You GET to Do the Dirty Work

IAT = I am thankful

It's SO HARD to believe this is only my 3rd post this year, but there it is. I suppose it's an indication of time and ability. 

I had a pretty sacred experience in the middle of a bout of anger recently. I have pondered whether to share the full detail or not. And I'm guessing since I am pounding on the keyboard, I decided to do it. My hesitation is two fold. 1) Revealing personal details about my dad would cause him to feel ashamed and embarrassed. 2) My inspiration is one of the most profound of my life, and I don't want anyone to see me as more than I am; a flawed human just like you grappling with my circumstances from time to time.

The last few years have brought new knowledge that my dad is an alcoholic. It was only recently I became aware that it's been his cross to bear for his entire adult life. Because he recently turned 80, we moved him to Arizona to be closer for the times he has emergencies. And because of the alcohol, there have been numerous emergencies over the last three years. The most recent was just one month ago.

He seemed to be doing much better and was successfully decreasing his intake, and then there was a triggering event I won't go into details about. His spiral began with the familiar incoherent phone calls to me and several of my family members. His birthday came and went with no recognition, not because we didn't want to, but because he was completely incapable of attending what we planned. More than once. 

I've learned to temper my emotions around most of these experiences most of the time, but there are days when I swing from hopeful to absolutely frustrated at the daily conversations, concerns, and consequences on me and my family. My family is hesitant to be involved at all. I mean who really wants to deal with a person who leans to total selfishness, inability to see, and the attending results of regular alcohol abuse. 

THE phone call came. The emergency call we hadn't had since he moved here. He called me with severe physical symptoms that were unmanageable and life threatening. In spite of that fact, he also called when I was in a position that I absolutely could not respond and rescue him. We discussed his options, including calling an ambulance. I told him I would come as soon as I could. Then I called him back to tell him I thought he really should call the ambulance. He already had. I'm leaving the worst of the details out, but anyone who has dealt with a family member involved with drugs and alcohol, can easily insert them.

From this point, I'll fast forward to my moment of angry inspiration. He spent a week in the hospital and somehow avoided also getting THE VIRUS. It took two days to convince him to go to any further therapy, but he ended up with two weeks in a short term care center to gain his strength back so he could walk and take care of himself again. I cannot begin to express my gratitude to the health care workers that attended him. Doctors who were as blunt and honest as was absolutely needed. Nurses who were overburdened because of our hospital patient load. And social workers and case managers willing to give every bit of information and services to support and save his life. 

In the meantime, his apartment told me there was going to be an inspection and I'm just telling you, there was no way it would pass. I had a sweet little niece visiting and she went over with me and did some scrubbing. I gathered up his laundry and bedding and washed it all. We cleared a pathway that would be less dangerous than how he was living and made sure the doorways were all clear. Then I just waited for him to come home, which he did. 

Three weeks of close to total bliss while he was quietly (for me) in the hospital and care center getting better. I just had to visit and coordinate and he's always nicer when he's "down." And then he went home and that's when the real fun began. Every day he became stronger and every day he was more back to himself, only I think now he is not all the way back. Each time in the hospital takes another little piece of him. But I digress.

After a week or so, and increasingly more frustrating interactions, I went to do his shopping one night. He had a specific short list that included two newspapers. Even though he hates everything and everyone in the government and knows all the news is fake, he has to read it every day anyway. I brought his groceries in and put them all away and while he was in the other room, he called, "did you get my newspapers?" As impending doom settled on me, I meekly replied, "no." I can't repeat his response, but I was immediately hot under the collar. I stormed out, slammed the door, and drove to Walgreens, counted out all my change because I didn't have any cash and didn't want to put it on my card, drove back, opened the door, slapped them down on the table, slammed the door again and drove off. He called four times and I ignored them all.

What happened next was my breakthrough. As I fumed toward home I kept thinking. "WHY DOES HE HAVE TO ACT LIKE SUCH A TODDLER? WHY IS HE CONSTANTLY THROWING TANTRUMS?" I should know better than to ask questions I don't want answers to. I heard a question in my mind. "Why DOES he throw temper tantrums like a toddler?" My brain said, "well toddlers usually throw tantrums when they are tired or don't have any explanation for the frustration they are feeling; when they don't understand." I was still angry, but a little light started flowing in. "Oooooooh." Only a couple of days before, he shared with me that this six weeks is the only time in his adult life he has gone that long without a drink!

Besides being shocked at the confession, I was astonished that I never knew as a child! I knew there was always beer, but I don't have a single memory of what I would have thought drunkenness or inebriation looked like. So I began to realize that with his age, and his loss of cognition because of age and addiction, there must be some real frustration going on over his knowing that he cannot go there anymore. There's an equal amount of frustration on my part that I've never had a dad fully present in my life. 

I plunged back into anger. WHY? Why do *I* have to be the one to take care of him and care and be frustrated and dealing with him. W.H.Y????? The memory of a prayer prayed many years ago, was brought back to my mind. When I realized in my young mom adult years that there wasn't much I could do to help my dad if he didn't want to be helped, with a host of other issues, that I now realize were probably the same problem, I told my Father in Heaven that I was turning him over to Him and He would just have to deal with Him, but to please let me know if there was anything I could do to help and I WOULD DO IT!

The next stunning ray of Light opened to thoughts I had never considered. "You GET to do the dirty work." I can't remember ever having thought that dealing with my dad was dirty work. So, I was a little perplexed until right after the question, the next thought was, "just like the Savior. Christ did the dirty work." And then a flood of examples.

Working the dirt.

The hands of a carpenter.

Writing in the dirt.

Mud on the eyes of the blind.

Washing the feet of His friends.

Befriending the unclean. 

The insane.

The adulteress.

The tax collector.

The harlot.

The bleeding woman.

The sinners.

"You get to do the dirty work." And as my resistance faded and I truly saw the invitation, my eyes flooded with tears. My own question formed within me. If I seek to be like Christ (and I do) and I want to obtain His attributes (and I do), how can I expect to do that if I am unwilling to do the dirty work? So many years ago, I could have been looked at by other families as doing the dirty work. I mean I was pretty adorable, so probably not, but....I was someone's project. Multiple someones and I am so grateful. I can't be afraid to get my hands dirty for my dad. I am grateful for the family I have that is willing to do it with me. It's uncomfortable, but I see how it is also an invitation. 

I know absolutely that I will continue to stumble, and get frustrated, and wish I wasn't the one to do it. But I am fully committed now, to look for those who others might identify as not worth the work. It's the only way those have a chance at all to fully experience what is available to them in this life. I continue to hope, until there is no more, that my efforts will make a difference. It has been the hope of my life since I was sixteen. I will continue because I GET to do the dirty work. I feel so blessed. 

 

All is Well

IAT = I am thankful

Years ago, I was introduced to Byron Katie's book, Loving What Is and The Work. It was mind and soul expanding. I'd heard over and over that I had control over my thoughts and emotions, and knew at some level that was true...but.

The Work taught me how to question my thoughts and that I could question every single one of them. AND it gave me a framework for doing that; flipping them around, and seeing the real truth within myself. I still often do the turnaround without the questions because that's where the great stuff is. What *I* am really thinking which allows me to change it.

I ask myself, Is that true? How can I know that is true? How do I react when I believe that thought? Who would I be without that thought? In the questioning and the new thinking, is freedom.

Somewhere in learning about Loving What Is, I met Leslie Householder and started diving in to everything she had. Much of what she teaches, came from sources I had already read, and had even done some significant work with mentor and friend Rebecca Fine who taught me to "expect success" and to stay in my own business.

Leslie expanded my previous knowledge and helped me see the mechanisms and solutions to the programs that run me, where they come from, how to change them, how to ask questions and get answers. And how to trust those answers and create a vibrant thriving life. I get to decide what that looks like.

Last year, my friend Caroline Skrdla invited me to attend a program called Landmark. Once again, new work, discoveries, and ideas nudged me forward in my understanding of myself and others. I saw miracles you cannot imagine in people's suffering over four days, that I didn't think was possible. A Cambodian woman who became my friend in the months after, of really working to get the ideas implemented into our lives, dropped her victimhood and her story around living and surviving her childhood during the killing fields. A nine year old, abandoned and left to tend her two younger siblings through months of deprivation and starvation, in one weekend, simply walked away from the terror and suffering of her thoughts and experiences.

I learned a little extra piece at Landmark that was and still is hard sometimes for me to accept, but only because I let it be hard. Loving what ISN'T. It's a fine line between loving what is to love what isn't. Example: loving my mother how she is and isn't. How she is? In heaven right now. How she isn't; or maybe wasn't? Not in my life much from the time I was five and gone by her own hand by the time I was nineteen. Not here to be my mom or grandma to my children. (Funny how that can be written in a single sentence and represent SO MUCH emotion and time)!

I know! I hear the question...BUT...you cannot imagine how many buts I've bounced off my sister friend Cari. But, how can you love that your mother wasn't there and that she committed suicide? How can you love those things?

What are my options? Not loving it causes my suffering. And I don't want to suffer. I wrestle with other ideas that bring me suffering until I let go of my firm grip on them and accept. Freedom.

If Victor Frankl could come out of the horrors of the holocaust still reasoning, that he had choice, and there was a space where he could make that choice and choose his attitude in ANY circumstance, what can we do? What can you do? How can we look newly at viruses, and riots, and political parties, and our neighbors and family members and what we THINK about them? Will we do what it takes for freedom? Not the general freedom that I believe most Americans seek after, but the freedom that allows a daughter without a mother, a black woman, a Cambodian girl, a Jewish man, and hundreds and thousands of others, and YOU right now in what you are suffering, to be REALLY free.

See, I have to admit that growing up in the world without a mother, and one who took her life, ISN'T the worst thing that could happen. I don't want to know what the worst thing in the world is. What I DO want to know, is how can I choose today, in the circumstances that I am tempted to suffer in; how can I choose differently? By choosing differently. By thinking differently. There are many other things in my life, I could choose to be a victim over, but my life had a lot of happiness, even with the "bad." It's because of how bad things WERE, that I can appreciate how GOOD things can be and are!

One of my friends who is wrestling her thoughts into new creations, shared an idea with me this morning. Here is how I ended up internalizing what she shared. The "Mormon" pioneers are some of the greatest examples in history that I know of that loved what was and loved what wasn't.

In the words of our revered hymn...(Just one of four amazing verses)

ALL IS WELL (verse 3)

Why should we mourn or think our lot is hard?

'Tis not so; all is right.

Why should we think to earn a great reward

If we now shun the fight?

Gird up your loins; fresh courage take.

Our God will never us forsake;

And soon we’ll have this tale to tell—

All is well! All is well!

Not all WILL BE well, all IS well. They too suffered deprivation, starvation, and suffering at the hands of our own government and mobs with the intention of exterminating them. Yet they sang, ALL IS WELL.

Today, as I awoke, tempted to believe the thoughts that brought me to tears, I chose instead to absolutely know that all is well. As many of us have heard from wise friends and family members over the years, typically grandparents, everything will be all right. The hymn of the early Saints of my faith, improved on that idea that flows through the generations. All is well. I'm standing in the freedom of that thought.

 

Sentimental Old Me

IAT = I am thankful

For my leaning toward sentimentality.

While vacuuming this morning around a chair that used to be my great great aunt's, and thinking of the loss in our community, I had two thoughts. Why am I so sentimental about things? And why do I love LDS funerals? Funny how our brains work sometimes. So, I just let my thoughts go and kept vacuuming.

I find it gut wrenching to rid my life and house of objects that belonged to loved ones. Before this morning, I never questioned why. As my family has encouraged me to clean up, clean out, reduce, minimize, it feels like I am letting THEM go. Currently my husband wants to get rid of the big oak table he made me for Christmas one year, and the big hutch desk that I made the same year. I look at him like he's grown an extra head.

As the vacuum reached under the couch, there was my mother; standing right in the middle of it. It's funny how her tragic end so very long ago, still has silver threads all intertwined in my head and my heart and my life. And my belongings.

The lifetime hopes of a relationship with her were "wrenched" from me when I wasn't paying attention. Trinkets and personal items didn't mean that much to me before then. But somehow, a place within me mistakenly thought that if I held on to a thing that someone owned, somehow I was retaining a part of them. Just recognizing that helps me to know, that's not true. But in my mother's case, not having known her long, I can understand why I might think that. The clinging doesn't change the past.

It's not just objects though, I'm sentimental about a lot of things. Exchanged letters, family recipes, cookies, music from the past. The longing left over from the losing, seems to be all wrapped up in it. Happy memories help transcend the loss.

I'm realizing that the very few memories I have of her, are far more precious that what I own that was once hers. That applies whether it's my mother's belongings, or my grandparents, my aunt, or the hundred little memorable things my children have made or given me that I have squirreled away as boxes of treasure.

Putting my hope in temporal things as worthy as some of that may be, doesn't hold a candle to Who I can put my trust in. Cue the love of funerals. I know it's weird! Maybe not so weird if you've ever been to an LDS funeral. If not, it's a positively confusing, uplifting swirl of emotion. But it nearly always ends with not just tears being dried, but lingering smiles and quiet laughter and fond memories all swirling together with satisfaction than embraces the sorrow.

Hope, and promise, and faith, and trust in the realness of things we cannot now see. Most of my LDS friends haven't accomplished much in the way the world might celebrate, though many of them are talented and accomplished. There is joy in finding out the little pieces of them that are planted in others after they are gone. The quiet, thoughtful, kept in the heart secrets that blessed the lives they touched. I also love hearing the story of their lives contributed by others that were a different experience than we created together.

Like the friend who died who owned dozens of cookbooks because she loved to read them, but she didn't cook. She made long lists of people she intended to bless and worked her way through them. Her life touched hundreds of students. Or the friend who I had no idea how many adventures he had growing up, including dangling his younger relatives out of the bottom of a plane as they skimmed over the desert. And how he'd drop everything to be there for a friend. Or the piano teacher who touched thousands over the years personally and musically. Who suffered many years physically but never complained and always wore a smile on her lips as she inquired about you and encouraged others. Or my friend's grandson today, who isn't remembered for scholastics, or sports, or music necessarily, but the rose left for every girl without a valentine, the helping a stranded stranger with a car in his suit while his date waited, the dancing in the kitchen as a handsome prince with his baby sister and her cousin dressed as princesses.

The celebration of their lives goes deep down in me, touches me, and inspires me to be and do a little better than I am being and doing.

My mother's funeral was not like that. I sat behind a curtain with my other family members who I did not know, at the front of the congregation. There was a disruption by a family member that completely stressed me out. The music was unfamiliar and there was only a little joy in hearing what some of her friends had to say about her. Perhaps it isn't fair because I can't think of a funeral at any church that would be a celebration when there is suicide. I can't think of ever attending an LDS funeral under those circumstances.

Anyway, with the vacuuming over and the funeral of the first of three boys finished, and time to ponder, I marveled at the teenage girl sitting alone among family strangers, with nothing and no one familiar, and a load of grief, regret, and sorrow, contrasted with a large family, larger extended family, hundreds of friends, and hundreds of supportive church and community members and the shared joy and laughter in the celebration of a life cut short far too young. (No, I'm not correcting that runon sentence. At least not now). I left uplifted by the faith and hope and trust in a Father with a great plan of happiness.

It's quite a difference. I love the faith, family, friendship, and fellowship, the shared burden, and the ultimate truths that lift and inspire and hope and trust in a forward time when there will be no more tears or grief or sorrow because of a Savior and His Father with a great plan of happiness that returns us to Him.

Knowing that, and the source of my clinging to things, allows me to consider letting go of the things, and embracing what truly brings joy. Interacting and sharing my life in such a way that when the time comes for my funeral, people will leave drying tears from their eyes, with a softened smile on their lips, a chuckle in their heart, and wanting to be and do a little better than they are being and doing. Maybe their sorrow will be kissed by the satisfaction of a combined story lived through each person I touched. My hope is that they too will look forward with hope to a loving Savior and Father and the plan that brings us all back together and a desire to be and do better.