The Prodigal Daughter

So today was the RA recharge. It worked, it did recharge. It took some extra work for me and the help of a friend to make sure that it would be. Ironically, it was not easy to relax. Near the beginning there was a lot for me to digest, to feel, blows to be taken in stride, and questions to muddle through before I could get to the part where I feel a little more recharged.

In fact, there was a lot of good things waiting there at the event. Tell me I'm not the only one who sometimes has to put a pause on things and get a little back up before I can truly partake. I wanted it to be good. But I really can't force my heart to feel things a certain way, at least not all that often.

An awesome professor gave a wonderful keynote speech. It was uplifting, funny, personal, insightful, and warm. There were some hard parts for me to try to digest that sat just behind his words. My internal voices were buzzing through the air at him. My body was having a dialog with him but he wasn't replying. I heard what he had to say and tried my best to receive God's intended message for me. I did get it. It was on the tip of my soul, but it was so preoccupied that it couldn't ingest it fully just yet. So I put it in a doggy bag.

I believe that is a gift God has given me. I have an impeccable memory for dialog. Basically, I can remember most all emotional conversations with exactness. I can rewrite it nearly word for word if asked to do so. This is a gift because those words that are said to me are allowed to keep giving to me in times when I need them or when I am better able to receive or understand (I hope that comes in handy in a counseling career). It also comes in handy for storytelling and comedy routines. But it is also kind of a curse because I also tend to over-analyze them for as long as the words are with me. Anyway, I'm trying to utilize the gift now. I put his words in a box for me to ingest more fully later when the pressure wasn't so high, and the voices aren't so loud. So that's what I'm doing now, trying to ingest it more fully.

He started out by talking about how to be "recharged." He quoted a famous coach who said to do three things each day. 1. laugh. 2. take time alone to think. and 3. be brought to tears by emotion (which emotions, of course, includes happiness and joy). Ultimately, he had an overarching alternative, but I'll get to that.

He talked about the story of the Prodigal Son. The context for this story is that the Pharisees were asking Christ why he was hanging out with the sinners, then he taught three stories all in a row. He first talked about the son who went away. When he came back, the father was looking for him and saw him a ways off and ran to him and fell on his neck and kissed him. He gave him a fine robe, a ring, new shoes, and a fatted calf. The professor had us visualize that we were sitting in our room and about to relax with our laptop, with perhaps Netflix (This has become my personal escape lately). Then the Savior walks in and He sits right down next to us. What would we do? He mentioned that part of most of us would be so excited. Another part that we all tend to relate to would feel inadequate and like "You shouldn't be here. I'm not the good or obedient daughter." He talked about how as we say that, we are doing the same thing that the pharisees were doing, saying "Why would you hang out with the low people?" Jesus was showing us that he wants to be with us.

By this point several people were in tears. Of course, this professor is good at eliciting tears, especially from me.

I am humbled and grateful to say that I feel like I have grown in this area. I think we all still feel victim of the question, "why would you want to hang with me, Jesus?" However, I struggle less with this mountain than I have in the past. It is a good feeling to know that I have a testimony that Christ loves me and wants to be with me, even though I'm often the daughter who ran away with His money and returned filthy and empty. I feel guilty and sometimes ashamed, but I can work through it much better and faster than ever before.

It was the second part of the story that was especially for me. I knew it was coming. In this story, I have always wanted to explore the other brother more. And the professor and I are often on the same wavelength. The older son gets bashed a lot in Sunday school while the other is glorified, but I always felt for him because I have always believed that he wasn't angry completely because he was judgmental or prideful, I think he was feeling a lot of pain too. I think that is true of most angry people (and that has been confirmed to me when I visited the jail last week), but few acknowledge the pain that anger stems from. Most tend to label, "bad guy" at any sign of anger. Contrary to what most think, and what the professor mentioned (and I could be very wrong), I don't think the older son was angry because he didn't get a party or a calf. I think it was because he wanted a show of affection like the father gave to the other. It wasn't about things, it was about the relationship with his father. The mistake the older brother made was in assuming that the gifts to the younger brother were a bigger manifestation of love than what he received.

But as the Father put it, "Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine." Time was the older brother's gift. One he hadn't fully appreciated. Comparison is a very effective way to explicitly devalue what is actually inherently valuable. And I'm very good at it.

Anyway, my take on the story is a little different twist than how the professor shared it, but both are good interpretations I think. Mine is just more relatable to me specifically. That being said, the professor's main point was that relationships are rejuvenating. But there is one kind of relationship that is especially important: our relationship with our Elder brother, Jesus Christ and our Father. He said that sometimes we are so caught up in what we do not have that we forget what we do have, that God has been with us this whole time.

And that's the stinger, right there.

Backtrack to Thursday. My mom read some letters from Cini to me over the phone. Cini  is in Navy boot camp and it is very difficult. In her letters, she wrote of how she was reading the scriptures and that at least two other girls became interested. They asked her to prepare a devotional every night because it really helped them to get through the day. There, in boot camp, there is no comfort but the kind you must carry in your heart. She found solace in the scriptures (something I have completely laid aside with the exception of my Sunday New Testament and counseling blog). She shared how the story of the ships going across the sea in Ether gave the girls hope and purpose as they continued on. When she cried herself to sleep each night, she cried to her Father.

I was hit profoundly by this. It was the piece of the puzzle I felt I was missing. I always knew that reading the scriptures was a powerful thing to do, that we are commanded to, that they are a gift...etc. But I had no motivation. I was in my head but not so much in my heart. I felt like I was praying and no one was answering (it seems so obvious and silly to me now, but I try not to judge yesterday's mistakes by today's understanding). As hard as I tried, (and I have tried really hard), I could not break out of the mindset that reading scriptures was something on the to do list. At least I couldn't until hearing my little sister share what she did in this horrible place she's in. The spirit pierced my heart in a way I hadn't predicted and hadn't felt in a very long time. I began to cry while my mom kept reading my little sister's testimony. "I thought I was here for me, but I am beginning to understand that the Lord has much bigger plans." Neither she nor I ever expected or thought that she would be going to boot camp for me. 

I wrote her a letter soon after and let my little heroine know just what she the Spirit had done for me through her. I vowed to focus more on my relationship with Christ. I vowed to use the stories (I'm a big fan of stories) from the scriptures to be a way Christ can speak to me. I vowed to focus more on telling my Father how I feel, and going to Him with my questions and concerns. In fact, I knew that this recharge would probably be difficult once I got into it. I knew that it would be so easy for me to slip back into old habits. So last night, I had a very long chat with my Father. We came up with an intervention, a plan to stop me from getting stuck where I always get stuck in my emotions. We worked together to plan out how I would show compassion to myself during the keynote speaker time, and the time I was in a large group. We discussed how I would allow Him to share compassion with me if I had a hard time at the recharge. We practiced. I felt confident I could do it, with Him. The plan involved some self-talk, some meditation, and a good friend.

Back to the room with my professor and his key note address.

He said that sometimes we are so caught up in what we do not have that we forget that God has been with us this whole time.

That's me! Dang it. I have been SO caught up in what I've lost, and what is waved before me that I can't have that I have nearly neglected what I had, the fact that my Father has been with me this whole time.I've known this for a while but felt I lacked the framework to understand it, let alone change it. I, like the older son, have wanted to feel God's love in a certain way. I wanted to feel it through special relationships with people that I care about, people I've lost. Lots and lots of loss. I often felt closest to Christ in these relationships. Well, I have many relationships still I haven't lost, but surely some of my favorites have been lost or ripped out from under me. Loneliness, after all, is not an absence of relationships, but a relationship of absence (loneliness is missing a particular relationship, think of being alone in a crowd). And it was like I constantly see this party and hear this music of other people having God's love the way I want it. And I'm angry. I have a hard time even being in the same room. It's so painful.

Then the Spirit nailed it, with the help of the professor. "Jill, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine." Right now in my life my Father shows me His love all the time in little ways all day long. The more I focus on why I can't have those relationships I want, the more I miss the ones I still have, could have, and most especially, the relationship I have with my Father. That relationship is one that won't leave me, won't tell me not to talk to Him, won't think twice before giving me a hug, won't label me, and will go with me wherever I end up next year. That is what I really have been hungering for this whole time. It's so easy to go looking for love in good places, but forget the better and best ones. The normally good ones end up being wrong.

PAUSE - I need to be fair to myself for a second. I need to point out that this is a journey I'm going on and I'm not very far into it yet. I'm going to mess up all the time. Although I have a different perspective on my losses now, I can't even begin to pretend I don't still want those relationships. These questions and the anger and confusion may continue to dominate my mental and emotional energy for a while. When someone cuts off your dominant arm, it takes a while before you can just naturally reach with the other hand and dominance switches. There will be a lot of trying to reach with the absent arm, and then painfully realizing it's not there. I can't just "let it go." I'm working on it. It's going to take a painful while. I'm going to need patience, and so are the people who are trusted with my aching heart every once in a while. All I can do at this point is notice when I reach with the wrong arm, and go to my Father more often. He's my physical therapist, and all the other kinds of therapists there are. That turning of the heart is a process. I need to be compassionate with myself while I flounder a bit, it's how you learn to swim.

Aye aye aye. On step closer. Sometimes this road feels awfully long. AND, I'll tell you what. I'm ultimately grateful to be walking it. It's a good journey, like the familiar road home echoing in my heart.

Thank You Gordon B. Hinckley, “Anyone who imagines that bliss is normal is going to waste a lot of time running around shouting that he’s been robbed. The fact is that most putts don’t drop, most beef is tough, most children grow up to just be people, most successful marriages require a high degree of mutual toleration, most jobs are more often dull than otherwise. Life is like an old time rail journey… delays… sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders and jolts, interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling burst of speed. The trick is to thank the Lord for letting you have the ride.” 

Thank you Father for the Recharge prep. For my sister. For my friend at the recharge that let me vent a bit so I could relax a little and feel heard. Thank you for that professor, and his keynote address. Thank you for letting me have the ride.

A Place to Hang Up the Capes

I love cemeteries. On the streets and in tiny apartments, a person must smile all the time, must reserve tears for their closet. He (inclusive of "she") must put on a tiger suit and then try to earn his stripes by some so-called strength. Sometimes we all forget what makes us real. Jesus wept. Why is it that the weepers of the world are labeled so often as weak, pessimistic, attention-seekers, or too serious? My pain is as beautiful as my joy. It is what makes me real. Without my reality, I am nothing to care about. It is my imperfections, my vulnerability that makes me matter and makes me relatable.

Have you ever noticed that in a cemetery, even the homeless man, the high school football star, the girl dressed in all black and chains, the troubled young adult, the parent, the weeping willows, there, the world gives them permission to weep? It is here in front of a stone in the earth that we acknowlegde our humanity. We acknowledge our need for eachother, our aches and our pains. Whether gathered in a circle or separately kneeling in solitude, all the drops of tears are acknowledged and welcomed just as much as all the drops of dew on each flower petal hovering over a name not breathing anymore.

All the people slowly walking through soft wet grass have a similar ache in their hearts and it is one they each know will never go away. Each wrinkled forhead radiates this understanding. A oneness in understanding, a knowing, an empathy you just aren't allowed to feel too many other places in the world.

The people that have passed on have done just that; passed on. They aren’t here. But us wanderers on Earth find some sort of haven here. The memorials aren’t for them; they are for us- a memorial of our humanity, a plaque of recognition that we are human. Not just because we die, but also because we cry. Not just because we cry, but because we love. Not just because we die, but also because we live. We hunger for something that reminds us that pain is an honerable and beautiful part of our existence because it is the medal of love and living. 

A cemetery is a refuge from the super human claims posted on the screens, billboards, and even cultural faces of an aching world putting on their capes and pretending gravity never affected their lives. ” This is soaring!” they say as if they don’t really care about all the rest of us real people with our feet on the ground… or six feet under.

     

 

Why do we discredit an emotion that enriches the other? Why do we forget that each emotion is temporary, both the pleasant and unpleasant? When did smiling become the communicator of strength, it is only one kind. Why is sadness so easily labeled a disorder to be treated in American culture? Since when did happiness become so self-contained and independent of relationships in our lives? Don't misunderstand. Being happy is wonderful. Smiling can help sometimes to heal from the pain, but it shouldn't be a mask when it is appropriate to frown. I echo a quote from a talk from Elder Jeffery R. Holland that has been long overdue, "... no one can responsibly suggest it would surely go away if those victims would just square their shoulders and think more positively—though I am a vigorous advocate of square shoulders and positive thinking!"

Furthermore, God does not look down upon our suffering. As President Monson said to the Relief Society sisters: “That love never changes. … It is there for you when you are sad or happy, discouraged or hopeful. God’s love is there for you whether or not you feel you deserve [it]. It is simply always there.”

The Cemetery is a bare human place where all hang up the capes, where all is raw and we seem to, among the dead, start living inside ourselves again.

A year ago today, Carmody Sagers died. I visited her grave this morning. I wept. I took her advice and I did not miss the little things. I took a walk. I sang to the wind. I watched seven blue birds communicate with two robins. I followed two brown bunnies into the brush. I watched the horses below. I blew bubbles and watched the colors swirl through transparency. I breathed deeply. I prayed. As I stood beside the dead, I tried my best to live.

It's okay to sit a while and just miss them.

My Counseling Blog

This is another blog that I try to update every Sunday. I am hesitant to share it with those who may read this blog because I fear it might be misunderstood. I write on this blog as if I am a counselor writing to other counselors who want to follow the example of the Wonderful, Counselor, The Mighty God. I am not a counselor and I've never had clients and I do not practice without a license. I write this way because it helps me discover the kind of therapist and counselor that I will be one day. I may be getting a lot wrong on this blog. But I feel in my heart that I am also getting a lot right too, however unpopular my views may be.

The Book of Matthew is focused on discovering what counseling and therapy truly is.

This is my latest post and I just wanted to share it. It is about how the Atonement plays out in my hypothetical and future office, but also in my daily life and personal relationships.