Loves Lonely Offices. (What Did I Know? ...)

A friend recently reminded me of "Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden.

Here it is:

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?

24 years into parenting, I could make such a list of the many austere and lonely offices of love that I once, innocently, knew absolutely nothing about. And not only physical acts, but the moments of pleading and praying and fasting and agonizing.

"What did I know, what did I know ..."

There's a line in Mosiah 28 that always makes me breathe in deeply--like a last big breath before going under water. It's when Ammon and his brothers first set out on their mission to the Lamanites. The words are simply, "And they took their journey ...".

Oh the simple start of that!

What did they know, what did they know?

That journey would come to be full of hearts that were depressed, and suffering of "every privation", and "all manner of afflictions".

It's just so strange imagining them at the start of all of that--with so much ahead that would be required of them. I see myself in the middle of that same journey and sometimes feel a bit wistful over the naive girl I was in the beginning. 

Of course, that's all sounding very melancholy and unappreciative of this spectacular life I am living. It IS spectacular. But the journey is certainly more complex than I had ever guessed it would be when Mike and I first "took [our] journey".

Still, I am so grateful for the things I understand now that I never did before. And, with Ammon, I can already say (as he did at the end of his journey), "could we have supposed when we started ... that God would have granted unto us such great blessings?"

No, I couldn't have known that either. 

And I do strongly suspect that, in the end, when all the learning has woven itself together and I when I finally understand all the whys and growth occasioned by the things that were permitted to occur, I (and we all) will have cause to say, with Ammon, "Now have we not reason to rejoice? Yea, I say unto you, there never were men that had so great reason to rejoice as we, since the world began. ..."

And now, for a few of the most recent things, mostly small, but all circled into this journey:

Mike texted me this of Starling the other day: cats all gathered to her. She is their truest friend by far 

Our neighbor gave us all his remaining peas. And we gave the non-pod portions to our steers--who greatly appreciated them.

Little pig.

Pokemoned out.

Dear boy.

Every time we go to Old Navy.

We took the pygmies back over to the farm (so they wouldn't eat all the expensive grain the kids need to feed their fair goats here at the rental). Here the kids are proudly displaying their current pen.

Father's Day. I love Mike one hundred billion thousand.

Nice church socks ...

I drove to S. Ogden one morning to meet up with all of my sisters to pray. Haha. That's right. TO PRAY. There were a number of frightening health concerns, etc. going on in the family and it seemed to us that being together to pray was just the right thing to do. We knelt around Kathy's coffee table, holding hands, and each taking a turn to pray. There were tears and also several moments of actual laughter in our prayers. What a lucky thing to have women like this in my life.

Mette acquired a sleep mask somewhere recently. Starling faithfully slept in it for several nights. It seemed quite amusing to us all. 

These next two pictures should be reversed. First the house with shingles. And then "wrapped". They've added a few windows in as well. But also ... mostly nothing has happened for about three weeks. So. Hmm.

Stinker Penny went with two friends to the Coldplay concert in Denver. She could not have been happier about it.

Mette with a trim, and Summer with the bob she has been requesting. (The before picture is below as well.)

Pig.

Anders (far left) at his Teacher's Quorum camp. (Which we had very little time to prepare for as we arrived back from a family reunion about an hour before he needed to leave.)

This notification that got sent from Jesse's watch to my phone and Mike's gave us quite a scare. (He's had that watch for years, and we've never gotten anything like this.) Turns out it was just some very wild tubing behind a boat at his YM's activity.

Goldie has been back and forth between home and working as an EFY counselor in Moab this summer. Here she is bumping into several boys from our old ward and then bumping into the daughter of one of my good friends. The world is just the smallest.

The gas-powered sprinkler Mike set up for me at the farm so I could grow pumpkins and sunflowers.