The highlight of my week

I am not a really funny person. I don't remember jokes easily. I like to laugh, but I don't generate much hilarity on my own. So when something strikes me as really funny it's like this divine gift. I savor it. While I was in the nursing mother's room today I heard one of those things that will make me happy for years. Let's hope I can do justice to this great piece of entertainment:

A friend was relating this conversation she had with her husband about our Relief Society Christmas party where I played my guitar while we sang carols.

Husband: How was the Christmas party? Was it nice?

Wife: Yeah, it was nice. Jody played her guitar and we all sang along. It was fun.

Husband: (looking confused) Jody played her guitar?

Wife: Yes, she played her guitar and we all sang Christmas carols.

After a few minutes, the husband was still sitting there looking baffled and thoughtful, so the wife had to find out what was going through his mind.

Wife: What are you thinking about?

Husband: Didn't you just say Jody played air guitar while you all sang along?

What a priceless mental image. I'm thinking we should try it for next year's party.

Shine, the condensed version

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
--Marianne Williamson

Shine, shine, shine

I read a conversation the other day about losing oneself in service. Not in the warm, fuzzy, charitable way, but in the Oh Dear Lord Where Have I GONE?!!? way. One of the women said that while she was at home with her children, she used to chant, "I want to be a window to His love, so pure and so clear that when my family looks at me, they don't see me at all, they just see His love for them. ...And then I cried and cried." I tried to relate this story to a friend the other day and was surprised that I choked up, too.

Usually I try to ignore the rock tumbler effect of life at home with many small children. It's not the only situation that requires a lot of tedious, monotonous, thankless work. I don't think it's inherently wrong to have a large family or to do it young. I DO think it takes serious concerted effort to do it in a way that's healthy for everyone. And I HATE the idea that you can-or even worse-should disappear in service to the Lord or any good cause. Losing yourself in the work doesn't mean fading into oblivion. I think it means losing the parts of yourself that weren't all that great to begin with and, through the grace of God, magnifying all the wonderful stuff He gave you in the first place. At the end of my life, I still want to be ME, just a much better, more dignified, more refined, more satisfied version of me. I believe identity counts for something. What's the point of being unique if your goal in life is to try to rub out your own identity and replace it with a bland albeit very effective service machine? A piece I love from the Bible dictionary on grace:

"It is likewise through the grace of the Lord that individuals, through faith in the atonement of Jesus Christ and repentance of their sins, receive strength and assistance to do good works that they otherwise would not be able to do if left to their own means. This grace is an enabling power that allows men and women to lay hold on eternal life and exaltation after they have expended their own best efforts."

How can I expend my best efforts without doing it in my own personally specific way? The parable of the talents applies here. I didn't receive a unique spirit just to bury it, assuming God doesn't mind because he already has so many great children. It's sacriligeous to think that the Lord would accept 15,000 changed diapers and 230 hours in PTA meetings in exchange for meaningful, personal service to Him.

The purpose of all this is to buoy me up because it's really easy to forget sometimes. I periodically fall into that annoying, pseudo-martyr, self-pitying thinking everyone hates in other people. Does it really matter who did the dishes as long as they're done? How do I contribute in a unique and meaningful way to the laundry on any given day? Does it matter that I'm the one who sends off my husband's mail? Couldn't anyone else fulfill my duties as well as I do?

In my life, the solution is to concentrate on the people. Yep, the dishes would probably be better done by a maid. An au pair could handle all the diaper changes. A secretary could send off the bills. But it's my voice my kids hear reading to them as they go to sleep. It's my hand that strokes my husband's hair. It's my own soul that's illuminated by love and understanding when I pray. That counts for something.

That doesn't mean everyone else is off the hook. I am more than a cook and chauffer and I think the people in my life have a responsibility to acknowledge that. Just like I have a responsibility to nurture the people I also serve. But when I remember the inherent worth of my own soul, the mechanics of daily life take their rightful place in the eternal scheme of things.

As for being a window to His love, I'd rather not aspire to that. I could handle being a filament. Or a wick, because I feel less ridiculous comparing myself to an oil lamp than to a light bulb. I want to be so devoted and so faithful that when my family looks at me, they see His glow, and they know that I couldn't have accomplished all this without Him. That His love sustains me as I offer them my love. When they then turn to Him, His love will transform them, too.

No audience in mind. Just writing for myself. But you can still read it if you want to.

Was it July when I posted that? As in 7 months ago? My life is like a set of interlocking gears-- all working together at the same time but all rotating at really different speeds. I'm a huge gear in the analogy. I feel like I don't change much at all over the course of a few months. But my little kids-- they're exceptionally small. Several whole rotations for them only move me about a tenth of the way around my axis. In the last seven months, my littlest one moved from laying there to crawling to almost walking. He learned that he likes his family, that strangers are the devil, that he likes food, that maybe all strangers aren't the devil, that he can get what he wants by being cute, that it's fun to bounce, that his siblings are hilarious, that the car seat means no attention for a while, that teeth are useful.... His whole world has changed. Me? Well, I've lost maybe 5 pounds. I've gone through a few cycles of happy-brooding-happy. I've aged a few years (sleep deprivation speeds things up exponentially). Other than that, things are a lot the same around these parts. I'm a slow moving gear.

Yeah...and that kind of half baked idea is the reason I don't do more of this. I know I have the mental capacity to do better, but I'm terribly fragmented at the moment. I don't like being faced with tangible proof of just how rusty my communications skills are. I keep starting to write, then recoiling at my lack of clarity, and putting it off for that magical time in the future when my brain will start working again. Ah, sweet procrastination.

I had a friend in school who had this uncanny way of seeing me exactly as I was. He was my honesty. I lost touch with him at a time in my life when, fittingly, I was behaving in a self-deceiving way. But when I think about him, I usually also take a few minutes to see how I'm really doing, inner-working wise. It's an odd contradiction. I cringe a little bit at the first glimpse of true introspection, but all in all I like to see the whole honest picture. I like honestly taking stock and seeing who I currently am. Here's the verdict for tonight: Lately I feel like I've been drifting, but I'm still in sight of Jody island. I've been standing on the beach for a while now, watching myself way out from shore, paddling a fishing boat around in big circles. I've been shaking my head and wondering what on earth I'm doing out there. But now, finally, I seem to have awakened enough from my aimless paddling to ask myself, Yeah, what AM I doing out here? (Why shouldn't I play multiple parts in my inner-drama? It was cool when Captain Jack did it. We're all fragmented to some extent). So I've spotted myself on shore, where I'm smacking my head and gesturing widely in a "Finally!!" way, and now I've turned the boat towards home. As I pull myself in, the dregs of seaweed and such are streaming out behind me and sloughing off in the tide. It's slow going, but by the time I reach the island, I'll be completely clean. Or something. I only hope I'm still waiting there for me when I get there. Knowing me, I'll probably have wandered off to try and make a bonfire out of coconut leaves or something. But hey, the chase is always an adventure.

I haven't decided if I want this blog to turn into an online scrapbook like some of the ones I like to visit, or if it'll be a place for random (and I mean really reeeeally random) thought fragments, like the ones from tonight, but in this nebulous state, I'm going to count it as good that at least I'm posting something. The process will become more refined as I actually do it.

And now I've allayed my conscience somewhat for being a bloghog--all reading and no posting. And I can go to bed.