70 pushups!

Below is a (rather lengthy) letter from me to Abe. For any of you curious about some of my responses, the letter I was responding to can be found by clicking --> here. 🙂

70 pushups. Not bad. Especially when I can do about eight. Ha!

I loved all the stories of people talking to or about you guys as the SWAT, FBI, and disciplined hunters with closets full of guns (that you can shoot at far range). Haha. Ohhh those are all so great. And it’s funny thinking about stereotypes we have of other cultures and people and to wonder how on earth Americans have become associated (at least in El Salvador) as gun-toting secret agents.

And I loved picturing you in a Walter Mitty soccer-playing scenario. Sometimes I wish someone was just following you around with a camera; quietly capturing daily moments of your existence there without you even knowing it and then sending them to me. Actually I wish I could be the one doing that — just taking pictures off to the side during the moments you paint for us in your emails: Miriam walking determinedly past a chatty neighbor because she had promised to be to church, the Zaldivar’s pulling porcupine quills from their dogs nose, or their little boy shouting he wanted to be baptized “tomorrow”, you eating lunch at Hna. Irma’s market, or gathered around a table at Hno. Morales’ home with friends from the Jucuapa ward, or you laughing with the drunks who have claimed you their best “Canadian-man” friend. Luckily you do a pretty great job of giving descriptions that create images for us. And your pictures always make me happy. But I think it would be my favorite thing ever to just trail along on the sly taking pictures of all your daily comings and goings.

I loved your repentance metaphor. It reminded me of what Elder Bednar said last conference after he told about things he’d learned from watching those Cheetahs. He told us: “... each of us should look for the lessons and warnings found in the simple events of everyday life. As we seek for a mind and heart open to receive heavenly direction by the power of the Holy Ghost, then some of the greatest instructions that we can receive and many of the most powerful warnings that can safeguard us will originate in our own ordinary experiences. Powerful parables are contained in both the scriptures and in our daily lives.“

I love seeing the lessons and parables you are discovering in the midst of your adventure in El Salvador. I love that God could teach you a powerful lesson — and one that would help others — from the simple experience of seeing a dog have porcupine quills removed. It makes me want to pay more attention to lessons in my daily routines. And it makes me love God for being so good and so willing to give us truth wherever we are open to seeing it.

And here’s another interesting thing. You probably won’t understand this fully until you have kids of your own. (Though you can likely feel it when you think of your younger siblings or even of people whose souls you have come to care about in your mission.) But in life, there is maybe nothing that makes me love someone more than when they are good to my kids. If someone goes out of their way to make one of you ten feel included or important or liked, I immediately just love that person. One small example: I told you that Jesse passed the sacrament for the first time last Sunday. He was the smallest kid up there and looked a bit unsure and nervous, and I kept seeing him glance around a bit anxiously to make sure he was always in the right spot, etc. Anyway, a few days later a little card came in the mail for Jesse from Elaine Carruth in the ward. (Do you remember her? Janet Nelson’s sister. They live in the house where you guys moved all the rocks ... and then moved them back. Hahah.) She just wanted to tell him what a great job he did passing the sacrament and what a great priesthood holder she knew he would be. It was a small thing, but it made me suddenly feel so much love for Elaine.

So the interesting thing — something I didn’t know would happen — is that my love for Heavenly Father and our Savior has grown SO MUCH with you on a mission. And it’s because you will share stories of answers to prayers or comfort they have sent you. Or you’ll share lessons they are teaching you. And it’s that same feeling I was describing in the above paragraph. Suddenly I am seeing so much more clearly that they are helping MY KID. And it makes me love them so much more! Just like my love swells for people HERE who are good to my kids.

Of course I know they are constantly helping all of my kids. And that they’ve been helping you your whole life. But there is a bit of a helpless feeling having a child so far away from where you can do much to soften their troubles — even if I didn’t know every problem or frustration you had or what specifically might be worrying you, I could ... I don’t know ... make you a good Sunday dinner, have you watch a fun late-night action movie with dad, tidy up the house for you to come home to, buy you some blue socks, just ... be a mom and make the backdrop to your life a little smoother. Now that I can’t do that, it makes God helping you stand out so much more starkly. I have become much more aware of all He is doing and how constantly aware He is of my own son. And seeing him do things for you makes me love him more than it ever has seeing him do things for me. I don’t know if that makes sense. But it’s a cool side of having you in a mission that I hadn’t anticipated.

Speaking of cool sides of you being on a mission. This one I did anticipate of course, but it is still so amazing to actually witness. It’s just the growth and spiritual wisdom and maturity and even just understanding of LIFE you are gaining. When you wrote last week about how people tend to confide their troubles to missionaries and how much you’ve begun to see just ... how hard life is for people and how many underlying struggles are occurring in other’s lives, and how much people just need kindness, it just amazed me to think of how many more years of living you might have had to pass through before gaining this compassionate realization. I mean I’m a good case in point. I feel like it has mostly been in the last decade or so that I have truly begun to understand the severity of trials those around me are experiencing. It’s been a slower process for me because my experience has been a bit more limited to watching the struggles of friends and family (though admittedly we have a pretty large family pool to learn from — with about every struggle of mankind divided up among them [addictions, disabilities, depression, divorce, abuse, pain from mistakes, etc.]). Still, I felt kind of in awe this week thinking of you getting to start learning this at such a crash-course-paced speed. How many 19 year olds have had their eyes so opened to the pain in the world and to how much their Savior wants them to be lifting and loving and helping? It's cool to think of how much more effectively God will be able to use you over the years ahead by you beginning to gain this compassion and understanding so young.

Well, that was a lot of thoughtful. How about a little light-hearted and ordinary!

Jesse went skiing with the Deacons this week. Probably only his third time ever skiing, but he seemed to have an OK time.

Hans got a sore throat last week. In an effort to stop the troublesome sensation, he began making a little, guttural, throat-clearing sort of sound ... over and over and over again. And he's continued to make it rather regularly. If you get on his case about it, he gets very defensive for a three-year-old. "No!" He'll shout, "I'm just throating!" I am not sure where he came up with that term. But dad seems to enjoy his "throating" about as much as he enjoyed your knuckle-cracking. Haha.

Starling is as dear and pleasant as a little girl can be, but she does lately primarily want me to be holding her. The only time she will play very contentedly is if I am gone from the home (and thus not an option at all) or if I sit on the floor with her and a pile of toys so that she can play with her toys while climbing back and forth over me and overall making sure I'm not thinking about going anywhere. It makes it tricky to get things done. However, doing an arm curl with a small human weight a good portion of each day is making my left arm pretttttty strong! I wouldn't go so far as to say I could beat you in an arm-wrestling match now (I mentioned my eight push-ups to your 70) but my left arm could certainly hold its ground a fair amount longer than my weak right arm. And it's all thanks to Starling.

Daisy took the AMC math test the other day. The big mystery of the day was: where is Alex Rich? I think he had big plans for success on the test but then didn't show up on test day. I don't know if it was illness or date confusion or what, but I told Daisy that the real tragedy in all of this is ... she will never know now if she might have beaten him. Ha! I do wish you were around to talk Calculus with her. I remember you telling her excitedly about all of these new things you were loving about it last year. And now she sometimes tries to tell me a few similar things ... but, of course, I don't really understand a word she is saying. It would be grand for the two of you to be able to happily talk away about Calculus wonders together.

The other night dad and I were discussing what movie to watch. I don't recall what he suggested, but it must have been one that wasn't up my alley because he said, "I just want to make you happy by you making me happy." Just the type of thing dad would say. I sure like that stinker dad of yours.

Speaking of. I came across this old picture the other day. It's dad holding you -- just moments after you were born. Crazy to think that we just (without having any money or real careers or knowing much of anything about being parents) brought you here. We weren't that much older than you are now really. Only four or five more years of living. Pretty amazing to think of all that has happened since that day.

Of course the real thing on my mind all week has been: WHERE ARE YOU!? The Durans posted a few pictures of transfer day on Facebook. We saw you sitting in a chapel with a bunch of other missionaries in one of the shots. Dad thought that if you were there at all, there was a good chance you were there to be transferred. If so, I'm excited for you to get to know a new place, but I also feel a little homesick at the thought of you leaving everything that has become familiar in Jucuapa and just ... anxious for you over everything and everyone being new again. I am eager to hear from you and hope you are doing all right. The good news is: whenever things are unknown with you again, we find ourselves praying much more intently over you!

In Come Follow Me this week I read about Nephi and his brothers, etc. finally finishing the boat and heading off into the sea. Nephi says, "... we did put forth into the sea and were driven forth before the wind towards the promised land."

It made me think of some similar verses in Ether 6 when the Jaredites climb into their barges and head off -- trusting themselves to the Lord:

“ And it came to pass that the Lord God caused that there should be a furious wind blow upon the face of the waters, towards the promised land; and thus they were tossed upon the waves of the sea before the wind. ...

“ And it came to pass that the wind did never cease to blow towards the promised land while they were upon the waters; and thus they were driven forth before the wind.

It seems clear that the wind isn't pleasant. It makes the sea stormy and tosses them about on the waves and makes everything feel unsettled. But without it, they wouldn’t move forward or ever progress in their journeys. That line in Ether is kind of cool (if not a little frightening): "... the wind did never cease to blow towards the promised land ..."

I get worried when I think of my kids having the wind blowing in their lives. Things seeming hard or turbulent or scary for them. But from those verses it seems pretty clear that we need it. We need adversity and the wind to be blowing pretty much our entire mortal journeys. But we can trust that what it is teaching us and where it is leading us is always towards the promised land. Towards everything important God has for us.

I love you so much. I hope you are happy and everything is great. But, if it isn't, I hope you can feel peace that there is purpose in God allowing those winds.

Love you so so much!

Mom

Here is just a little snapshot of an ordinary, messy after-dinner moment. 

TWENTY YEARS

Perhaps one of the most significant parts of December? Our 20 year anniversary! Two decades? In many ways I feel like I've been with Mike always, but also … I don't feel old enough to have possibly been married for TWENTY years! We were married just one day after I turned 23 so in three years we will have spent as much of life together as we ever spent apart. In any case, there is nothing old and tired about having been with him for such a long time. I literally find myself whispering prayers of just absolute THANKS for him all of the time.

And this pictures here. The kids could not stop laughing. 

Also, I love this little snippet from an email Abe sent me:

Lots of times when missionaries go to another house in interchanges or for whatever reason, they like to see pictures of the other Elder's families. ... [E]veryone is blown away by how muscle-y and tough Dad looks in all the pictures with his beard and everything. It doesn't translate as well, but they say things like "He's buff! Is he one of the Avengers? He probably knows how to terminate people." Another time we were listening to some audio file and it mentioned something about a troubled teen that got in a fist-fight with his Dad. They were talking about if they thought they could beat their dads, and said "But NOT Elder Harris's Dad! He's way too strong. We'd never last a second."

And, last of all, while I found no time to write up all the events of the last few blog posts in the ways that would have given me the most satisfaction, I did manage to make a little time to try and find some stumbling words to express some of what I feel about this marriage to Mike. I couldn't couldn't get it right, but I do truly truly love my husband. Here is what I wrote:

Mike loved me when he proposed of course, but it was a madly smitten kind of love. The incautious kind that once told me he couldn’t even “remember what [he] thought about before”. He certainly couldn’t have known then (nor could I have told him) that that intense infatuation wouldn’t be the end. Or even nearly enough. All it could really be was a hopeful little offering. A beginning (made mostly in naïveté) that couldn’t yet comprehend ... twenty years and ten kids later. And I’m not exactly sure how that tiny start has now set the pilings and secured the riggings over two full decades. But I do know, in grappling for some type of words to explain this, that the makeup of our souls seem to have actually woven themselves together — like literal cords of light wound tightly between us (the existence of which I can’t really explain or prove ... only feel certain of). I feel stretched and uncomfortable even having him physically far. And it’s a lovely thing — having this happiness that so completely belongs to just the two of us.

And Of Course ...

And, of course, all the ordinary still went on during the holiday months. 

For example, Mette and Summer asked to play out front for a minute one cold day. When I agreed, they ran towards the door with Mette shouting, "If we see a thief we'll slap and spank them! But not if it's a neighbor that we know."

And eight-year-old  Anders (who, it turns out, heard someone in sacrament meeting say how they were usually "a man of few words" and thought that sounded dignified) told me: "Sometimes I try not talking for awhile so I can be 'a man of few words'. But then I wonder why I wanted to be a man of few words and I just start talking again."

And Starling! Though she was only just approaching nine months in these photos, she will be TEN months on the 23rd! I have been thinking of her as still closer to a newborn person than a … one year old person. But, shrug, TEN MONTHS! Sometimes I think about Summer and Mette and CANNOT imagine that I was less than three months away from birthing another baby when Summer was this age! How did we survive that? Starling is so clearly just A BABY! But, of course, she's all grown up too. Dear dear little tiny baby Star. All day long I kiss her and tell her she's the most wonderful thing to ever have happened. Of course I've felt that with each of my babies. But it makes it no less true in this case! THE MOST WONDERFUL THING! THIS HUMAN! My goodness I adore her. Almost too much it feels!

And oh! But wait! In all of this quickly scribbling down -- short hand -- all of Christmas, did I forget Christmas morning? I think I did! Well. That's crazy. Always such a fun and happy morning. Some high-light gifts this year? Minky blankets for the older girls (they always stole mine), a soldering iron for Jesse, Some mythical Schleich sea and mountain creatures for Anders, Schleich dinosaurs for Hansie, and some silly little floppy boards with sticky mermaids and fairies with interchangeable outfits that were on the cheap end but occupied the two younger girls more than any of their other gifts.

There were other things too. Pillow Pets for Hans, Mette and Summer to take to the cabin and of course new games. (They've had fun playing Daisy's Cataan, but I've preferred to mostly join in Goldie's The Game of Things because it's so simple and straight forward and funny.) There were also a few busts. A letterboard thing for Goldie to hang in her room … that neglected to contain the "included" letters, some overalls for Penny that were too small, and a music box for Penny to replace the special one the little kids broke … that came with a broken part. Haha. It was a fun and happy morning. 

More

Decorating the giant tree:

And Jesse turning 11 (a better view of the circuit-board cake Daisy made him was visible in the last post):

And a visit to Christmas Village! It's a magical place to be sure. But also … soooo crowded that it isn't an effort I make every year. 

A ward Christmas party and my mom reading Christmas books to the kids. This is the third year we've had her come over for a December Family Night to read my old childhood Christmas books to the kids, and I love it. 

Meanwhile … Abe was living out his first birthday/Christmas/holiday season away from home. He got a new companion just days before Christmas so things were all a bit unfamiliar, but the package we sent (along with the one from my sister) made it to him in time! Also … they got bed frames (rather than just mattresses on the floor). They had to put them together with kicks in place of a hammer, but it seemed to be great cause for celebration. :) Our favorite thing (that also gave us a good chuckle) that he said on the phone to us on Christmas Eve was that he really enjoyed the mission … even though they actually do nothing even remotely enjoyable. Haha. Daisy was able to work that little comment nicely into her talk a week later on being able to feel joy in any circumstances when the Savior is our focus. 

And a little Nativity at the Allred Christmas party.

I was almost tempted to have us skip our own little nativity and reading of Luke 2 on Christmas Eve. (Mostly because I didn't want to pull out scarves and robes and the like), but I'm glad I didn't put the kabosh on it as it was my favorite part of Christmas Eve. Mike turned off all the lights but a candle again (which magically kept the kids much more reverent than usual). He also played the mandolin while we sang a few Christmas songs.