Today is Palm Sunday when we celebrate Christ’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem – one week before Easter. On this day, Jesus rode through the city gates on a donkey and has hailed by the Jews as their King.  Only four days later, after the Last Super with his apostles, Jesus was betrayed and taken away from the Garden of Gethsemane by soldiers.  And five days after His triumphant entry, He was tried and crucified.

It didn’t take long for the Hailed King to move into a downwardly spiral of events – just a few days. While Christ anticipated these events and knew they were part of the plan, I’m sure they were not pleasant. We too know how fast things can fall apart in this earth life.

On the morning of Friday the 13^th of July 2012, I sat alone in my small Honda Civic slowly absorbing the words I had just heard from my doctor and trying not to cry. I had a 25 cm cyst in my abdomen that needed to be surgically removed immediately before damage was done to my internal organs. I had no health insurance, no job, and nowhere to live to recover from such a surgery. My heart was very heavy.

The phone rang.  It was the HR Department from my previous employer telling me that my Cobra Health Insurance had been reinstated. Then I did start to cry.  I wept tears of gratitude and knew that I had been a part of a miracle. It was the first of many miracles – and I had unknowingly taken just one step into a journey that would last many months.

That morning in the dark mood of that small car, my path was illuminated by that miracle and God would continue to guide me throughout this journey.  “I will go before your face. I will be on your right hand on your left, and my Spirit shall be in your hearts, and mine angles round about you, to bear you up.”  (D&C 84:88)

Four days later I was in Alexandria Hospital hooked to an IV and waiting for an ambulance that would take me to Fairfax where a surgeon was waiting to operate.  A friend waited with me, insisting that I have a blessing before I left for surgery.  After several calls – and to my surprise – Elder Wilson of the Seventy was on his way to anoint me. The moment he put his hands on my head, my whole body filled with power.  It was an overwhelming feeling.  I knew then that this man had lived a life dedicated to righteousness and that he had become a powerful tool in the hands of God – and I also knew that God wanted to show me, His daughter, how powerful He was – and assure me that He was in charge and would strengthen me.  Another miracle.  ”I’ll strengthen you, help you, and cause you to stand. Upheld by my righteous, omnipotent hand.” (How Firm a Foundation – #85)

And so it went, from the ambulance to the hospital, and into the hands of a very particular surgeon. One miracle after another.  I was guided and strengthened and kept safe down a narrow illumined path as my life exploded around me.  My friends worked in shifts to be with me until my family could arrive.  My sister, Heather, was with me one week later when bad combination of stress and pain killers caused my intestines constrict and cramp – leaving me with the worse abdominal pain of my life.  I was curled up in a ball on the Stinson’s couch – crying and desperate.  Heather called the doctor and listed the pros/cons of an emergency room visit.  She asked if I wanted her to call for a blessing – and that didn’t feel right, so I asked for a prayer of faith.  With me on the couch, my sister knelt and offered a prayer on my behalf.

It was then that I felt the great comfort of the Lord.  Like a warm blanket, I felt the arms of love encircle me and a soft voice in my mind telling me to relax.  I knew if I could just let my body relax that the pain would start to work itself out.  And it did.  I have felt this same comfort many times since in moments of distress.  “His presence shall my wants supply, And guard me with a watchful eye. / To fertile vales, and dewy meads. My weary, wandering steps he leads. / My noon-day walks he shall attend, And all my midnight hours defend.”   (The Lord My Pasture will Prepare – #109)

And, through these experiences, I came again to know – even more deeply – what I’d know before: that the Risen Lord Lives!  He knows me!  He lives to guide me and strengthen me and comfort me.  I know more intensely now that He is my Savior.

On this Palm Sunday, we, with all Christendom, hail Him as our King and look with eager eyes to Easter Sunday when HOPE is made fresh again in the world.  ”He is Risen! Tell it out with joyful voice. / He has burst the three days’ prison; let the whole wide word rejoice. /Death is conquered.  We are free.  Christ has won – the victory.”  (He is Risen – #199)

I will spend my Palm Sunday worshiping at two different churches.  During this Holy Week, I will attend a session at the LDS Temple and a mass at the Basilica of Catholic University.   I hope to spend Easter Morning on the steps of the Jefferson Memorial with my scriptures, watching the sun come up above the Cherry Blossoms.

Read More

 

 

Every year my ward ushers in the Christmas season with a Wreath Making Party. There’s music, a program, food, and of course, wreaths. It was last night and I was asked to speak. Here are my remarks.

As I’ve contemplated the theme of this year’s program, Come let us adore him, I think of Mary and Joseph finding refuge in a stable, the shepherds and magi, following the star, but mostly I think of the sweet Christ child and the joy His birth brought to the world. Let me share with you two stories, one about finding room in the inn, the other about following the star, both about hope and babies.

Story I: Surprise. You’re pregnant.

In 2001 I was pregnant with my third child, and fell into a deep depression. Much of it was hormonal, but it also had to do with our current situation. We were living in a small two bedroom and I’d lay awake each night mentally rearranging furniture and wonder where on earth this unexpected child’s stuff was supposed to go.  I already shared a dresser with the toddler. My husband also traveled a lot and I was having a hard time managing two littles on my own. How could I add a newborn?

The bigger I got, the deeper I sank. I wanted to feel joy but couldn’t.  Instead I was mired in a mixture of misery and guilt.  What was wrong with me that I was less than elated?  How could a Mormon woman NOT see pregnancy as a blessing?    Even when things were going well, the depression could sneak up on me like the shark in Jaws.  One minute I would be figuratively enjoying a nice swim and the next minute I was drowning in pain and darkness.  I prayed as I tucked the other two in bed at night that they would not be damaged by my foul moods. I prayed as I drove to work that I’d be able to stop crying long enough to teach the 3-hour block.  I prayed when the psychologist that my OB made me see told me that my depression would go away if I just ate more salmon. I hate salmon.

I have always had a hard time getting answers to prayers.  This is not to say that I never get answers–I do. Sometimes. It’s just that when God does decide to respond to my pleas me, he uses creative means of communication.

When I was 6 months pregnant, some girlfriends decided we should go to the outlets up in Maine.  They knew I was depressed and thought a little retail therapy might help. And if that failed, there was a Dairy Queen nearby.  Salmon was not going to relieve my hormonal upheaval, but a Peanut-Buster Parfait might.

In one of those Swedish catalog stores where kids’ pajamas cost what my wedding dress did, I picked up a little knit cap, tried it on my fist and smiled.  It was mostly green, a cheery Granny Smith with a few stripes, pink, yellow, blue. It was even on sale.  But the last thing I needed was more clothes.  By this point I knew I was having another girl, 22 months after my last.  Same age, same season, same clothes.  Everything else about the pregnancy felt so overwhelming, it was a great relief to know that I didn’t have to buy a single article of clothing.  So I tossed the cap back.

But when I left the store I couldn’t walk away. I told my friends I’d catch up and I stood there, trying to figure out what I was feeling.  There was no voice, but I knew God wanted me to buy that green hat.  Yes, the Lord speaks to people in the language and means they best understand. So what does this say about me that God talks to me through shopping?  Ignoring the slight, I obeyed the prompting, feeling a little foolish (and superficial), but glad to have ANY kind of divine communication in the midst of my depression which, more than anything else, left me feeling spiritually abandoned.

That night as I took the knit cap out of the bag, I imagined the tiny, warm head that it would adorn. I could imagine the soft cheeks against my breast. And perhaps for the first time, I didn’t think about the morning sickness or sciatica, the lack of space, my limited resources.  I only thought about this baby as an individual.  In that moment I felt peace. There would be room enough in our house, in my heart, for this child.  I held the cap and cried.

The cap sat on my dresser for the next 3 months as a reminder of the comfort and knowledge I had received. It became a talisman, a symbol that my baby and I had not been forgotten.

Camille’s arrival signaled the departure of my depression.  The moment she left my body I felt as if the clouds parted and the sun began to shine again.  She wore the cap many times.  I joked to my husband that it was the “cap of many colors,” representing my love for her.  And now it is hard to imagine not having her in my life, hard to imagine that carrying her was such a burden on my body and spirit.

She arrived two weeks before Christmas, and we were crowded. Our tiny apartment became a mini Hong Kong, as we put shelves on top of dressers, got bunk beds and just kept stacking stuff up up up. But there was room for this precious child, and as we celebrated the savior’s birth, I had never better understood the joy of the nativity, that a tiny child could so enlarge my heart and fill my soul with love.  There was room aplenty in the Inn.

Story II: We have some bad news for you…

In 2005 , I was once again expecting. This time I was elated but nervous as I’d lost 3 babies the previous year. My OB sent me to the high-risk practice at the Brigham and I underwent so many tests that I often felt like I’d been abducted by aliens.  At 9 weeks a somber nurse told me there was a problem and ushered me into the genetic counselor’s office.  I heard the words cystic hygroma, severe defects, chromosomal abnormality, and termination. I stopped listening and just concentrating on breathing

Once again I found myself pregnant and depressed. Every time I went to the doctor it got worse. The cyst was growing, and my doctor would list for me all the things that might be wrong with my baby—if I even made it full term.  (The irony that this other depression surrounds being desperate to have a baby is not lost on me) Every time I went into her office, I felt bereft. She was like the dementors from Harry Potter, sucking all the light and joy out of me. I felt as if I’d never be happy again.

I turned to the Lord and prayed my heart out. I prayed for strength, for comfort, for a manageable disability. At church I remember looking at certain women, and thinking “So & so has REAL faith. She is the kind of woman who gets miracles, not me.” I wasn’t jealous of bitter—nobody’s mad—just observing that it seemed certain people get the yes answer, and others, like me, got the “not this time sweetheart.”  Sometime around month 6 I had a conversation with a friend who’d also had a “we have some bad news for you” pregnancy.  Her advice to me was simple. Ask God for what I wanted. Even if it was a miracle. Just ask. The Lord loves us and wants us to come to Him with our righteous desires.  She said that there would be blessings in the asking, regardless of the outcome.

So I did. And it was terrifying to ask for a miracle, to lay my broken heart at His feet.  I was so afraid that I couldn’t take the pain if my desires weren’t granted. But God heard my prayers and gave me a gift. Hope. I remember it felt tangible, this gift of Hope that I could choose to take or not take. It wasn’t a warranty against pain and suffering, or a guarantee of a glittery and shiny outcome. But it shone brightly, like a star you might follow through the desert or a wilderness. And I followed.  The first thing I did was “fire” my OB. If I was going to make it I needed to find someone who could also also allow for the possibility of a good outcome. Next, a dear friend organized a fast for me, contacting many of our friends. The idea of being on the receiving end of sacrifice made me really uncomfortable. But I could not deny that their faith bolstered mine and gave me a peace that felt like being wrapped in one of those warm, minky blankets they sell at Costco. By month 8 I had the courage to  go ahead and prepare the nursery. I painted it a happy lavender and my sister sent me the bedding she’d handmade for her daughter. I followed the star of hope and had faith that whatever awaited me in the manger would be a blessing.

Fast-forward to 3 days before Thanksgiving. As it came time to deliver the baby, the room was filled with doctors and nurses waiting to see what they would need to do for this child.  None of it stressed me at the point. I knew whatever happened, God had heard me, comforted me, and I would not be left alone. Our child arrived chubby and healthy and it made us smile to have medical professionals dub our daughter “the miracle baby.”  I felt like the Holy Family as hospital personnel and friends streamed in and out of our room to behold our miracle baby.  “Come let us adore Him,” I thought. Dave named her Beatrice, bringer of joy and blessings.  Thanksgiving took on new meaning for our family as we all drank in the beauty of our answered prayers.

Now at Christmas, I identify with many of the players. I see myself in the harried and busy innkeepers who can’t find room in the inn–and I am reluctant to judge them as I suspect they too were super stressed and eluded by peace .  I see myself as a distant traveler following a star, weary but hopeful that I can survive the journey, praying that the gifts I bring will be sufficient.  But mostly I strive to be like the tired but faithful mother who looks to the Holy Child and finds faith and joy. Oh Come Let us Adorn Him!

Read More

In July I was diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer.  I had major abdominal surgery and began chemotherapy, which continues today.  It’s been a long, tiring, terrible journey – and it’s not over yet.  My physical body has been opened, cut, poked, drawn, and filled with poison.  My emotions have tugged and pulled.  The illness has wrecked my preveiously ordered life.  I’m too tired to maintain a schedule of work, athletics, socability, and too worried about germs to always attend activities and church service.  The doctors keep me close with an endless schedule  blood draws, appointments, transfusions, and infusions. I am left desperately trying to keep up, working only part time, and watching the bills pile up.

I worry a lot.  About dying.  But more about living.  How will I recover?  And get on my feet again?  What things will never be the same again – and how will I grieve the losses?  How will I know how to rebuild the pieces that can be recovered?

It is from this dark place of uncertainty and loss that I write three things I am most grateful for on this Thanksgiving weekend.

1. I am thankful that I can see God.
In the midst of my exploding life (last summer), a path was cleared, and in the wreckage some things were illuminated.  I believe it was the hand of God.  I was handed the right health insurance; I was transfered to the right surgeon; I was provided the right recovery location; and I was given the right part time work.  There were no missteps or tangles around these items, they simply were – available and present.  And while the cancer still came to me and the cup was not passed over, I felt God with me in the hospital and on the journey. I heard the voice saying, “you will be OK” and “things will work” and “got to sleep; we will fix this in the morning”.  My heart has been granted peace many times.  I believe it was and is the hand of God – and I see it more clearly because it shines in the darkness.

2.  I am thankful for the goodness, kindness, and humanity of others.
The massive outpouring of goodness from other people has come to me in the darkest night.  Others have both sat with me in that darkness and lifted me out of it. It has been extrordinary.

In the hospital, I was never alone.  Every time I opened my eyes, my friends were there, committed to staying and being near.  They stayed in uncomfortable chairs and slept on uncomfortable benches.  They held my hands and unhooked me from myrid machines so I could move.  They were a constant.

And then the steady march of visits, calls, prayers, lunches, and well wishes came.  And the mountain of cards and gifts – and flowers, quilts, food, scarves, funds, chemo remidies, and chocolates.  I have been overwhelmed and humbled with the kindnesses – even from strangers.

My family, immediate and extended, have been formost in the effort, assisting me at personal cost to themselves and their families.  They simply made themselves available and cared for me.

The most incredible part is that I feel like the help is far from being expended – rather that it is close by me – like an accessible well of goodness – full and waiting.  I simply need reach out and scoop it up.

3.  I am thankful for the divine spark that I find in myself.
This time of trial has brought me a deeper appreciation for the divine spark within myself.  I feel the will to live, to go on, to push forward. I am filled with the sense that I am important and I have something beautiful to add to the world.  I feel stronger deep inside.  I have a desire to move beyond the darkness and live outside the despair – in a place of joy.   I want my spirit to shine.

For these things, I am most grateful at Thanksgiving.

 

Read More

Tomorrow marks a few milestones for me. My son turns 1 1/2, and despite his frighteningly early birth and warnings from doctors that we could be dealing with a lot of delays and health issues, he’s pretty close to normal on the developmental chart and is healthy (robustly so) and strong (he handles the stairs in our second-and-third-floor condo at now-you-see-me, now-you-don’t speed). It’s the 23rd anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down, something seared into my brain because I’d spent several weeks the previous summer in what was then the Soviet Union, and despite people talking in cafes about independence and our translator’s curiosity about free markets and the nuts and bolts of owning a small business, Eastern Europe still looked like an unpickable lock. It’s the birthday of a few friends, one in particular whom I’ve known since childhood.

Tomorrow also marks a year since I signed myself into a psychiatric ward, suicidal, untrusting of family, resentful about church, furious with my husband, feeling desperately alone. I stayed for a week and a half, waiting for a new combination of medicines to work, waiting to trust myself around sharp objects and empty spaces. I slept a lot, went to workshops and meals when I felt I could, put together jigsaw puzzles and then pulled them apart again.

While I was in the hospital, one of the occupational therapists on the ward handed me a list of events that could trigger post-partum depression. Nearly all of them applied to me. Unexpected pregnancy? Check. Complications during pregnancy? Check. Early delivery, baby in NICU, long-term separation of mother and baby? History of depression? Recently stopped breastfeeding? Check, check, check. I hadn’t chosen any of these things. No wonder I was feeling that my life was in freefall, that nothing I did had any effect or meaning.

I think I re-emerged from the depression seven or eight months later. I couldn’t give you a day when I knew I was going to be all right; I still have afternoons that yawn at me like enormous sharp-toothed beasts. For the most part, though, I am myself again, and I am grateful.

About that post-partum checklist: Everything on it represented either an outside stressor or an internal hormonal shift. We are good at recognizing stressors for what they are, but hormones are stealthy, and they are serious. Men are subject to them too, of course, but the word “hormonal” conjures up a specter of a wild-haired, wild-eyed woman at the end of her rope, screaming at her children and threatening her husband with a carving knife or cast-iron skillet. It’s chiefly a female attribute, and it stands in for unstable, unbalanced, irrational, emotional — the opposite of what men tend to pride themselves on being. Label a woman hormonal and she is immediately the other, the unknowable, an embarrassment.

I have a lot of resentment about this, but other than pointing out that hormonal changes are actually normal, I’m going to leave the men-have-hormones-too, emotional-is-neither-better-or-worse-than-analytical arguments for another time. Because yeah, hormones have huge effects on me. I knew that I was pregnant each time — taking a pregnancy test was only ever a confirmation of something I’d already known from fatigue, nausea, and blurred vision. I can feel it when I ovulate. I know when I’m too weepy or too angry or too withdrawn (or maybe just more weepy or angry or withdrawn than usual) that my body is marinating in some new chemical mixture.

And I guess what I really want to say with this post is, first, that sometimes our bodies betray us. We secrete chemicals that change our reaction to the world around us, that alter our lens on reality. I think it must be inherent to mortality: these bodies of cells, dependent on DNA copying over and over correctly, dependent on chemical messages, dependent on small electrical charges lighting up parts of our brains, have constant failures. It’s in the design. It’s miraculous that it works at all, so none of the failures are surprising, and some of the failures are bound to be distorted messages that say “null” instead of “whole,” “harm” instead of “bless.” Things break down. It doesn’t mean that the universe has betrayed us or that the presence of God has withdrawn. It just means that we are mortal and our bodies fail in infinite small ways. Sometimes, like starfish, we are self-healing. But sometimes, because we are social beings, we need someone else to help us heal.

The second thing I want to say is that things do regrow and heal, and that we are not alone. You are not alone. Someone — a visiting teacher? — made a list of people who knew me and loved me, people I could turn to when I felt most helpless and most unloved. Phone numbers. E-mail addresses. I left the list hanging on my refrigerator for months. I rarely used it, but when I did my friends never failed me. Even reading their names made me feel safer. Following this blog and hearing other women’s stories made me feel less “other.” I spent hours reaching out to my Mother in Heaven, asking her for help and feeling her beside me, whispering to me that I would be all right someday, that the only way around was through. I read and re-read Sara Burlingame’s Prayer for a Friend Contemplating Suicide and thought, Other people have been through this, and they have survived, and I will too. It has been a year, and I am still here, and I made it through, and I will keep making it through.

Who and what do you turn to when you feel alone? What are the things that help you see more clearly or feel more connected?

Read More

Since it’s May, I thought I would focus on Mother’s Day because you can read conference on your own and pick out something that works for you.

Just kidding! I would never do that. But I know some people do. I suppose it isn’t a bad thing, but it doesn’t work for me. Another thing that doesn’t always work for me are Elder Jeffery R. Holland’s talks. His verbiage (to me) seems as though he overtly is only addressing the men of the church, and as I was particularly offended at his flippant television remote = grandchildren joke, I am resistant to consider his advice or direction. 

But I love Matthew 20.

Read More

This picture was taken at the Sewall-Belmont House and Museum, home to Alice Paul and the early suffragettes, during the 40^th anniversary of the March 22, 1972 passage of the ERA through Congress. I was so inspired by this program that I decided to create a series of posts dedicated to the ERA’s past, present, and future. In this post I give some back ground information on the amendment, in the next post I will outline my personal journey from knowing nothing about the ERA, to reading “Housewife to Heretic,” to becoming a National Council for Women’s Organizations Mormons for ERA Activist! The final post will be dedicated to the future of the ERA and what you can do. Check out the official ERA website for more information: www.equalrightsamendment.org

I come from a family of strong women. We are opinionated, talented, capable, and hearty. We have faced heartache and trials and through it all we thank the Lord for our blessings. So it was with much surprise when I first learned about the church’s opposition to the ERA or The Equal Rights Amendment. “How can equal rights ever be a bad thing?” I genuinely asked my mother. “I don’t know” she said “the church said it was a moral issue,” she was now racking her brain to remember the reason, “that it would ruin the family if it passed or something like that” she mumbled trailing off, already preoccupied with another task. That was not enough for me. It just did not make any common sense.

The Suffragettes fought and gained the right to vote in 1920 alongside cadres of Mormon women who formed, with official church approval, women’s suffrage associations throughout the West “many, if not all of them, sprang from the women’s auxiliary organizations of the church, most notably the Relief Society. The Woman’s Exponent, an unofficial publication for Mormon women, took up the cause with zeal” (Jean Bickmore White). Championed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony (albeit with the express purpose that once women had the right to vote they would inevitably reject polygamy), Utah became only the second territory to grant women the right to vote! Three years later in 1923, Alice Paul an indefatigable women’s rights activist realized that the right to vote alone would not end the withstanding discrimination against women under the law and drafted the first Equal Rights Amendment which stated: “Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.”

It seems simple enough, banal even. “Men and women shall have equal rights.” Yet, how did the amendment constructed to enforce this law only three years after the LDS church officially approved the use of auxiliary services to fight for the cause of women’s rights become something “immoral?” How could something so seemingly obvious incite such vehement opposition from the very same religion and daughters of the women that brought about women’s suffrage?

Read More