STATES OF GRACE

I once watched a professional stoneware artist working at the wheel, throwing pots. I asked him questions about the formation of the outer walls and how he made the varied shapes he was forming. He told me he only pays attention to the center and the outside walls take care of themselves.
Too often our attention is directed to our outer walls, or the way we appear to others. We find ourselves worthy only if we match up well against everybody else. We compare and compete then find ourselves lacking, never convinced we’re good enough. If we pay attention to our own personal journey, how we compare to others won’t matter any more. We don’t have to be perfect. We don’t have to be the best. We don’t have to compete with others. We have only to be better than we were yesterday.
I remember a day when the parents of the students in my daughter’s ballet class were invited to attend a performance demonstration to see the progress of the dance students. There were obvious differences in the levels of ballet technique and performance competency as the girls followed the teacher’s commands and performed a choreographed dance for us.
My daughter had struggled with shyness for years, along with learning to cope with legs that were several inches different in length. Taking ballet was her idea. She’d found the courage to take classes as a beginner with other girls who had been taking ballet for ten or more years.
Watching her dance that day was amazingly beautiful to me. It didn’t matter how she compared to the other girls. Even her teacher could not possibly know what she had overcome to get to this personal level of grace. Someone attending that class as an observer could not possibly make a judgment that was accurate about her competency or accomplishments. Then I realized only a parent who truly knows and loves their child can accurately assess their progress. So it is with God; only our loving heavenly parents can accurately assess our progress.
As I watched my daughter turn a pirouette that day, my heart caught the very instant she stopped, stood still and smiled at me. Time stopped and she was the only ballerina on the dance floor. That shining moment of grace still dances in my heart to remind me that we all have a parent in heaven watching us with great love like I watched my daughter that day.
The time between our entrance and exit on the stage of life is fleeting and precious. Those around us are dancing as fast as they can but generally no one notices. We all need an audience who knows how hard we’re trying and how far we’ve come. Instead of looking out there for applause we need to look up there. The master potter is at work and is lovingly placing the soft clay of our souls into the hot kiln of life so we can each emerge the unique shining vessels we can become.

Calling Jesus

One Sunday the children in my class of three-year-olds at church were having a heated debate. During the course of most Sunday lessons I am called many different names by my young students including Mommy or Hey You. I am comfortable with all of these names but the children often feel they must educate their fellow students about my “real” name which happens to be the one they like to call me.
One tiny thin-boned little girl took a deep breath, placed one hand on her hip, pointed the other at her rowdy male classmates and stated emphatically, “Her name is Sister Baadsgaard!”
“No she’s not,” a boisterous little boy answered jumping to his feet with his fists forming punching machines ready to defend his claim. “Her name is Grandma!”
Another little boy with big blue eyes and long eye-lashes who rarely spoke whispered, “Her name is teacher.”
That day at church we sang, I’m trying to be like Jesus by Janice Kapp Perry. The words welded those children to my heart as I sang, “I’m trying to be like Jesus; I’m following in his ways. I’m trying to love as he did in all that I do and say.”
The children in my class didn’t know the words to that song and they didn’t appear to be watching the chorister. One boy poked his neighbor. One child crawled out the back of the folding chair and another started disrobing. Though it appeared they weren’t listening, they were. It occurred to me that these children were already like Jesus. I was the one who needed to live the meaning of that song.
During his ministry Jesus often asked for the children to be brought to him. Then he told the adults to behold them with new eyes and become like a child – humble, submissive, teachable and quick to love and forgive. Jesus always had the time to love and bless people one by one; each soul received his individual time and attention.
When all my children were small, I could never find baby Jesus in the nativity set during the holiday season. I usually located the tiny porcelain babe in a manger tucked away under my daughter’s pillow or hidden under my son’s bed. I finally understood that each of my children wanted baby Jesus for themselves. So I purchased a nativity set for each of them.
When my children are young they call out to me in the blackness of their bedroom for comfort and reassurance when they feel lonely and scared. As adults my children call me on the phone when life is hard and they feel sad or afraid. I try to tell them what Jesus would say if he were on the other end of the line. Yet I always feel inadequate and limited in my ability to bless.
That’s why each of us needs our own Jesus. Christ gives hope to a confused world and to us. Because of Jesus we know love conquers fear and the meek will eventually inherit the earth. It doesn’t matter what we call him but if we call him. Whether we call him Savior, “Wonderful, Counselor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6) or simply friend – if we call him, we’ll never be alone or comfortless again.

Licking Honey Off a Thorn

I finally went to the doctor. I’d been experiencing pain in my shoulder for a couple of years and it kept getting worse. I don’t like to go to doctors. I believe most pain goes away if you give it enough time. I’ve learned - sometimes it doesn’t. Pain, doctors tell me, is the way our body signals that something is wrong and needs attention. If we couldn’t feel pain, we’d leave our hand on the hot stove.
Emotional pain is like that. Sometimes we ignore our pain hoping it will eventually go away; but buried pain never dies. One woman told me she was depressed, bitter and angry for years. Her husband had abused her then left her for another woman. She said one day it dawned on her that God had not abandoned her; she had abandoned God. She was going it alone even though her Heavenly Father was there, willing to help. A realization came to her one night when she looked up at the stars.
“Where are you, God?” she asked defiantly.
As she gazed into the night sky, she suddenly and powerfully felt the love of God. She realized the stars in the heavens were always there, even during the day; but their light and beauty were revealed only in darkness. In a similar way, she understood God was always there but only in the black times in her life did the absolute perfection of divine devotion reveal God's most brilliant and ennobling love.
Childbirth can be described as an ocean of pain that ebbs and flows like waves. At the crest of each wave, the labor pain is at the peak - then it gradually subsides. There is a small break between waves, where the laboring mother is allowed to regroup and then brace herself for the next pain. The closer she gets to actually giving birth, the closer the waves of pain come together. When the mother is actually delivering a new child, the pains don’t have any break between them. That’s when the mother wonders if she can hold on any longer. But she does - and because she does, new life is born.
We all need to be reborn, given new life through pain, whether emotional or physical or both. When we develop a new heart and rebirth of purpose, it follows the difficult times, the peak of pain when there is no let­up, when we think we can’t go on. But we do. So we are reborn many times in life, reborn to joy - all following great pain.
Each life has meaning and purpose under any circumstance. We are asked to find that purpose and meaning through pain. God invites us to choose betterment over bitterness, growth over self-pity, and inner peace and joy over jaded attitudes. Hell is self-absorption. Heaven is other-absorption. So we choose.
The doctor I went to ordered physical therapy and medication. I learned to stretch and exercise my tendons and muscles in new and healing ways. The calcium deposit in my shoulder won’t go away but I can better deal with it by facing the truth, educating myself and maintaining new healthy routines. In a similar way, many problems in life don’t go away. We will keep becoming more than we were if we face the truth, educate ourselves and maintain new healthy routines. I heard someone say once that life is like licking honey off a thorn. Without pain we would not experience the fullness of joy. Without joy we would not discover the meaning and purpose in pain.

Lessons from the Farm

One of the great things about living on two acres is there is room to grow a garden, tend a mini fruit orchard and raise animals. Our family knows from personal experience that eggs don’t come from cartons at the grocery store and apples often have worm holes. When we are personally acquainted with the natural world, we learn perfection in nature or ourselves is more a process that a product. We can cut out the worm hole and still enjoy the rest of the apple. We can accept our humanness and still be happy.
Growing a garden certainly teaches us that we literally reap what we sew. Though we never get corn where we planted potatoes; we sometimes do get volunteers from previous plantings and some very interesting combinations of present plantings. We have harvested squashes and melons that have cross-pollinated forming totally unique varieties like canta-watermelons or crookneck zucchinis. Buried seeds from a previous year will sometimes grow into a new seedling without being purposely planted again. If we keep planting and working with hope our lives will often produce a harvest we did not expect. The magic and mystery is that we never know for sure what unexpected gift is coming.
There is another part of the law of the harvest no one talks about. We can labor very hard tilling, planting, weeding and watering but sometimes a sudden frost or storm will destroy all our hard work. This turn of events often requires that we hang on until we can plant again next spring. Sometimes children walk into forbidden paths, illness strikes or the people we love die. Eventually we reap what we sew– but sometimes it takes more time than we thought to see the return on our investment.
Our mini farm has also taught us about the law of the jungle or survival of the fittest. The birds in our neighborhood know the exact morning we plan to pick our cherries. The night before, these birds swarm our tree, strip it of every single piece of fruit and leave piles of pink poop under our deck railing to taunt us. Sometimes we’ve been tempted to eat green cherries just to get our share. Finally we decided to call our crop a free will offering. Likewise, when people steal from us, we can eat bitter fruit and become sour like them or consider our bounty a gift - and move on.
Gophers tunnel into our garden and devour the root vegetables. My husband sets traps but they keep coming. Raccoons strip the leaves off our corn and devour every kernel on the cob before it makes it to our barbeque. Foxes and stray dogs think our pigeons, rabbits and ducks make a tasty supper. There are predators out there. Bad things happen to good people and hearts are broken by tragedy or betrayal. We don’t always get what we deserve but we are invited to learn from both the bitter and the sweet, trusting that God will someday make sense of it all.
Nature and life is not always a boundless harvest; sometimes it hails and destroys our crop or death comes too soon. Life is hard; yet life is also sweet. In the end it is not the gardener with the flawless garden who wins but the one who has overcome the most without giving up hope. Who we become is our ultimate harvest.

PLAYING IN THE SYMPHONY OF LIFE

There are times in all our lives when we feel alone and discouraged. There are days when we question whether anyone understands or cares – when we can’t remember the melody or find the will to sing it. At times like these I believe it helps to join in the strength of those around us.
I play second violin in an orchestra. The other members of the group who play in that section sit in front, behind and on both sides of me. When I lose my place in the music I listen carefully to the musician next to me while I scan the notes on the page to locate where we are in the score. Before long I can jump back in and start playing again. The player next to me can’t stop playing to instruct me without losing their place. So when they can tell I’m lost, they will whisper the number of the measure we’re on.
We can’t always solve the problems of others but we can listen carefully so we are aware when someone around us has lost their place. We can learn to be more in tune with the needs of those around us and we never know what positive influence we have. For example, one day after I’d given a talk at BYU Education week, a woman approached me and said, “You don’t know me but when I was a teenager I read something you wrote that helped me more than you’ll ever know. I was going through some awful things and had decided to end it all. Then I read the article you wrote in the New Era called ‘Holding On’. So I did. Those words literally saved my life.”
Though we are often unaware, those around us are starved for attention and compassion. We can’t always stop our life and rush to save them; but we can in effect whisper the number of the measure we’re on by offering a kind smile or a gentle word of appreciation, affection or encouragement. Before long, they will be able to find their place in the music and start playing again. A symphony simply does not have the same power without every instrument playing their part.
When our orchestra is playing disjointed and out of tune during rehearsals, our conductor will make us stop, memorize a few bars and then ask us to close our eyes and play the music without looking. He will further instruct us to listen to those next to us and also across the orchestra so we can hear how our part fits into the whole. It is amazing how much better we all sound when we do that. When we are focused only on our part and our eyes are glued to the sheet of music in front of us we are too concerned with self – unable to play the notes together as beautifully as we could.
If we want to get in tune with those around us we have to occasionally get our minds off ourselves long enough to truly listen. Then we will notice subtle expressions of need and hear the silent cries of those across the way. When all of us listen this way, we can play the score of life with infinitely more harmony and grace.
So, at those times when we feel abandoned, we need to glace around us. We are not alone; we are surrounded by caring people. When we are lost, they will help us find our place in the score and when they are lost we will help them. If we listen carefully with our hearts and glance up to the master maestro, the melody is never far away. There is love all around and inside us. All we have to do is listen.