When Impossible Things Become Possible

“...for with God all things are possible” (Mark 10:27)

It's amazing the difference one single choice can make in your life. I also love how good God is at preparing you to make choices that will allow Him to bless you.

I never intended to be a military spouse. I was actually adamantly against it. When we were dating, I told Ted that wasn't an option. I would NOT be married to someone in the military. I hated the idea of the government being in control of my life: where I lived, when I got to see my husband, etc.

Ted, on the other hand, has always wanted to join the military. He nearly joined multiple times before I met him. He was actually training to join the Marines when he broke his hand in a bike accident and, as a result, decided to go teach English in Russia, which is where he met me.

Both of us, over the years since we got married, just assumed the other person would change their mind on the subject. Ted assumed I would decide the military wasn't so bad after all and let him join eventually, and I assumed he would see that the military wasn't a good fit for our family and give up his dream of joining. From time to time the topic of the military would come up, and we would both discover in surprise that the other person continued to feel the same way about the issue as they had before: Ted was still interested in joining, and I was still against it.

When after several of these conversations I realized that even with the passing years Ted’s desire to join the military had not diminished, I reluctantly agreed to let him apply for an officer position in the Navy as part of his job hunting activities. I was hugely relieved when he was offered and accepted a civilian job before completing the Navy officer application process. I figured that would be the end of Ted’s pursuit of the military as a career.

Then Ted’s brother began talking with a recruiter about joining the Army National Guard. In my mind, it made way more sense for Ted’s brother to pursue this course than Ted, because Ted’s brother was still in school and could get some free training and experience and additional schooling paid for by joining, whereas Ted already had his degree and a good job in his field--what did he have to gain? Besides, I had always thought the National Guard sounded like the worst possible option: why would you give the government control over your life when they aren't even providing you with a full-time job to pay the bills?

Then at a family party I was part of a conversation with Ted’s brother that God used to shift my perspective on what joining the National Guard could mean for Ted and our family. We’d had a lot of financial difficulty since I quit my job to stay home after the birth of our first child, especially that first year after Ted graduated. We were making more money now with this second job, but digging ourselves out of the debt we’d gotten into that first year after having a baby seemed an impossible task. I didn't regret choosing to stay home with my child, but I didn't know how we were going to improve the financial situation that choice had put us in.

While talking with Ted’s brother, I suddenly saw joining the National Guard as an opportunity for Ted to get a second part-time job to supplement our income that he would actually like and be excited about and that wouldn't conflict with his full-time job (except in the case of deployments, which his full-time job was required by law to be okay with and not punish him for). Of the two sacrifices, I realized that I was way more willing to have Ted get a second job and increase our income that way than I was to get a job myself and put my children in daycare. And if Ted was going to get a second job, the National Guard was the obvious choice, since it would be something that he would feel added meaning and fulfillment to his life, not just increased the burden of providing for his family.

Suddenly I found myself being the one suggesting that Ted look into joining the military (more specifically, the Air National Guard). This was so out of character for me, I knew it was God who was inspiring me to suggest this course of action. During the time that we were pondering this option for our lives, Ted and I were able to visit the temple. During that temple session I felt like God went through and addressed each of my biggest concerns about taking this step. I knew He was encouraging me to go forward with this choice and to trust Him to take care of me and my family.

Ted joined the Utah Air National Guard last April, and that choice has made so many blessings and miracles possible for us. Getting out of debt now seems like a real possibility rather than the impossibility it seemed to be before, and it's all a result of this one choice God guided us to make. It took many years of preparation, especially emotional preparation, for me to be ready to make that choice and to handle it well, and God was kind enough and knew me well enough to take the time to prepare me to make that choice so that I could receive the blessings He wanted to give me. I am so grateful for His wisdom and His desire to bless us with what we need when we seek to do good and to follow His will in our lives. I love how much more perfect His plan always is than my own.

My Identity as a Mother

I was having a conversation with someone about how many children we were planning to have. The person I was having the conversation with has two children and feels like that is the right number for their family. This made me think about what it would be like to be done having children at this point, with only Sam and Grace. Thinking about this made me realize that I am definitely, 100%, NOT ready to be done having children.

Ted and I were already planning on having more children, but I didn't realize how strongly I felt about it until this experience. I just got used to my identity as a mother of small children, and I am not ready to give it up yet. I can't imagine just having these two kids that just keep getting older so fast, forcing me to reinvent myself again way sooner than I am ready for. I don't want them to grow up and become all independent and have to go back and get a job again! No thanks!

I complain a lot about the challenges of being a stay-at-home mom, but there are a lot of things I really love about it as well, and I realized I have become pretty attached to this stage of life. So, even though there are drawbacks to starting over again and again each time a new baby comes along and losing the newfound freedom you’ve gained as your children get older and become a little more independent, I am not ready to give up my critical role as a mother of infants and small children. Having more kids is definitely the right choice for me at this stage of my life, and it's comforting to know that, even as I wonder how on earth I will manage to care for a third child on top of the two I already have. People do it though, so it must be possible. And I now know that that is definitely the life I want for myself, despite the challenges it will bring. So I will go forward with faith, trusting that the Lord will give me the strength and wisdom I need to succeed.

Life Philosophies

There's a conversation Ted and I have had several times throughout our marriage. It's a discussion about the Rudy philosophy versus the It's a Wonderful Life philosophy. In the movie Rudy, Sean Astin’s character sacrifices everything to follow his dreams, while in the movie It's a Wonderful Life, Jimmy Stewart’s character sacrifices his dreams to fulfill family and community obligations. Which is the correct philosophy? Which is the worthier objective? Which is the more worthwhile sacrifice?

I realized that neither of these philosophies is a 100% correct philosophy for everyone all the time. Following your dreams at all costs can lead you to act selfishly and damage your relationships with others. Sacrificing too much of your own needs and desires to meet the desires and expectations of others can be unhealthy and can create unhealthy relationships.

The only philosophy that is true for everyone 100% of the time is the one contained in the following Bible verses: “And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength, this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:30-31).

The only thing thing or person you're supposed to be willing to sacrifice everything for, all your heart, soul, mind and strength, is God. Not your dreams, not a cause, not your talents or career, not another person, not a material possession--only God. That’s the answer.

You may be asking, why is God the only one worthy of such a sacrifice? Because He is the only one who has already sacrificed everything for you. Jesus Christ paid the ultimate price of the atonement, took the pains, sicknesses, and sins of every single one of God’s children on Himself, which gave Him, and only Him, the power to save each of us and ensure our ultimate, eternal peace and happiness. He is the only one who knows the correct path for each of us to take in our life, what dreams, causes, relationships, and talents to pursue, to help us learn what we need to learn to reach our full potential, do the most good in this mortal life, and prepare for salvation in the next.

Sometimes we have the philosophy, my life will be complete when…(insert mortal experience that we think we have to have in order to be happy: marriage, children, career objective, material possession, etc.). This kind of philosophy can be a dangerous one. To think that your happiness requires some specific mortal experience or possession or achievement is foolish. Either you won't get it and you will think that you can't possibly be happy without it (and you can't be as long as your focus is all on that one thing--marriage, career, etc.), or you’ll get it and realize it has not brought you all the happiness you will ever need, and you’ll either keep trying to make it do that when it doesn't have the power to, or you’ll lose direction and meaning in your life (ex: Olympic athletes who win the gold and then don't know what to do with themselves after achieving that dream).

God’s plans and dreams for us, on the other hand, are with our eternal progress in mind, and each step we take on the path He has laid out for us brings us a step closer to an eternity of joy and increase. No experience we have here is a waste or a failure; every experience can teach us something that can draw us closer to God and help us become more like Him, which is our ultimate goal, and one we can never fully achieve in this life or without the Savior’s help. The more we choose to seek out and follow God’s plan for us, even, and perhaps especially, when it requires sacrifice, the more we will learn, and the more peace, joy, and love we will feel. God wants His children to be happy, and only by sacrificing our all to Him will we find the true, lasting happiness we are seeking, accomplish the things that are most important for us to accomplish, and become the people we have the potential to be.

Food Philosophies

I had a discussion with my mother-in-law about food the other day, and I realized that her philosophy on food and feeding your family is totally different than the food philosophy I grew up with in my family. My mother-in-law had eight children, and she did an excellent job of consistently providing healthy, balanced meals for her family to eat. One of her big things was making sure everyone had a filling, nutritious, hot breakfast to eat every school morning so that they would be in the best physical state to be able to learn and excel at school. As she was describing to me her process of planning and preparing meals for the month or the week, I realized that her main concern in planning meals for her family was nutrition. She took little to no thought about whether or not her family would like the foods she had decided to prepare. 

That's totally different than the way food planning worked in my house growing up. When I try to plan food, I feel an enormous amount of pressure to make food that people will actually like to eat, myself included. Nutrition was a secondary concern in my family. The main concern was whether or not people liked the food that was prepared. My mother-in-law claimed she didn't really have any picky eaters in her family. I, on the other hand, come from a family of picky eaters. I'm sure many of you reading this would say that this is the fault of my parents and their parenting. And you could be right. I don't really know. All I know is that in my family it was considered inconsiderate and unkind to offer hungry people food they could not eat because they did not like it. You may as well not have made food at all for all the good it did them. 

As a child, my mom was forced to sit at the table until she’d eaten whatever food was prepared, whether she liked it or not. This was such an unpleasant experience for her that she was fiercely determined never to do that to her children. Looking back, I'm pretty sure food was a big comfort thing for my mom, one of her coping mechanisms for dealing with other difficult or unpleasant things in her life. In my family, my dad was the one with the responsibility for making dinner. That's just the way things worked out in the division of responsibilities based on my parents’ individual strengths, weaknesses, and preferences. The reason I think food was a comfort thing for my mom is because if my dad made dinner and tweaked the recipe in a way that made it taste different or made something new that my mom didn't like, it wasn't just an inconvenience for her, it was a tragedy. How dare my dad ruin the meal that way. 

I see a little bit of that food as a comfort thing in myself as well. On my mission, for example, I had a companion who would get so caught up in missionary work that she would sometimes forget to plan in time for us to eat lunch. I had to let her know that I could not function without eating all my meals, partly because I get really cranky if I don't eat regularly, but also because I was doing so many things that were hard for me as a missionary, I really needed to be able to rely on the comforting safety of good food at regular intervals to help me stay sane and cope with the hard things. 

I'm not sure what the moral of the story is with all this. I'm not saying that one food philosophy is better or worse than the other--for now, I am just noticing the differences. I feel like that is the first step in making a deliberate choice about what your own philosophy will be--realizing that there are different ways to think about something and that you can choose how you think about it. Do I have any responsibility to take the food preferences of my family members into account when making food, or is the nutritiousness of the meal I offer the only important consideration? What do I want to teach my children about food and its purpose? How do I want to teach that? What is an appropriate way to react to encountering food you don't like? How should I best teach and model that for my children? These are all questions I must answer as I figure out what my own food philosophy will be.

On Being Female

With all the discussions on gender these days, I’ve been pondering the differences between male and female. I feel like the feminist argument is that the only difference between males and females is the difference in sexual reproduction equipment. All other differences are social constructs that should not be imposed on people. Besides in the category of body parts, males and females are exactly the same and should be treated exactly the same. 

On the other hand, you have the transgender dialogue which says that there is something besides your sexual reproductive organs that makes you male or female. This seems to run counter to the feminist argument. According to feminism, there is nothing abnormal about being a girl who likes trucks or a boy who likes dolls, for example; it’s just society pushing girls in one direction and boys in another, not anything innately different in the nature of boys and girls. The transgender argument, however, seems to say that if you identify with things that society says are more traditionally things associated with members of the opposite gender, like if you are a boy that enjoys dressing up and wearing makeup, for example, then you are not just a boy that likes things society says that only girls should like, but instead you may be a female trapped in the physical body of a male, suggesting that there are internal differences of some sort between males and females, not just outward physical differences. Somehow it seems that the same people subscribe to both these arguments, even though they seem to contradict one another.

One thing I’ve found interesting about the personal stories of transgender individuals that I’ve read (these stories are of individuals who were born with male body parts but who feel that they may really be female) is the level of importance they place on their desire to dress up and look pretty. In their stories, that desire seems to be emphasized as a core part of their transgender identity, or their identity as female rather than male.

What I find interesting about this is that I am a female, but I do not consider dressing up and looking pretty as a core part of my identity. It's something I do occasionally because society expects it of me, but it is not something I enjoy doing or that I feel is an important part of my identity. I don't feel like that makes me any less female though. It makes me less stereotypical female, but not less core identity female. I think there are women for whom dressing up and looking pretty is a core part of their female identity, but I am not one of them. (I have a suspicion that this may be influenced by whether or not dressing up and looking pretty is a core part of your mother’s female identity, meaning that it is something learned, not something innate, but I don't know for sure.)

This begs the question, if we lived in a time and place and class of society in which dressing up in fancy clothes and wigs was acceptable for men, would these transgender individuals feel more comfortable in their male identity? Or is their focus on dressing up in female clothes and wearing makeup merely an outward manifestation of other inward gender differences that are simply more difficult to express and less noticeable/unacceptable to other members of society? What does it really mean to be male or to be female, outside of stereotypes that society tells us we should expect from each gender? That is the million dollar question, I guess. And I don't have an answer. Just musings. 

If my personal female identity is not defined by female stereotypes such as liking shoes, purses, jewelry, makeup, clothing, shopping, scented candles and lotion, facials, interior decorating, and arts and crafts, what is it defined by? Having breasts and a vagina? That does seem to be a significant part of it. The fact that because of the body I was born with my responsibilities include pregnancy and breastfeeding? That also seems to be a pretty significant part of my identity as a female. Attached to that, a sense of the importance of my responsibility to teach and nurture my children? That is definitely a huge part of my current female identity. The fact that in order to sexually reproduce I must marry a man? That was actually a somewhat troubling fact for me in my youth since I was not especially impressed with the male population I observed around me; luckily, I found a Ted :) 

I feel like most of my personal identity as a female is tied to the way my body functions and the unique responsibilities I have because of that. Perhaps also my female friendships and the common struggles we have to deal with our emotions, form meaningful relationships, find someone to marry, have and raise children, and find meaning in our lives. Gender identity seems so straightforward when you are not someone who struggles with gender dysphoria, which I think is why it is such a difficult struggle to understand for those who don't experience it. I am female because my body is female. I don't have to do anything to qualify for the female group except have the body I was born with, which lends itself to certain strictly female activities, such as menstruation, childbearing and breastfeeding. I have these things in common with other females, either the reality of them, the memory of them, the hope of them in the future, or the grief for the lack of them. These are the things that form in large part my female identity. I'm not sure what it means to be female outside of those physical aspects and all that comes with them, unless we're talking about some of the more superficial stereotypes, most of which don't apply to me. Those are some of my musings on being female.

"O Wretched Man That I Am"

My study of the Book of Mormon this week brought me to these verses written by the prophet Nephi:

2 Nephi 4:17-18

17 Nevertheless, notwithstanding the great goodness of the Lord, in showing me his great and marvelous works, my heart exclaimeth: O wretched man that I am! Yea, my heart sorroweth because of my flesh; my soul grieveth because of mine iniquities.

18 I am encompassed about, because of the temptations and the sins which do so easily beset me.

My thought reading these verses this time through was, “I have been there so many times.”

When I was younger I didn't understand Nephi's words in these verses. Nephi was a very righteous man, a prophet even. What on earth was he talking about?

Now I know. No matter how righteous you are, none of us is perfect. We each have our own weaknesses that we struggle with, and sometimes those weaknesses can seem so all-consuming and so difficult to bear. And when we have been working on our weaknesses for a long time and feel like we have made so much progress, and then our weaknesses rear their ugly heads again and knock us down and make us feel like we haven't made any progress at all, it can be so so frustrating and discouraging. We feel like saying, “O wretched man (or woman) that I am! Yea, my heart sorroweth because of my flesh; my soul grieveth because of mine iniquities. I am encompassed about, because of the temptations and the sins which do so easily beset me.” 

It doesn't matter what those temptations and sins are that beset you or how they compare to anyone else’s. Any sin will keep you out of heaven, no matter how small. Every single one of us needs the atonement to overcome the sins and weaknesses that we personally struggle with, that are keeping us personally from becoming more like God. 

Nephi goes on to say, “nevertheless, I know in whom I have trusted,” and talks about all the ways God has supported him in his trials, delivered him from his enemies, given him great knowledge and visions and sent angels to minister unto him. Then, starting in verse 26, he says, 

“O then, if I have seen so great things, if the Lord in his condescension unto the children of men hath visited men in so much mercy, why should my heart weep and my soul linger in the valley of sorrow, and my flesh waste away, and my strength slacken, because of mine afflictions?....Awake, my soul! No longer droop in sin. Rejoice, O my heart, and give place no more for the enemy of my soul….Rejoice, O my heart, and cry unto the Lord, and say: O Lord, I will praise thee forever; yea, my soul will rejoice in thee, my God, and the rock of my salvation.”

Nephi turns the focus from himself and his weaknesses to the Lord and His mercy. He recognizes that it is Satan, “the enemy of [his] soul,” that wants him to “linger in the valley of sorrow” and allow his “strength [to] slacken” as he dwells on his weaknesses and allows discouragement and self-deprecation to consume him. Those feelings of discouragement and despair do not come from the Lord, and Nephi realizes that he must shake them off and instead rejoice in the Lord and His mercy and the power the atonement gives him to repent and be forgiven and change.

The Lord has an infinite amount of love for each of His children and is way more patient with us than we are with ourselves. The Lord says in the book of Ether, “I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them” (Ether 12:27). In the next verse He says, “Behold, I will show unto [my children] their weakness, and I will show unto them that faith, hope and charity bringeth unto me--the fountain of all righteousness.” 

When we are confronted with our weaknesses, we can give in to the enemy of our souls and allow our souls to linger in the valley of sorrow and our strength to slacken, or we can choose the Lord’s way and face our weaknesses with “faith, hope and charity.” When we have faith and hope that we can change and become better and that the Lord will help us, our outlook on our lives and ourselves is so much brighter, and we feel so much more motivated to keep moving forward and striving to become better. The Lord is full of charity and love for us, and He wants us to extend that kind of love to ourselves and to those around us. May we all learn to do that and to “rejoice in the Lord” rather than “droop in sin” is my prayer, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Dealing with Hard Emotions

A little while back on Facebook I saw this quote by John Gottman:

“Your emotional awareness and ability to handle feelings will determine your success and happiness in life.”

I think there is a lot of truth to that. The most difficult thing about most hard things in life is the emotions that come with a particular event or circumstance. I feel like we spend a lot of our life developing coping mechanisms to deal with hard emotions we experience, and then we spend the rest of our life trying to unlearn the unhealthy coping mechanisms we’ve developed and replace them with healthier ways of coping with hard emotions. We know we’ve really progressed when events or circumstances that used to trigger hard emotions for us no longer do because we’ve learned to see those events/circumstances in a different, more truthful way.

I thought I’d share some of the lessons I’ve personally learned while learning to cope with difficult emotions in healthier ways in my life, in case the things that I’ve learned could help someone else in their own learning process. 

One of the biggest lies I believed before learning to handle hard emotions better was that the way I felt was a result of other people's words/actions. I gave way too much control of my feelings to other people. Because of this I loved other people, but I was also terrified of them. I loved people because they had the power to make me happy when they noticed me or spent time with me, but I was also terrified of them because they had equal power to make me sad when they ignored me or rejected my overtures of friendship. 

This false belief caused me problems in a few different ways. First of all, it made me incredibly sensitive to the way other people reacted to me because I was always trying to gauge my acceptability as a person and how I should feel about myself based on how others reacted to me. Obviously problematic. As I mentioned in an earlier post, how other people react to you is often a much better reflection of them and their current emotional state than it is of you and your value as a human being. 

Another problem this false belief caused me took me a bit longer to recognize, but was equally damaging to me and to my relationships. Believing that my feelings were determined by others and their interactions with me, I tended to put too much of the burden of keeping me happy and feeling good about my life on those who were closest to me. I thought that when I was sad I needed those close to me to show me love to make me happy again. I knew I usually felt happy when I was with people I loved a lot, and so I focused my life on spending as much time as possible with people I loved and feared the times when I could not be with them. I became emotionally dependent on other people, which hurt both them and me.

The biggest lesson I had to learn in dealing with hard emotions is that other people are not in charge of my emotions; I’m in charge of my own emotions. I found this to be both a freeing and a terrifying truth. No one is responsible for making me feel happy in my life except me. I have the power to do that, and I also have the responsibility to do that. Only me. Of course it’s easier to be happy generally when you have people in your life that love you and a job or activities to do that you enjoy, but day to day, minute to minute, you are the one that has control over your own feelings and actions and the one that determines your own happiness by how you think about and interpret the world around you and what you choose to do.

One thing I noticed as I learned to unravel my feelings and trace them back to their source was that the trigger for hard emotions I experienced was often different than I initially thought it was. How I explained to myself the reason for my sadness was often not the actual trigger at all, making it difficult to resolve the actual problem. I think that is often the reason we struggle to resolve difficult emotions: we’re looking for solutions in the wrong places to fix things that aren't actually the source of the problem at all.

Let me give you an example. Often I get sad when I try to use my relationship with someone as a coping mechanism for a different problem. For example, maybe my house is a mess and I need to clean it, but cleaning sounds hard and my motivation to tackle the actual problem of a messy house is low. What’s actually making me unhappy is a messy house, but instead of tackling the actual problem, I try to find a different way to feel better, such as hanging out with a friend. When my friend can't hang out, I am sad that I cannot use that means to feel better and start bemoaning my lack of friends or their lack of desire to hang out with me, when my real problem is not a lack of friends but the fact that I have a messy house that I haven't cleaned yet, but I’ve convinced myself otherwise. Or maybe I have the responsibility to make a phone call or perform some other task that sounds hard, but I’m avoiding it, and so I start feeling a desperate need to know I am loved in spite of failing to accomplish something that someone else is expecting of me or that I know I need to do, when really if I just did the thing I knew I needed to do instead of procrastinating I would have no need to compensate for my failure to do it by getting reassurance of love from someone else.

So, the end lesson I’ve learned from all this is that when I start feeling difficult emotions such as loneliness or a desperate need to feel loved, one of the best ways for me to feel better is not to wallow in my sadness or start seeking reassurance of love from my friends, but instead to push through the hard emotions and start doing something that I know needs doing. If I’m feeling frustrated that I’m living in a messy house, I need to get up and start cleaning it, not wallow in my frustration and wait for someone else to take care of my problem for me. I have the power to solve my own problems and change the way I’m feeling. Often all it takes is a little productivity to realize that my problem is not a lack of people that love me or the amount of love I’m being shown--neither of which is a problem I have the power to solve, since it involves the agency of others--but rather my failure to create meaning in my life outside of other people and work to accomplish good things on my own. Once I start working to accomplish something, even if I really am not feeling motivated to do so starting out, by the end I feel so much better about myself and my life, and all the other problems I thought I had and the hard emotions I was feeling dissipate in the positive feelings created by working to accomplish something good. 

Yes, so that’s my two cents of wisdom for today: if you're feeling sad, particularly if your sadnesses tend to stem from things you make up in your head and not actual life problems, push through the sad feelings and start working to accomplish something you know needs to be done, even if that task seems to have nothing to do with what you’re sad about, and you may find that what you were sad about is actually less of a problem than you thought it was and that productivity has miraculously produced an overall happier state of mind for you. Prayer usually helps a lot too. When I pray for help to see things differently and feel better, and then I get up and do something, the Spirit will often also teach me a little nugget of wisdom or a different way of seeing things that magically makes me feel better as well, and makes me a wiser person overall. I love you all, and I wish you well in learning to cope with your own difficult emotions--one of the greatest challenges we all face in this life, I think, but one that it is possible to overcome with the right tools and a lot of hard work.

*Note: For some people, the right tools may include medication and/or therapy, and that is totally fine. Whatever works best for you for handling the difficult emotions you struggle with (what those emotions are and what triggers them is different for everyone) in a positive, healthy way is great. No judgement here.