You Don't Have to Control Yourself Yourself

This has been an interesting week filled with epiphanies.

It all started in the family relations class. Now you have to know that my husband is ward mission leader and my close friend has a husband who works on Sunday so the two of us go spouse-less to this discussion on marriage, which can get a little dangerous. (My comments might be a little more restrained if I had Greg poking me in the ribs instead of Sonja egging me on.) Anyway, we were talking about anger and other extreme emotions and the teacher said that we had the power to control not only what we did but how we felt. Immediately my hand shot up. "There is no way," I said, "We have the power to choose how we react to our feelings and whether we feed them into something horrible, but the initial response is totally out of our control." She shook her head and claimed we did. So I turned to Sonja, my partner in crime, who shrugged her shoulders and agreed with the stinking teacher. I left furious. Some people have as their gift and curse a very active limbic system, they love more and freak out more. What about depression? Are we expected to simply control that with our minds? The more I chewed on it, the more angry I felt.

On the way home I blew. Greg asked me about my lesson and I told him that the pee brains in family relations said we could control our emotions- have you ever heard something so asinine?! Greg laughed and said it was the natural man in me speaking and left it at that. In the hustle and bustle of preparing Sunday dinner for a small army, the subject was left behind but somehow the Lord wasn't done with me yet.

Monday we had an abbreviated FHE. I assigned the lesson to George who pulled a slip of paper from his scriptures, obviously left over from an old lesson. It was a quote from David O. McKay which said, "Spirituality is victory over self, coupled with communion with the infinite." Each person in the family talked about how they could become a better victor over themselves and I was reminded of trying to control my emotions but I thought secretly that I try so hard to control my reaction to my feelings that if I was required to try to manhandle my heart-- well, just chuck me down to hell right now because it would be impossible.

On Wednesday afternoon I picked up Rachel after school and brought her to my house for the missionary discussions. She is a young woman who has started coming to mutual and wants to be baptised. I love her desire to learn and when I picked her up she immediately began to ask me what it meant by the baptism of fire talked about in 2 Nephi 31. I told her that was when we receive the Holy Ghost. She asked me if it happened during the ordinance after baptism. I said that was part of it but the real baptism with the Holy Ghost is a personal thing, it is when you are filled with the Spirit and make the commitment to try to keep it with you always.

Although the struggle to maintain the spirit is a lifelong pursuit, that initial baptism of fire can happen in a moment and be life changing. I remember soon after I was baptised, sitting in Primary (it was on Tuesday afternoon right after school) and listening to the prelude, "There is a Green Hill Far Away." I pulled out the hymnal and began to read the words to myself, when suddenly I was bathed in the fact that this was real. The whole church thing wasn't some myth my parents had stupidly swallowed. Jesus really, really loved me, died for me, and was alive and watching over me right that very minute. I could feel it almost at a cellular level. I began to cry and my friend poked me to ask what was wrong. I said, "it's true!" and she thought I was weird- which I was, but it was still true.

As I talked to Rachel, there was this little voice at the back of my brain trying to be heard. She left and I pulled out my scriptures and read about the people who had had that profound experience of being baptised by fire. First, there were the apostles on the day of pentecost. After they spoke in tongues and Peter explained what was going on to the people, those that had once mocked were "pricked in their hearts" and asked what they should do. Their desires were changed. Second, look at the people who listened to King Benjamin's address. The Scriptures say that everyone of them said, "because the Spirit of the Lord Omnipotent, which has wrought a mighty change in us, or in our hearts, that we have no more disposition to do evil, but to do good continually." (Mosiah 5:2) Finally when Ammon, the arm-cutter, preaches the gospel to King Lamoni, the man faints and later his wife does the same thing. After a while the people become contentious and Abish wakes them up. Immediately the king tells the people about all the incredible things he had learned. Although many wouldn't listen, they declared that "their hearts had been changed; that they had no more desire to do evil." (Alma 19:32)

For me, maybe this change of heart is the change of emotions, initial reactions, we talked about on Sunday but I can't do it alone- just as the people in the scriptures couldn't. We need the Holy Ghost to help and we need to ask for that help. Sometimes the answers might come as the automatic gift of being faithful but other times it can come through inspiration to find physical or medical answers that give us direction and added strength. At other times the answer may be that we have to endure the "thorn in our side" a little longer, but if we can buck up and do our best, we are promised it will be removed. And when that thorn is removed, we will be blessed with empathy and strength that would never have been ours without it.

It was yesterday morning that the last nail got whammed in my heart and I gave up and believed. I was walking with Sonja and talking about my son who is a senior. We had planned on him going to BYUi this next semester but through a combination of him dragging his feet and me not pushing hard enough, he missed the deadline. I took this as a personal failure but my friend told me that maybe my son didn't really want to go to school yet and what if that was the right thing for him. She asked if he was reading his scriptures and living the gospel. I said, of course. Then Sonja asked that if he had the spirit, then don't you think his desires or the lack of them are the right thing and therefore righteous.

I went home crying because there was that "desire" thing again. So if we open our heart to the spirit, our hearts will be changed, and eventually our desires will be righteous. George didn't want to go to school until the winter; I don't think it was laziness, he just wasn't ready. What a stretch that was for me to trust his feelings, and my own. If we really have the Spirit, then our passions and desires can be just what the Lord would have us do. Lately, I have felt so driven to write. The ideas seem to ooze from my brain, unlike any time in my life. What if that is coming from Heavenly Father. It is my time. Now I can go overboard and get in trouble. Heaven knows, I am well aware of the sound of the echoing whoosh you hear with the Spirit leaves. It is black and white for me. I know if I only write while the kids are in school then I think my desires might actually be righteous- what a concept- actually wanting and enjoying doing the right thing.

This doesn't mean that the natural man won't scream at me now and again with things that are inappropriate but the key is to recognize where our desires are coming from. Mine are still probably 2/3rds to 1/3 but as I feed the best desires, I can hope for a complete change of heart until "I have no more desire to do evil." And when that day comes I will never again want to jump out of my car and wring another driver's neck or clobber my twelve year old for forgetting his homework again or want to play hookey from church meetings, taxes, obligations or life and just drive away and be FREE! I can't wait for that day but for now I'll feed the Spirit, starve the natural man and finish doing my taxes. Yuck!

Writer's Block and not Doing your Homework

Tonight was bedlam. I was watching a nine-year-old girl for a friend and the younger children were running around our feet, screaming in glee and showing off. To top it off I was late starting dinner and forgot I was having dinner guests until they arrived at the door. Somehow I had also asked my teenager to make dinner rolls. Of course, they weren't ready in time and the kitchen sink was piled high with all the dishes she had used for her small little salty mounds of what tasted like hardened playdough. My older sons and my husband were loudly debating the option of writing in Kermit the Frog on their ballots rather than vote for McCain who looks like the GOP candidate with our guests and I was running around frantically, trying to get edible food on the table. It was bedlam.

By the time the guests left and dinner was cleared I noticed my thirteen year old son who had been working on his math homework the entire time slumped over face down in his open book. I sat next to him, looked at the broken pencil and bent dinner fork, and guessed it wasn't going well. "Can I help you?" I offered.

"No! This is so stupid; it is impossible. It won't do what I want it to. I hate it!"

"Well, buddy," I tried to soften his frustration, "maybe if you look at it a different way..."

"There is no other way!" He smashed his face two or three times back into the page, returning to his lifeless stance.

I lifted the book and saw percentages. I explained that the key to percentages is that "of" means its the denominator but he wouldn't believe me. So I went back over his work, most of it incorrect and showed him how to do it. After the third correct answer in the back of the book, he began to see hope that it might work out. He did a problem and got it right and then grabbed the pencil and I became to him. Less than ten minutes later he closed the book with satisfaction, finished with his impossible task and ran upstairs to catch the last of American Idol before family prayer.

What surprised me as I watched him go was how similar his experience had been to my own just the day before. I was working on a chapter about "small sins." I had a scripture I wanted to weave into a C. S. Lewis quote that totally correlated to the topic but everytime I tried to segue it together, it was AWFUL. I couldn't make it work; it just wouldn't twist and squeeze into compliance. The entire day I only produced four pages of ragged, nasty copy and when my husband got home, I felt like I was an idiot to think I could even attempt such a massive project with my addled brain.

My patient husband pulled me away from the computer and we talked about it. My problem was the same as my son's, I wasn't willing to let go of my false idea so I could let a better one enter. Greg made some other suggestions and we talked about themes of the book and the big picture and a whole new and better connection came to mind that lead to the introduction of three more quotes and life was fabulous and you couldn't tear me away from flopping out the ten fabulous pages I produced today.

Now as I look back on it, I wonder how many times I wasn't willing to let go of what I had to take in something better. How many times have I felt too busy to attend a meeting or said no to a friend who had invited me to lunch or didn't ever make a phone call I thought about but let life get in the way? I remember after I lost my baby and my father passed away just four days later I sort of shut down. One day a woman my husband worked with came over to take me to dinner. I told her I didn't want to go out but she would not let me politely say no. When we got in the car, I began by talking about my loss but she wouldn't let me. She said that it would be there when we got back but for an hour I was going to go on vacation from all that pain and have fun, and I did. When I got back, it was amazing because suddenly I wasn't still marinated in it. I realized I could be free of some of the extreme emotion that was drowning me. I hadn't realized I had that ability but once I did, it was easier.

Part of being a writer is seeing connections others don't see. They say there are no new plots, only new perspectives on the old ones. But if we don't let go every once in a while and open our minds and hearts, we can spend our whole lives trapped in the same old, same old.

Thank goodness for mothers that can do math, husbands who can put up with their crazy wives and close friends who pull us out of our comfort zones against our wills.