Family

Our recent whirlwind trip through many states included a stop near Houston, staying with Russ's brother and wife. We managed to get a picture of Russ with his mother and brother and sister. Families are still family even if we get together rarely and live miles apart. There is just a comfortable feeling being with people who could shut you out but usually you know they never would. I guess there are families in the world where members don't accept each other unconditionally and sometimes go for great lengths of time without communication, sometimes even to the grave. How sad.

The circumstance for me being with my sisters recently was not the happiest, but we still enjoyed being together. I am eternally grateful to have had the blessing of being a part of a loving, caring, helpful family through my earthly sojourn. I can only hope they will choose to be my family forever. The fact that I want them to be with me forever will not make it happen, though. Each individual has been given, by our Father in Heaven, the right and responsibility to choose where they want to spend eternity. If we choose to accept the incredible gift of Christ's atonement and have a desire to be like Him and follow all the celestial rules to be worthy of citizenship in His kingdom, we have the possibility of being with our loved ones forever. But that will only happen if each one of them makes the same choice and effort. I hope for that.

It hurts.

I have wondered what my life might have been like had I made very different choices. What if I had completed my education and chosen a career instead of getting married? What if Russ and I had decided to not try to have any more children after James and Angela? What if we had stayed in Dryden instead of moving around? What if I had been born in Japan and had to experience the recent earthquake and tsunami? What if I had been born in the Middle Ages and had to live through the Plague, in ignorance of the world around me? I am without a doubt greatly blessed. I have never known true hunger. I have never been without shelter or a comfortable bed (except by choice when camping!). I have never experienced war, or pestilence, or natural disasters in which I lost things important to me. But I have hurt. I hurt every day as I see my mother CHOOSE to not move. She has eliminated so many possibilities from her life and there is nothing I can do about it. I hurt whenever a loved one wants something different in their life but cannot seem to be motivated sufficiently to make necessary changes. I hurt every time a loved one is afraid or disappointed. I hurt every time I hear from one of my children and one of the grandchildren is sick or a spouse is going to be away for extended periods, especially if in harm's way. I am slowly comprehending the need for life to not just go along smoothly with everything working out exactly as we would want. We really do need opposition in order to grow. How does our loving Father in Heaven hear our constant cries, ache for us, know what's best for us even if we doubt, and withstand the pain of it? I struggle with the desire to rush to the side of someone I love when they are hurt, sick, or sad. I want to do everything in my power to alleviate their suffering. I know God loves us more than we can even comprehend. I am amazed that He allowed Jesus to suffer, even if He did know it was necessary. How do you have that kind of wisdom and self-control? How do you maintain a peaceful nature while witnessing the suffering of loved ones? How do you comfort, reassure, and encourage while staying back and letting the necessary growth and experience continue without interfering? I can appreciate the wisdom of doing it. I just can't understand how to endure the pain of doing it. Loving really hurts. But I think loneliness, never experiencing love, would be worse.

Hand-me-downs

I took a day last week to go through my dad's clothing, what was left of it. Awhile before he died, I went through his clothes with him and he got rid of most of it. He was realistic, for the most part, about what he was going to be using. He saved some work clothes because that was what he lived for, what was the highest priority for use of his energy. Some of his clothes went to the garbage because nobody would ever want to use such beat-up things. Lots of his clothes went to a thrift store. Of the clothes that were left after he died, most went to the thrift store. Some, Russ chose to have me alter so he could wear them- mostly work clothes. As I shortened shirt sleeves and pant legs, I thought about Russ's relationship to my father. Russ loved and admired Dad. For many years he worked with him doing building and remodeling. He learned a lot from him- about building and about life. Russ spent some time working for his own father years ago. I'm sure he learned some things from him, too. But Russ always felt much closer to my father than his own. That was probably because my father happened to be more pleasant to be with than Russ's own father. (My father was certainly not without faults. Growing up, I constantly resented his absence. He was always working or doing things for other people or community organizations. He was admired by many people for the good things he did but his children would all have liked more time with him.) I realized that Russ has inherited more hand-me-downs than the shirts and pants. He received basic philosophies of hard work, getting along with people, being affectionate especially to family, and as much patience/ can-do stick-to-itiveness as he was willing to adopt. They have all helped to make Russ a better person. We all learn from other people during our life. I have frequently reminded my kids and grandkids that the people they choose as "heroes" will influence what kind of person they become. As I have thought about and discussed people's memories of my father, I wonder what my eulogy will be like. How will I be remembered? It's always easy to pick out faults in others that we want to avoid. But in order to do that, we have to be truly honestly introspective enough to see whether we are guilty of the faults we notice in others. We also have to be pro-active in identifying what characteristics we want to develop. Then comes the really hard part- making those characteristics an everyday, natural, automatic part of our personality. Wistfully stating that we wish we were more patient, more ambitious, more reliable....... is pointless if we do nothing to adopt those features in our daily activities and conversation. Sometimes we may even need help. There is some wise saying from somebody that has to do with the best kind of friend being someone who helps you to be your best self when you're with them. That "friend" can be a member of your family or someone not related. God can help, too. Change is hard, though. We have to have a really strong, deep desire for it because it takes persistent effort, sometimes for a long time. I hope when I die, I can look back on my life with some degree of satisfaction that I truly made a good, continual effort.