home, and noticed the back corner lot of empty dirt. We chose to work with the dirt, use it and grow something beautiful from it. Again and again, year after year we keep tilling, keep planting, keep pulling weeds. Turning the emptiness of dirt into something useful and good. Its easy to look at other's gardens and feel like we will never grow flowers that big and beautiful. Or just give up at the fact that we don't even own a shovel. We need to stop comparing out dirt with others dirt, and our potential gardens with what others have already grown. God knows what you need to do, and who you need to become. We need to look inside ourselfs and be brave enough to love what we find there.
In our garden we try and grow berries that are native or grow well given our climate and type of soil. We can grow heaps of strawberries. The patch that was already here when we moved in has spread a few inches each year with red reaching arms, stretching to find some open ground. We brought in raspberry starts and they took to our garden wonderfully. We got our first real crop of raspberries last summer and we are looking forward to a steady stream of them from now on. Huckleberry, current berry and blackberry plants have also found a home in our garden. But one plant I just cant seem to grow; blueberry bushes. My girls love blueberries. We buy them all year long, and if I don't hide them in the very back of the refrigerator then they wont last ten minute in my house. A couple years ago I bought a blueberry bush, thinking how much my kids would love picking their own blueberries. I planted it outback and it didn't even pretend to try and like my garden. It was still alive, but never grew taller or produced leafs like the other berry bushes around it. I wasn't sure what happened, so the next summer I tried again. This time I ordered a blueberry bush from an expensive seed catalog, thinking it might be a little hardier. I was wrong, it didn't do much more than the first plant.
The next time I was in our local nursery I asked one of the workers there why I was having so much trouble with blueberry plants. He explained to me that blueberry plants are not easy to grow in Idaho because we have such acidic soil and water. Blueberry plants thrive with more of an alkaline ph, so not only is our Idaho soil not a good match, watering it is basically killing it. He gave me the name and number of a woman who lived in my town who had successfully grown blueberries. She had to keep them in a flower pot so she could control the soil, and she also had to balance out the ph level of the water she was pouring on it.
As I was hearing all the trouble this woman was going to for the blueberry plants I was half amazed that someone was compassionate enough to offer specific care for a plant. And the other half of me was scribbling the word "blue berry plant" off any imaginary list I every had in my mind. That blueberry bush sounded high maintenance, special soil I might be able to handle, but specialized water? Forget it.
If you stuck with me through the part of imagining your a seed, then maybe you can consider you are a blue berry plant. I think we have more in common that anyone has given us credit for. We are nothing more than spirits or souls living in a body. And the earth that we have been planted in has everything we need to live and grow. But there are also toxins that seep in though all sources, feeding us lies that don't help fuel our growth.
Even as children we are being taught how we need to act, look, think, and be. Don't be too much of anything, don't be too loud, to outspoken, to confident, to quiet. Don't look too big or too small, too old or too young. And don't think anything too different than what is being taught around you. So much of what we learn is wonderful, but we were also planted in a world where there is glory over looking perfect. The mask of perfect is applauded, idealized, and accepted until anything less than is looked over or down on. We've given in, we've thrown out all of the things that made us an individual, and instead found the priority of the community and became that. Maybe we didn't even realize the toxic water we were drinking, or the poisoned dirt we found ourselves in. We didn't even realize we were throwing our true self away to become more pleasing to more people. And maybe we did, and we chose to ignore our truth to become something else that seemed more shiny in front of others.
As I've talked so much in this book about loving others that are hard to love. I do believe that love and boundaries can co-exist. Loving others is one of the kindest, purest, truest gifts. But love does not look like abuse, love does not look like manipulation. Love does not look like drowning. You must also love yourself enough to notice the toxic water of all of these lies enough to walk away. Set up boundaries if you must to make sure you are only taking in good, nurturing water.
After having to rid myself of lies and toxins that find their way to the ground we stand on, I applaud the blueberry plant, in a world where I am constantly being told to be different, be better, and stronger. I remember the blueberry plant, and I don't call it "too weak" or "too good" for Idaho tap water. Instead I see a message coming from it, the message of 'This is who I am". Its truth that if you feed something, or somebody, lies and it will eventually wilt. The Blueberry plant is firm in who it is, it knows what its to become, and what it needs to get there. It has no need for anything less that the exact pure nutrition that it has to have in order to live.
A healthy mind is essential to living life courageously and with purpose. I've seen the effects of a clouded mind, due to addictive substances. I've also seen my own effects of a clouded mind due to darkness, depression and anxiety. We are not perfect people, we are not expected to be perfect, but if more of your days are spent with a clouded mind than without, its time to look at who you are, what you need, and what your actually putting into your mind and body each day. Are they the best choices? Are they what you, the you that God made, need? Everything can be used for your good, and trials, as hard as they are while we are in the middle of them, can work to your benefit to give you experience and help you love others better. I am not saying that keeping a healthy mind is easy, and for some its just not our natural chemical make up. I recently went in for a yearly check up, and as I waited for my doctor to come in I wondered to myself if I should mention to him the year of depression I just got out of. I decided I would, although I started to get cold hands and a racing heart at the thought of it. He finally came in and after a little small talk he started asking me questions concerning my mental health. I just worked up the courage and said "I just got out of a good year of depression, and I still feel anxious at times". I hadn't realized how hard that was to say out loud and as the words came out I had to calm my voice from shaking. He made note of it and kept on down the line of questions. And then, he never came back to it. I was checked for all other things, other physical conditions that might be happening to my body. But my mental health never came up again. I brushed it off, but later that week I thought about how hard it had been for me to admit my mind set to my doctor in the clinic. And I could only say it out loud now that I was out of it. What if I had been really depressed, reaching out for help and even after saying the words it was still brushed to the side? If you are struggling, don't be like me. Don't just mention it and then wait for someone to start questioning. If you need help you say it as many times as it takes for someone to listen. I don't believe that in most cases prayer will heal you. Of course there have been moments of miracles, but instead I believe that prayer will guide you to the help you need. Take the help.
When I find myself struggling mentally I consciously stop everything for a moment. Stop all the running around, and painfully trudging through task to task, all the while feeling rushed and overwhelmed. Stopping everything is important because in these moments I cant seem to find that true me, who is underneath all the to-do lists and fake sparkling images I am trying to live up to. So I just stop. Usually in my mind I try and locate what seems to be on my mind that day. Oh, I'm feeling like I'm not enough? My mind visualizes buckets and I am forced to mentally go through my mental buckets. There are always two of them. The most important bucket - self worth. Then self confidence. But I often find other buckets besides just the two. Like the forgiveness bucket, this is full of all the grudges I am holding that I haven't yet let go of. This bucket always gets to heavy if I don't stop and purposely unload it. And I've found that things that are in the forgiveness bucket tend to add other things to buckets I didn't even know existed. Like when someone honks at me and tosses their hands in the air at me while I'm driving. Suddenly I'm also caring around "bad driver" and " I messing everything up" in the Self talk bucket.
So, stop everything for a moment to sit down and take notice of all the things that found their way into the buckets. Then take them out one by one, look at each one, hold it in my mind, if it doesn't belong there then tell it that it is a lie and doesn't get to stay, then toss it out of the bucket. This is a visual I use to clear the lies from my mind. I do let some things stay in buckets, like my confidence bucket or interests bucket, I love filling those buckets up with anything that makes my soul wake up and feel excited about living this life.
Clearing the buckets from things I drag around gives me a glimpse of the bottom of the bucket again. "You are God's Child". Once I see this message at the bottom of the bucket again I remember who I am and what I am doing. My to do list re-organizes itself and I say good buy to the invisible audience that I once felt pressured to perform for. I don't need recognition from anyone. God has a plan that's designed for me, and that's where my trust is.
It wasn't until a year and a half after the passing of my dad did I really find myself speaking truth. I was on a weekend girls trip with my husbands sisters and mom. We had sat down for breakfast and the café we were eating at had a pack of conversation cards. We went around the table reading questions and lightly answering. My sister in law turned to the next card in the pile and said "Toni can probably answer this one, Describe yourself in 6 words." I thought for a moment and my mind didn't even slow down on all the words I would have shouted out years ago. Descriptive words like kind, hard working, and honest were left in the dust as my mind instead raced to "Child of God who is trying". I've thought back to that answer a few times and I'm happy that I could shout that out without even thinking about it. I've found truth and my truest self. I love knowing who I really am.
We cant just brush past the forgiveness and self talk bucket without digging a little deeper. Those buckets, they don't seem as important as Self confidence and self worth. But once they get heavy they seem to cause chaos every where else. Its not a secret that these two little subjects are important, there are more and more books and talks written on them each day.
I always thought forgiveness was for the other person, some sort of get out of jail free card. Like when your young the game of keep away seems fun, taking something from your younger brother or sister and holding it up high so they cant reach. Despite their jumping and reaching they want something you have and are not quite big enough to get it. The power is yours, and you decide if you will hand it over to them or keep it out of reach. This was always my idea of forgiveness. This thing you got to hold, entitling you to turn on the victim sign, and also decide when the time was right to hand it back over or make them suffer by keeping it out of their reach.
Now, I see it as something completely different. Forgiveness is more about me than I thought. As you hold this thing above your head, it starts to get heavy. Your arms are burning but your not going to give up now! Your winning! You're the good person in this event and your not giving up until the other person knows exactly how much pain they have caused. So you stand your ground and keep holding it above your head. After a few hours, days, or weeks, maybe even years of holding this you start to realize how heavy it really is, and how inconvenient it is to always have this in your grasp. Sometimes I have felt stuck at this moment. Wanting to forgive but not being able to really let go of it. Your ego is reminding you how much heartache you have been through, and lies start to come through your mind, like "not only have they done wrong by me, but they have caused me additional pain because now my arm hurts from holding this grudge". Of course its probably not your arm that was effected, instead it might be your children, your marriage, your job, your inner peace, your sense of identity, your finances, or your reputation. Whatever it might be. But this is where you make a choice. Do you keep listening to the lies? Maybe they don't even seem like lies, maybe they seem like truth. But the weight of that grudge you are carrying around is now mostly stopping your progress. Like when your younger sibling has tried long enough, has given up and is now playing legos. Meanwhile your still walking around the house still holding your grudge above your head. Now its starting to effect you and your life, and forgiving is going to be more for you than it is for them. Forgiveness is an act of love for them and for yourself.
I am a person of words. I pay attention to words that I hear and see, I write them down and look them up in the dictionary to make sure I am understanding their meaning correctly. So the amount of words and uncomplete sentences floating around in my brain, any given day is immense. I used to be able to get along just fine with this constant chatter but add three little girls who are anything but quiet and I just don't have the patience or focus for all four of us. Find what quiets your mind, for me its painting and yoga. Find what clears your mind, for me its running and writing. There is a difference between quieting your mind and clearing your mind.
When I'm feeling anxiety or overwhelm is when I need quiet. I need my brain to stop its words, just for a moment. I need it to stop with all the worrying and trying to control. Stop. Quiet. Don't think. In the afternoons I paint, its a good quiet time before the kids get home from school when I can just take a mental break before monkeys, in children's bodies come swinging through the front door. At night when my mind will not shut off, and I know that I will sink in a black hole if I try to sleep with this kind of rat race in my mind, I do yoga. Yoga before bed is another way I can clear my mind before I try and shut my eyes in the dark with all the words.
Clearing my mind looks more like trying to organize a million thoughts that are scrambled. Just trying to find your way through them all, not really needing to get rid of, instead organizing and wondering what needs to happen with them. Running and writing do this for me, running is my physical outlet for a boggled mind, I have taken stress to the trail and stomped it out as my feet hit the ground. Other times I finish my run with a better understanding of the trial ahead of me. Writing is my mental way through the maze, I can get it out of my brain and onto paper or the keyboard. Just letting it flow out of my hands lightens my load. When its on the paper I can see it clearly, and it doesn't feel so big. Both are helpful and needed at different times.
And prayer. I'm not sure there is anything I lean on more than prayer. I can only speak to what prayer does for me. Sometimes I feel like it quiets my mind, sometimes I feel like it clears my mind. But mostly I feel like prayer is me admitting that I cannot see the whole picture, therefor I don't have all the answers for this big mess. Its me turning off my control panel and humbly asking for help or direction. Sometimes prayer looks like me locking myself in my closet and kneeling around shoes and laundry, begging for answers. And sometimes my prayers look like me washing dishes at my sink, with a prayer in my heart and on my mind. Sometimes I feel peace, and sometimes I don't. But I always feel less alone, which I always find to be a blessing. Nothing looks the same for two people, but finding the best ways for you to quiet and clear your mind, as well as a prayer practice that works for you could help with the distractions or anxiety that come when you feel like you're living in a fear driven mind set.
One day in July of 2017 I was out in the garden with my children. It had been a beautiful morning and afternoon, blue skies, warm sun. I looked out in the west, where the sun would set that evening and I noticed dark grey storm clouds. Within an hour they were bigger and greyer, the wind was picking up and they were moving right at us. The kids ran around screaming at the flashing light and loud sounds of thunder and lighting. I stood in the garden, watching it come closer, a little bit of rain started to drop and the wind picked up, my kids took their chasing and silly screams closer to the house. They were yelling for me to come in with them, but I couldn't move. I stood my ground, eyes on the storm. My hair was blowing around me and the sunflower leaves were being tossed in the wind, but something about the storm had my attention. It had been a perfect, beautiful day, A couple hours ago there were no clouds in sight. And now the sky was angry. It was flashing lightening and hollering.... and I couldn't look away. The rain was falling more steadily now, and the kids were already onto a new game inside of the house. I forced myself to walk inside, but even then I watched it out the back door.
In March my husband and I were getting ready to take a 6 hour flight.... without kids. We had celebrated our 10 year anniversary the August before but too much was going on at the time. So we booked a trip that would happen in March instead. I had not read a whole Chapter book for years, just because my children are young. So for weeks I thought about what book I wanted to take on the airplane with me and read uninterrupted. I borrowed a few books from my mom and grandma, but as we loaded all of our bags in the car and started to pull out of our driveway to go to the airport the book that I had been dragging around with me for years and years came to mind. So I told my husband to wait just a moment while I run into grab one more thing. I picked the book up off the shelf and we left to catch our flight.
It had been 5 months since my dad passed away. And I felt like I had finally climbed my way out of the dirt. Of course I was still dirty from the journey, my spirit was tired and sore. But I felt like I had made my way to the surface. I thing a good word to describe how I was feeling was Raw.
I googled the word "raw", there was a definition for raw when used to describe emotions. It was defined as, Strong, undisguised and intense.
That's how I felt. I was good to go about my daily, weekly, monthly tasks. But inside my heart was heavy. I felt like I imagined my soul like it was in a recovery room. Or like you might feel once you leave the hospital after a stay in the icu. Scared to move, worried about ripping an incision that needs to heal, but also feeling like you should be able to do normal life again.
When the airplane took off I pulled out this book. Finally, after years and years I opened it up.
Only a couple chapters in I found this couple paragraphs in a book, in the book the main character comes upon a woman crying at a grave in the desert. She tells the woman that she is sorry and that she must have loved this person very much.
The woman answered, "No, I wish I could say that I had, but I did not. I did not even like him."
The main character asks her why she is at his grave.
The woman answers, "because no one else is. He was shallow and unkind, but no one should be buried without somebody to know his passing and to care."
The main character asks her, then why do you cry?
And this is the woman's answer, " He had a chance to be brave and to seek the truth, to honor and defend it. He had time in which he could have faced fear and overcome it; to know himself without deceit, excuse, or self pity; to bear pain without bitterness. He had days in which to laugh, to see beauty, to fill his heart with gratitude. He could have been kind and brave and generous. Above all, there were people he could have loved and learned to forgive. He is gone, and the dry surface is already smoothing over in the wind. Now all of his chances are finished. Of course I weep for him."
All of the raw feelings I was holding, all of the confusing sadness that I hadn't expected. This was it.
All of the tears I was still blinking back, and all the pain I was still feeling. This was them. I'm not crying because I miss him, or because I don't know how I will go on with out him. I hardly talked to him. I cry because of the tragedy of a wasted life. His heart beating for almost 60 years. Him breathing in and out, waking up each morning, seeing the sun in the sky and watching it set behind the mountains every day for 58 years. He had a healthy body, a family, talent, any so many opportunities.... and yet.... darkness.
If I had read these words any other time in my life I would have just breezed past these pages and never thought twice of them. But now, I am the woman at the grave. And I cry as the wind smooth's over the grave until its barely visible, and no one even remembers.
If I had read these words any other time in my life I would have just breezed past these pages and never thought twice of them. But now, I am the woman at the grave. And I cry as the wind smooth's over the grave until its barely visible, and no one even remembers.
At the end of my dads life there was no funeral, there were not lines of people in a church waiting to tell me how great he was and sorry for my loss. His grave was already being smoothed over by the wind even before he died. And that's why I cried and that's why I fell into the darkness. The tragedy of a wasted life, when God had such great plans for him. I've questioned the word "victim" over my whole life. And wondered if the word victim is a word I should take on. I think at times in my life I have held the word high above my head and hoped someone would see it and coming running to help and other times I felt strong and brushed it off. Sometimes as I wonder if I should try it on, my self worth bucket comes to mind and I realize I don't need to put anything in that bucket. I am God's child and putting anything else in that bucket just causes unnecessary weight and blocks my view of who I really am.
Late August my Garden is full. Pumpkins are ready to be picked and the sunflowers are standing tall and wide awake, staring at me with their big grown eye. I wander around, shooing chickens out of the tomatoes and watching the kids chase a frog. The flower boxes are crammed with flowers, each one reaching for the sky. The apple trees limbs are heavy with fruit, begging us to come pick. My girls ask if they can pick some flowers and I hand them the gardening sheers. They come back with hand fulls of daisies and coneflowers. I look around me at the sea of green leaves, and I am thankful those seeds didn't stay a seed. I am also thankful I didn't stay in that dark hole. It took me months to find the answer to finding my way out. Light. Just like light from the sun is needed for seeds to grow, I also needed light. The light of the Son, Jesus Christ. I think back to the year of 2017, the darkest year of my life. The year God put me in my own personal hole and covered me up with dirt and whispered "Grow!". I came out of that year a completely different person than the seed that I used to be.
Now that I am out of the darkness, can I finally say how thankful I am for that big pile of dirt. I still cry when I think about a life not used for good. I also still feel feelings of anger and confusion. But I can also sit with people who are in the dark and have a real conversation with them. I can look them in the eyes and say honestly, "yes, I know. Me too." I can notice the women at church or in my community that are showing up with a mask on, to hide whatever dirt pile they are struggling under. I can have the real conversation of God, and of Darkness. I can feel love for the addict and for the man sleeping in his car, as well as for the millionaire. Because I know the truth of whats at the bottom of their bucket. I always think back to dirt, my mind is always in the garden. We are all handed piles of dirt. we have time on earth to decide what to do with it. Similar to when we first moved into our home, and noticed the back corner lot of empty dirt. We chose to work with the dirt, use it and grow something beautiful from it. Again and again, year after year we keep tilling, keep planting, keep pulling weeds. Turning the emptiness of dirt into something useful and good. Its easy to look at other's gardens and feel like we will never grow flowers that big and beautiful. Or just give up at the fact that we don't even own a shovel. We need to stop comparing out dirt with others dirt, and our potential gardens with what others have already grown. God knows what you need to do, and who you need to become. We need to look inside ourselfs and be brave enough to love what we find there.
In our garden we try and grow berries that are native or grow well given our climate and type of soil. We can grow heaps of strawberries. The patch that was already here when we moved in has spread a few inches each year with red reaching arms, stretching to find some open ground. We brought in raspberry starts and they took to our garden wonderfully. We got our first real crop of raspberries last summer and we are looking forward to a steady stream of them from now on. Huckleberry, current berry and blackberry plants have also found a home in our garden. But one plant I just cant seem to grow; blueberry bushes. My girls love blueberries. We buy them all year long, and if I don't hide them in the very back of the refrigerator then they wont last ten minute in my house. A couple years ago I bought a blueberry bush, thinking how much my kids would love picking their own blueberries. I planted it outback and it didn't even pretend to try and like my garden. It was still alive, but never grew taller or produced leafs like the other berry bushes around it. I wasn't sure what happened, so the next summer I tried again. This time I ordered a blueberry bush from an expensive seed catalog, thinking it might be a little hardier. I was wrong, it didn't do much more than the first plant.
The next time I was in our local nursery I asked one of the workers there why I was having so much trouble with blueberry plants. He explained to me that blueberry plants are not easy to grow in Idaho because we have such acidic soil and water. Blueberry plants thrive with more of an alkaline ph, so not only is our Idaho soil not a good match, watering it is basically killing it. He gave me the name and number of a woman who lived in my town who had successfully grown blueberries. She had to keep them in a flower pot so she could control the soil, and she also had to balance out the ph level of the water she was pouring on it.
As I was hearing all the trouble this woman was going to for the blueberry plants I was half amazed that someone was compassionate enough to offer specific care for a plant. And the other half of me was scribbling the word "blue berry plant" off any imaginary list I every had in my mind. That blueberry bush sounded high maintenance, special soil I might be able to handle, but specialized water? Forget it.
If you stuck with me through the part of imagining your a seed, then maybe you can consider you are a blue berry plant. I think we have more in common that anyone has given us credit for. We are nothing more than spirits or souls living in a body. And the earth that we have been planted in has everything we need to live and grow. But there are also toxins that seep in though all sources, feeding us lies that don't help fuel our growth.
Even as children we are being taught how we need to act, look, think, and be. Don't be too much of anything, don't be too loud, to outspoken, to confident, to quiet. Don't look too big or too small, too old or too young. And don't think anything too different than what is being taught around you. So much of what we learn is wonderful, but we were also planted in a world where there is glory over looking perfect. The mask of perfect is applauded, idealized, and accepted until anything less than is looked over or down on. We've given in, we've thrown out all of the things that made us an individual, and instead found the priority of the community and became that. Maybe we didn't even realize the toxic water we were drinking, or the poisoned dirt we found ourselves in. We didn't even realize we were throwing our true self away to become more pleasing to more people. And maybe we did, and we chose to ignore our truth to become something else that seemed more shiny in front of others.
As I've talked so much in this book about loving others that are hard to love. I do believe that love and boundaries can co-exist. Loving others is one of the kindest, purest, truest gifts. But love does not look like abuse, love does not look like manipulation. Love does not look like drowning. You must also love yourself enough to notice the toxic water of all of these lies enough to walk away. Set up boundaries if you must to make sure you are only taking in good, nurturing water.
After having to rid myself of lies and toxins that find their way to the ground we stand on, I applaud the blueberry plant, in a world where I am constantly being told to be different, be better, and stronger. I remember the blueberry plant, and I don't call it "too weak" or "too good" for Idaho tap water. Instead I see a message coming from it, the message of 'This is who I am". Its truth that if you feed something, or somebody, lies and it will eventually wilt. The Blueberry plant is firm in who it is, it knows what its to become, and what it needs to get there. It has no need for anything less that the exact pure nutrition that it has to have in order to live.
A healthy mind is essential to living life courageously and with purpose. I've seen the effects of a clouded mind, due to addictive substances. I've also seen my own effects of a clouded mind due to darkness, depression and anxiety. We are not perfect people, we are not expected to be perfect, but if more of your days are spent with a clouded mind than without, its time to look at who you are, what you need, and what your actually putting into your mind and body each day. Are they the best choices? Are they what you, the you that God made, need? Everything can be used for your good, and trials, as hard as they are while we are in the middle of them, can work to your benefit to give you experience and help you love others better. I am not saying that keeping a healthy mind is easy, and for some its just not our natural chemical make up. I recently went in for a yearly check up, and as I waited for my doctor to come in I wondered to myself if I should mention to him the year of depression I just got out of. I decided I would, although I started to get cold hands and a racing heart at the thought of it. He finally came in and after a little small talk he started asking me questions concerning my mental health. I just worked up the courage and said "I just got out of a good year of depression, and I still feel anxious at times". I hadn't realized how hard that was to say out loud and as the words came out I had to calm my voice from shaking. He made note of it and kept on down the line of questions. And then, he never came back to it. I was checked for all other things, other physical conditions that might be happening to my body. But my mental health never came up again. I brushed it off, but later that week I thought about how hard it had been for me to admit my mind set to my doctor in the clinic. And I could only say it out loud now that I was out of it. What if I had been really depressed, reaching out for help and even after saying the words it was still brushed to the side? If you are struggling, don't be like me. Don't just mention it and then wait for someone to start questioning. If you need help you say it as many times as it takes for someone to listen. I don't believe that in most cases prayer will heal you. Of course there have been moments of miracles, but instead I believe that prayer will guide you to the help you need. Take the help.
When I find myself struggling mentally I consciously stop everything for a moment. Stop all the running around, and painfully trudging through task to task, all the while feeling rushed and overwhelmed. Stopping everything is important because in these moments I cant seem to find that true me, who is underneath all the to-do lists and fake sparkling images I am trying to live up to. So I just stop. Usually in my mind I try and locate what seems to be on my mind that day. Oh, I'm feeling like I'm not enough? My mind visualizes buckets and I am forced to mentally go through my mental buckets. There are always two of them. The most important bucket - self worth. Then self confidence. But I often find other buckets besides just the two. Like the forgiveness bucket, this is full of all the grudges I am holding that I haven't yet let go of. This bucket always gets to heavy if I don't stop and purposely unload it. And I've found that things that are in the forgiveness bucket tend to add other things to buckets I didn't even know existed. Like when someone honks at me and tosses their hands in the air at me while I'm driving. Suddenly I'm also caring around "bad driver" and " I messing everything up" in the Self talk bucket.
So, stop everything for a moment to sit down and take notice of all the things that found their way into the buckets. Then take them out one by one, look at each one, hold it in my mind, if it doesn't belong there then tell it that it is a lie and doesn't get to stay, then toss it out of the bucket. This is a visual I use to clear the lies from my mind. I do let some things stay in buckets, like my confidence bucket or interests bucket, I love filling those buckets up with anything that makes my soul wake up and feel excited about living this life.
Clearing the buckets from things I drag around gives me a glimpse of the bottom of the bucket again. "You are God's Child". Once I see this message at the bottom of the bucket again I remember who I am and what I am doing. My to do list re-organizes itself and I say good buy to the invisible audience that I once felt pressured to perform for. I don't need recognition from anyone. God has a plan that's designed for me, and that's where my trust is.
It wasn't until a year and a half after the passing of my dad did I really find myself speaking truth. I was on a weekend girls trip with my husbands sisters and mom. We had sat down for breakfast and the café we were eating at had a pack of conversation cards. We went around the table reading questions and lightly answering. My sister in law turned to the next card in the pile and said "Toni can probably answer this one, Describe yourself in 6 words." I thought for a moment and my mind didn't even slow down on all the words I would have shouted out years ago. Descriptive words like kind, hard working, and honest were left in the dust as my mind instead raced to "Child of God who is trying". I've thought back to that answer a few times and I'm happy that I could shout that out without even thinking about it. I've found truth and my truest self. I love knowing who I really am.
We cant just brush past the forgiveness and self talk bucket without digging a little deeper. Those buckets, they don't seem as important as Self confidence and self worth. But once they get heavy they seem to cause chaos every where else. Its not a secret that these two little subjects are important, there are more and more books and talks written on them each day.
I always thought forgiveness was for the other person, some sort of get out of jail free card. Like when your young the game of keep away seems fun, taking something from your younger brother or sister and holding it up high so they cant reach. Despite their jumping and reaching they want something you have and are not quite big enough to get it. The power is yours, and you decide if you will hand it over to them or keep it out of reach. This was always my idea of forgiveness. This thing you got to hold, entitling you to turn on the victim sign, and also decide when the time was right to hand it back over or make them suffer by keeping it out of their reach.
Now, I see it as something completely different. Forgiveness is more about me than I thought. As you hold this thing above your head, it starts to get heavy. Your arms are burning but your not going to give up now! Your winning! You're the good person in this event and your not giving up until the other person knows exactly how much pain they have caused. So you stand your ground and keep holding it above your head. After a few hours, days, or weeks, maybe even years of holding this you start to realize how heavy it really is, and how inconvenient it is to always have this in your grasp. Sometimes I have felt stuck at this moment. Wanting to forgive but not being able to really let go of it. Your ego is reminding you how much heartache you have been through, and lies start to come through your mind, like "not only have they done wrong by me, but they have caused me additional pain because now my arm hurts from holding this grudge". Of course its probably not your arm that was effected, instead it might be your children, your marriage, your job, your inner peace, your sense of identity, your finances, or your reputation. Whatever it might be. But this is where you make a choice. Do you keep listening to the lies? Maybe they don't even seem like lies, maybe they seem like truth. But the weight of that grudge you are carrying around is now mostly stopping your progress. Like when your younger sibling has tried long enough, has given up and is now playing legos. Meanwhile your still walking around the house still holding your grudge above your head. Now its starting to effect you and your life, and forgiving is going to be more for you than it is for them. Forgiveness is an act of love for them and for yourself.
I am a person of words. I pay attention to words that I hear and see, I write them down and look them up in the dictionary to make sure I am understanding their meaning correctly. So the amount of words and uncomplete sentences floating around in my brain, any given day is immense. I used to be able to get along just fine with this constant chatter but add three little girls who are anything but quiet and I just don't have the patience or focus for all four of us. Find what quiets your mind, for me its painting and yoga. Find what clears your mind, for me its running and writing. There is a difference between quieting your mind and clearing your mind.
When I'm feeling anxiety or overwhelm is when I need quiet. I need my brain to stop its words, just for a moment. I need it to stop with all the worrying and trying to control. Stop. Quiet. Don't think. In the afternoons I paint, its a good quiet time before the kids get home from school when I can just take a mental break before monkeys, in children's bodies come swinging through the front door. At night when my mind will not shut off, and I know that I will sink in a black hole if I try to sleep with this kind of rat race in my mind, I do yoga. Yoga before bed is another way I can clear my mind before I try and shut my eyes in the dark with all the words.
Clearing my mind looks more like trying to organize a million thoughts that are scrambled. Just trying to find your way through them all, not really needing to get rid of, instead organizing and wondering what needs to happen with them. Running and writing do this for me, running is my physical outlet for a boggled mind, I have taken stress to the trail and stomped it out as my feet hit the ground. Other times I finish my run with a better understanding of the trial ahead of me. Writing is my mental way through the maze, I can get it out of my brain and onto paper or the keyboard. Just letting it flow out of my hands lightens my load. When its on the paper I can see it clearly, and it doesn't feel so big. Both are helpful and needed at different times.
And prayer. I'm not sure there is anything I lean on more than prayer. I can only speak to what prayer does for me. Sometimes I feel like it quiets my mind, sometimes I feel like it clears my mind. But mostly I feel like prayer is me admitting that I cannot see the whole picture, therefor I don't have all the answers for this big mess. Its me turning off my control panel and humbly asking for help or direction. Sometimes prayer looks like me locking myself in my closet and kneeling around shoes and laundry, begging for answers. And sometimes my prayers look like me washing dishes at my sink, with a prayer in my heart and on my mind. Sometimes I feel peace, and sometimes I don't. But I always feel less alone, which I always find to be a blessing. Nothing looks the same for two people, but finding the best ways for you to quiet and clear your mind, as well as a prayer practice that works for you could help with the distractions or anxiety that come when you feel like you're living in a fear driven mind set.
One day in July of 2017 I was out in the garden with my children. It had been a beautiful morning and afternoon, blue skies, warm sun. I looked out in the west, where the sun would set that evening and I noticed dark grey storm clouds. Within an hour they were bigger and greyer, the wind was picking up and they were moving right at us. The kids ran around screaming at the flashing light and loud sounds of thunder and lighting. I stood in the garden, watching it come closer, a little bit of rain started to drop and the wind picked up, my kids took their chasing and silly screams closer to the house. They were yelling for me to come in with them, but I couldn't move. I stood my ground, eyes on the storm. My hair was blowing around me and the sunflower leaves were being tossed in the wind, but something about the storm had my attention. It had been a perfect, beautiful day, A couple hours ago there were no clouds in sight. And now the sky was angry. It was flashing lightening and hollering.... and I couldn't look away. The rain was falling more steadily now, and the kids were already onto a new game inside of the house. I forced myself to walk inside, but even then I watched it out the back door.
I've thought back to that day a few times and I could never understand what it was about the storm that captivated me. Until now, I can almost see it clearly. That storm came at a time when I felt alone in my own storm. I was searching everywhere for something real, something hard that I could relate with but all I could see around me was people hiding behind masks of perfection. These grey clouds rolled in I saw it as something real. Something I could relate to, something that wasn't painted up and perfectly clean. It was instead roaring with pain and throwing fits of lightning, dark and heavy until it cried hard and heavy tears. She sky was not ashamed of the storm, it didn't try to hide it, it was instead sharing it. And my kids as most kids saw it as scary. They hunched their shoulders and got wide eyes each time lightening would flash. Scared kids during a thunder storm are a lot like us. Adults running and hiding from anything hard or scary. Something that looks challenging and maybe even a little dark. That summer day, I was in my own dark and scary and the reason I couldn't draw my eyes away was because I saw what my kids couldn't. Beauty. Beauty in the hard. Beauty in the scary, beauty in the real, and even beauty in the dark. With no shame attached.
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