Learned Lesson Number Sixteen: Gratitude Is Its Own Reward

I have noticed a pattern in the writing of these things I believe to be true. They always get tested. I write about Faith, and Fear rushes in. I write about Hope, and Despair rushes in. I write about Home, and Emptiness rushes in. I find myself in a position of having to prove and re-prove in my own life these lessons that God is trying to teach me. I have to earn the blessings that come with the learning of the lessons over and over again. God is big on repetition. But that is next week’s message. Today I want to talk about gratitude. I NEED to talk about gratitude. Because I need to FEEL gratitude. I know that when I am overwhelmed by gratitude, there is not so much room for the negative and scary stuff.

This morning I have been unable to get off the couch. I awoke to an emotional weight that brought me to tears and would not let me up. The sense of loss I was feeling for people and places that are suddenly gone from my life was overwhelming. I am sleeping on my sister’s couch because I just returned from a year in Utah, staying with my parents and spiritually “recharging”. I will be moving into a bedroom here, (as soon as I can force myself off the couch to do the work required to set up my space) and I lived in a bedroom in Utah, after God decided I could no longer be trusted with a whole house. As painful as this reality is, I also know it is a gift. One for which I am grateful. At the place I am in my life, it is good to be relieved of the responsibility of maintaining a home. I am grateful to my parents and my sister for offering me a bedroom. That said, I am feeling somewhat impatient about reaching that place where I can finally sustain myself and do for my children the things I have been woefully unable to do.

I am blessed with some unbelievable kids, whom I have missed terribly. I have anxiously anticipated getting back to Arizona to be with them, and the past weekend has been filled with celebrations that did not disappoint. My youngest son turned 13 and my youngest grandson celebrated his first birthday. It was Memorial Day, and my boys are fortunate to have a roommate who has safely returned from 2 tours in Iraq. He grilled burgers for us yesterday. My heart has been filled with thanksgiving and love for all of my children and their friends, (whom I consider my honorary children) as I have been able to laugh with them, eat cake, and listen to them play and sing for me. Four of my kids have been writing music together lately, and could not wait to show me what they have been working on. It gave me chills and brought me to tears, honestly. Writing this down and sharing it with you helps me allow the gratitude to wash over me, and moves me toward healing from the loss of what is missing.

Thursday was my last day as a Teacher’s Aide at Timpanogos Academy in Lindon, Utah. I started this job the day after having spent the night in the ER with a nasty gallbladder attack. I was grateful for the job but not anxious to do it at the time. For the first week, I was miserable and in pain, and extremely fearful that I would let down my mother, who got me the job and had faith in me to do it well. As time went by, I started to create some real friendships with the other aides and the teachers, and also to get really attached to the kids I was working with. I began to look forward to every day, and it started to not feel like a job.

On Thursday, the other aides and I performed for the kids at lunchtime, a version of “We Will Rock You” that I had rewritten the words for, and it was a BLAST! We donned our psychedelic Rock and Roll trappings, slapped on some sunglasses, and just cut loose with it. The kids went nuts, and I cannot remember the last time I had that much fun. There were many heartfelt goodbyes, and a couple of my favorite 4^th-grade boys actually followed me out to the car, hugging me and begging me not to go. It was an overwhelming outpouring of love, for which I will always be grateful. This made my all-night drive across the desert a bittersweet one, but I was blessed to have the strengthening influence of two inspiring audio talks given to me by one of my friends before I left. A friend who has experienced loss on a level I cannot imagine, and yet faces life with gratitude and humor. Thanks, Lori.

I have described this experience as feeling like being “driven out of Eden”, and I think this is a fitting analogy. Adam and Eve would have certainly been comfortable and safe, had they stayed in Eden. But they could never have been with their children. They never would have been polished by the refining fires of adversity, and they never would have truly appreciated joy without experiencing sorrow.

So I am grateful for the sorrow I felt this morning on the couch. It makes the joy, when it comes, so much sweeter. I am grateful for the kind of friends who sense when I need them and call. I am grateful to be able to go babysit my grandsons tomorrow. I am grateful I was able to wash dishes for my boys yesterday. I am grateful for a sister who has opened her home and her heart to me and my son. I am grateful for my white kitty, who has missed me and won’t leave me alone for a minute. I am not so grateful for her white kitty hairs, which are now clinging to everything I own. But I will take it, as adversity goes.

I feel better now. Gratitude is its own reward. Feeling it makes everything better. But to truly feel it, you have to specifically acknowledge it. There’s a reason that we are taught to express it FIRST in our prayers. BEFORE we ask for what we stand in need of. So count your blessings. Name them. Get grateful, and get off the couch.

Learned Lesson Number Fifteen: Be Careful Where You Hang Your Hopes

Hope is a precious thing. Without it we cannot endure. Anything. When we learn how to properly access it, we can endure. Anything. So consider very carefully where you look for hope. And where you choose to put it, once you have found it.

When I was 9 years old, I wanted a horse. Really badly. I fervently hoped I would get a horse for Christmas. It was pretty much all I thought about. It was an impossibility. We lived in the suburbs, in a rental, with a tiny back yard. In spite of my mother’s very rational explanations of why I could not have a horse, I still hoped. In my logical little 9-year-old mind, she was just trying to throw me off with her reasoning. Horses eat grass. We had grass. A horse needs a fence. Got one of those, too. I could take care of the horse, I had read all the books, knew what they ate, how to groom them, and certainly how to love them. And besides, I had been praying for a horse. God would not let me down.

I did not get a horse. I still do not have a horse. My hopes were dashed, and have been many more times since then, and in much harsher ways. Yet I still believe in hope. And I still believe in God.

This is how the dictionary defines hope: “ The feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best.” I kind of like this definition because it includes an “or”. So often we feel like our hopes have been destroyed because we did not get what we wanted. It is much easier to hang onto hope after not getting what we want when we can believe that the outcome might still be in our best interest. Even if we don’t see or feel that right away, due to our disappointment.

I also found that “expectation” was listed as a synonym for “hope”. I am not sure that I completely agree with this assessment. I think that expectations are closed and hope is open. Expectations are “It needs to be this, and it will be this”, while hope is more “I want it to be this, but if it isn’t, then something better will come”. I think that expectations are Earthly, and hope is Heavenly. This is where God comes in.

Recently while struggling with a rather painful loss of hope, (familiar territory for me the past few years) I looked up “Hope” in the topical guide of my scriptures. I found many inspiring references, but this is the one that linked to my soul, and made me sob just a little:

Romans 8:24-25 “For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.”

This connected with me on a visceral level, because I was in a place of desperately wanting to see evidence of what I was hoping for, and it was not coming. I had prayed for an answer and was led to this scripture. I realized that I was hanging my hopes in the wrong places. I was attaching them to humans and events. Events change, and humans are weak and imperfect, and cannot be trusted with my hopes. I likewise cannot be trusted with the hopes of others. No matter how much I love and trust them. No matter how much I want them to love and trust me.

Real hope, while often delivered via other humans, comes from God, and God alone. He is unchanging and immoveable. He is the only one who can see what “we see not”, and deliver it. And He does it on His timetable, not ours. To truly access real hope, we have to get our lives aligned with God so that we can see the signs He sends to give us hope. If we are aligned with Him, the signs appear where we are looking. I have tested this, and I know it to be true. I hope for many things in my life that are not yet seen. I still hope for a horse. And for much bigger things than that. So I keep the channels open. I look for the signs. I roll with the disappointments in my life, and I forgive the weakness in myself and other humans. My hopes are hanging in a solid and immoveable place. I work daily at keeping them bright, while anxiously awaiting the time when I will be shown what I hope for, but do not yet see.

Learned Lesson Number Fourteen: Be Fiercely Yourself

Who among us really knows who we are? Even when looking in a mirror, what we see is not exactly what others see. The mirror-image is a slightly altered one from the actual image. And then that whole complicated subject of perception comes into play. Two people can view the same person, thing, or situation, and give completely different descriptions, when both are seeing supposedly the very same visual. It’s enough to make your head spin. I recently turned 50, and since I am shooting for the century mark, this means I am only halfway through this earthly journey, and the older I get, the more I realize how little I actually know. Even about myself. Having said this, I also am reasonably certain about the things that I DO know. Thus this “Blog’o’Stuff” that I think I know for sure.

So. Here is what I know about who I am. I believe that God created me with certain basic elements that make up my soul in its original, barest form. In my mind, this original form of Peg is a little girl who looks something like Pippi Longstocking. She is unique and I love her. She is the last version of myself that I remember in her purest form. Before the floods and fires of life began to alter my view. She wears braids and has a pet monkey and keeps a horse in her kitchen, and nobody tells her what to do. She is a grand storyteller, and she does not suffer condescension or those who would be cruel to children. She has superhuman strength, and she is fiercely herself.

This original child is the part of ourselves that God has charged us with protecting and preserving as we bounce through this mortal existence. Each of us is subject to the buffetings of negative circumstances and difficult people. These things alter us, sometimes harshly. It can be scary and lonely. But we are given people who recognize us, along the way. These are our soul mates, and they come in many forms. We need to value and keep them close. They are the ones who love us most and know us best; who retain the ability to see only that original soul when they look at us. I am fortunate to have a number of these people in my life. The ones who have always seen me, no matter how deeply hidden I was.

When I was 20 years old and just getting to know the man I would marry, I found myself wanting him so much that I kept mostly silent. Letting him do the talking, subconsciously hiding the parts of myself that I feared he would not like. Hiding Pippi, who I loved the most. Making her disappear. I cannot blame him for this, I chose to suppress myself, and I must be accountable for that. But the consequences of that choice have been far-reaching and painful. I remember going out for a burger with one of my aforementioned “soul mates” while trying to decide whether to get married. He told me I had changed, and that I even “blinked my eyes differently.” I asked if this was good or bad, and he said, “Just different. Not like you”.

In the movie “Runaway Bride”, a woman becomes somewhat infamous for continually bolting from the altar, and a reporter attempts to discover why this is. He interviews each of the jilted grooms, and asks them all “how does she like her eggs?” Every man’s answer is different, all followed by “She likes them just like I like them.” Ultimately this woman needed to figure out how she really liked her eggs. I should have been bold about how I liked my eggs. It might have saved me a lot of grief. Once you are married and living with a person, it is pretty much impossible to hide your real self. And once the guard came down, my fears that he would not much care for the uncensored, raw version of me were realized. I tried for 23 years to correct this. Decided to start truly being myself and hoping I would grow on him. But alas, he was not a fan of Pippi.

I am not interested in recounting the sad tale of divorce yet again, nor am I interested in placing blame. Part of learning who I am is taking responsibility for my part in how it all played out. I struggle far more with the forgiving of myself than with the forgiving of him. And as far as I think I have come in recent years, there is still a big part of me that is terrified of being me. It is risky to be fiercely oneself, but the alternative is far worse. Trust me.

In finally letting people see who I really am, I risk rejection, and recently I have felt some of that. It is not fun. But in the holding back of my raw self, I assure rejection. Maybe not right away, but eventually. It is far better to put yourself out there and know you have been honest. As the Good Doctor Geisel says, “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.”

A wise bit of advice my mother used to offer me in the rapids of my marriage was to “pray to see him through the Lord’s eyes”, and that always helped. It is a practice I still use, any time I struggle with anyone. If I can see them as I think God sees them, then there is no judgment on my part. It is while trying to see myself through that lens that I often lose my footing, and sometimes I stumble. In fact, lately it has felt like I am face-planting into the pavement on a regular basis. My view of myself is still somewhat skewed, and those pavement-bonding moments do not help with that. But my approach is to actively strengthen my personal relationship with God, in order to better see myself through His eyes. It is a tedious process, but I think it is working. When I look in the mirror, I am recognizing at least an outline of myself again. Because the way that God sees us all is as His children.

One of my assignments while in post-divorce therapy was to write a letter to my childhood self. It was an excruciating task, because I could not find her. At that point, even superhuman strength could not help poor Pippi dig out from under what I had piled on top of her. Finally getting the dirt to loosen has taken coming to Utah and moving into a bedroom in my parents’ house. It has taken getting sick and letting them take care of me. And it has taken going back to the beginning. To elementary school. Where, in my job as a teacher’s aide, I have been blessed with a group of vivacious 4^th-graders who somehow recognize me.

They “high-five” me in the halls and they call me “Pegster” and “Pegasus”. These were my nicknames when I was their age. They figured this out without my having told them. Lately they have taken to pounding on the desks or the lunch tables and singing “We Will Rock You” when they see me coming. I did not instigate this, and while I find it amusing and somewhat gratifying, I am sure the teachers do not. It’s a good thing school is almost out. But I will miss those kids who recognized Pippi in me, enough to help me dig her out. I need her. She is my ticket Home.

The Savior Himself said, “Unless ye become as a little child, ye can in nowise enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” So if you have lost touch with who you really are, find a way to go back to the 4^th grade. Hang out with some 9-year-olds for a while. Find a way to get back there and retrieve your childhood self. Then defend that kid. Fiercely.

Learned Lesson Number Thirteen: Get Schooled

I started college in 1979. Oldest of nine children, I went off to Brigham Young University with high hopes, in clothes I had made for myself and with money saved from three summer jobs. The eight kids still at home meant my folks could not help much financially. I worked in the college bookstore, and majored in art. This was a poorly-considered choice, but it took me a year to figure that out. Art was a highly-competitive major, and I was just not that good at it. I chose BYU in the hopes of getting into their song-and-dance group, “The Young Ambassadors”, and when I was not successful at this, I decided to return to Arizona for the summer and regroup.

I secured a full-time custodial job at Arizona State University. As an employee, I could take classes for next to nothing, so stayed at ASU. I took French and Weightlifting. I stayed up too late and could not choose a major. I leaned toward Photo-journalism, although music was my first love. After a year at ASU, I decided the 4pm to midnight custodial job was interfering with my social life, so I quit and enrolled in Mesa Community College. Working my way backwards, high school was sure to be my next stop. Instead, I met a drummer. He had a band. I wanted to be in it, and I wanted him. Going back to high school might have been a better idea. But I was sold. Quit school, sang in bars and hotel lounges for a year, and married my drummer. Six kids and twenty-three years of marriage boot camp later, I graduated from the School of Dwindling Self-Esteem and found myself in a world where that particular education held no earning power. I knew I needed to go back to Real College. I had enrolled in a couple of classes at MCC a year or two before divorce, but that was quickly halted. I was “using too much gas” and “neglecting my duties at home” in this silly pursuit.

While working out the post-divorce financial arrangement, I quickly learned how fast $300 an hour in legal fees adds up, so naively settled for only four years of alimony, in spite of the guideline for a marriage as long as ours being three times higher. Divorce Math 101. I knew my soon-to-be ex would fight me on the higher numbers, and I figured I had a year of school under my belt, so I would be done in three, giving me a full year to secure a job, and then I would no longer be reliant upon a man who hated me for my support. It seemed logical, and it speeded up the process considerably, while eliminating legal costs.

I had no idea that I would have to withdraw from two semesters in a row because I could not keep my youngest son in school. Or that my 15-year-old daughter would require major spinal surgery, and that her father would use this surgery to try and take possession of both her and her younger brother. After two years of not sleeping at night because I dreaded the morning, which usually greeted me with a kicking, screaming, anxiety-ridden child who had to be stuffed into the car by his brothers and then relegated to the Principal’s office where he would kick the walls all day, I finally opted for an online K12 education for him.

I found some irony in the fact that twice I enrolled in Psychology 101, and twice I had to withdraw from that class to deal with the real-world psychological issues taking place in my own home. And this was upper-division stuff. But I got no college credit for it. What I had learned in two decades of raising children was only marketable in the form of child care, so I took a nanny job for a year, working for a very wealthy blended family. This was an education in social class and morals, and did not end well. Again, no college credit.

After four years of trial and error, I have become most creative in the balancing of my real-world education with my academic education, both of which are ongoing. As I have learned to navigate the world of Financial Aid and online possibilities, and also with the help of family and friends, I am finally within a year of securing that elusive Degree. If asked to sum up what I have learned thus far, my answer would have to be that I have learned that no one is ever fully educated. The lessons will continue to come long after the cap and gown have made their walk.