It's all beautiful...

 I've been doing a lot of avoidance strategies lately: facebook, netflix, reading blogs. I realized I was so busy for a while, it gave me a great sense of purpose. When things slowed down a little bit, I had a hole I needed to fill. Add to that a scare I had the other day (well, it hasn't gone away yet really) with a friend's health, and I found I was trying to escape my own life. 

 I was reading John Scalzi's blog, and ran across a post that really resonated: It's all beautiful and nothing lasts.   He talked about a dream he had, and this is something he says in the dream. What struck me, was that it wasn't defeatist, it was motivational: it doesn't last so enjoy the heck out of life while you have it --whatever it is. 

 I went to my daughter's choir concert last night, and they had a mentally handicapped girl there participating. At the end of the first song, she screamed "more more" so the choir sang her favorite song for her. She was so over-stimulated that she kind of lost control, and was rubbing her face and shouting, and flailing, and I thought --her parents! The pain they must feel right now! The pain they feel every day! But I looked at the choir, and those kids just saw that they were making this girl happy. They saw beauty. I realized that you could see the moment in two different ways. I've been looking at things wrong a lot. 

 Excuse the clichéed simile with autumn and death. Each week I see more and more leaves fall, each week the beauty moves down the mountain. At first the brightest colors are the furthest away, but as winter and death gets closer, the color moves down towards the valley, toward my own front yard. Soon the aspens by my driveway will be bright gold; then they will be dead for winter. 

 With more intense feelings, even bad ones, come more beauty. I valued my friend more as I feared for her health. I mourn the loss of having little babies in the house, and passed a mom with a 6 month old in the grocery store yesterday, and said "you are so lucky!" I saw the beauty in the little baby girl precisely because my baby days were over. I don't remember if I knew how lucky I was when I had babies. I hope I did, but there is beauty in the remembering and yearning too. 

 So I run up the mountain, and enjoy the beauty even of the leaves that have fallen. When winter comes, I will no doubt exclaim over snow and ice crystals. I hope I can stop and enjoy listening to Ari and Kai's chatter after school today. Tia still thinks I'm funny sometimes. I hope I appreciate that now -- It won't last!

 To see the beauty, I have to look for it in each moment. Remember with fondness, and not block the pain --there is beauty in the fallen leaves too.

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His burden is light --or, the bike lamp analogy.

We got a new computer and suddenly all of my recent pictures have disappeared. Luckily I've got something to share that doesn't need pictures.

I've been the second counselor in our ward's Relief Society (our church congregation's women's organization) for 2 1/2 years. This seemed like a pretty heavy calling  (job) and there have been times, with my personal training clients again, and Jeff's new job taking up lots of extra hours that I've been tempted to ask for a release. Sometimes it's felt like I was being stretched longer and longer -as though there were screws attached to my skull and soles and every day they were twisting tighter and tighter in opposite directions. I was expecting to snap like an old rubber band any day. However I liked serving the ladies in my ward, I enjoyed my work, I loved my clients, and loved being with my kids. I'm not saying it was bad stuff in my life, just that I wondered how I could do it most days (and most days there were a lot of mistakes).

In my church you are always doing something. Everyone usually has a job. It's part of our belief system that we follow the example of Jesus Christ in serving each other, so we all take turns doing something. In the last year or so I cast about looking for a job that I could be given next that was sufficiently easy for me. That would give me the "break" I felt I so richly deserved. I decided ward librarian would be perfect. That would mean showing up Sunday and helping people make copies, sign out pencils and scriptures etc. and then going home until the next Sunday. Perfect. I could be extra nice and smiley to people. I would be perfect.

A month ago I got released. I got NO new calling. People commented on the smile on my face. I couldn't stop grinning. I was having my thyroid biopsied for cancer that next Friday so I thought Heavenly Father (since we believe all callings are divinely inspired) knew how much I needed a break and was giving me one. Even better than librarian! Well, later that night I noticed I had a voicemail I'd missed from the day before. From the STAKE PRESIDENCY. For those of you not familiar with the vocabulary, the Stake is our group of 10 congregations in our area. I was called as the Stake Primary Secretary. Arguably this may be the most time consuming calling I could possibly get. I won't go into details, but in the interview, I was told over and over how much of a time commitment this would be, how much my family would have to sacrifice, etc.

I looked President Parry in the eye and asked -a little desperately- "the Lord helps you, right?" and he assured me that the Lord does. I said OK then, as long as I didn't have cancer.

I didn't have cancer.

That was huge miracle in itself. My Dr. was sure tests would be inconclusive, that surgery was a surety, gave me surgeons' names to check out; then the results came and were unequivocally benign.  This was where I started to believe everything would be OK, that somehow I could do this.

I sat in church the next Sunday, and heard someone quote the familiar scripture from Matthew 11:30 that we always hear around Christmas: "his yoke is easy and his burden is light".  I always wanted to say nuh-uh! when I heard this before. It often -very often -didn't feel light at all! It felt heavy! But this time, I heard it in a different way. His burden is "light". Light and not darkness. I heard how he helps us see more clearly, to get the answers we need. If we serve, and keep the promises and covenants we made, he would give us revelation in return --or a help in carrying our burdens.

Today our Sunday school teacher mentioned a story I'd heard before about a bike lamp. There was a boy who had a lamp on his bike to light the way in the dark. The faster he pedaled, the brighter the lamp would shine. The problem (in his mind at least) was that having the light on the bike meant extra resistance. It was a little harder to pedal against that resistance, so he decided to take the lamp off. A crash during the next night time ride was inevitable. It was harder to pedal with the light, but clearer. The lamp was necessary to light his way.

I guess I am willing to work as hard as I need to in order to keep that light. Along with keeping promises I've already made to serve, I'm noticing answers coming to questions I've had for months and years. The whole politicized conversation regarding homosexuality and same sex marriage has been confusing and disturbing for me. It's really bothered me. I don't like the idea of a  group of people feeling we as a church hate them or don't care for them. I've been getting some real helps with this question lately (see this interview for example). I also have worried about the restriction of the priesthood (in the past) for people of African descent (see this page on LDS.org for a quick overview), and I've been recently been put in touch with full personal histories on this question that helped me get some peace about this subject (i.e. --people in the church aren't perfect!).

I'm looking forward to someday being the ward librarian. I'm -of course- already making big mistakes in my new calling, but so far the stretching doesn't feel like I will twoiiiing! any second, but that I am increasing little by little in my capacity. God bless us all in all that we undertake. We'll need it.

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Funktionslust!

It's a German word meaning “pleasure taken in what one can do best.” I like to think of it as pleasure taken in physical movement ---just the joy of being alive and being able to move, to feel my heart beat fast, to sweat, use my muscles. I felt it tonight running. I feel like I have to do a follow-up post to the last one where I struggled so hard with that last run. They're not all like that. After that run, I tell myself I never have to run again after this race. SCREW IT!

I felt back on top tonight, and had the thought cross my mind that I've got to talk my kids into coming on runs with me long enough to feel this. What a high. I've felt it in Tae Bo often enough, where the music hits just right, and you push through that last set, beyond what you thought you were capable of, but being outside... it brings one more dimension to the pleasure.

I ran to books on MP3 a for a long time. Nothing like it to keep from getting bored, and getting lost in a story instead, but I'm glad i finally figured out how to do the music thing on my Zen. My taste is eclectic to say the least. Right now I've got:

Eminem
Judy Garland
Big&Rich
The Cult
XTC
Ke$ha
B.O.B.
Black Eyed Peas
Muse
Cake
Celine Dion
Green Day
Jackson 5
Cage the Elephant
and some others. My only requirement is that the song has to get my blood pumping when I hear it. So yeah, Judy Garland singing "C'mon get Happy" does it, "Firewoman" from the Cult does it, and "American Idiot" from Green Day does it all equally as well. It feels like cheating to borrow energy from these performers, but that's what we pay them for right?

My time is back down too! Last week was pretty bad because I had my hyperthyroidism acting up, and lost some muscle. I'm fast again compared to that "herd of turtles" I was last week anyway. I'm so grateful my body is working right again.

Gina from "Choosing Raw" did a post a few days ago on body image (there's also a part two you can get to from there if you're interested) that was fantastic. This girl thinks before she writes (unlike my blabbering). I thought it was so interesting the changes noticed in womens' journals after the 1930's. There was a big shift in focus towards body image. Before then, it was more common to express personal goals which were more spiritual in nature. It's easy for me to fall into this trap myself, and pick this most trivial of focal points.

Athleticism helps me maintain that balance. Although I'm no elite athlete, making sure my legs stay strong helps me let go (some of the time!) of the desire for thin thin thighs. Those thighs do a lot for me! Let 'em live! Pushing a little further each time lifting weights helps me appreciate my arms even though they will never be the willowy, graceful appendages of a supermodel. I'm short and stubby all over, and I can't change that much. But I'm grateful for functionality.

No big conclusion, thanks for listening to my rambles. --Amara

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