Author: Broken Handmaid of the Lord

I have to stop reading, but I can’t.  It is too raw and real and familiar, but at the same time, it is inevitable that I should walk her path and learn her truth.  Finding yourself underneath the layers that others have built on top of you for their own reasons is the hardest thing to do.  That is Tara’s story, and it is my story. There are so many parallels, it feels as though she is me and I am her. Her complex emotions and relationships bring my pain to the surface. She tells my story. How can I keep reading? How can I stop?

She left the church.  She couldn’t fit.  Will I fit?  Will I lose everything like the one who sold all for the pearl of great price, the one thing that is indispensable, my own soul?  How can I?  How can I do otherwise?

Life in a fallen world is a cycle of birth and death.  The caterpillar is constantly growing and shedding old skins.  What was once new and alive becomes dead and confining.  The future is unknown to the small creeping thing until one day the chrysalis opens and it flies to its destiny among the clouds.

I am a babe upon my Savior’s knee.  Who am I to say what my destiny is and where he will set my feet?  If he tells me to go, as Abraham went, to seek a better way, to find him anew, I will go.  Still, I feel as though I am stepping into a dark void.  The darkness surrounds me like an inky blanket, my brain groping for certainty like a mountain climber in a free fall. 

Marvelous are the ways of my God!  He will not fail to give me support.  He searches for me in the darkness of my afflictions.  The lamb cries out and the shepherd will come without fail.  He has engraven me upon the palms of his hands and he will not forget.  The one who takes note of the sparrow’s fall will not leave me comfortless.  Oh Lord guide my steps and those of my sisters who walk my path in these troubled days.  We are of more worth than many sparrows.  Thou that seeth the value of all things knoweth the worth of the souls of thy daughters, and thy heart is moved with compassion at our tears.  Our prayers are not lost to the void, but do rise to the height of thy halls and echo within thy chambers.  Let thy mighty hand be made bare!  Let thy daughters rise up and put on their beautiful garments.  Let not our oppressors know victory, but let them taste defeat!  Let them know that there is a God in Israel and he has the power to save!

I started a new audiobook today. I listened to first few hours of Educated by Tara Westover, a book several of my friends recommended to me. It is about a girl from Idaho that was raised in an extremist religious home on a junkyard. She grew up to achieve postgraduate degrees and this is her memoir of her journey. It took me a while to decide to read the book. I think subconsciously I worried that she would look down on her family and her roots.

I’m from Idaho, and I have very sacred fond memories of running wild and free across our land. We didn’t have a lot of land compared to some of our neighbors, but there were few fences, and most of them barbed wire. I learned from a young age how to get through a barbed wire fence without getting hurt- at least not very badly. I remember waking in the morning with a rush of excitement in my consciousness. I would slip on my swimming suit, which was all I wore during the summers, and go out exploring with my little brother tagging along behind me. We spent days in the sun, tramping through weeds, riding bikes, swimming in irrigation ditches, and going on “hikes.”

“Hikes” were magical. With a little bit of imagination and bravery, you could find anything on a hike. You could catch grasshoppers, or if you were lucky, little yellow butterflies. You might see wild rose bushes, smell some sage brush, or find the occasional tree growing next to the irrigation ditch. Once I found a dead robin covered in ants. There were adventures to discover, treasure maps to draw, buried treasure to find, and sometimes a life and death drama, like when our cat, Midnight, first climbed to the top of the power pole.

I remember how sad I was when we moved to the city. It was like I left a part of myself on those acres of scrubby grass, weeds, and dirt. There is a connection to the land living in the country. Something in the air and the water that teaches you that you are only a part of the world, you don’t own it. That you rely on the land, and the land sustains you. It sustains everyone. I learned that what we reaped we sowed, and if we made a mess, it waited until we cleaned it up. If you didn’t know how to do something, you taught yourself how. Living in the country teaches you self-reliance. It isn’t a skill, it’s life.

I could tell all kinds of stories that would curl my city friends’ hair! Stories about jumping off porches into snow banks, dropping pebbles into our pump well, and even an open sewage pit in our backyard….We had to fix our own plumbing problems, and for a while we had to dig up our septic system to fix it. Yes, some kids went swimming in it, and they got in big trouble.

Looking back on my childhood, there is light and there is shadow. I’ve spent a good chunk of my adult life sorting out that and confronting the shadow. Shadows are a part of life in a fallen world. They aren’t bad, they just are. Everyone has one and the brighter and more piercing the light, the darker the shadow. One thing you learn pretty quickly as an artist, is that shadows are very important. The more art I do the more I come back to that simple fact. Shadows can make or break your artwork. They add interest and dimension. They define a shape. They create texture. Rich deep shadows are just as vital to art as light and color. As an artist, you learn to look at them without judgement. In looking at our past, that is harder to do.

We want to look at the good things only, and skip over the shadow. We want to put a rosy glow over everything and distort the image. Our consciousness slips past the complicated and messy places of our lives. We lie to ourselves about who we are. We tell ourselves that what we think we see, is what is real. That’s how non-artistic people see the world. Everything is in stick figures, tables have four legs and so do chairs. Nothing is shown in three dimensions. No shadows are drawn in. It isn’t real, and everyone, including the non-artist knows it. The problem isn’t in their hands, it’s in their minds. My art teacher used to say, “Draw what you see, not what you think you see.”

My Savior says, “Tell me what you are, not what you wish you were. Tell me your sins. Show me your shadow. I know you have one, and it doesn’t make you worthless. It’s part of you, and I love you. I love your shadow and I’ll show you how I can take you, and your shadow, and make a masterpiece out of you. Do not be ashamed, only believe!”

Educated isn’t what I feared it would be. I see myself in little Tara, the ragged girl who looked up to the Indian Princess in the mountain for comfort. She describes the land she grew up on in loving detail, and describes the light as well as the shadow of her past. It’s a beautiful book, and better, very honest. She hasn’t simple-mindedly rejected her past and her family, she has embraced them as part of her history and part of what has made her who she is today. She is not embittered at her difficult childhood, although it was difficult by almost anyone’s measure.

The story is a strange one that reads like “Little House on the Prairie,” except Michael Landon plays a man with severe bipolar disorder, undiagnosed and untreated. And there is a strange juxtaposition of modernity, symbolized by “the feds,” and the simple life of isolation, enforced by stockpiling weapons and food. The story has no clear “bad guy,” just a man at war with himself, trying to manage a disorder that is far too big for him. He turns to more and more extreme ideas to manage the chaos within, but in doing so, he cripples his family’s connections to a healthy network. His inability to confront and accept his own shadow creates a yawning chasm in his life that makes lasting intimate relationships with his children impossible. His insistence on self-reliance at the expense of connection, cuts him off from all the sources of support that could help him deal with his demons, which he refuses to acknowledge. It would be a tragic story, except that there are clear signs that several of his children have managed to rise above the darkness. Of course, I haven’t yet finished the book, so I can’t be sure.

I hope this turns out to be a story of hope for those families plagued by mental illness. God is merciful to all his children and he will not allow any wounds that he lacks the power to bind up. Homes and families that suffer are not left alone. The Master is ever watchful over his little ones. Miracles happen, and blessings come in unexpected places. Blessed be the name of the Lord!

I have had a recurring dream that I had again three nights ago.  It takes place in various settings, but all of them rather grand halls.  One in particular had the look of a football stadium it was so large, but also ornate and very fine.  I am supposed to put on some performance.  Usually it is with a choir, but sometimes it is in a play.  If it is a choir performance, I have spent the whole day obsessing over preparations for the event only to forget my choir dress, or to have brought the wrong one.  I have traveled some distance, and there is no way of correcting the error.  Sometimes the dress is something like bright yellow, which would be very conspicuous.  If it is a play, I have forgotten my part, or never knew it in the first place, and my costume is incomplete, or missing entirely.  I’m not naked, but not wearing the expected costume.

The key emotional aspects of the dream are the inevitability of what will happen.  From the beginning of the dream and my obsessive preparations, I know I am going to come up short, then when I do, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.  There is the stress, the embarrassment, and the complete lack of options other than letting everyone down and failing completely to contribute to the performance.  The stew of emotions has become so familiar I can readily bring up the memory of them.

What is a costume or a choir dress to me?  It is a mask, a role, or my non-shadow self that I present to the world.  The choir dress is significant in the uniformity of it.  I am not allowed to stand out or differ from the other members.  The costume in the play is significant because I am not allowed to be myself, but to conform to a role, a part that I am playing.  For whatever reason, I am unable to meet the demands of the society I am in.  I can’t play the part, wear the mask, or conform to the expectation. 

In the last three years, I have found myself in several of these kind of binds in my conscious life.  First, with my own family.  I have felt that the person that I have become is vastly different than the person my parents wished I would grow up to be.  In some ways, I see myself as disappointment to them, but in other ways, I am defiantly defensive; angry that they don’t see the very positive aspects of myself the same way I do, as essential parts of my core person that I am determined to nurture although they are undesirable to them.  In the end I feel exposed and self-conscious, as though wearing a bright yellow dress in a field of navy blue singers; isolated and out of place.  My husband’s family likewise is disappointed in my unwillingness to conform in my ideas and perceptions. 

My church is in a climate of change right now, which is good for me, because I am also in the midst of great transformations.  It is as though I have constructed a chrysalis and my insides are being melted down into something completely different than I was before.  Perhaps something that can fly?  I am becoming something I was always meant to be, but something much different that I was before, which is scary for everyone.  What will become of my relationship with the church of my childhood?  Will it be big enough and welcoming enough to accommodate my new wings?  I see many encouraging signs, but the future will take time to reveal itself.

Lastly, and perhaps most dramatically, I have parted ways with my old party, the GOP.  Unlike the other groups I have mentioned, this one has not been due to my transformation, but the transformation of others.  The party that used to exist in 2016 is no more.  Of course, I am not the same person politically as I was three years ago, but I still hold most of the same core values as I used to.  On the other hand, the GOP has become infected with a severe case of populist nationalism that has made it entirely incompatible with my value system.  I seem to recall one version of my dream when I came to the concert dressed in an old choir dress and everyone else had on a new one.  That is how I feel about the GOP.  I no longer fit and there is no solution but to leave the concert.    

What is my subconscious mind telling me?  The stew of dream emotions is familiar to me in conscious life.  It forms the backbone of so much of my suffering.  It is evidence of the dreaded double bind.  There is no easy path, and most of all, no path that involves comfortable companionship.  I am alone in my yellow dress.  What of the concerts?  What of the play?  Should I go out on stage and proudly perform, pretending to be what I am not?  Should I exit the affair and find another production?  Should I give up the stage and become an accountant? 

One of the things you learn in plays or choir concerts, you are part of a team.  There is no maverick on the stage.  It is a brutal place where you will be seen and judged by hundreds of people.  This binds performers together in a way that few other things can.  It isn’t fair to your team to stand out and ruin it for everyone, but what if conforming is impossible while also being true to yourself?  What if you know in your soul that the show won’t be right without you?  That the hole is too big to justify leaving the stage entirely?

This analysis leaves out the part of my own fallibility.  Usually the dream involves my own absent mindedness, not a principled choice to rebel.  But in a way, owning my shadow side, the absent minded side, is the whole point of the dream.  My principled decision to accept my own fallibility and embrace my whole self, including the person who lets down her friends and fellow performers, is the conflict represented by the dream.  How can I accept her though?  She is not able to play the part.  Perhaps the answer is that she needs to ask for help?  Perhaps in asking her community for help, they will see the conflict and come to the rescue?  Perhaps they will see that the old dress is preferable and change their own costumes?  Perhaps the solution lies with the group and not with me alone?  That’s an uncomfortable situation as I have so little power over others. 

Whatever the group decides, I have to embrace my own self, including the shadow side regardless of how much difficulty it causes the people I love.  Hopefully there will be room for me on the stage.  Hopefully a solution will be found that makes it possible for me to contribute in spite of my flaws.  Vulnerability is the key.  And asking for help.  And having a little bit of faith that God will provide a way, just as he did for the Israelites through the Red Sea.  All things are possible to Him who knows all things.  In his mighty hand, I will place my trust.

The spirit was electric in sacrament meeting today. The theme was charity and I felt my heart swell with it as I sang the songs and listened to the sister missionaries give their talks. Refrain from judgment. Take the time to nurture others by really understanding them and their needs. Have more faith! Let God work miracles through you. Bring his sheep to Him!

The spirit works on me in interesting ways in this stage of life. In sacrament meeting one moment, I am singing, the next Austin pulls my face away to look at something or knocks the hymnal from my hand. One moment I am making connections and feeling inspired, then I am pulling a device away from an older child. It is fragmented and frustrating and sometimes I wonder why I bother to come at all. Then today as I wrestled my grumpy baby, Devin turned to me and said, “Can I take him out for you Mom?” So my big thirteen year old carried my baby out for ten minutes to get his wiggles out. As I watched them go I thought of how blessed I am to have these children in my life. It is worth it to bring them and teach them to listen, to teach, and to serve.

The Lord has blessed me so richly these last few months. I have seen his hand in so many ways. I still have depression and anxiety. I am still finding myself and exploring my purpose on the Earth and how best to follow my Lord. I have acted with courage these past months. I have become comfortable with being uncomfortable online. That openness has bled over to my personal relationships in the real world. As I looked around the chapel today I saw many friends that I know on a deeper level now. Because I took off my protective armor, because I have dared to be real and vulnerable, I have found a deeper intimacy with those around me. Giving myself permission to live and feel without fear has made everything in my life better.

Now I am starting to feel comfortable with my life. What took courage and effort before isn’t so difficult. That means it is time to reach a little higher. I have so much desire to bless others and alleviate suffering. There are people the Lord has for me to bless this year and I’m going to find them. I refuse to listen to the fear and doubts that hold me back. I have been spinning my wheels for long enough, and now it is time for me to act and let the miracles start!

First, I want to adopt some grandparents. We have a couple of assisted living centers close by and my boys might be a real blessing to some lonely people we can visit a couple of times a month. One of the biggest flaw I see in our society is our lack of connection between the generations. Children and the elderly need one another, especially in a world where paychecks too often define the value of a human being.

Second, I want to mentor a refugee family. I haven’t been involved with the Refugees of North Texas for a few years. The election of Donald Trump and the rise in xenophobia among my friends and family has discouraged me. I have allowed despair to prevent me from acting in faith in behalf of the suffering, but no more.

Third, I plan to become more involved with politics. I’m not sure exactly what that will look like, but probably attending town halls and actively campaigning for candidates advocating changes to the trend of political polarization whatever party they belong to.

After I wrote this I started having panic problems.  I have a hard time trying to run faster than I have strength…..I don’t need to rush right back into my depression!  Maybe for now, I can just be comfortable.  At least for another day…..

My spirit is willing, but my flesh is weak.  My heart is bigger than my body can support sometimes.  Through the mercy of my Lord and Savior, my poor efforts will be enough.  Blessed be the name of the Lord!

THESE are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated. 

The Crisis, by Thomas Paine

This Mythic America series has been a lot harder to write than I thought it would be. It isn’t that I don’t know what I want to say, it’s how I want to say it. I’ve had so many ideas bouncing around in my head. I wrote the War Vector chapter, but I don’t like it. I’m trying write it so that everyone doesn’t end up hating every word, but it isn’t working. The message I have is not going to be popular. The Savior wisely said that men don’t like new wine, they prefer the old. I am definitely cooking up a vat of new wine. Cheers!

I’ve been reading Modern Man in Search of a Soul by Carl Jung and that has spurred a thousand thoughts. I’ve been watching Donald Trump’s Twitter feed growing increasingly erratic. I thought it was bad before, but he has taken it to a whole new level. Watching my country slowly bleeding to death from self inflicted wounds has sparked a desperation inside of me to figure out how we got to this place and how to get us out. How did Russia, our old cold war nemesis, manage to rise from the ashes like a phoenix and strike us with such astonishingly powerful venom? How can we have become so vulnerable to the overtures of a tyrant? How can we unite again as a nation and throw off the despot’s yoke? Will the Republican Party survive their treachery? If not, will another party rise up in its place? Will the Democratic Party take advantage of the power vacuum and create a one party nation? It is already vastly powerful, but with no serious competition how long will it be before it is odiously corrupt?

These are not political questions. These are not even national questions. Quite literally, these are global concerns with relevance to future generations yet unborn. We are at war with forces we scarcely understand and our choices today have consequences far beyond the present moment.

First off, I want to communicate something that I never realized until this year. The Democrats and the Republicans need one another to be strong and healthy. I always thought that politics was a zero sum game where one side’s loss was the other side’s gain. In electing Donald Trump, we cut off our nose to spite our face. Now we are bashing our head into the wall, slitting our wrists, and drinking copious amounts of poison. The left is thinking that it’s going to be okay because all the wounds are on the right side of the body. They think the right side of the body will die and they will survive, but the trouble is, if one side dies so does the other. The Republican Party’s fall to authoritarian seduction will kill the Republic one way or the other.

Abraham Lincoln understood this concept of symbiotic dependence. He didn’t demonize the South like other Northerners did. He understood that a healthy, well functioning union would require all of the states, not just the Northern ones. After the war he and his successors did not seek to subvert and enslave the South, but to rebuild it. If there is ever to be a truly United States again post Trump, we need to put aside our differences and come together on principles that we can all agree on. That is going to take some humility and some soul searching on both sides of the political aisle. I can hear the left screaming on Twitter that I am being unfair, that Trump is not their fault. I would say that children talk about fault and blame. We need to rise above childish things and talk about solutions. We are going to have to do difficult things and have uncomfortable conversations. We will need to question long held views and shed simple answers to complex issues. Most of all, we need to stop demonizing one another. That is what Putin wants. Today he sides with Trump, tomorrow, he will find someone worse. He will not relent until the free world goes up in flames and all men are under his heel or the heel of someone like him that he can relate to and control.

Perhaps you think these difficult things are not necessary. You feel that you can continue to live in freedom and prosperity while the fabric of our nation unravels around you. Perhaps you believe that the system will hold, that Trump is not so dangerous, that the Democratic Party will save us, or the Republican Party (Trump Party) will be able to force the country to accept authoritarian rule. I don’t see that happening. I see the nose of the plane is pointed at the ground and if someone doesn’t change the course, we will crash and die together along with the hopes of the entire world. God expects us to do what we can to preserve the blessings he has given us, rather than watch impotently as they disappear depriving our children and grandchildren of life in a free Republic. The stakes could not be higher, and no one is going to like what I have to say about what we need to do about it. No one.

Still, as I read Thomas Paine’s ingenious essay, I felt a spark of hope. Perhaps there is a way out of this quagmire. America has had dark days in the past. We have struggled with disunity and disloyalty to freedom’s principles in the past. We have endured dark times and perhaps we will rise above this panic. Time will tell.

Yet panics, in some cases, have their uses; they produce as much good as hurt. Their duration is always short; the mind soon grows through them, and acquires a firmer habit than before. But their peculiar advantage is, that they are the touchstones of sincerity and hypocrisy, and bring things and men to light, which might otherwise have lain forever undiscovered. In fact, they have the same effect on secret traitors, which an imaginary apparition would have upon a private murderer. They sift out the hidden thoughts of man, and hold them up in public to the world.

The Crisis by Thomas Paine

This morning started early for me, as it has every Christmas morning since I had kids. The energy in the air was electric as my boys rushed to sort the gifts. Austin had already opened two before we were able to force some kind of orderly pattern on the occasion. There was still torn paper and cardboard everywhere, scissors passed around to release stubborn toys, and Nerf darts flying all the while.

Having worked with children, my own and in the schools, for decades now, I still marvel at the difference between children and adults. Children think ten times more, they move ten times more, and they believe ten times more than adults do. They trust and they feel and they have faith as easily as they breath. It is no wonder that the Master said that we have to become as little children to enter the kingdom of God.

I had two gifts this Christmas from my Savior, both very old and very precious. The first was the story of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. I got a copy long ago with the most gorgeous illustrations I’ve ever seen. This year we sat down as a family and looked at the pictures. I retold the story along with a few of my favorite pages, told with the appropriate overdramatic flare that those who know me well have seen. 🙂 The boys paid attention remarkably well as I took way to long to explain the characters in loving detail, and compared the transformation of Ebenezeer Scrooge as a kind of rebirth.

As a young boy, Ebenezer Scrooge sat in the cold lonely schoolhouse with only his books and his imagination. Even though his life was far from ideal, he had his imaginary friends and fanciful stories to provide comfort and companionship. His heart could love and feel the full range of emotion. Later in life he became old and cynical and even with all the money and resources in the world, he could not have been more miserable and poor. His heart was cold and unfeeling which gave him power in the adult world that is often cruel to those who dare to feel. The ghostly visitors and their messages wrought a mighty change in him, a change of heart. He saw the truth, that only as we peel back the protective layers of cynicism and fear, only as we face the reality that the intangible things of this world are of far more significance and value than what man tends to prize, that we become as little children, able to treasure the glorious possibilities of a life filled with hope and faith. We are reborn! With the wisdom and experience of age is added the energy and enthusiasm of childhood. A truly reborn soul, fresh with the enabling power of Christ newly flowing through his veins is a veritable force of nature! Nothing is impossible to such a soul, and as hard as Satan tries to crush him, he only becomes stronger and more resolute.

The other gift from my Savior was a very old song, made new again to me with the movie that I watched of the same name. Silent Night. It was done by BYUtv so I didn’t know if it would be any good or not. Low budget Christmas films can be disappointing, but I took a chance and I’m so glad I did. I spent most of the film bawling. I thought to myself, “I’m more of a baby than Austin is.” And I was. Perhaps I was being reborn! I don’t know how much of the story was artistic invention and how much was based in fact. I don’t care! It was the story of my life and it spoke to my soul on a primal level.

Joseph Mohr, a young German priest resists his superior, Father Noestler, and insists on preaching sermons in German instead of in Latin, insisting that his congregation needed to not only hear the gospel of Jesus Christ, but also understand it. He goes about in his youthful enthusiasm recruiting for his church choir from the local tavern where he picks out the best voices from the drunken singers. He packs his Catholic church with sinners whom he loves and serves. Father Noestler decides to transfer him because he can’t stand the growth and life that the young priest brings to his calling. He has become old and cynical and confesses at one pivotal moment in the film that he used to be like young Joseph, but had long since found that his efforts were not worth it; that people don’t change.

In response to a series of tragic events, Joseph Mohr, and his sometime friend and collaborator Franz Gruber, write the song Silent Night and in defiance of the cynical Father, sing it on Christmas Eve with their checkered choir. Joseph Mohr is transferred, but the congregation sings his song far and wide and its beautiful simplicity has rendered it immortal.

Two truths came into focus for me in watching this movie, one is the fear that is created in the world when something is born again. When someone taps into the power of the atonement, and the message of the Savior, the world gets turned upside down. Death and decay are miserable, but they are expected. Jesus Christ brings life! It is scary and unpredictable and full of energy, like a class full of first graders in the throws of the delight of learning. There is paper and glue and messes and noise. There are arguments and tears. Ideas pop around like a popcorn popper without a lid. Nothing is impossible or off limits. That’s scary to an adult world used to slow death and dying; the predictable melancholy of cynicism. A fourteen year old boy might get a vision and start a new church! A young mother might start a blog and write about depression and anxiety! Revelations might happen. Anything might happen. That’s scary, but I can get comfortable with fear. That’s what courage is for.

The other truth is that if I decide that I will not relent; that I will continue to have faith and hope as a little child, that my Savior will provide for me, just as he did for Joseph Mohr. Just as he did for Ebenezer Scrooge. There is value in what I do, even if it seems that the world is collapsing around me. Maybe especially then. It occurred to me that there is plenty of dead religion in the world. Plenty of crusty old wine bottles. Plenty of pews full of judgmental sinners who think they can work their way to heaven while denying the need for the atonement in their own lives. There isn’t enough of the pure religion; that charity which never faileth. That is what I want. That is what He wants for me and for all of us.

My Master loves me. He gives me good gifts at Christmas time. As is his custom, he gives gifts to me on his birthday. When I should give to him, he gives to me, and my cup runneth over. I will continue in faith and in love. I will keep telling my story and giving my witness. He lives! Children love Him for they are innocent and alive, just like we can be, if we are reborn in Him. His path is a path of life, and though death and decay are certain, the resurrection is also certain. He has overcome the grave!

Silent night, holy night!
Son of God, love’s pure light
Radiant beams from Thy holy face
With the dawn of redeeming grace
Jesus Lord, at Thy birth
Jesus Lord, at Thy birth

I was saving the world, one tweet at a time. Of course, Twitter activism is more effective when there is actual hope and enthusiasm for the cause. The many Kurdish Twitter accounts I had hunted down and added to my followers had heartrending messages, pictures, videos and pleas for America to #donotabandonRojava and #donotabandontheKurds. Once U.S. soldiers are gone, the Turks will come to slaughter them, but their cries have very little attention. Apparently the Kurds have been too busy fighting ISIS to build a healthy international online presence because their tweets have dismally few likes and retweets. In contrast Donald Trump’s tweet relating his cozy conversation with the butcher Erodagan of Turkey and calmly explaining their treachery against the Kurds has 45,000 likes in only four hours. He loves it when he can talk to someone on his own level of evil and apparently his faithful followers feel the same kinship. I found a few hopeful cable news clips of regional experts insisting that this pull out would have catastrophic effects, and honorable men that have resigned in protest, but as cable news is mostly entertainment, and doomed people that got the worst Christmas present from 45 ever make for poor entertainment, I imagine that the news cycle will soon move on. The Kurds are doomed and Americans will open their Christmas gifts on Christmas morning without a thought for them.

It was two o’clock in the morning, and I couldn’t shut my brain off. I laid in the dark thinking about singing in sacrament meeting the next day. I hadn’t sung this arrangement before and I was going to run through it the next morning with my accompanist, Andrew Barbosa. Then I would sing it in front of the whole ward. “Why didn’t I practice more?” I lectured myself. I could not get the Kurds out of my head. I had read everything I could find about them and the more I read, the more real they felt to me.

I always wondered how the world could have let the holocaust happen. Now I know. We turn away our faces, just as Isaiah said we would do to the Savior. “We hid, as it were, our faces from him.” Some things are too horrible to comprehend, like the millions of Kurds that have been murdered over the last century because they want to have Kurdish spoken in their children’s schools, they want to sing songs out loud in Kurdish, and they want to worship God the way they want to. Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran have relentlessly persecuted them in the most atrocious ways. From time to time the United Nations and human rights groups have had pity on them, but in the end, man’s inhumanity to man always seems to fall upon them.

In this country there was another group a couple hundred years ago. They were driven from place to place because they were different. They believed that God and Jesus Christ had called a prophet that was publishing new words from Him to his chosen people. They were gathering Israel again and their numbers were growing. Fear, suspicion, and hatred combined against them. They were the Mormons, and my ancestors were among them. They crossed the wilderness in wagons and with handcarts, burying babies and husbands and wives along the trail. They found a place in the mountains where they could live unmolested; a desert land in nestled in the mountains. We should have died there slowly of starvation, but the Lord was merciful. A vast wilderness separated us from the people who hated us. By the time that wilderness was populated, the hatred had cooled, and the Mormon people are able to worship as we choose to this day. What would have happened to us if we had lived in the heart of the Middle East as the Kurds do?

Does God love the Mormon people more than the Kurdish? No. He is no respecter of persons. They are his children. He loves them, and so do I. I prayed in my anguish that God would have mercy on the Kurds. The Savior commanded us to love and serve the least among us. Surely the Kurds are the least. They have no nation and no rights. They are hated and persecuted and betrayed by the powerful who use them and cast them aside. I refuse to turn my face away from them, but I cannot bare the sorrow myself. I drank my fill and then I prayed in anguish of my soul.

“My Savior, I love thee and seek to be thy handmaid. Please have mercy upon the Kurdish people. Their skin, religion, and customs are not mine, but I love them as though they were my brothers and sisters. Have mercy upon them as thou hast had mercy upon me. Let their lives be precious in thy sight as my life and the lives of my boys are precious in thy sight. Let thy angels surround them in their mountain home as thou hast protected my people. Let them have the rights I take for granted to live and sing praises to thee in their tongue and according to their traditions. Let not their enemies destroy them! Show them that the Savior is the Savior of all men, and those rejected and despised are valued by thee. For the Lord taketh the weak things of the world to work his mighty miracles. The first shall be last and the last shall be first. The wisdom of the wise is turned to foolishness and weak things are made strong.”

He was despised. Despised and rejected. For he was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. We are kin in suffering. The blood of the sorrowful cries out unto thee for we know that thou didst descend below them all. Thy mercy is always over thy children and thou art mighty to save. If ever I was thy handmaid, and if thou hearest my voice, let thy mighty hand be made bare to the nations! Let the nations of the Earth witness that there is a God in Israel!

His voice came to me, “Peace be unto thy soul. Even as Joseph’s heart yearned after Benjamin, so your heart yearns after his seed. I the Lord will remember my covenant people, the seed of my servant Abraham. In my wisdom and my mercy have I spread his seed unto all nations and I will not forget my people Israel.”

He is Mighty to Save! His hand will be made bare before the nations of the world for he will not abandon his people Israel! His omnipotent hand will snatch the prey from the mighty and deliver his people. Someday perhaps I will meet them in their mountain home and rejoice with them in their deliverance. Their sister who loved them and prayed for them in the darkness of the night.

This morning Devin had a migraine and couldn’t find his pants. Wesley drug his bare feet to the bitter end. I arrived twenty minutes late to practice. I ran through my solo along with the two numbers the choir was singing. During announcements Austin knocked off my fake eyelashes. Two minutes before I was supposed to come up and sing, I ran to the bathroom and miraculously put them back on just in time to walk up to the pulpit as though nothing had happened! I prayed that my tired voice would carry the message to his people in church today. It was my Christmas gift to them. I have had so many loving, encouraging friends in my ward. The tender mercies of the Lord have been poured out upon me without measure. Although I don’t deserve them, I take them gladly. My little Tedford children were on the second row, all four of them! Their neon sweatshirts and black cornrows made the ward Christmas scene complete. William sweetly wished me a Merry Christmas. I can’t tell you how much it meant to me that they were there to hear my testimony of our Lord and Savior. He is Mighty to Save! He was born in Bethlehem to a virgin who did conceive of the Holy Ghost, a baby, even the only begotten son of the Father.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.” John 3:5

Truly He taught us to love one another;
His law is Love and His gospel is Peace;
Chains shall he break, for the slave is our brother,
And in his name all oppression shall cease,
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful Chorus raise we;
Let all within us praise his Holy name!

O Holy Night!! Blessed day of our redemption when God’s son came into the world to bring us life and light! O Holy, Holy Night! My heart is comforted for I know that he will deliver his people, Israel. And men shall marvel for he is Mighty to Save! Blessed be the name of the Most High God!

Twitter is like the boyfriend you know you need to break up with. I need to stay away, but it sucks me in. A couple of days ago I heard that 45 had decided we were going to pull out of Syria. I figured General/Secretary Mattis would never let that happen, so I wasn’t concerned. I dismissed it as Trump being an idiot again. When the awful news came down yesterday that Mattis was resigning and we were actually leaving Syria, I fell into a panic.

I went to all the Twitter folks that I follow in times of crisis to get their takes and everybody was appropriately distressed. No one had any conciliatory messages except that perhaps at last Trump had gone too far and would get real pushback from Republican foreign policy hawks in the Senate. Unfortunately, that is not the only fire going on right now in the dumpster. We also have the government shutdown clock ticking and the stock market crashing……So I was up past 1:00 in the morning with feet frozen contemplating the disastrous new world with America in retreat as the forces of authoritarianism and despotism cover the planet in devastating atrocities before consolidating their power and making a war that will truly end all wars.

Some might dismiss my concerns as pessimism. Perhaps. I hope you are right. Some are cynical and expect that America has always been a sham and nothing has changed. For some, cynicism is a powerful anesthetic. They can continue to live like zombies, alive but dead to real conviction. My brain just doesn’t work that way. Cynicism is like a poison to my soul, as fatal to me as hemlock was to Socrates. I am an unapologetic believer in American exceptionalism. It is written on the fleshy tablets of my heart and will remain there until my corpse rots in the grave. When my Savior comes for me in the resurrection, the writing will be restored as it is a part of me. America has ever been my dream. I revel in her victories and the mightiness of her compassion. She is not perfect, but her imperfections are like spots on the sun; they are nothing in comparison with her greatness and beauty. Any warts from the past are swallowed up in the hopes of a better future. I rejoice when I see the influx of immigrants who come here with a sincere understanding of the miracle of representative government that unlocks the potential of human society like nothing the world has ever seen.

Like a gardener, I look across the planet, as if I were lady liberty herself. I see pockets of liberty’s fire that burn bright in the human soul, and I cheer for them from afar. I have friends on Twitter from all over the world that I follow. Kurds, Israelis, French, German, Indian (from India), and Ukrainian. Thanks to Google translate I can understand their take on the day’s news. They are my countrymen. I love them and want the blessings of liberty and prosperity to rest upon them and their families. I pray for them. Today I have rushed around trying to clean the house and prepare for Wesley’s birthday party, but I had to take a break to write for a while. I feel like my head is going to explode!

For a while years ago, I was rather obsessively following the war in Iraq. I was distressed with the rest of the world at the rise of Al Queda in Iraq and the deadly war of terror they waged with the Iraqi security forces who were daily found handcuffed in chains of unfortunate victims beheaded because they dared to believe in a Democratic future in Iraq. When the surge put them on the retreat, I hoped that perhaps those people might yet secure the blessings of peace and security for themselves.

Then President Obama decided the war was over, and ISIS was born in the vacuum we left behind. We abandoned our allies and the Syrian and Iraqi people paid the price in rivers of blood and horrendous atrocities. When we again committed to fight against terrorism in earnest, I was mystified when I heard about Iraqi forces that were armed with American weapons and trained by American soldiers, who left their weapons and even their uniforms and fled in retreat. The precious equipment including tanks, munitions, and firearms was handed over to our enemies. How could the Iraqi people do that? Didn’t they know the danger of ISIS and the importance of defending their homes and families? I was disgusted and angry.

I researched the Middle East and the different factions of Iraq, why Democracy has been so difficult for them to adopt, and why their military was so incompetent. Apparently the military leaders are Sunni, leftovers from Sadam Hussien’s government. They really don’t want Democracy or American/Iraqi victory. They were sabotaging their own army and their poor men fled in the chaos. It was discouraging to read about. But then, I came across the Peshmerga.

Peshmerga. The very word fills my heart with admiration. I love them as though they were my own people. They seem to me as if they are mythical warriors infused with heavenly fire. If there was an opposite to the Iraqis in battle competence, it is the Peshmerga.

They are composed of Kurds, a scrappy and fierce, loyal and resourceful people. They are steely with the determination born out of a crucible of suffering over hundreds of years. They have survived against astounding odds over the years. Unfortunately, they are feared and hated by the nations in whose land they live. Turkey especially has nursed a murderous desire to wipe them off the planet. The United States has given the Kurds a small fraction of the aid that Iraqi forces have enjoyed. Even though we Americans have been unsteady allies, they are devoted to us. They fight alongside our soldiers with the sure knowledge that only we have the honor and power to give them what they want most, security and peace in a homeland. They only want to be themselves and live in peace, but no nation will allow it. Their only hope is for the United States to make them a country or force representation for them in a government of an existing nation. Like Israel, they want a homeland, a place that they can have the right to exist. Like Israel, they need the steady support of the United States to survive.

Partisans were insisting that either we do another surge or continue with air attacks which were not working. The overwhelming majority of military leaders said, “If you want to win the war against ISIS without sending in another surge of troops on the ground, you need to arm the Kurds.” Mattis especially seemed to think that the Peshmerga were the key to securing the region. Their forces were battle hardened, fiercely loyal, and devestatingly deadly. Every bullet given to a Kurd would find it’s target in an enemy. Unfortunately, arming the Kurds would antagonize Turkey and Syria and everybody else that hates the Kurds, so it was a diplomatic nightmare.

Trump was smart enough to appoint Mattis as his Secretary of Defense, and he has done incredible things. He armed the Kurds as he wanted to do years ago. The Kurds and U.S. forces together have turned the tide against ISIS and they are nearly destroyed. Given a few more years, stability and prosperity might coax the war weary people to give Democracy another chance. With Democratic representation, the Kurds would at last have a voice and the chance at the life they fought for doing the work we didn’t want to do. The Peshmerga are heroes. They fought our battles against ISIS and they won them for us. They are our soldiers just as much as if they were commissioned in our army. We owe them our gratitude and our promise of reciprocal loyalty. Instead we are leaving them to almost certain death.

Turkey’s Defense Minister has already said that as soon as American forces leave the region, they will attack the Kurds and destroy them. The Kurds are more than allies, they are the personal friends and brothers in arms to our military men. It is no wonder that General Mattis resigned in protest. He is a man of honor. The Kurds were vital to his Middle East policy. To command his men to abandon their allies to certain destruction is immoral and unAmerican. I am ashamed of my country and our feckless leader. Donald Trump is a coward and a bully. He knows nothing of honor or loyalty.

It was all I could do last night to keep from packing a suitcase and flying to Syria. I would go and fight with the Peshmerga and die with them and they would know that at least one American would not leave them. Alas, my life is bound for a different fate, but my heart is with them, as it is with all those who fight for freedom. They are more American than most of us will ever be. They fight for a country that they don’t live in, for the hope of freedoms they have only heard about.

My love for the Kurds and profound respect I have for the Peshmerga fills my heart with a rage at their betrayal that I didn’t know I was capable of. For any of my friends and family who have hoped that my hatred of Donald Trump would abate, it grows by the day. The only way that it will be expired is by his complete rejection, impeachment, and removal from office. He is a blight upon humanity. The only place he is worthy to inhabit is a prison cell and until he is safely in one, I will fight against him and his kind. Those who glut themselves on the blessings fought for and died for by people they could never understand; those who live narcissistic lives of entitlement thinking that the fine things of the world are owed to them; the privileged few who think that they are God’s gift to the rest of the world while contributing nothing but bile. The stench of their filthiness rises to heaven along with the blood of those who they betray. God’s hand will not be stayed forever, and woe to those who are guilty when the sword of his justice falls.

I have a complicated relationship with Relief Society.  Some of the most sacred experiences I have had in church have been in Relief Society.  On the other hand, there is an extremely destructive tendency among women in my church to be harshly critical of ourselves and one another.  This can make Relief Society meetings become shame fests.  In fact, years ago while I was in therapy for depression, I had to make a conscious decision not to pick up the invisible whip that I carried with me to Relief Society and self flagellate.  It was an important step in my healing.

It has been a few months since I have been to Relief Society.  I was hurt badly by someone in the leadership.  When I reached out to try and fix the situation to make the environment safe for myself, I was shamed and blamed.  This whole mess resulted in a major setback for me emotionally, but has also acted as a catalyst for me to be more open in my emotional journey which has given me greater courage and more confidence.  As I have worked toward becoming stronger, I have built powerful bonds with several sisters in the Relief Society.  I drew on their strength as well as my own as I went back to face my fears and my insecurities as well as the dreaded white lacy table cloth and silk flower arrangement.

It is funny how simple things like table cloths and flower arrangements can become powerful symbols in the brain.  The homey tablecloth and silk flowers can disarm you into thinking that this is a safe place, that you can reveal your burdens and find helpful supportive sisters who will react compassionately.  When you find out through painful experience that this is not the case, that your vulnerability can be used as a weapon against you, the symbols inspire cynicism and fill the soul with bitterness.    It was hard to face those symbols again today.

I walked in right as the prayer was being said.  I stood awkwardly and surveyed the room.  Surprisingly, the tablecloth was red, doubtless to be festive for Christmas.  There was also no flower arrangement, but a wooden nativity.  As the teacher began her lesson, she told us that the table cloth she had brought was actually a shower curtain.  She hadn’t realized it when she had been dashing around getting ready for church. She grabbed the red cloth out of the laundry basket thinking it was a red tablecloth.  Only later did she realize it was the shower curtain she had been looking for that week.   The fact that she was willing to share her funny story and allow us all to peek into her world that was less than perfect spoke powerfully to me.  She was okay with imperfection, both in herself and in others.  I felt that this was divine intervention.  The Lord had changed the symbols just as together we will change the feelings behind them.  What happened in the past doesn’t have to determine the future.  

The two sisters who had hurt me sat behind me during the lesson and I could feel the awkward burn through the back of my head.  I thought of all my blog posts and all the many times I testified of my Savior and his love for all mankind.  I drew on that love and felt it radiate from my person like a bright light.  It swallowed up my pain and the awkwardness of the moment.  The negative force I could feel from behind me vanished.  The pain of the past was real and the damage to the relationships I had with the women behind me were real, but all of it was swallowed up in the Love I felt from my Savior in that moment.

My relationship with Relief Society will most likely continue to be fraught with conflicting emotions, but I was glad I had the strength to go back to a place I was afraid to go.  I’m glad that a growing number of the Relief Society sisters are becoming more comfortable with being imperfect and allowing imperfection.  I’m grateful to strive beside these sisters as we work to make Relief Society a more compassionate and vulnerable place.  As the lesson closed, the teacher said that she is working to expand her “safe spaces.”  I echo her sentiment.  I too am going to expand my safe space.  I am going to dare to be authentic more often, take off the mask in more places, and make the world my safe space; the place I can be free to live unafraid.

It is only possible as I carry His Love with me as a lamp.  In His light, the forces of cynicism, bitterness, and fear vanish away.  His mercy and His forgiveness swallow up the pain of the past and give me the courage I need to face the future unafraid and with confidence.  Blessed be the name of my Savior, for he is Mighty to Save!  I will carry his light with me into dark places.  I will not fear for He is my salvation and he will not leave me alone.

I heard the laughter and felt the energy of the crowd that was gathering. My classmates and friends seemed drawn to the scene, and although I couldn’t look directly at them, I knew they felt that special something that was on the stage that afternoon.

“Yea,” quoth he, “Dost thou fall upon thy face?

Thou wilt fall backward when thou hast more wit,

Wilt thou not, Jule?” and, by my holy dame,

The pretty wretch left crying and said “ay.”

I had memorized the lines and was saying them, but it was more than that. I was the nurse that day. I had made a connection with Shakespeare and I knew that the story the nurse was telling was a joke. She was telling a joke, and I knew what a joke would look like and sound like in 1996. I was able to bridge the gap that day on that stage with 1996 and old Shakespearean England with the nurse telling a joke. The cast and crew were laughing at my joke, at the nurse’s joke, at Shakespear’s joke. It was funny! It was a sex joke, and it was funny. The cast and crew have left that stage and moved on to other things in their lives, but I’ll never forget that surreal experience where I was able to tap into a script that was very old and to most of us, if we were to be totally honest, full of boring and obsolete stuff. For that moment, during that monologue, the script was not old, boring, and obsolete, it was alive and real and funny. That is probably the most vivid memory I have of my high school drama experience.

I’ve had a recurring dream the last few weeks. The setting changes and shifts. Sometimes I’m at Walmart, sometimes a shopping mall, sometimes when I turn a corner, it becomes a hallway of school lockers. The dream is always the same feeling. I am desperately looking for something. I’m trying to find my locker, my classroom, the perfect Christmas gift, the right pair of jeans…..I’m looking and looking and looking, and there’s this sense of unease that I’ll never find it. There are lots of other people and we are all doing the same thing. No one speaks to one another. We are all bustling around very busy with lists in our hands, searching and searching. What are we all looking for?

This morning I woke from my dream asking that question. What was I looking for? What were the other people in my dream looking for? I think I have the answer. We are looking for Mythic America.

When I was a little girl, I heard a story about a little boy who was playing in his backyard. He found his father’s axe, and walked over to his dad’s prize cherry tree and chopped it down. Later his father was very upset and demanded to know who had destroyed his precious tree. His son came forward bravely and confessed. “I cannot tell a lie,” he told his father. He received the punishment from his dad. Later that boy became the father of his country, the great general and President, George Washington. I didn’t particularly love the story, but I did remember it. I had vivid experiences of an angry father and being punished for childish mistakes. I had never done something so egregious as chop down a prized tree, so I could hardly imagine having so much courage as to confess to such a heinous offense knowing the wrath of his father was sure to be taken out on him.

The story taught me that my culture valued honesty and that sometimes being honest meant doing hard things that might have painful results. I learned that one of the most important values of our founding leaders was their commitment to being honest even when it was hard.

In my training to become a teacher we were taught that although this story was often told, there was no historical evidence for it. Therefore it was perfectly understood that we were not to tell the story and propagate the false tradition.

Really? Really? Think about the good things that story teaches! For generations teachers across the nation have lost a powerful tool to teach about our traditions in this country, to give children connection to a historical figure and the truth that honesty in our leaders matters. History, at least any history that means anything, is not made up of facts, it is made up of stories. Are we so dense as to think that our history is a collection of facts? More preposterous still, that those facts are somehow enough to carry our civilization forward? Our history, at least the history that matters, lives in our souls. It teaches us truth, not facts. Whether or not George Washington cut down a tree is not relevant, it was a story that taught a larger truth and made a connection with our past. That is powerful! The story that even an unlearned farm hand can sit down and tell his grandchildren in the sunset of his life that teaches values and makes connections across generations is worth more than a million history textbooks stuffed full of useless facts.

At risk of coming dangerously close to Rudy Guilliani’s gaffe, I am saying, truth is not Truth. Truth with a capital T matters. Truth with a small t doesn’t matter. As a society we live in the information age. We are drowning in facts that don’t matter, like whether or not there is evidence that George Washington really cut down a cherry tree. Some small t truths are dangerous because they lead us away from the big Truths and the vectors that carry those truths from the brain into the deep parts of the soul. Mythic vectors.

I don’t particularly care whether or not children are told the story of George Washington and the cherry tree. I DO care whether or not they learn that honesty in our leaders is important. I DO care that they make a real connection with our nations founders. I DO care that they understand Mythic America. If we take away the cherry tree story, we better figure out a story that teaches those things, that we CAN tell them. Mythic America used to live in the hearts and minds of our old people, and they would pass those truths down to our youth. Mythic America knit the generations together and gave us a common history and culture in spite of our diversity.

As tempting as it is to believe that the disaster in our executive branch and the resulting damage to our institutions is because of a single president, I can’t accept it. He is a symptom of a larger problem. We have lost Mythic America. We can’t find it at Walmart or even Amazon. We won’t find it in high school lockers or in textbooks. Trump supporters believe 45 is Mythic America! They are so desperate to find what has been lost, that they cling to Donald Trump like an orphaned child clings to a photo of his dead parents. They know the photo is a poor substitute for the parents, but it’s the best they have. They will not leave Donald Trump until we are able to offer them something better. We must find what has been lost if we are to save our nation and our world.

To be continued……..