Learned Lesson Number Twelve: Home Is Not Four Walls

Last year I lost a house, for the fifth time in as many years. The first of these was the house my children mourned losing, the one their father had provided. Beautiful and large, it was the center of where their friends and their lives revolved. I think they mourned the loss of that home at least as much as the departure of their father, who, after choosing his new wife, moved to another house in another state, with another’s children. So nothing felt more urgent to me than providing a real home for my children, whom he had left behind. My resolve and my faith in my ability to achieve this, as their mother, was unwavering. It was my reason for being; finding a home base, where my children would feel safe. I knew they needed to not feel like they were losing everything. And thus the journey toward "home" began.

Year One: a rental, just outside the orbit of familiar people and places, but the only place I could get. Displaced Homemaker, no marketable skills. WalMart job, shattered credit rating. The house was too small. My boys lived in the garage, and would not go to church or school. Faith being central to my survival, I feared my children would lose whatever level of religious faith they had acquired up to that point, so Year Two brought a lease-to-own, closer to their schools and our church. A Good Mother knows the value of the influence of church-going friends and the comfort of being at familiar schools. One year later, I lost the down-payment when I was unable to qualify to purchase the house. Two of my sons had dropped out of high school, and none were attending church. My youngest son had anger and anxiety issues that forced me to withdraw him from public school, and my own educational plans were put on hold. Yet I pressed on in my quest.

Year Three: nanny job with rental house, slightly rural area. More money, but situation with my children deteriorating further, partly due to their father’s unsuccessful attempt to spirit them away. Year Four, nanny job ends, finding us back in our old neighborhood, in a far-too-tiny rental. No credit check required. One side effect of moving a large family out of a large house into increasingly smaller houses is that the amount of stuff that follows, and therefore needs to be managed, seems increasingly larger. By this fourth and smallest house, I felt like a hoarder with all the boxes of STUFF stacked around me. It was memories mixed with junk, and it drained the life out of us all, but I did not have the emotional fortitude to go through it and decide what did and did not matter. Let alone the resolve to throw those things out.

The fifth and final house in this progression would surely be the home that saved my children. Yet another lease-to-own; down-payment forfeited when the deal went south. It turns out, those who require no credit check are often shady themselves, and this was proven to me painfully when I realized how completely I had been ripped off. Alimony running out, most of my children having moved out, and a houseful of stuff which I could not afford to maintain. Two years shy of completing my college degree, and most painful of all, I had failed to make my children a home. They were finding homes of their own. For me, this was Rock Bottom. No money, no job, no home, and no idea why I had failed so miserably. As a mother, as a wife, as a woman. I was in total despair.

I put the stuff in storage, dragged my exhausted self and my youngest son to Utah, and moved into my parents’ home to take refuge. This is where the healing and the epiphany began. The pressure of needing to provide was lifted. My parents made me feel at home. When I returned to Arizona to visit my children, they made me feel at home. I started to see that they still loved me. Unconditionally. They appreciated my efforts to make them a home, and they told me so. I discovered that home is not a location. Once I had let go of the idea that it was the four walls that mattered, I discovered home in many places. In the car, driving cross-country with my youngest son; sleeping on the couch where my three oldest sons, all of whom are gainfully employed and doing just fine, share a home; at my married daughter’s apartment, holding my grandbabies; at church, at a concert, a movie, or enjoying a meal with people that I love. Home is not a structure made of brick and mortar. Home is something you carry with you, that you offer to others. Home is who you’re with, wherever you are, so long as it is built on a foundation of love.

Learned Lesson Number Eleven: Easter is Not About Chocolate

Atonement

I hurt, I fall, land on my knees,

He knows my pain, He feels, He sees.

Each slight, dismissal, injury

Was carried in Gethsemane.

He bled, atoned, for all of those

Who tried and scourged Him, brought Him low.

The bitter gall, the crown of thorns,

Through the streets, the cross was borne.

When, in despair, I plead with Him

To take from me the weight of sin,

The ache of loss, the grief undone,

He took it all, the battle’s won.

I smile through tears, healed by degrees.

Get on my feet, from off my knees

And do the work He gave to me,

That I may go, renewed, to be

With Him for all Eternity.

Learned Lesson Number Ten: Kindness is Never Foolishness

When I was in college the first time, some 30-plus years ago, I read a story in my Freshman English class at BYU that had a profound effect upon my life. It was written by Isaac Bashevis Singer, and is entitled “Gimpel the Fool”. Gimpel was an orphan who was simple and without guile. Because of his nature, he was a target his entire life. Everyone in the village where he lived engaged in dispensing ridicule and lies that were directed at Gimpel, for the sake of nothing more than their own entertainment. In spite of this, Gimpel chose to never get angry or take revenge upon anyone, even though he was large in stature and could have taken most of them out at any time. Even though he usually did know when they were lying to him. Instead he chose to perpetually extend the benefit of the doubt to all who would mess with him, because he did not want to take the chance that his disbelief or his vengefulness might hurt another. “What was I to do?” said he, “I believed them, and I hope at least that did them some good.” Gimpel chose to take the advice of his rabbi, which was, "It is written, better to be a fool all your days than for one hour to be evil. You are not a fool. They are the fools. For he who causes his neighbor to feel shame loses Paradise himself."

The story of Gimpel was not a happy one. He was horribly taken advantage of throughout his life, choosing always to see and embrace the good in those who treated him most miserably. When he came to the end of his days, he had no regrets, because he had never dished evil to a living soul. He was prepared and without fear, saying, “When the time comes I will go joyfully. Whatever may be there, it will be real, without complication, without ridicule, without deception. God be praised: there even Gimpel cannot be deceived.”

I have been gently accused, from time to time in my life, of being a “doormat”, of not standing up for myself when I was being taken advantage of. And without dwelling upon parts of my life that I am now mostly free of, sometimes they were right. I hate conflict, and would always rather take the brunt of any unkindness than ever dish it out myself. Not that I haven’t occasionally engaged in a few biting and cynical dialogues in my head when I felt attacked. But I can never bring myself to actually carry them out. The act of making anyone feel even slightly bad about anything, even (maybe especially) if they deserve it, is just not in my repertoire. I blame my mother for this. She does not have a mean cell in her body. When I was a small child, growing up in the 1960’s, she used to often quote a line from the movie “Bambi”, spoken by a repentant little bunny called Thumper, whose mother had taught it to him… “If ya can’t say somethin’ nice, don’t say nothin’ at all.” She must have said this to us a lot, because it is so deeply ingrained in my memory. My mother lives by these words. I can honestly not remember a single time in my entire life that I have ever heard her speak an unkind word about anyone. And I have seen her deal kindly with those who deserved otherwise. This is what I aspire to.

I have six children, and I spend a whole lot of time beating myself up over the many ways I believe I have failed them over the years. None of us is perfect when it comes to parenting. But I believe that they have picked up this one concept along the way somehow, because they are mostly kind to each other. (Sometimes in their own unique, biting, and cynical way!) But they take care of each other, and I find that gratifying. I tell them repeatedly (and try to show them as well) that there is nothing in life that matters more than how they treat others. NOTHING. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Without exception. There is a reason that particular Rule is called the Golden one.

I saw a movie once, can’t remember what it was called, but it was about a guy who had treated people horribly his entire life, then had a near-death experience, from which he returned with the unwelcome ability to feel exactly what he had made other people feel. As time went by, he discovered that his own life was far less painful if he treated the people around him with kindness. Well, DUH! My own personal theory about Judgment Day, and Heaven versus Hell in the life after this one, is that a similar rule will apply. That the definition of both Heaven and Hell is the same; You will simply feel what you have caused others to feel. The Savior Himself has put no small emphasis on this particular concept. “Love one another, as I have loved you.” Pretty basic. As it says on the wall in my mother’s house, “Nice Matters”. Thumper and I have wise mothers. And Gimpel was no fool. When in doubt, always err on the side of kindness. What’s the worst that could happen?