Bridge Building

When I was in the middle of the battle of my life; when I was in the struggle to save the life of my husband and the integrity of my family, I stopped writing journals. I kept everything secret. I didn’t share the realities of my struggle with anyone. Only myself, Kirby, and my children--when they were old enough to be aware-- saw this side of our lives. I didn’t even journal during this time, because I didn’t want to leave a record of any of this. I knew that somewhere down the road, if we all survived it, that this part of my life would be something that I would want to forget and move past. It is odd to me, therefore, that this very aspect of our lives, the one that I most tightly guarded and so privately held, is now the part of my life that I am attempting to share with the world.

I am sure that for many of our acquaintances, and even extended family members, this story will be unexpected. So, why would I reveal it now? We have successfully emerged from this darkness. It is almost forgotten--as I had hoped it would be. We have found a way through a great mountain of obstacles. Our hearts have been healed and comforted. Why would I go back now, to a place so painfully endured and so nearly erased to lay it bare for all to see?

These are questions that I have pondered for a long time. I have considered that some may not want to know these truths; that sometimes we hide our difficulties to protect others. I always have thought that preserving the privacy of personal struggle and imperfection is important. Privacy is very important to all of us. I have been noticing lately, however, that the people and stories that inspire us most are those that are the most real. Those who are most fearless in revealing their own path though pain to healing often weld the most power to touch our hearts. This is because each of us will face tests of character and endurance during our life.  Ultimately, the purpose I have in telling this story now is contained in the message of this old and beloved poem:

The Bridge Builder

An old man going a lone highway,
Came at the evening, cold and gray,
To a chasm, vast, and deep and wide,
Through which was flowing a sullen tide.

The old man crossed in the twilight dim;
The sullen stream had no fear for him;
But he turned, when safe on the other side,
And built a bridge to span the tide.

"Old man," said a fellow pilgrim, near,
"You are wasting strength with building here;
Your journey will end with the ending day;
You never again will pass this way;
You've crossed the chasm, deep and wide-
Why build you this bridge at the evening tide?"

The builder lifted his old gray head:
"Good friend, in the path I have come," he said,
"There followeth after me today,
A youth, whose feet must pass this way.

This chasm, that has been naught to me,
To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be.
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;
Good friend, I am building this bridge for him."

Will Allen Dromgoole

My Witness

When I was young I often imagined what my future would be like. In my imagination, I would live in a cottage in the mountains. It would be surrounded by lovely flower gardens, and I would have many rosy cheeked children playing around it. I would spend my time joyfully taking care of my home and happy children. I would of course, have a handsome husband, who loved me dearly and who provided for us and kept us secure and safe.

As I got older, my plan became more practical, and at the same time more detailed. I would marry an educated, ambitious man, who was active in the church, loved me dearly, and who supported my desire to be a wife and mother full time. He would work and I would take care of our family and home. We would be active in the church and serve in many callings. While the children were in school I would do volunteer work with the PTA, and in my spare time, I would be a writer.

When I met Kirby and we shared the vision of our future together--our dreams were in sync. He was the perfect man of my dreams, down to the color of his eyes and the spread of his shoulders.  He was intelligent, hard working, a returned missionary worthy to take me to the temple, and ambitious with a life plan. He treated me like I was the rarest treasure, and he made me feel safe and loved.

After our temple sealing, (1983) we embarked on our new life together with optimism and an enthusiasm for life. We loved each other, and we were excited to start our family together. We happily welcomed children into our lives. Kirby was a Korean linguist for the US Army, so we went wherever the Army sent us, striving to be together as much as we could, and writing long letters when we were apart. I wasn’t living in a cottage in the woods, but rather, in an apartment in San Francisco, or in a hooch in Korea, or in Army housing in Maryland, but it didn’t matter where we lived, because each place we occupied, in whatever location we were in, we were filled with our love for each other, and our optimism for our future, and our joy in our beautiful, growing family.

About 2 years into our marriage, Kirby’s bipolar disorder started to manifest itself. Of course, I had no idea what was happening when my protector and the love of my life suddenly stopped on the side of a freeway between North Carolina and Maryland, got out and started walking down the road. There I sat with a toddler in the backseat and a pregnant baby belly. I was being a bit obsessive about the carpet requirements in our new housing unit at the time--stressing about the expense of the requirements, and Kirby told me to stop talking about it. Of course, after a brief silence, I had one more thing to say, so immediately thereafter Kirby pulled off the road, got out of the car, and started walking down the side of the freeway.  I thought I saw him climb into a semi truck that stopped for him, and I was completely devastated. I had no idea where I was, where I was going, or how to reach anyone I knew. I had no money with me. My parents, who had helped us move, were  on route back to Utah. I didn’t know my way back to my brother’s house in North Carolina, or my way to our new place at Fort Meade, Maryland. Finally, after several minutes of breaking down and then collecting my shattered self, I started driving down the freeway again, thinking I would pull off at the next exit and try to call my brother. That’s when I saw Kirby walking along the side of the road and I pulled over to pick him up. He was surprised that I had taken so long to pick him up. I completely lost it at that point, and when I stopped sobbing, Kirby apologized for upsetting me, and promised never to do that to me again.

Unfortunately, that was just the beginning of a long journey through repeated episodes with a similar dynamic. We mended the rift after each episode, and we loved each other harder and more desperately, but the smooth ice of our life together had been cracked, and the seams left us more vulnerable and less secure with each passing year.

In the years that followed, each time there was a crisis, Kirby would leave me again, physically or emotionally. After the anger and crisis were over, I would pick Kirby up, proverbially, by the side of the road, where I had been left lost and stranded, and where he was walking powerless and solitary. Each time he would get back in the car that was our life, and retake his place in the driver’s seat and we would continue going down the road, which was our life together—Again and again this happened, until finally we were just surviving the cycle. We were each so beaten down by the disease that was bipolar disorder, that we didn’t know how to do anything but keep playing the part we had given ourselves to play—that of driver and passenger in a car that never seemed to have the capacity to fully make it to its destination—our happy ending.

Finally, life intervened with a war (2003). Kirby deployed with the Army National Guard, and I stayed home with a house full of kids and a full-time job. I wondered what had happened to my life’s happy ending. I wondered what would become of my marriage, my family, my life in the future. I was broken, Kirby was broken, but we were still playing the parts we had given ourselves to play. I didn’t know how to get from the survival mode I was living in, to a place where I could truly feel hope, joy, and happiness again, but the desire to find a way kept me acting my part from day to day for many years.

That was the condition I was in, not so many years ago.

That is not where I am today.

Today I live in a beautiful home, with flowers growing around it. My children and grandchildren are in and out—each one beautiful and active. Each one fills me with hope and joy. My husband, Kirby, provides for me. He is handsome, hard working, loyal and generous. He treats me like a queen and a treasure. I no longer work outside of my home. I take care of my family and my home, and sometimes I volunteer, and sometimes I write. Somehow I was transported out of my despair and back into my happy ending. How did that even happen?

You know, when I was younger, I used to wonder how God could expect us to love him more than anyone else. How could I love Him more than the wonderful parents that raised me, or more than my husband and children that I had loved and sacrificed for for many years? I couldn’t even remember Him, or see Him. Well, that is no longer a question for me. I love God above all, because he rescued me. He rescued my husband, and he can rescue each of you. At some place along the road I was traveling, I finally surrendered the wheel of that car, which represents my life, to God; and Kirby and I got into the back seat of that car and we let God drive the car. I finally learned to trust God, my Heavenly Father, and His son Jesus Christ, my Redeemer, and to believe that they know where we are supposed to go, and that they can and will take us to a place where we will find peace, love, and joy. I stopped being afraid. I started having faith. I started applying the atonement in my life until I was finally able to let go of past pain and allow myself to be healed. My life changed—not all at once, but as I could understand and accept the changes--they occurred. The cracks in the ice of my relationships were healed over and eliminated, and I was left whole and intact. Today, I love God and trust Him above all because of the transformation that occurred in my own life. Each day I seek to be worthy to feel His Holy Spirit. I seek the Spirit through study, prayer, and obedience; because having The Spirit with me takes away my fear. He teaches me to trust, and to love, and to forgive, and He allows me to live with joy.

I hope that each of you can learn to trust God; that you will seek him by study, and also by faith and obedience. I testify that They (the Godhead) will be there when you do. God the Father who waits on you to come home, Christ the Savior who can heal your heart, The Holy Spirit guide who will be in your heart. You will have times when you will sense the holy angels ‘round about you which are bearing you up in your trials. This is my witness, my experience, and the evidence of my life, which I offer to you humbly, and in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen

What is More Important?

The other day one of my Facebook friends, a young mother with three children, expressed some of her frustrations with trying to maintain a clean and orderly home while struggling with the ever present chaos of family life. She was asking for practical suggestions from her friends, even though she is exemplary in maintaining this kind of order and cleanliness. She very probably was merely venting to a friendly audience, and looking for moral support and encouragement with the hard and demanding job that is motherhood.

I made a comment on her comment stream that went a bit against the grain of things by suggesting that messes can wait, and that taking care of herself--if she is feeling stressed out, or relaxing with her family--if they need her time, may be a priority higher than the cleanliness her home. Of course she resisted my suggestion that a mess might wait until later to clean. I'm not sure she really heard what I was trying to say, but I have experienced these same stresses, and I have had some memorable moments in my life, when my husband has rightly put me in my place, by demanding that my first attention be placed on him, or on our family, rather than on the practical work of my career, whether that career be teaching, or running a household.

I was thinking today of times when I have observed people who are experiencing a natural disaster. Often you see this kind of thing on the news. A reporter will put a microphone in someone's face. You will see the ravaged remains of their homes and possessions in a heap behind them, and invariably, when asked for their response on the tragedy they have just survived, those people will speak of gratitude for their lives, or the lives of their families, and gratitude for the help they are receiving. Rarely will they bemoan their messed up beyond recognition house.

It is impressive to me, that when the material accumulation of a lifetime is literally demolished in a moment, a person's gratitude for life and family most clearly comes into focus. If we could manage to keep that priority order in tact through our normal days and routines, maybe we wouldn't need to have disasters in our lives to direct our focus towards things that matter most--cause they would already be there.

Yes maintaining order in our lives is an essential element for peace and progress, and it is important; but it is not more important than our own and our families' needs for light, truth, love, and attention.

Yes, Jesus taught that we should have order, but he demonstrated to us repeatedly that we should love God and others first, and that we should take time out of our schedules to administer to the one--even when that one is ourselves.

He took himself away and was alone with God. He paused along the way to administer to the needs of others. He was never so driven by his "schedule" of things to do, that people became less important than his "to do" list.

I hope that as women and mothers especially, that the homes we keep and the order we strive to maintain is not a focus that takes priority over the people we serve.

Dealing with Disparity

Growing up as a child and youth, I had a pretty clear perception of what I wanted my life to look like as a wife and mother. This turned out to be both good and bad for me. It was good, in that my early vision of what my life would become inspired my choices and influenced my goals. My dreams kept me working hard and striving to achieve good things. But it was also bad, in that upon arriving at adulthood, I kept measuring my personal and my family's success against my childhood vision of my mentally perceived future. Unfortunately seen through this lens, I found myself feeling both frustrated and defeated when my life didn't follow my own preconceived course at all like I had envisioned it. The result was, that I ended up holding myself, my husband, and my life's circumstances up to a standard that wasn't based on reality, and that ultimately wasn't fair to anyone.

During many of my adult years I could have chosen to be more content with my life. I could have stopped trying to measure my life's progress against my own idealistically enduring, yet clearly unrealistic standard. Even today, I am clearly continuing my efforts to become the person that the child in me is demanding that I become.

Are these happily after dreams of my youth the goals I should still be aiming for today? I have, for the most part achieved the place that I have been trying to arrive at during my whole life. After much effort, I actually am here, and it is wonderful! So perhaps, my stubborn loyalty to idealism has been a good thing. I feel satisfaction at being at a place that resembles so closely the potential future that I envisioned long ago. "Arriving" has certainly brought me much satisfaction. But a big part of the process of "arriving" actually came for me, from accepting that my life's process, which was much messier and meandering than I had once perceived that it would be, was and is okay. Accepting is also a place that I came to be, that had to proceed my arrival at the place that I am.

Ultimately, I have learned to appreciate the effort it took to get here, and also to value the meandering path through those many unexpected obstacles, that I traveled along the way. I can now see the growth that my struggles and the adjustments to my plans produced in me.

It is at this point that I understand that the complex path that brought me to the place of my vision was more valuable to me than an easy stroll down an unencumbered way would have been. It was the struggle to get here that made me what I am today.

To "arrive" has been a great satisfaction to me and I have relished the joy of it, but I also realize that I must press on from here and continue to challenge myself with dreams of new vistas. New plans and schemes, though much less clearly defined in my mind than the views of my youth, now must take me beyond what I had initially imagined. I need to create a new vision for my future that builds upon the foundation of all that has occurred in my past, and though that new vision is still being formed in my mind, I feel I am reaching a tipping point where I am ready to explore those possibilities.

Receiving Joy

Over a year ago I quit my job "to write."  This last year and a half, I have spent only a small portion of my time actually writing.  Most of my time has been spent preparing to write. I have learned about writing, thought about what to write, and pondered the format in which I could write--but I have not taken a direct path to writing.  I have spent most of my time getting my house in order--literally and figuratively.  I have relished having time to love and serve my family, and others, whenever the opportunities arise--and I have found that these types of opportunities arise often.  I have spent time to fill my own mind and soul with knowledge and the spirit, thereby I have been learning much and I have been recognizing and following more closely the promptings of the spirit in my life.  Seeking a topic to write on and a point of view from which to write has been something I have pondered for many months.

In the 16 months since I stopped working full time as a teacher I have done a lot of de-cluttering and cleaning out.  I have refurbished my home and my life's focus.  I feel like I am finally at a place that I can begin to write.  I have sought for the message that God would have me share with others, and it keeps coming down this: I need to share the story of how the transforming power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ has been made manifest in my life to--heal, reveal, transform, and uplift me, to free me from the bondage of past hurts, sins, and pains.

I am trying to wrap my mind around how I can encapsulate 56 years of experience and learning onto flat empty pages in a way that can uplift and teach others the lessons of my life.  I am still unsure of how that journey will play out, but I am depending on the Holy Spirit to guide my way so that I can discover how that can happen as I do it.

First memories

When I look into my past, to try to identify where my testimony of Jesus Christ and his gospel began, I see myself as a young child, walking into Jr. Sunday School with my arms folded. I hear the pianist playing songs that I know about nature and beauty and the love of my Heavenly Father.

Skies are fair above us;
Leaves are on the trees.
Flower buds are nodding,
Swayed by gentle breeze.
Loving hearts are happy
While we work and play.
God is in the heaven;
Joyous is our day.

In sky and land and river wide,
The work of God I see;
Oh, may my heart be full of thanks
For all he gives to me.

I feel a quiet peaceful feeling that wraps me as in arms of love, and I am grateful to be there.

On another occasion, I see myself sitting next to my Father in an afternoon session of Stake Conference that I chose to attend, even though my brothers and mom had decided that one session was enough for them and had opted to stay home. I remember feeling special to be there with my Dad alone, but also, I remember feeling a warm peaceful happiness in my spirit--that witnessed to me that my Heavenly Father was also pleased that I had chosen to be there. I would have been about 5 years old at that time.

I remember loving parents and teachers, grandparents, siblings, and friends providing security and love to me through out my childhood. I remember loving the beauty of nature. I remember attending church weekly, and listening to conferences. I watched my parents and grandparents serve in their callings, as they taught and lead in ward and stake positions. They willingly gave much of their time and talent in serving the Lord.

I grew up knowing what I wanted in my life. I wanted what my parents and grandparents had, a happy marriage, a home, gardens, children, gospel knowledge, opportunities to serve God in wards and stakes, loving ties to friends, neighbors and relatives built by shared experiences, enriched through playing and working together, and founded on love towards others. These are the building blocks of my youth that undergirded my life and forever affected my views of success and the aspirations for my future life and which lit my testimony of the gospel of love, and inspired faith in my Heavenly Father.