You Can't Fix What You Aren't Willing to Face; A Life Beyond Darkness

I've been watching a T.V. series on Prime TV that is called "Surviving Evil."  Sometimes I wonder what draws me to these horrible shows about sadistic violence.  Each survivor has a similar "victim" profile.  Like me they are kind, empathetic women who are determined to overcome the evil that tries to dominate, overwhelm, and destroy them and the people they love.  I see myself in each victim no matter how similar or different I am from them.

One victim resonated disturbingly close to home.  Her name was Bridgette and she was a first grade teacher when she was abducted by a stranger, assaulted and terrorized, and taken to deserted area where she was shot three times.  As she recounted her survival, she talked about crawling to the closest house she could find.  She felt that angels carried her.  When she rang the doorbell, someone came to the door, saw her, and then shut the door and locked it.  She had to crawl to the next house before a compassionate stranger called the authorities and stood guard over her until they arrived.  After many surgeries and nearly dying, she managed to recover.

How often have I felt kidnapped by depression?  How often have I felt brutalized by an unseen presence, determined to destroy me?  How many times have I felt that all I can do is crawl, hoping the angels will look down and have mercy upon me?  How many times have I looked for help, only to see the door slam shut, and realize that the journey to recovery is still agonizingly far away?  I see in this woman, a sister who knows the sorrow I feel and the pain I suffer, and I cry my tears with her.  I find strength as she says, "I went to the authorities because I don't want this to happen to anyone else."  No one deserves to feel this way.  No one should be shamed and tormented as I have been.  The enemy is real and he needs to be called out.  My brothers and sisters who suffer will not suffer alone.  Even if all I can do is stand guard, as the man did in the show, and wait with the victim for help to arrive.

The episode I just finished watching was about about a woman named Adriane Fields.  I watched the show because she lived in Ft. Worth and was assaulted by a serial killer who killed women in Arlington.  I practically live in Arlington and I had never heard of a serial killer here.  The show resonated with me because of the strength and power of the survivor, Adriane. She had a premonition that she would be attacked by the bathtub killer, a name people had given the killer terrorizing the DFW area.  She was so convinced of it that she actually moved to a safer apartment complex in a better neighborhood to avoid it.  In spite of this, she still sensed danger.  For months she lived in fear of her imminent attack.  The very night she was determined to put her fears aside, sleep soundly with the light off, and not worry about the killer, he broke into her apartment.  However,  her months of vigilance and study of the evil that stalked her, enabled her to survive.  She was able to talk to the attacker and convince him to let her live.  Her eye witness testimony, along with the careful recitation of everything the killer had said, made it possible for the authorities to find the man.  She testified against him and saw to it that justice was done both for her, and the two women who died at his hand.  He was executed in 2009.

I was impressed by a couple of things about this survivor.  One thing was her beauty.  It shined out of her eyes and in her complexion.  She had chosen to learn from her experience to trust her instincts and her intuition, to see herself as an instrument to make the world a better, safer place.  At the end of the program, she had some wonderful wellness advice.  She said, "You Can't Fix What You Aren't Willing to Face."  In my recovery journey, that has been my unspoken mantra.  If you can't face it, you can't fix it.

Is it in your childhood?  Is it an abusive relationship?  Is it a traumatizing experience?  What does your mind avoid?  If you can't face it, you will never fix it.  It will haunt and stalk you like the bathtub killer.  You won't see him, but he will be there, sabatoging your life, victimizing you, keeping you down where he wants you to be.  There is no way around the pain.  Only through it.  There is no help and no hope unless you decide to face it.

For the last couple of days, I have been paranoid and anxious.  Satan is angry at me.  I can feel his fury like hot breath on my neck.  For so long he has muzzled me with fear.  So long he has been free to torment me and the ones I love.  Like the victims in "Surviving Evil" the ultimate thing you must avoid at all cost is angering your tormentor by disobedience, rebellion, or independent thought.  I have rebelled.  I am speaking out, revealing his secrets.  I am facing my fears and saying no to my doubts.  It is terrifying.  Revenge is as certain as the sunrise in the morning, if not for my Savior.  I pray for strength.  I pray for wisdom.  I pray that I can be an instrument in his hands to bring my tormentor to account, and free other victims of his dark embrace.  There is goodness, there is light, there is freedom.  There is a life for me beyond the darkness.

The Curse of the Fig Tree

Sometimes scripture stories are repeated so often that we fail to see that they are really mindbogglingly strange.  Consider one of the oldest stories, Adam and Eve.  If God really didn't want Adam and Eve to partake of the fruit of the tree, why did he put it in the garden in the first place?  Why didn't he get rid of the snake?  Why were they only able to have children, AFTER they left the garden?  Didn't God kind of set Adam and Eve up to fail by giving them two commandments that were impossible to obey at the same time?

Consider Abraham who was promised a  posterity numbering greater than the sand of the seashore and a promised land to dwell in.  He lived his life as a nomad having left the idolatry of his father's people and land, wandering homeless.  Also, his wife couldn't get pregnant.  When she was finally given a son, Abraham was commanded by God to kill him.  Why didn't God just give him a lot of kids, and a homeland?  That would fulfill his promise and would have made sense, right?  Strange.

Then there is Isaac, the boy who was offered in sacrifice to God, was spared by an angel and dedicated to God as the birthright son.  His wife was not infertile.  She had twins.  Why make this so complicated?  Couldn't God have just sent one baby at a time?  Or a set of boy girl twins?  Then, why didn't he make sure that the boy who was supposed to be the birthright son came out first?  Strange.

Maybe you might think that these are anomalies in the way God interacts with mankind.  But when you look closer, you see a clear pattern.  A clear pattern of convoluted, confusing, backward events that eventually result in the promises and gifts of a loving God to his covenant people.  Not for nothing do they say that God works in mysterious ways!

It just gets stranger as you progress through the Old Testament.  Jacob marries two women, who also give him their handmaidens to be servant wives.  He has a staggering number of rowdy boys who do all kinds of horrible things and make their parents' lives hell.  The birthright son, Rueben decides to have sex with his Dad's wife in a misguided effort to show dominance over his father.  He looses the birthright.  Now who gets the birthright?  Does it go to Judah, first son of the first wife?  Rueben was technically Leah's first born since he was the son of her handmaid.  Technically the birthright would go to the first son of the second wife, Joseph, but one could definitely see that Judah had a claim to it, as did Rueben's next younger brother.  With this kind of raging testosterone competition going on, it is not so surprising that the brothers take out Joseph, and compete to take his crown.  What a mess!  There is all kinds of drama in the family including rape, murder, adultery, and deception.  Of course, we know the strange and convoluted way that God chose to save Jacob's family using the Egyptians led by Joseph, who was not as taken out as his brothers had hoped.  And so, the tribe of raucous and betimes disobedient, yet humbled and repentant Israel was taken into Egypt to be saved, only later to become enslaved, by the same Egyptians.....strange.

Let's fast forward to the birth of the Savior.  The Aaronic Priesthood is still held by the church of God which is at this time, practicing the Law of Moses, the prophet deliverer of Israel.  The Jewish people are enslaved by the hated Romans who find them an especially haughty, particular, and rebellious people.  The church of God has been over-run by "church people" who love to appear righteous and spend all their time and energy giving one another titles, making one another feel important, and enlarging their own power and influence.  They have created a thriving marketplace inside the temple courtyard which helps to finance their activities.  They seek to make the Law of Moses so complex and restrictive that only they are able to follow their interpretation of it- or at least they appear to.  This facade of righteousness solidifies their authority over the rest of the people and ensures that they remain in power, along with their children and children's children.  These church people are called Pharisees, Sadducees, the Sanhedrin, the Council of Elders, the scribes and various other names.  They lead in the synagogues, control the education system, control the temple, and oversee the ordinances of the law of Moses.

Overall, I imagine the people to be quite cynical.  They know, as all people do, when their leaders are being hypocritical.  Justice, prosperity, and freedom are only for the privileged or the lucky.  The Roman leaders are brutal and unconcerned with the human rights of those they rule.  The church leadership is corrupt and self-serving as well.  The poor and the widow are oppressed.  The faithful seekers of truth are despised or even killed if they become too outspoken.  Everything is pretty sad.  Suddenly, strange things begin to happen.  A descendant of Levi, of the original sons of Jacob, entered the temple sanctum to do his appointed duties.  He sees an angel of God who prophecies that his wife, a woman who has long been barren, will conceive and bare a son who would prepare the way for the Messiah.  What????  Then Mary, an obscure descendant of David has an angel appear to her, letting her know that she, a virgin, is going to give birth to the Son of God who is already growing within her.

And so begins the slow unraveling of the social order of the time.  Satan fights back.  Zacharias is murdered.  King Herod tries to kill the baby Messiah and succeeds in slaughtering all the boy babies in the land.  Thanks to the timely dream of his guardian father Joseph, the baby Messiah is saved.....in Egypt.  Of course.

Let's fast forward again to the triumphal entry of Jesus Christ into his city, Jerusalem.  This is the time foretold by the prophets for hundreds and possibly thousands of years.  Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the great deliverer has come to his people.  He is healing the sick and the infirm.  He has revitalized the faith of the children of Israel who follow him joyfully proclaiming his gospel unto all who will listen. The children are proclaiming that he is the promised Messiah.  They are singing!  It is beautiful.  He enters the temple courtyard and scatters the merchants and money changers. The time of their corruption is over.  The King has come to claim his rightful place to rule and reign in righteousness forever.  Right?

It would seem so.  If I had been there, I would have thought so.  Anything was possible.  God is walking among men and sickness and death have no power.  The words of life come from his mouth.  How can the Romans oppress?  How can the apostate church leadership stand against this man, the Son of David, the half God, whose right it is to rule over mankind?

At this crucial moment in world history, the Savior passes a fig tree.  He looks for fruit and he finds none.   I imagine his piercing gaze falling over each branch and leaf, perceiving with his superhuman senses that everything about the tree is functioning properly, and yet there is no fruit.  No blossoms, no ripening orbs, no sign whatsoever of the thing he was seeking for.

Liken this to the Master's search these years of his ministry.  Entering synagogues, preaching the truth, beckoning men to come follow him, to spiritually nourish the precious souls fainting all around.  City after city, time and time again, he is cast out, reviled against, and rejected by the leadership of the apostate church.  He has searched high and low among the churches in Judea and has found no fruit.  No charity, no truth, no genuine connection to God.  Not a sign of it.  There are buildings, a temple, offices carried out with laser precision by the sons of Levi, lawyers and scribes that study the words of the prophets with zeal and know of the workings of God in past times.  And yet, just as the fig tree, the church is producing no fruit.

In the only instance that we know of in the New Testament, the destructive wrath of the Savior is released-onto the fig tree, the symbol of apostate Judaism at the time he came to the Earth.  That one destructive act was like a judgement/curse issued with power and authority upon those who claimed his title and yet failed to be good stewards.  And what a curse it was.  From that very hour, the tree wilted and died.

And what of the apostate Judaism?  Of course, we know that the Savior was murdered by the very men whom he had passed judgement on in the withering of the fig tree.  They killed him as he knew they would, but their fate was already sealed with the curse of the fig tree.  It wouldn't be many years before the Romans would kill them all and destroy their temple leaving not one stone standing upon another.  Such is the doom of all those who set their hand against the chosen vessels of the Lord.  Such is the fate of those who profess the authority and sanction of God and yet do not produce the fruit!  In fact, if you look back on some of the strange works of God in the scripture stories, you might find some not as strange as they appeared without this principle in mind.

Could it be that he wants chosen people, a chosen church, a blessed flock of obedient people, but at the same time, he doesn't want them to THINK of themselves as chosen?  That is the ultimate irony!  The moment the Lord begins to bless someone, to elevate them because of their obedience, then they lift themselves up in pride and bring upon themselves the curse of the Fig Tree because they don't prove themselves worthy of the blessings and elevated status he has given them.  The pride of their hearts makes them unable to produce the fruits of the spirit which was the whole point of the blessings to begin with.  And so the strange workings of God are not so strange after all.  He continues to put the last first and the first last.  And men, and churches, and nations who fail to produce the fruit- beware the curse of the Fig Tree!

God has said since ancient times, "Thou shalt NOT take the name of the Lord thy God in Vain."  Each of us has the gift and privilege of calling ourselves Christians, of taking his name upon us.  We, like the Jews at the time of the Savior, have a peculiar place in the world to show all men that by casting off the natural man and obeying the commandments of God, he can transform us from mortal to immortal, from sinful to sanctified, from death to life eternal.  But woe be unto us if we take his name in vain!  Woe to us if our churches are not filled with his love!  Woe to us if we use his name and his doctrine to inflate our own pride and serve our own selfish interests while despising those with broken hearts who seek after him for healing and grace.

The time has come to inspect ourselves.  Those who cry "America First," are our fig trees baring fruit?  If he came to our political rallys would he find a nation that fosters charity, mercy, and a connection with God?  Are we worthy of the privileged place we hold in HIS world, as HIS people?  What of our church?  If he came to our meetinghouse, would we recognize him?  Are we filled with humility and willingness to confess our need for the Savior in our lives?  Are we feeding the spirits of those with whom we worship, as he has commanded us to do?  The Master has said, "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples.  Ye shall have love one to another."  Does that love mark us as his own?  In our families, in our wards, in our communities, in our nation?  If not, it is time to repent.  It is time to return to him and bow ourselves before him in humility.  Imagine what might have happened to the leadership of the Jews if they had done that?  They and their children would not have perished at the blade of a Roman sword.  The stain of the Innocent blood would not follow them.  May we be more wise than they were and change the tide of our doom before it is too late.

Joyful Psalms to the Savior

Since starting therapy last spring, my dreams have gone through a change.  Mornings used to be tortuously difficult.  My REM sleep was full of nightmares seething with anxiety, full of shame and darkness.  I would wake, but remain still in my bed, immobilized by fear, dread sapping motivation.  The sounds of boys eating breakfast and gathering supplies, Ben performing the duties I knew were mine, and me lying in a depression induced paralysis, wanting to help, but unable to move.

Contrast that to my journal entry yesterday:


"I have had a lot of dreams lately, but I savor them too long.  My conscious mind grabs onto them lovingly and then falls back into the dream. Instead of pulling the dream to the conscious realm, my conscious is pulled back into the subconscious along with any memory it discovered.  They have been happy dreams.  Perhaps I know that their beauty would not translate well to the consciousness and to preserve it, they must stay bright, dancing in my subconscious only to be released at the second coming of the Savior.  Perhaps they are in the Adamic language, and will burst forth as a song when I see his face."

What accounts for this change in my mornings?  There is one large difference between my mind six months ago and my mind yesterday, and that is my total embrace of the Savior and his atonement in my life.  The author and designer of depression is Satan.  Of course it is.  Only he desires for me to be miserable.  Only he knows me so well as to design attacks on my soul with such precision, able to penetrate all the defenses that might save me.  Only Jesus Christ could save me.  Even his church, with all the light and truth it possesses was not enough.  Even the modern marvel of medical treatment combined with the church was not enough.  I had to venture, at his direction, into the world of therapy, and drink deeply of the wisdom of men before at last, I feel the darkness begin recede in earnest.  It was He, and none other who directed me into therapy.  It is He who directs my path.  He knew what I needed, and he has saved me.

I sat in the foyer of the church yesterday, not with my head bowed and tears rolling down my cheeks, but with light and joy and a desperate desire to express to my Savior, my adoration at his marvelous healing.  I read in my scriptures yesterday of two blind men who implored the Savior, the Son of David, to have mercy on them.  The crowd tried to get them to be quiet, but they persisted.  The Master healed them.  Can you imagine their joy?  Can you conceive of the love and gratitude those men had for the Savior when they saw in brilliant color, his face appear where before there was only darkness?  That is how I felt.  This is what I wrote.

"How I love my Lord; him who has ransomed me!  He holds up my face to sunlight, to eat he gives me the fatted calf.  A fine robe has he secured around me to replace sackcloth and ashes.  How unworthy I am!  See his mercy!  Behold his grace!  He has esteemed the lowly handmaiden and has caused my soul to soar as an eagle to see the marvelous works of his mighty hands.  He has sharpened my eyes to see more than mortal eyes can see.

"He is mighty to save!  MIGHTY TO SAVE!  No enemy can take my soul.  He has redeemed me from the tormentors and made my heart to be light.  The dark designs of my enemy, forged in the bowels of the Earth and conceived in sin and hell, has he overcome.  I will praise my God and my King forever for he is Mighty, Mighty to Save.

"I fear that I have delusions of grandeur.  How can it be that he loves me?  How can it be that he has seen me and had mercy upon me, for I am nothing and no one, least of all and last of all.  If he has had mercy upon me, how much then for you!  No man, woman, or child is beyond his love and rescue.

"I feel, now that I know this thing, that I cannot hold back from singing praises to him forever!  How can we hold back from rejoicing, for he has overcome all things.  Satan, that crafty snake who has laid a trap for me.  Like a mouse, I was afraid.  I could not escape.  My doom and my fate was certain.  But my Lord has had mercy upon me.  He has redeemed my soul from hell and made me a home in the tops of the mountain where none will come to make afraid."

He lives!  He loves us!  He has power to save.  He is mighty to save.  All those with broken hearts, he can heal you.  The path may not be easy, but he will guide your steps.  No obstacle is too great, no illness too unknowable for him who is Lord of all.  Come unto him, cast your burdens at his feet.  Find refuge in his embrace.  He waits for you.

Sex....Can She Get More Awkward? Yes She Can!

This title is a little bit of a click bait one.  I want to get views and I've found that controversial titles get more views.  My "church people" post the other day got a hundred views in one day!  That's a record.  So the sex I am talking about is going to be less about the verb and more about the adjective.  More about boys and girls and less about women and men.  Sorry guys.  Made ya look!

So today I went to a Zumba class with some awesome ladies from church.  Most of us in the room were members of my church, moms of a least a couple of kids, and in happy stable marriages.  There we were, rolling our hips suggestively, expressing ourselves with our bodies in a most open and joyful way, without shame or self consciousness.....well maybe a little bit.  At first I was in my left brain, trying to make sure I got the steps right, was using the correct foot, and following directions like a good girl.  Then I got into the zone, I thought, "This is easy stuff girl.  Just use your right brain like drawing.  Feel the music, and move your feet.  No one is watching you, the important thing is that you move and you feel good."  I stayed in that zone for the rest of the class, I sweat hard, I danced like no one was watching.  It took me back to my dancing days.

I took dance classes as a little girl like a lot of people do.  I stood awkwardly in my leotard in front of the big glass mirrors.  Julie, my teacher, was a fabulous dancer and I worshiped the ground she danced on.  I, by contrast, always seemed to be all wrong.  Always stuck in my left brain, trying too hard and afraid to mess up, I never really danced in class.  I danced at home.  My stereo pumping my favorite song, the mood would take me, and I would stand up and dance in my room, in the basement, in the backyard....I was a Goddess!  I put together random routines that had no counting and no wrong steps, and I danced.  It was glorious.  At one point I started dancing in front of the back patio doors after the sun went down.  The light from the dining room lit me up like a stage and the glass on the patio doors reflected like a mirror.  I danced like no one was watching and it was amazing to see myself, uninhibited- a real dancer....until I realized that the whole neighborhood could see me.  My adolescent self was mortified!  How embarrassing. 

Eventually the dancing stopped.  Women don't dance.  Little girls dance, and women have more important things to do.  Like laundry.  I hadn't danced for many years until one day on the way home from counselling about ten years ago.  My session had been especially good, and I was in a euphoric mood.  I imagined I could see, dancing in my right brain, a happy girl.  She had glowing streamers in her hair, and her body flipped and sprang effortlessly through space, a gorgeous and happy dance of light. 

Ironically, in counselling, you learn to unthink stuff about age.  People who are quick to grow up, despise the things of childhood, and rush into being important and adult too soon, are often stunted in their emotional growth.  They are afraid of the childhood things that they left behind too soon, and in order to heal they have to go back in time, find their lost "inner child" and nurture themselves into emotional maturity and wholeness.  Those most emotionally immature are most resistant to revisit their childhood and find that inner child, abandoned, shamed and neglected, crying out for love and attention.  They are also most likely to want to "take it like a man" or woman, and can't admit that there is anything wrong them, or by extension, their family of origin.  Like a wounded animal determined to keep helping hands away, determined to protect themselves from imaginary danger until death takes them, a wounded soul despises the cure it most needs.

Yesterday I was irritated with the boys who hadn't done their chores on their day off.  I had been too busy with parent teacher conferences and errands to get after them.  They had found a way around our efforts to ban You Tube and were playing videos off of the Wii U.  Curiously, I spied what they were watching.  I saw a strange sight.  Four or five middle aged men with their faces creased in laughter, pure euphoria clearly smeared across the screen in all its glory.  My boys saw that I was watching and they drew me in excitedly, "Look at what they built Mom!  It's so COOL!"  It was very cool.  These men had pooled their resources and expertise to build a working remote controlled airplane that they had equipped with an airsoft gun.  As it flew through the sky, it shot air soft balls menacingly at a cardboard tank that was similarly equipped and fired uselessly into the grass of their make believe battlefield.  They had clearly invested a lot of time and effort into their fantasy war, and my boys got to see what they rarely get to see, grown men living the dreams of childhood!  What a glorious sight.  Better still, there were no grievously wounded soldiers, grisly corpses, or mourning wives and children involved.  It was all the fun, and none of the horror.  Men being male and loving it.

So now let's get awkward and talk about sex.  Dancing girls and warrior boys.  I don't pretend to be an expert on gender, but I used to be a girl, and I'm raising four boys, so I have some experience and observations to share.  Before I do, I want to draw attention to the urgency of this issue.  I personally know two wonderful people that I sing with who have made it into adulthood and are just now, in adulthood, discovering things about their sexual orientation, which from my lexicon means, their sexual identity: maleness, femaleness, and how they relate to other people.  Sexual orientation is actually a really good word.  A lot of lukewarm meaningless terms tend to come from the political left and political correctness has graced us with some of the stupidest words and phrases like, "happy holidays."  No one celebrates "holidays."  I know people who celebrate Christmas, Haunakkah, etc, but no one celebrates "holidays."  Maybe I'll do a post about that later.  Sexual orientation is a great word.  It clearly indicates that we are talking about the social expression of biological and spiritual realities about ourselves in relationship to other people.  Everyone has a different sexual identity and it's extremely complex.  I believe it is quite possible that every person is as unique in their sexual orientation as our fingerprints are unique to ourselves.  It is just as personal and just as sacred as you can get which brings me to another point.

Human sexuality is awkward, scary, taboo, sacred, beautiful, and essential.  It is the closest any of us will get to being like God, creating and raising other humans, becoming God to them; pretending to be what only our heavenly parents could adequately be, nurturers to other eternal creatures.  There is nothing more emotionally charged than sex and gender.  As we explore these issues we enter a minefield of triggers.  I dare to write this knowing that there is a good reason sex is awkward and taboo.  It is because sex matters!  To everyone.  As such, it is emotional dynamite and needs to be treated with care.

I venture into this minefield with my right brain.  Like in my zumba class, I am going to dance to the music I feel pulsing inside of me, write what I feel and hopefully it will shed some light on a subject that is so sacred and so unknowable, that the left brain just can't get a hold of it yet.  Like a Sci-Fi movie that has technology far beyond the scientific prowess of the present, the artist can imagine far more than the left brain can discover.  It is for the artist imagination to dance among the clouds, and leave the left brain thinkers to muddle through the details.  Here I go.

Why do girls dance?  We dance because we are beautiful.  We know we are beautiful.  There is nothing more beautiful than the female form, the dainty softness, the curve of a breast, a  hip.  The soft pink blush of a youthful cheek, the bouncing curls...all artists know that to find beauty, we look to the female.  And yet in the animal world, the female is usually not the most beautiful of the species.  Usually it is the male that is brightly colored and eye catching.  Why did God decide in his crowning creation, to make the female the more beautiful?  I don't know.  I just know that he did.  Many people get really upset about the female body being exploited.  Some of this outrage is totally justified, and some of it is misplaced.  When societies get in trouble is when our appreciation of female beauty becomes too narrow.

I have a dear friend that is in her nineties.  She helped to nurture me through my last major depressive episode.  I would come to her house and talk to her for hours.  Her gentle face, with it's lines, was especially beautiful to me.  In her bright eyes, I saw friendship and wisdom.  In her embrace, I found a kindred spirit.  I would tell her how beautiful she was and she would laugh.  "I'm as ugly as a mud fence.  That's what my dad always told me."  I have beautiful memories of another woman, my Aunt Minnie.  She was my mother's aunt and her soul had uncommon beauty.  She loved me and I loved her although I knew her only a few brief years.  She called me her dancing doll because I loved to spin and spin and dance in her living room while she watched and relished my performance.  Old women have a special kind of beauty and a unique kind of love.  The love an old woman is constant and reassuring, her hands worn and weathered from years of service.  The beauty of age may be an acquired taste, but it is real and potent.  Too often, in our fast food society, distracted by every shiny thing to cross our vision, we don't take the time to see the beauty of the old. 

The ideal of female beauty is complex.  We tend to think of ribbons, soft curls, and pastel colors when it comes to women, but there is more to us.  We have testosterone coursing through our veins too, although not in as great a quantity as men.  Often we are at our most alluring when we venture into the male world, a strange and mysterious presence.  I have found my alto two voice to be the most sexy when, like Karen Carpenter, I drop to the range of a tenor with sultery femininity.  It is as if taunting the males around me.  "See, I can sing your notes and sound like you never will.  I can be a woman in your territory!"  Likewise, those men who have not yet shed the fantasies of boyhood can be found playing Magic the Gathering, or Dungeons and Dragons in the shadow of a warrior princess, fiercely gazing down upon them with her scanitily clad body decked out in battle gear, feminine trappings and deadly weapons in a strange and compelling juxtaposition.  The nurturing woman, a glorious angel of death!  I have no idea if such a woman is sexually appealing to most men or all men, but she is obviously appealing to many.  Why is that?  Maybe we need to switch to men for a while.

I know more about men and boys now than I ever wanted to know.  Through their eyes, I see the feminine world as a strange and foreign place, but their world, once mysterious, now makes much more sense.  Theirs is a world of battle and dominance.  As they shed infancy, they immediately find a weapon.  They find a bow to shoot imaginary arrows when they pick up a lowly coat hanger.  Their little fingers make a gun, when a more realistic substitute is not immediately available.  Today Austin ripped up a piece of wooden floor trim to make his sword for lack of a better weapon.  These little men twirl and flourish their deadly weapons and hit the closest human they can find, usually me.  There is no better game than when Mom can pretend to be mortally wounded and fall to the ground.  Their little faces squeal with delight as they see that they were able to conquer giant all-powerful Mom!  Nothing is better than that feeling of dominance, of conquest, of winning. 

Consider the game of football.  It is a game of play war in which men fight to gain territory.  It is all the more compelling because of the danger involved.  Men literally sacrifice their bodies, and more controversially their brains, on the battlefield of this sport in similar ways to a real battlefield.  I have often wondered if the sport will ever become safe to play.  I doubt it.  Part of the appeal is in the danger of the game.  Like gladiator warriors in a Roman collesium, players must be willing to sacrifice pieces of themselves for the sake of the game.  And so the controversy continues and the debates grow hotly about the where the line is between safety and letting boys be boys; warriors who want to dominate more than they care about their own wellbeing.

What is the male ideal?  What kind of man is most likely to win the heart of fair maiden dancer?  Ironically, women tend to be most attracted to men who often don't meet the description of conqueror.  There are a few archetypical males we can look at:  the strong silent type, the bad boy, and the sensitive guy.  Women can be extraordinarily complex in their tastes to the point that it is difficult even for us to see any patterns to make any sense of things.  Overall, women don't put a lot of weight into appearance, except as it expresses the type of man she is interested in.  For example, I loved the idea of a cowboy type when I met Ben.  I loved the fact that he was from the country, hunted, and could ride a horse.  I loved that he had a rugged look about him, especially when he would come home from work as a tree trimmer.  He would always be confused when I wanted to hug and kiss him when he was all dirty, sweaty, and dusty.  My heart still flutters a bit when he does his rugged man stuff like operating power tools, cooking over an open fire, or climbing our tree to do some trimming.  I suppose my taste might be for the strong silent type.  Cowboys today are not very flashy.  They don't make headlines and their jobs are not high paying, but they are steady and dependable.  For an eccentric artist like myself, Ben has been a very good match.  He is like me in that he is my opposite.  I am expressive, he is reserved.  He is social, I am introverted.  He is the pragmatic, realistic, sensible one.  I am the dreamer, always lost in the world of what was and what could be. 

Some women prefer the bad boy.  Sometimes this is pathological, but I don't think it always is.  I think women, especially ones who tend to be rule followers, are drawn to men who push boundaries because they see the courage that they want to have more of themselves.  There is also the draw of the brooding man who is full of angst.  We want to soothe that angst and comfort that pain.  We want to inspire a man to be better than he is without us.

The sensitive guy is the most paradoxical of the archetypes.  Why would the male ideal be sensitive?  He is a warrior.  Warriors are not supposed to be sensitive.  In this I think we need to look at a female archetype, the fiercest and most feared warrior, the mother bear.  Why is the mother bear so feared?  Because she is driven by strong emotion.  Often it is the most sensitive man who is the most valiant protector, the most fierce opponent, the most diligent and persistent foe.  In this ironic combination of traits, the sensitive man becomes his own ideal; the conqueror, not by suppressing and denying his emotions, but by unleashing them to maximize their power.

Sex, courtship, and marriage, is the place where dancer and warrior meet.  Each has their expectations and desires  Each person a unique and complex sexual being, sacred and eternally significant.  The individual must venture into the territory of the other and find himself or herself in the opposite.  Usually it ends up awkward, smelly, and disappointing for everyone.  Of course I don't speak for everyone, but I assume that with something this difficult, I'm not the only one to come away from the whole thing a bit disillusioned.  "That's what all the fuss was about?"  Marriage itself can become something more like an old Ugg boot than sexy stiletto.  Divorce lawyers are busy and as many times as we change partners, we fail to make the connection we longed for.  The dancer girl, craving the adoration and worship of her beauty, the warrior craving the conquest and dominance of the sexual battlefield.  In sex and marriage, we come so close to what we want, but become cynical as we find it ever just out of reach.  We set aside fantasies and dreams of our childhood days and settle for the here and now.  But you are still reading.....could it be that if we are brave enough to enter the minefield that we just might learn something that could change it all?  Let us keep the hope alive and explore a little further. 

I said before that women don't dance.  Actually, women do dance, but only with each other.  We safely dance within view of one another, without fear of arousing sexual desires, we reveal the expressiveness of our bodies to one another.  I have even thought, somewhat scandalously, that it would be so fun to dress up in one of those gorgeous belly dancer outfits and learn to belly dance.  Some women buy poles and learn the art of pole dancing, that most seductive of dance/stripper routines.  As we dance, we not only get our bodies more fit and healthy, we learn to find joy and beauty within ourselves and our own sexuality.  If we could learn to be comfortable with being awkward, maybe we could even share that with our husbands.  I suspect they would be thrilled.

On the other side of the sexual aisle, perhaps men could be a little more tuned into their own strong emotions and desires and let them spur him to greater effort and creativity on the sexual battlefield.  Maybe he can utilize some of those formidable resources he has amassed to purchase some flowers, gifts, and trinkets.  Perhaps he might find the courage to be vulnerable, show emotion, and be that "sensitive guy" who conquers with his inner "momma bear."  He could use his creativity and daring to be spontaneous, and thoughtful in his approach toward wooing her, thereby becoming conqueror of the bedroom. 

I feel that I am reaching the end of what I have to say in this post although there is so much more I could say.  Hopefully I have spurred some good thoughts.   I have focused mostly on good healthy sexual relationships and interactions although the "me too" movement has shown us that there is definitely a dark side to the interactions of men and women.  Satan has filled our world with lies and stumbling blocks like pornography and confusing messages around sexual identity, to where it is almost impossible to navigate the maze.  We injure ourselves and one another as we stumble blindly in a sea of complexity.  I begin to approach the wisdom of Socrates who said, "True wisdom is in knowing that you know nothing."  At least its a place to start!

Narcissistic Families and Feudal Systems; Functional Families and Heaven on Earth

The apostles were gathered around the Savior asking him a question that was on their minds.  "Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of God?"  Seems a strange question to ask the Son of God, but they wanted to know.  The sons of thunder, James and John, were getting the stink eye because their mother asked the Savior if her sons could sit on his right and left hands.  They were jockeying for position as men often do.  They wanted to know how to be the top guy.  The Savior scooped up a child from the street.  Maybe she was dirty, maybe his hair wasn't combed.  I imagine him to be curious at this strange grown up person who paid so much attention to a small one.  I imagine her to squirm a bit, or wiggle her toes in her sandals.  Imagine their surprise when the Savior said that none of them, in fact no person could enter into the Kingdom of Heaven unless they become like a little child.

In the Matthew version in chapter 20, he goes into greater detail, but if you put it together with Mark chapter 9, the picture becomes more clear.  The Savior explains one of the key principles of how the Kingdom of God operates and how it is different from the world of men.  He says,  you know how the Gentiles rule the people?  I imagine he was talking about the Romans.  If you are greater, then you live in a better place, you have servants, you live the high life and exercise dominion over everyone less than you.  He tells them that in the Kingdom of Heaven, the greatest serve the others. 

Think of how revolutionary that concept was!  A servant king; who could even imagine such a thing?  Jesus Christ took many opportunities to teach his disciples this principle.  He took the apostles sandals from their feet and washed them like a humble servant; the least in the household.  He was teaching us how to be great.  We become great by abasing ourselves and serving those less than we are.  He, the greatest of all, the only person who lived a sinless life, the most glorious human soul to ever grace the planet, the man who was literally half God, washed the dirt and grime from the feet of his disciples. 

In studying about dysfunctional families or narcissistic families as they are sometimes referred to, I learned that the reason these families don't work properly is that they operate backward.  Instead of the parents serving the emotional needs of the children, these families put the parent's emotional needs first.  These families operate like a feudal system where the needs and desires of the peasants are subservient to the interests of their leaders who oppress them.

Consider the War of the Roses.  What was the War of the Roses?  I can't remember all the details, but I remember learning about it my history class and thinking it was the stupidest war I had ever heard about.  The war lasted decades and cost countless lives.  It was basically two families trying to prove in battle that they had the right to rule Britain.  British citizens were trotted out baring the standard of one family or the other, and killed one another to advance the interests of their Lords.  The family of Britain would certainly be classified as dysfunctional at this time. 

Consider how constitutionally limited democratic republics work today.  When they are operating properly, a Democratic Republic functions much like a functional family or the Kingdom of God where the greatest are made the servants of all.  The interests of the people are advanced by their leaders who are accountable to them for their actions.  The leaders become the servants of the public.  It is no wonder why this form of government has done more to advance humankind than other forms like the feudal system.

In my own family I have found myself as the least.  I can't help but draw a likeness to myself wiping up the puke off the floor, changing the poopy diaper, or calmly teaching my boys the basics of civil human interactions for the hundredth time as I break up the hundredth fight; to the image of the Savior washing grimy feet.  How often have I put my children's needs first?  How often have I served these little people with no immediate reward?  How much does my heart yearn after their welfare, as though my own life were nothing in the balance with theirs?  Such is the Savior's love for us.  Such is a mother's love for her children.

I laugh at Ben because he gets irritated sometimes that my boys cling to me in the toddler phase.  They want Momma.  Same with their Grandma.  Grandpa holds a special place in my boys' hearts, but it is Grandma that they adore.  It is she that they run to to show her all the things they hold dear.  I suppose in some ways, the Mother is the greatest in Kingdom of Home.  Why?  Because she serves everyone.  Often, the mother must teach the father how to sense the needs of his children, partly because he usually spends less time with them and doesn't know them as well, but also because of the intuition and spiritual connection she has with her children.  Wise is the man who heeds the counsel of the mother of his children!  Blessed is the family who serves the least among them in love.  When husband and wife serve their children and meet their emotional needs, a functional family is created; the likeness of heaven on Earth.

Motherhood has not come easily to me.  The role of primary care giver of children is a frustrating and tedious job with little praise and few tangible rewards.  The life of an at-home parent can be a strange form of torture in which sleep deprivation, isolation, repetitive menial chores, and the annoying soundtrack to the latest children's movie combine to slowly drive a person to madness.  Even so, if I had my life to live over again, I would make the same choices I have made in regards to my children.  Great things in this world and the next are advanced with great love and sacrifice.  I choose to be the servant to my children and my family.  I'm really following the example of my Master, the One who is mighty to save, the King of Kings and Lord of All, even Jesus Christ.  To be his handmaid has always been my one ambition- the sole desire of my heart.

Things the Lord Hates; Hidden Sins and "Church People"

It's the recurring nightmare that I never wake up from.  I get a notification on my phone ten minutes before I need to be somewhere.  My brain switches into "leave the house mode" and I start gathering my stuff and my kids.  I realize my son has a poopy diaper and my eight year old can't find his shoes.  I set down my stuff to change the diaper and I can't find the diapers.  Then the twelve year old decides that now is the time to discuss what he wants for Christmas and needs my full attention to tell me everything in detail.  Then I can't find my stuff that I gathered because I set it down and I can't remember where.  We get out to the car it won't start because the keys are in my gym bag and I forgot to transfer them over to my purse.  I get the keys and come back to the car only to realize that my thirteen year old is not there.  He went back into the house to get his headphones.  He needs them to do his schoolwork assignment that is due tomorrow.  Finally we pull out of the driveway to go to the event fifteen minutes late.  

If where we are going is church, this scenerio is worse.  There are scriptures, ties, socks, diaper bags, snacks, and sacrament meeting busy supplies.  I drive to church with a silent prayer on my lips, (eyes open of course.  I'm driving.) "Please forgive me again for being late."  And He laughs.  Yes.  He laughs.  God has a sense of humor.  Of course he does!  He who saw the widow's offering sees me give of my want and my offering is acceptable to him.  He laughs at me quite often because he knows how hard I try and how little any of it shows.  He delights in giving his forgiveness and laughing at the situations that always seem to thwart my best efforts.  He knows how much I love him and he created me to be the way I am.  He gave me the weaknesses he did because he wanted me to remember to be humble.  He didn't want me to ever become so good at living checklist religion, that I forgot who I really was; the handmaid of the Lord, the humble seeker of His Love.

So if the Lord laughs, what other emotions does he have?  While much attention is given to his love, and for very good reason, not much is said about his hate.  Hate and love are opposite emotions.  Because we love, we also hate.  We hate what hurts the ones we love.  As a mother, I have learned how difficult it can be to love someone so much.  When someone hurts my child, I can loose all sense of perspective.  Momma wolf comes out when the full moon rises and sometimes her response is not as controlled as it should be.  Case in point.  My eight year old and two year old get into a scuffle.  The two year old is hurt.  Momma wolf erupts and severely reprimands or even physically hits the eight year old.  Once sane mom is back she realizes that she also loves her eight year old and is equally angry at herself for hurting him.  In the end everybody is hurt and sad.  God is not human, of course, so he doesn't loose control like I do sometimes.  Still, I will never believe that God does not hate.  He hates if he loves because the two emotions are connected.  When you pick up one end of the stick you get the other.

In the scriptures the Lord reveals what he hates.  Proverbs 6 says, "A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood,  An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren."

There is a lot there.  The first thing I noticed is that most of these things refer to parts of people or behaviors rather than full people.  The Lord doesn't hate any people, just parts of them that they have polluted with sin.  He hates a proud look.  I imagine myself with a sarcastic smirk when the speaker gives a quote in her sacrament meeting talk that I know for a fact is an internet hoax.  The Lord hates that look.  He wishes I would leave that look at home when I come to church.  

A lying tongue.  What parent doesn't hate a lying tongue!  We tell our kids all the time, "I don't care what you did, but that you lied to me."  Nothing feels more personal than being lied to.  Better to have no tongue than a lying tongue.  

Hands that shed innocent blood.  The hands are a metaphor for works.  Innocent blood is a metaphor for the sacrifice of the Savior.  Hands that go around destroying faith and testimony, preventing people from coming to the Savior and being healed, are shedding Christ's blood for nothing.  They shed his blood by keeping others from coming unto him.

An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations.  I imagine a rationalization of why I didn't do my visiting teaching or ministering this month.  "If she wasn't so hard to get a hold of, I would have been able to see her.  She just doesn't want anything to do with me.  She probably hates me because she is friends with that woman that can't stand me.  They probably talk about me."  Root out that garbage.  Don't imagine things that aren't there!  Just do what the Lord has commanded and let others worry about themselves.  Imagination can create all kinds of wickedness that doesn't exist.  Put it to better use.

Feet that be swift in running to mischief.  I think of my boys again.  "Mom, mom!  Devin took the IPad without permission,"  and then the inevitable look that says, "Now I'm going to watch with pure relish as my brother gets his punishment."  We run to mischief to expose it, to prove that we are better than someone else, and to ensure that punishment is given.  Like ambulance chasers, we can't wait to get the latest news about the affair, the scandalous divorce, the drug addiction, or whatever the case may be.  We seize onto it and then pass it along to our friends.  The Lord hates that!  We are supposed to mourn with those that mourn not pour lemon juice into the wound, and yet that is what we do when we chase sorrow to make mischief with it.

A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.  I lump those together because false witness does create discord.  False witness breaks faith among allies and causes fractures in the fabric of society.  When we deal in facts and witnesses report the facts, there is no discord.  If George W. Bush had not lied to the American people about the torture that was going in Gitmo, it wouldn't have been a big deal.  Everybody understood how scary the situation was and our government is only human.  We crossed the line, as people will do in such times and need to be reminded of our principles.  As a country we could have heard all the facts and made course corrections to bring our policies in harmony with our values.  With facts out in the open, we could debate, come to agreement, and move forward.  Because President Bush chose to lie- I believe to himself as well as to the American people about the reality of the situation, minimizing the allegations and the motivations, men like John McCain had to step forward to speak for the truth tellers in the military who had appealed to him directly to intervene.  There is still discord among Republicans about whether or not torture took place and who was responsible for it, in a large part because we were lied to by someone we trusted.  It was only after I read John McCain's memoirs that I saw the facts laid out and understood how badly the conservative media had done in informing us about the horrendous things that were done in the name of our country and by those who are sworn to protect us.  I can finally understand the animosity of the left toward Bush, whom I thought was unfairly maligned by the press.  I know many conservatives like me still feel the same way, nursing resentments toward the "Main Stream Media" that is unfairly maligning conservatives without realizing who is really to blame.  False witness creates discord.

Similar examples could be given of other leaders like Bill Clinton's wife Hillary who was first lady of the United States and falsely witnessed against her own people saying, "A vast right wing conspiracy is conspiring against my husband," instead of acknowledging the likely truth, that her philandering husband was up to his old tricks.  This accusation is only part of the reason that conservatives tend to hate Hillary Clinton with a passion that defies any attempts on her part to calm it.  She broke faith as Bush did when he bore false witness.  She was misleading in the handling of the Benghazi affair, and with her use of a private email server, which demolished the trust of any fair minded conservative who wished to extend her an olive branch.  Trust is difficult to build and easily destroyed.  It is the currency of humankind and we all suffer when it is broken by those who bare false testimony especially when they hold high office.  Our leaders' witness to us is sacred and when it is defiled as it has been by our recent leaders, distrust and discord result.

Another thing that the hatred of the Lord teaches me is that all of these sins are hidden sins.  He doesn't hate the sins that are out in the open that we all know and try hard not to do.  He doesn't say, "I hate the smell of cigarette smoke in sacrament meeting."  That is something everyone can smell and the person who is responsible for it is most likely very aware of the problem.  He doesn't say, "I hate the tattoo on the back shoulder of sister so-and-so."  He doesn't say "I hate the sister that doesn't bring a dish to the pot-luck."  He hates the unseen sins that reside in those who call themselves after his name and for whom pride lurks unrestrained.  I have had two counselors now that have encouraged me to limit my association with members of my church.  They both used the same term to describe the people they wanted me to stay away from for my mental health, so I assume it is probably a thing.  They said, "It sounds like there are a lot of 'church people' at your church.  Stay away from them."  

What is a "church person"?  There are people that I imagine think themselves to be pretty righteous.  They are the ones often called on to do extra assignments or perform important callings.  They show up to church ten minutes early every week because they have to defend their pew.  It doesn't have their name on it, but it might as well.  They sit in the same seats every week and feel they own them.  If they were ever to be late, their children would get a whipping they wouldn't forget.  Maybe that is why their children are so still in sacrament meeting.  They don't hear the sermon though.  Their eyes are glazed over, having forced themselves into a trance rather than risk misbehavior and the resulting wrath."  These are the people who want their wards to look like something out of a Mormonad rather than full of broken people who need the Savior.  They don't relate to people whose sins are more visible because they don't really believe they have any sins.  How can you have empathy for the sinner when you yourself have not committed sin?  Of course they do have sins, but they've been hiding them for so long, they aren't consciously aware that they exist.  Such people worship God in Pharisaical fashion, with all the outward signs of a disciple of Christ, but crucifying him in their hearts. They seek to fashion for themselves a God after their own likeness, who sees things the way they do and changes to fit them, rather than seeking to change to bring themselves in harmony with Him.

I guess I always knew intellectually that my church was not immune to this phenomenon, but really having my eyes opened the last few months to the evil that really lives in the hearts of some who profess the name of the Savior, has wounded my spirit.  How could this be a thing?  How could mental health professionals be rightly saying that I should stay away from members of my own ward family for my mental health?  After insisting that I remain active in my church, the response has been, "Okay, we'll work around it then."  If there is not a place for the broken hearted- and IMHO there is no better term for those suffering for depression-to come unto the Savior with others who call themselves by his name in safety, that is a problem.  Not so much a problem for me, although it is that, but a problem for the church, and for those who live with this kind of rot in their hearts and souls.  What will the Lord do when he sees these people at judgement day?  Who could contain his righteous wrath?  Can there be any greater irony than the doctor who kills patients, or the nurse administering poison for a cure?  Is there any better metaphor for one who professes religious piety and offers religious admonition while denying a need for the Savior in their own lives?  What will he do with the souls of those guilty of it?  I can't think of anything or anyone that the Lord would hate more than those who are guilty of this kind of thing.  I shudder to think of his wrath poured out without measure!  What fate could be worse?

Just like His Love has power, His Hate also has power.  Some people call it Karma, for lack of a better term.  It is the law of the universe that those who sow sin will reap the consequences for it even if, for now, those sins are safely hidden away.  Weaknesses in ourselves that we see and desire to change bring us to Christ lead us indirectly to the Savior and to life eternal.  These weaknesses lead us to look with compassion and empathy on other sinners and to extend them friendship and assistance on their repentance journey.  Sins that are easily hidden away and rationalized into a compartment of the subconscious will bring damnation as surely as the sun sets in the west.  I hope and pray that our ward members will cleanse that inner vessel of all such sin.  I pray that I can look to the Savior for my salvation and hide nothing from him.  I hope that he will continue to laugh and delight in my efforts to serve him.  Only then will I be able to stand blameless in his presence.  

The Art of Focus: Making Babies, Boiling Water, and the Atonement

When I first got married I had laser focus on one thing.  I wanted to have a baby.  When I was finally able to talk Ben into trying to get pregnant, it was devastating when month after month and later year after year, I could not conceive.  In the years since our marriage, I earned my teaching degree, but I didn't want a teaching job.  I wanted a baby.  When I was finally offered a job as a teacher, I took it, deciding that I needed to focus my life on serving the children God was giving me instead of focusing on the baby he wasn't giving me.  It was only after I stopped focusing on getting pregnant that I got the positive test only two months after I accepted the position of fourth grade teacher.

Life has a funny way of teaching us that when we want something to happen, we need to focus on something else.  Whenever I put a pot of water on the stove to boil, I go chop some vegetables, put in a load of laundry, or work on another chore checking back only periodically.  Everyone knows that standing in front of the pot of water, willing it to boil will not make it go faster.  If you sing it an encouraging song, promise a reward, or threaten it menacingly, it will not make the water boil faster and you will waste all of your energy in frustration if you focus on it.  Hence the saying, "the watched pot never boils."

Most of my life, I've focused on works.  "Go to church, read scriptures, say prayers, choose the right," and yet I never measured up to the standard that I and my church leaders held up as the ideal.  The more I have focused on my Savior, the more I find that the works happen easier.  I am still not the ideal woman.  Far from it.  Still, I have gotten better results with my works when I focus on something else--the enabling and sustaining power of Him who is mighty to save. 

There is much contention in society right now as we enter the home stretch to the midterm elections.  Democrats and Republicans are vehemently smearing each other and insisting that their party will bring society the best chance at a peaceful, abundant, happy environment in our country.  Right now, I don't think either party is going to be able to deliver on those campaign promises, because I have never seen us drifting so far from the principles of the Master.  We are living in the time foretold of a spiritual famine where men's hearts fail them.  It is time to change our focus to him who is Mighty to Save-individuals, families, churches, and nations.

Holding Hard Truths in Your Brain

This morning I woke up at 7:50 with the vague memory of hearing a beeping sound far away. Ben is in Phoenix today.  He usually gets the kids up for school in the morning.  Mornings are hard with depression.  It took a while to convince myself that it was worth the effort to get my children to school rather than just pull the covers over my head and hope everything would disappear.  I got three out of four kids to school on time.  My difficult child for the morning, there is always one, tried to convince me to let him stay home from school.  He drug his feet and made excuses.  I had to patiently coax him to put on one sock and then the other.  I had to get him his shoes, his backpack, and hold his shoulders while lovingly reminding him that he could do hard things, that being late once in a while is not a big deal, and that it was going to be okay as I walked him out to the car.  I didn't scream or shout.  It was a good parent morning even though I woke up late. I was a good mom with depression.  My child was an hour late to school and it was my fault, and I'm still a good mom. I was able to hold the hard truths in my brain this morning.  Sometimes I can do that and sometimes I can't.

Not all truth is created equal.  Some truth is easy to hold in the brain.  It's simple and doesn't take much work.  It fits into lots of competing narratives.  Like sand, on a molecular level, sand is stable, hard and unmoving, but on a practical level, it is small enough that it doesn't really get in anybody's way.  Sand is soft, sand is moveable, sand is convenient and polite.

Some truth is hard to hold in the brain.  It is like a mountain; hard to move, hard to see, and impossible to ignore.  The rain falls on it.  The wind and weather beat on it, but it stays the same year after year, generation after generation.  The things you learn about the mountain stay the same.  Contrast that to the sand dune that changes from one hour to the next.  Each grain of sand is a truth, but a dune of sand is a collection of millions of tiny truths that move independently of one another.  The mountain is one big truth that functions as a single entity.

My life is surrounded with a lot of little truths that don't matter a lot.  They shift around in my brain and my life.  There are some truths that are big and hard and don't move.  They are impossible to understand completely and difficult to hold in my brain.

Take this truth:  God loves me the same before I repent of my sins as he does after I repent of my sins.  That's a mountain sized truth.  It doesn't change and it is very important.  His love isn't earned.  It doesn't depend on my works.  It means that I am valuable no matter what I do.  My works don't change my value to him because he doesn't need my works.  In life we associate with other mortals who need us.  A spouse, a parent, a son, a daughter, they depend on us and our works to provide something for them.  Our choices impact their lives and effect our relationships.  We can  use our works to manipulate and change them.  God doesn't operate like that.  His love doesn't change.  Because he has all power to save, and no power over our wills, he waits for us to come to him.  He can't come to us because that would be tampering with our free will.  He waits for us to come to him where we can get his love and his forgiveness when we are ready to receive it.

I used to think that I could bargain with God.  I used to think that God had a checklist with an impossible list of tasks for me to complete each day in which I knew I could never complete.  I thought that he and I were making some kind of equal pact in which I kept my side of the bargain and he kept his.  I would complete my share of the list and then he would do the rest and he would determine whether or not I had "done my share."  I thought the atonement was some kind of business transaction.  If that were so, we would need an eternal number of lawyers in heaven to hash out all the details of the contracts and obligations.  We would need an eternal number of forms to fill out and sign along with an eternal amount of fine print to examine.  Are we in hell yet?

The reason I used to see the atonement in this way is because I'm a mortal living in a fallen world with finite resources where love is a commodity that is bought and sold like everything else.  How could I understand it any differently?  How could I see God as anything but what I had observed on this planet?  Only through the spirit.  We can only understand God through our spiritual senses.

I remember as a teenager when I first began to repent, I thought that God would be angry with me.  I thought that he would be critical and resentful at me for using him.  I didn't want to use too much of his atonement for fear that he would shut me out.  Surely he would say, "You've had more than your fair share.  Look at all the other people?  Save some for them."  I was repeatedly surprised when I came to him in prayer, confessed my sins, and repented, his love was always there.  His encouragement was always there.  Occasionally I would get correction, but the feeling was always that I was more than enough.  The feeling was that I could have as much as I wanted to take of his love, of his mercy, of his forgiveness.  He wanted  me to have it.  I got the distinct impression that he didn't really care at all what sins I had committed but only what their impact was on me.  The actual events, who was to blame, what had lead up to the sin, and what to do in the future were distinctly unimportant to him.  I was important.  Not the sin.  He loved me not a righteous choice that I didn't make and how that affected him.  It wasn't about him.  It was about me and my spiritual well being.  How can that be? 

God lives in a place where love is free.  It is given and received without measure and without price.  He lives in a place where everyone is seen as a being of eternal potential and value.  The idea of basing a person's worth on his or her behavior, the car he drives, whether or not her children are on the honor roll, or where his parents came from is completely foreign.  Why would you do that?  Of course people are not the same as the clothes on their backs.  Of course people are not what they produce.  In the place God lives, the necessities of life are free.  There is no stress.  There is no worry whether choices will lead to pain or pleasure.  He doesn't care what your skin color is, who your parents were, or whether or not you "earned" your place in the kingdom of heaven.  All those ideas are mortal ideas.

When we repent and approach the throne of God, he wants to bless us.  He wants to show us his eternal love.  He wants us to see him for who he is and ourselves for who we are.  He wants us to shed the scarcity paradigm of mortality and see into the eternity of his world.

The problem is, that after we leave his presence, when the inspiration passes, when real life comes back into focus, we are back in mortality again.  We are back in the mode of temporal transitory things that are scarce and must be earned.  Our works matter again and love isn't free.  We can't keep the truth in our brains for very long before it slips away again in a flood of mortal cares.  And so my spirit keeps having to drag my depressed brain back to the truth.  God loves me.  His love is free.  His forgiveness is free.  He wants me to have it.  He wants me to remember that my worth is independent of my works and my stuff.  It's hard!!

Like a mountain, my God's love does not move or change.  Like a spring of water out of the mountain his forgiveness is free.  There is enough and to spare for every weary traveler to drink his fill.  His shop is always open and his milk and honey can be had without money and without price.  He makes me to lie down in green pastures, safe and secure in the knowledge that he has power over all things.  He has put a robe around my shoulders to keep out the chill and remind me that this world is not my home.  I will never be comfortable in it.  But I will not fear, for he has overcome the world!  I am ever his weary handmaid and the handmaid is worthy of her hire.

Christ is my art teacher

I remember sitting in my first real art class in high school.  The instructor was a scandalous woman.   She had hair cut like a man.   Imagine!   There were rumors that she might even be a lesbian.  I had more important things to worry about.   I wasn't an artist.   I had never won any of the coloring contests I had submitted for,  and I had long since abandoned any fantasies of artistic ambition.  I had only taken the class to fill an elective that I needed.  What if I failed art?  

The first thing she had to teach me was less learning and more unlearning.  I had to unlearn the idea that I knew what something looks like.   She said, and I can hear her expressive, patient voice repeat over and over,  "Draw what you see and not what you think you see!"  That phrase is burned into my memory.

You think you see a table with four legs.  Tables have four legs but you only see three.   Draw what you see.   You think an apple is round,  a basketball is smooth, and a sky is blue.  None of those things are as true as we think they are.   The world is complicated and if you only see what you think you see, you miss so much.

Becoming an artist has taught me about the limitations of my own understanding.   If what you see is not what you think you see,  what about yourself?   Your kids?   Your church?   Your best friend?   Your marriage?   Is what you see really what you think you see? Can you adapt to the truth when it blasts into your world and destroys everything you thought was real.  The comfortable falsehoods that made the world seem safe and predictable hold us back.   As artists.   As people.

I remember drawing a realistic rose for the first time and realizing I'd never really seen one before.   It wasn't until I studied it and understood the way the petals overlap and beauty of the repeating patterns that reveal and obscure at the same time,  forcing the brain to imagine what lies at the center of the bloom,  out of sight.   It was only then that I saw a rose and understood on a new level what it was and why they speak to me.

My efforts at drawing were clumsy and awkward at first I'm sure,  but I was elated at how much my skills improved as I unlearned certainty and embraced the neglected side of the brain;  the side that deals in color, shade, value,  and texture;  the side that teaches you to think with your feelings and trust your intuition.  Artists leap into the unknown to learn instantly by trial and reflection what is impossible for the risk averse to comprehend.   Art teaches you to take a chance and watch something magical appear where nothing but blank paper was, an expression of what was once in the brain,  but now is concrete,  an expression of the abstract.

I had learned some of that in music and drama.   I had learned to feel when I was singing the right pitch,  to rely less on my ears and more on my instruments of sound, the diaphragm, the throat,  and the mouth.  I had learned to switch my mind to see out of someone else's eyes and speak with their voice on a stage.  Still,  there is nothing like learning to see the world as an artist and I am so grateful to that dear art teacher for applauding my early efforts.  She saw the artist in me before I saw her in myself.  I still struggle to see myself as an artist.  Even earlier this year I found myself drawing on notebook paper or scraps I found laying around rather than in a proper artist sketchbook.  I couldn't bring myself to take the risk of drawing something stupid on the "good paper."  A lot of my best work is on paper that is sub quality simply because I undervalued what I could produce.

I've learned that there are no bad artists, only those who cling to certainty and avoid failure. These people are the people who will only act when they know the outcome before they invest the effort.  They are afraid to waste paper or pencils because they don't have the faith that something valuable will come out in the end.   They'd rather live life with their eyes half closed and their brains half alive.   It's safer, for a while anyway.  That brings me to the atonement.  He's paid the price for you to take art lessons.  You can make all the bad art you want!  He's my art teacher and he's great.

Christ tells me that each day is a canvas to fill.  He said yesterday, 

"If something is worth doing well it's worth doing badly.  Be a beginner.   Take a chance.  Make a mistake. Get out of bed late and take your kids to church with mismatched socks, pants that are too short, and hair that is uncombed.  Walk in to sacrament meeting late and ignore the judgement.  Teach a Sunday School class that is far too loud and has far too many references to cereal to be taken too seriously by anyone.  (Yes, cereal, as in Syria, as every student in my Old Testament primary class can tell you.)  Make that awkward comment in Relief Society.  It will make people think.  Don't forget to overshare on Facebook.  That drawing looks like a lady squinting at someone's foot fungus, but that doesn't matter.  It might speak to someone's soul the way it speaks to yours.  Above all don't forget that what someone else thinks of your work is about them, not about you.  At the end of the day bring your canvas to me and we'll look it over.  We'll see what worked and what didn't.  I'll tell you that you were brave and fierce, and then we'll hang your work in your mansion that waits for you when you come home to me.  Tomorrow you get a new canvas and we'll do the same thing."

It's a miracle that he loves me.  It's a miracle that he trusts me with the good paint that doesn't wash out easily.  It's a miracle that he let's me do things every day that I'm not able to do well yet.  I learn, I act, I trust that he will make it enough; that my offering is sufficient for him.  Failure teaches better than success, and I get to learn every day, because he paid the price.  Someday I will paint masterpiece canvases, but until then, I am the artist I am, and it is enough for him.  It is enough for me.  On my face, at his feet.

"What are you Talkin' About???" Individuation and the Plan of Salvation

I only slept a few hours last night.  With colder weather comes increased anxiety for me.  Icy cold feet and hands, tight chest, and racing thoughts make sleep almost impossible.  I woke for no apparent reason at 5:30 this morning with the same thoughts on my mind as were tumbling around the night before. 

Austin toddled into my room after I had been reading and thinking for over an hour.  As is our custom, he climbed into my bed and snuggled with me under the blankets.  Sometimes he goes back to sleep, but not today.  I looked into his luminous eyes framed with the trademark Burbank black lashes and fell in love again, as I do every time I see him.  My brain awash in yummy oxytocin, my thoughts came out in a rush.

"I just want you do to become the person that God designed you to be,"  I emotively explained to the rapt eyes of my cherubic child.  "That's all I want."

He scrunched up his eyes as if trying to figure out what I was saying, then gave up, "What are you talkin' about???"  he asked clear as a bell.

I laughed and squeezed him tightly.  What was I talking about?  Individuation.  Why is it so hard for me?  What is keeping me stuck?  How can I help my children to do it? 

Individuation is a psychological term for the development of the individual as a person distinct from all others.  It has to do with accepting all aspects of the self including the conscious acceptance of flaws and subconscious realities.  It would seem a fairly easy thing to do for a Christian who believes that Christ loves my whole self while perfectly understanding all of my flaws and limitations.  To have faith in Christ is to have faith in the self as redeemable and lovable in spite of sins and weaknesses of the fallen condition to which I am subject.  Why then is this so hard for me to do?

I immersed myself in study this morning of philosopher and social scientist Carl Jung.  He was an early protege of Sigmund Freud, although they had a falling out.  His ideas seem to resonate deeply with me.  The concept of a collective consciousness is brilliant.  The idea that all my ancestors are  spiritually channeling their energy and prayers into my efforts as a mother, hoping that finally we might get it right; that at last with this generation of people, our genetic potential might truly be realized; is electrifying.  Perhaps my children might be able to express those traits and attributes that previous generations only hoped for or dreamed of.  Perhaps they might be able to nurture and love those aspects of themselves unfairly shunned or shamed in prior generations; those things valuable and lovable, but only to those who truly understand them, as our ancestors surely do with their eternal perspective.

Carl Jung seemed to have the same inclination that I have to think of psychology and spirituality as different ways of looking at the same thing.  Spiritual knowledge fills in where science cannot go, and science fills in where spiritual knowledge cannot go.  Like light and shadow, both are necessary for the clear picture to emerge.  As dual beings of mortal and immortal aspect, it would make sense that we would need both divine and carnal understanding to puzzle out the self.

After all, how is science supposed to help a person become something that no man truly understands, an infinite creation of eternal worth?  Science doesn't even know the shape of such a thing as it doesn't exist on this planet.  No observations of monkeys, mice, and cockroaches (yes, I read about a cockroach study today) will give us much insight into the form of our eternal identity.  Such things can only be spiritually discerned.

On the other hand, after countless priesthood blessings and endless prayers and pleading for counsel from my church leaders, I am still reliant on medication and counselling.  Obviously, when it comes to the fallen and broken man, science still has much to teach the religious community.

Unfortunately, the religious community and the pyschological community seem to be increasingly siloed.  In these polarizing times, it seems that if you are knowledgeable in the social sciences, you are a liberal/progressive, and have a suspicion of those who claim spiritual knowledge and power.  If you are a spiritual person who attends church regularly and prioritizes a relationship with the divine, you are a conservative and have a suspicion of the social sciences.  Increasingly such people have few friendships with the other side of the proverbial aisle.  In retreating behind walls of fear, we are hamstringing ourselves; starving to death amid a feast of plenty; blind because we refuse to look at what someone different from ourselves sees and understands from their perspective.

And so, I see a path for members of the church of Christ.  We can be the bridge that is so sorely needed in these last days.  We can venture forth bravely to use both spiritual and secular knowledge to understand ourselves and our children.  We can create a new enlightenment of knowledge about the mind and its glorious role in the individuation of the souls of God; the divine journey where we discover our true selves, and find God in the process.

God has a Plan to Save my Family and Yours

A friend loaned us a book called, If You had Controlling Parents; How to Make Peace with Your Past and Take Your Place in the World.  In the past two days, I have read almost all of it.  It is nothing new to me really, just a different person explaining the painful lessons I've already learned in a new way.  Even so, I have learned so much.  The chapter on forgiveness is especially good.

There is one paragraph citing a man named Wayne Muller who wrote, Legacy of the Heart:  The Spiritual Advantages of a Painful Childhood that reads:

"What we are forgiving is not the act--not the violence or the neglect, the incest, the divorce or the abuse.  We are forgiving the actors, the people who could not manage to honor and cherish their own children, their own spouse, or their own lives in a loving and gentle way.  We are forgiving their suffering, their confusion, their unskillfulness, their desperation and their humanity." 

To look into your past and see the pain, the suffering, the abuse, the neglect, the trauma-- to see it without excuse or denial, to know it is there and to feel the devastating impact it has had on your life, and yet to also see those who inflicted it as valuable, beautiful, lovable people-- that is almost beyond the capacity of the human mind to do.  To hold those truths together in your heart and mind, is to achieve true charity and true forgiveness.  To err is human.  To hurt, to sin, to wound those we love; that is fallen man.  To see it, to understand it fully, to see God's hand in it, and to forgive; that is divine, that is salvation, that transcends this world. 

Turn back the pages of history to a young boy named Joseph, son of Israel.  No boy could have had a brighter future ahead.  Born to be the birthright son of Israel, the great patriarch, chosen as the barer of the Abrahamic Covenant; heir to the Kingdom of God on Earth.  Surely God would have an ideal childhood planned for such a boy.  Surely he would enjoy a life with every need provided for, and every want supplied.  A robe of many colors marked him as favored and blessed, the favorite son of his father.

Imagine his young face as his brothers threw him into a pit and debated on whether to leave him to die, or kill him by their own hand.  Imagine the terror in his young heart, the feelings of betrayal that must have overwhelmed him.  Imagine being sold as a slave, watching your brothers walk away counting the profit that they made.  Maybe they were laughing raucously, making jokes about him being the chosen son no more, and tearing his beloved coat.  He would never see his mother again.  Of all the crime shows I have seen and all the abuse stories I have read, I can't think of one more heart rending than what Joseph endured.  How could he ever trust anyone again?  How could he believe that God had not abandoned him?  I don't know.  He was no ordinary boy.  Already he had shown a remarkable ability to dream dreams and interpret them.  He was unusually bright and resourceful, and it was God's plan to bring him to Egypt.

Egypt.....at the time of Joseph, Egypt was the center of art, architecture, medicine, and learning.  Egyptian culture had been greatly blessed with knowledge and wisdom that baffles even the learned men and women of modern day.  Joseph was taken into the center of this treasure trove of learning that he never would have had as a shepherd with his father.  I imagine him in Potiphar's house, after the day's chores were done, finding a quiet corner and some borrowed books, burning a candle into the night hours filling his mind with everything he could find.  The spirit of God burned bright in him and helped him to assimilate the information and combine it with the faith and testimony of his fathers.  His powerful birthright combined with his faith and the power of the knowledge he gained, it is no wonder that Potiphar noticed that everything Joseph touched prospered.  Nothing could stop him from advancing, even after Potiphar and his treacherous wife had him thrown into prison, yet he gained the trust of his jailer and associated with powerful prisoners.  I'm sure he talked to them and learned much from them.

In the end, Joseph interpreted the Pharaoh's dreams, was made his chief adviser, and designed an ingenious plan to save the Egyptian people from a terrible seven year famine.  He earned the honor and respect of all Egypt.  The Pharaoh himself was awed by Joseph's remarkable wisdom and character.  He married into royalty.  He was treated by the Egyptians the way his family had never treated him.  He had twin sons the eldest of whom he named Manasseh.  Manasseh means "Causing to forget," and the scriptures say that he named him that because he was finally beginning to let go of his past and his father's house.  The suffering and the trauma he had endured was over and he had a new life; a beautiful wife, two sons, a meaningful career, and every need and want cared for.  No, he wasn't leading his family as his early visions had indicated.  No, he didn't have the association of those who understood his God and worshiped as he did, but it was enough.  He was satisfied.  He had let go of the hatred, the bitterness, the longing for the life that was taken from him.  And then they came.

Imagine his horror.  Imagine the flood of memories rushing into his mind as his brothers came riding into Egypt.  Just as he had made his peace with his past, they came to town.  I picture them thin and ragged looking.  They were dusty and stinky and destitute.  Joseph was clean and manicured and perfumed.  Joseph had every right to turn them away hungry.  What did he owe them?  But then he found that he had a brother.  Not a half brother, not a traitor brother, but a real brother; another son of his mother.  Benjamin, son of Rachel, the brother whom he had never met, bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh who had never betrayed him.  He hatched a plan to bring Benjamin to Egypt.  He would have Benjamin, a brother, a real brother that he could build a relationship with and share his life with.

But then his plan was thwarted by the most unexpected turn of events.  Judah.  Judah the betrayer.  Judah the mastermind behind Joseph's affliction.  Judah refused to let Benjamin go.  He pleaded with Joseph for Benjamin.  He explained the pain of his father at the loss of Rachel's first child and that his own life was worth nothing if he did not return with Benjamin.  Judah, the betrayer became Judah the sacrificial lamb, offering his life in exchange for his brother.  He would pay the price.  He would be the slave.  He would willingly take the place of Benjamin.

And Joseph wept.  His father still loved him.  His brothers had changed.  This visionary man, this savior of Egypt, this victim who blessed all around him, saw the hand of the Lord clearly.  His God had designed it all.  He was the last.  He was the slave.  He was the servant.  He was the prisoner.  Yet God had made him first.  He had given him power and wisdom and resources to save his family.  Judah the abuser was also Judah the sacrifice.  He put himself last.  He offered himself as a ransom for his brother.  Judah the betrayer was also Judah the savior.  It was all a type and a shadow of  Judah who would produce the Savior along with those who would betray and crucify him.  Everything made sense.  He revealed himself to his brothers.

They were afraid, but he had nothing but love for them.  "Be not grieved nor angry with yourselves...God sent me to save your lives by a great deliverance."  Joseph the afflicted, Joseph the abused, Joseph the hated, saved his family by the grace of God.  The betrayal was real, the abuse was real, the pain was real, but it was swallowed up by him who is mighty to save.  He is MIGHTY TO SAVE!  He can take all the darkness and evil and abusive filth of this world and turn it to good.  He has a design and a plan that defy human understanding.

Joseph had a broken family.  I have a broken family.  You have a broken family.  God has a plan to save our families just as he saved Israel's family.  It isn't an easy path, but each of us can do our part to be a tool in his hands as Joseph was; to bare our burdens as he did; to keep our faith bright even in the darkest times.  Someday my eyes will be opened as Joseph's were and I will see why everything had to be how it is.  Until then I walk in the darkness of my depression, seeing only the steps right in front of me, the torch of faith flickering dimly in my hand.

Soldiers of Halla

There have been a couple of fantasy series books that my boys like that have "Soldiers of Halla," who are basically superhero warriors whose job is to restore order and justice to a world in chaos.  A few weeks ago, my counselor and I decided that these soldiers are not just fantasy, but are created by my brain each and every time an injustice is done to me.

Seems far fetched?  Actually, it is so common a fictional trope as to be cliche.  Think of Athena springing from Zeus's head fully clad in armor; this is not a new idea.  My soldiers happen to be male.  Some people are pretty thick skinned and it takes a lot to produce a soldier.  For others, like me and one of my sons especially, a soldier will spring out at the slightest provocation.  It depends on a person's temperament how easily a soldier will be produced, and temperament is about as good or bad as hair color, and just as hard to permanently change.  These soldiers are not rational beings that are prone to restraint.  They follow orders, even when told to stand down, but they HATE to be told to stand down.  Consider the following scenarios:

Austin is watching KidTube on the Ipad.  It's time to get ready for school.  I take the IPad and turn it off and say, "It's time for school!"

Austin screams, "No School!!  IPad!!"

Dodging his flailing arms, I try to change his diaper and dress him for school while speaking soothing words about lunch bags, friends, and riding in the van.  He turns to look at me with murder in his eyes and rakes his fingernails across my face.  A soldier pops out of my brain.  "Shall I execute him my lady?"  he asks crisply.

"What?"  I say incredulously, "He's my baby, of course not.  You shouldn't be here.  Stand down!"

Grumbling and mumbling to himself about how little boys shouldn't scratch their mothers and of course he should be here because it is his job to protect me, he takes his position directly behind me.  He thinks, "Eventually she will realize that she needs me and when she does, I'll be here."

Then one of my boys comes home from school.  He drops his backpack in the entryway, says, "Hi Mom," and then grabs the ice cream out of the freezer, even though I've told him a million times that is not an approved after school snack.  Out pops another soldier, "Shall I ground him for a month my lady?" he asks respectfully.

"That's a terrible idea!  I just need to stop buying ice cream.  It isn't good for anyone.  Stand down!" I reprimand coldly.  And the soldier shuffles over in line behind the last guy.  They gripe to one another about how the universe is all wrong and that eventually I will realize that I need them and when I do, they will be ready.

Throughout the day I have had maybe ten soldiers pop out of my brain and I have told them all to stand down.  After weeks and months of this, there are hundreds of soldiers lined up behind me all resentful, angry, and full of pent up energy.  They come with me everywhere I go, reminding me that the universe is not right, and asking to be given a job.  I tell them patiently, "You don't understand soldiers, you shouldn't be here.  Good moms just take this kind of thing and it doesn't bother them.  This is the way things should be."  The soldiers think that is just a bunch of crap.  Eventually I can't control them anymore, and I explode.  They rebel and start yelling at everyone, dishing out extreme punishments and damaging the upholstery.

My counselor says, "These soldiers are supposed to be here, and they won't go away until you give them a job to do."  So I am imagining my life as a commander of soldiers.  Instead of telling my men to go away, I give them a job instead.  Let's re-imagine my life as a commander.

 Austin is watching KidTube on the Ipad.  It's time to get ready for school.  I take the IPad and turn it off and say, "It's time for school!"

Austin screams, "No School!!  IPad!!"

Dodging his flailing arms, I try to change his diaper and dress him for school while speaking soothing words about lunch bags, friends, and riding in the van.  He turns to look at me with murder in his eyes and rakes his fingernails across my face.  A soldier pops out of my brain, but before he can get a word out, I say, "Soldier, thank you for coming.  You are just in time to take this child to timeout.  He needs to understand that he is not allowed to scratch his mother.  Don't forget to sing the uh-oh song."  He takes the baby to timeout and disappears, his duty complete.

Then one of my boys comes home from school.  He drops his backpack in the entryway, says, "Hi Mom," and then grabs the ice cream out of the freezer, even though I've told him a million times that is not an approved after school snack.  Out pops another soldier, but before he suggests a course of action, I say, "I'm so glad you are here!  Take that ice cream away from that boy.  He knows that is not allowed.  And remind him to do his chores and homework before he watches the new Flash episode."  He takes the ice cream, issues the order and disappears, his duty complete.

The truth is, the soldiers ARE supposed to be there.  If they weren't supposed to be there, they wouldn't have showed up.  They just need a good commander to give them orders so that they can be satisfied.  Now that I am a commander of soldiers, I can unleash the power of my temperament to help me instead of cause problems.  Maybe then there will be a little more order in my chaotic universe!