Close To My Heart

In my church, everyone is an active participant in the actual organization. Unless you choose not to, if you come to church even semi-regularly, you'll have a job to do, either something specific on Sundays, during the week at auxiliary activities (Youth and kids) or else something general that you do to support other people. It's hard to be a passive Mormon, and that's good. We refer to these assignments as callings because we feel that our local leaders are inspired through prayer to know who should fill a particular assignment. It's a good feeling to know that you're needed, whether as the designer and printer of the Sunday program, the teacher of a class of 6 year olds, or the Bishop (lay pastor) of the congregation. All the positions are filled from the general membership. No one is paid, and no one can campaign for or get elected to a position, so there is a kind of equality. Your congregational leader might be the guy who fixes your air conditioner or the president of a Fortune 500 company. There is no differentiation in church service. There is no actual prestige attached to more visible callings, only more of a time commitment and different responsibilities.

This video explains my motivation for always accepting these assignments, even if they require time and effort on top of all else that I'm involved in.


For most of my life, I've worked with the children and youth, except for a couple of brief interludes doing other things.
But now...drum roll please....I'm a Ward Missionary.

Yes, my assignment, or calling, has changed. It is a bittersweet thing to end one calling and begin a new one, for lots of reasons. I have a feeling inside that is part sadness that I won't be working directly with the girls and women with whom I've had close association for several years, and part excitement to be working with the fine young men and women who are serving missions in our area. I won't be working with youth, which will feel strange and a bit lonesome at first, but I will get to do similar things to what my son in California is doing and my daughter will soon be doing.

My assignment is to find those who would be interested in talking to our full-time missionaries and learning more about the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. That's the main goal. Finding those who are interested or who have felt led to spiritual seeking means I have to meet people, set a good example, and be willing to talk to just about anyone. I'll also act as a general support to the full-time missionaries that serve in our congregation as well as befriend and support those who have recently joined the church.

If you're a friend of mine not of my faith, don't worry. Hopefully I won't really change my behavior at all. Hopefully you already know that I love you no matter what and would never force my faith on you, but instead will continue to try to be a good friend and stand ready to answer any question you might have, even the hard ones. If you're not interested, that's okay, but I want you know that the truth is out there if you want to investigate.

I'll miss the girls I worked with. Much more than they'll miss me, for sure. They'll hardly know I'm gone and I don't say that out of self-pity. I was a helper, not a focus. A shining beauty of the lay ministry of our church is that no one really has ownership of a method or program. It's all focused outward, on trying to build and help each other. So, the program I just left will continue on, with barely a blip, and the girls will find helpers in their new leaders. The other gal who was released along with me mentioned this-that we're the ones with the big hole left in our lives (I would say I spent anywhere from 5-15 hours a week on this assignment, depending on the intensity of the various activities). Fortunately I've always got plenty of adventures, both new and old, to fill my time. Hopefully the lovely girls I worked with will know, most of all, that they're loved and that there are grownups who care enough to work hard on their behalf. Then hopefully that feeling will confirm the feelings they have that they're loved by God and that He cares about them. If you operate on that basic feeling, it's a lot easier to stay anchored in this crazy world.

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My Adrenal System is Fine

Sometimes you get a call from your son at 6:03 am and you hear the beep of an open car door but no voice on the other end. You yell into the receiver and hear nothing, then the line goes dead. Panic rises in your throat, but you hope like crazy that he pocket-dialed you getting out of the car for seminary. You keep breathing.

But then sometimes another call comes at 6:04 and you hear the shaking voice of your boy say "Mom, I crashed the car." And you tell him you'll be right there. Adrenaline rushes into your bloodstream and you go into a kind of hyper-focused mode that compartmentalizes all other possibilities to the back parts of your brain.

You put on shoes and a sweater and remember your wallet and phone. You get in the car to drive away and realize it's completely coated in ice so you have to get out and take another 5 minutes to find some clear glass. You can't stand it after about a square foot of the front windshield is done and you toss the scraper in the car and go. As you drive away you plead for the Lord to clear your path so you can just get to your boy.

He calls again and says he's fine, but the adrenaline reaction is fully in play, so you keep racing down the hill and look everywhere for him among all the headlights you see. Finally you spot his tiny car, up against a guard rail and dug into the snow and mud. He's turned around and on the opposite side of the road that he was originally travelling.

He comes to you and you hold him in your arms and the compartmentalization fails slightly so you hope you're coming across as strong and calm for his sake, in spite of the now-jellied state of your heart and mind. He's shaken and miserable, but whole and healthy.

He really is. Totally uninjured. No air bags deployed, no serious damage to the car, just a terrifying loss of control, then a 360 across all lanes of of the road on a dark, icy morning. I actually know how that feels. Thanks to the early hour, there was no traffic and he did not hit anyone else. The car has little more than the plastic version of bumps and bruises. Thanks to my husband joining AAA last fall, the tow truck was there in minutes and popped the car out of it's muddy hole. Thanks be to God, as the darling driver reminded me with reverent awe, my son is okay.

We drove home and said a tearful prayer of gratitude together.

It's a minor thing, and will have few residual effects, but the mind is stubborn, at least for these few hours of aftermath. We are both reliving it now; he in his actual memory, I in my imagination. All those thoughts of what could have been are enough to sap my energy and keep me in a state of strange distraction. This has happened before with other kids and with my husband, and the feelings have been just as intense each time.

I'm shaky and weepy and can't think straight, but I have stuff to do, so I am writing this down and letting it go so I can get on with the rest of the day and continue to be strong and calm when he gets home.

Then I have to help him get back on the horse, so to speak. I can't let my shaky nerves or his hold him back-he needs to drive again as soon as possible and know that he's capable of moving past this.

Worse things can and probably will happen, but not to us and not on this day, so I will end with another whispered thank you to the heavens.

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Late Winter

I'm getting excited for the proper beginning of spring. I went outside yesterday to jump on the trampoline (more fun and less impact than running) and got a bit of a start on the yarn clean-up that needs to happen in the next week or so. Soon it will be time to plant things and start moving things around. 

I think being out in the light and air more and more will help me feel better. I've been fighting some faint infection for a week or so that makes me very tired and run a bit of a fever most days. It's not enough to give me an excuse to plant myself on the couch, but it is persistant enough to be extremely annoying. 

In the spirit of that physical slowness, I've taken a bit of a hiatus from electronic communication. For as little as I perceive that I use Facebook, it is often the first thing I think of doing when I open up my computer. This week I turned it off in support of Evan as he did the same thing. He'll write about it as a way to understand a bit about the Transcendentalists, like Emerson and Thoreau. I did it out of curiosity. Without Facebook as an option, it was fascinating to have that beat to consider what I really opened my computer for in the first place, and go straight to Lightroom or Indexing or briefly peek at my email then LOG OFF of google, so there were no little growly banners fading in and out of my right hand corner. I also, without much forethought, ended up cutting way down on texting. I just lost that need to read and respond immediately. I was slow to answer texts when they came and I did not feel the need to have my phone at my fingertips every minute. 

Not unexpectedly, I both liked and feared this arrangement. I (rather paradoxically, even I admit) enjoy not knowing too much about others/not being known too much by others as much as I enjoy revealing the little bits of myself that I do reveal online. And with certain friends, Facebook actually is a primary way of interacting, for better or worse. In the final analysis though, I liked being free of the beeps and sounds and buzzes that usually bring me running. 

I took this picture while riding in the car and did NOT
immediately broadcast it on instagram. Hopefully some
of the people who might have looked at their screens at that
moment were actually looking at the sky or
taking their own photos and didn't need an
alert to know the sunset was lovely. 

So, it has been a quiet week; a slow week; quite in keeping with all the napping and achy joints. It was not, however, a lonely or isolated week. I've seen the people I wanted to see, done the things I wanted to do, and have been very productive overall. It's a good reminder to continuously figure out a happy medium between feeling ruled by the always-increasing ability to communicate instantaneously with the world and choosing just how much and how often to connect. 

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Long Time Gone: California Girl

Looking west out my hotel window

The second half of my journey west was a whole week in lovely Silicon Valley, CA. The weather was super nice, and I made myself go out in it as much as possible, but mostly I was inside the hotel and convention center that were my home from Wednesday to Wednesday. From Thursday till Sunday I was teaching at Stitches West, one of my regular conferences. It was great as always. Familiar yet fresh and filled with happy reunions with friends and the professional pursuit I love most of all: teaching. The folks I've met who are fellow-teachers have become some of my truest friends, and because our time together is brief and concentrated, we've managed to get to know each other pretty well over the years. It was a pleasure to spend time with all of them.

After the knitting expo was over, some of us stayed on to get some work done and take further classes. I did some photo work for two other teachers and continued working on a sample job that was also for one of my friends there.

Landscaping outside the hotel. 

This camelia was the size of my head. There
was a hedge of them in full bloom outside the
hotel. 

One social highlight of the weekend was a shoe party with
some of my fave pals. This purchase was the result. 

Trying out my panorama feature while out for delish Indian
food. This is Edie, Cindy, Beth and Sarah. Love them!

Thanks to this nifty arrangement found in
about half the seats in the San Jose airport,
I was not doomed to sit on the ground to
make sure my devices were charged.  

Over San Fran. I could SEE the
Golden Gate Bridge,
but because of the thickness and angle of the
airplane window, I could not get it in the frame. 

It was of course refreshing to have so much time to myself, but it also feels a little strange yet. I realize when I'm away what a distraction my actual house can be from getting certain things done. In another environment, I have no trouble getting up and exercising, or spending hours at a time finishing a photo shoot. When I'm home, I jump from thing to thing because I can see around me all the parts of my life, and it's sometimes hard to prioritize. I talk myself out of exercising because I didn't get the dishes done the night before. I go in spurts of work because I look up and notice that I REALLY need to vacuum or that I forgot to mail that package.

I've been working on rethinking our little office area on the lower floor, and trying to make that room a work-centered, distraction-free zone, but it's challenging because I like to do so many different things, and the office/studio has distractions of its own. Mostly I have a renewed (yet again) desire to make the space more empty, more restful for the eye, so that everything is not out in view and I can pick and choose what to at any given time, rather than feel compelled to do things.

Overall, it was indeed a long time to be gone, but every day was full of joy, renewal and fun, and I'm grateful I had the means and opportunity to take such a luxurious and special trip!

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Long Time Gone: Up North for A Little Wild Weather

So, where was I? Oh yes, Monday at the rodeo. Here is my iconic photo from there:

I like it so much I might have a canvas made for my photos-of-my-travels collection. 

After the rodeo and that awesome Mexican hotdog, my sister R and I headed back up to Gilbert to my older brother's house for one more night. We went out together for a nice family dinner, then enjoyed an evening of chatting and general cozy togetherness. Tuesday morning I took R to meet a friend for breakfast, after which I took her to the airport so she could fly home to Tennessee. It was such a treat that 7 out of 8 sibs were together briefly again this weekend. 

After the airport I got on the road to Anthem, AZ and visited my sister-in-law again (the mom of the recently baptized O). We had a pleasant lunch and I got to see one of my nephews again because he was home sick. Can I just insert here that I am truly blessed with 4 sisters-in-law who are just the most fantastic people? They have edified our family so very much. How I love them all. 

I left Anthem and wended my way to Flagstaff, up the center of Arizona to 7000 feet elevation. It's always a learning experience to watch the land gradually change as I drive farther from the center of the earth and a little closer to the sky. Saguaros and desert grasses give way to scrub and high plains, then little by little the pines appear, first small and shrub-like, then growing taller and straighter, until the forests and mountains of the high country surround me fully. It's beautiful to see this cross-section of ecosystems unfold before my eyes. 

A sweet afternoon visit with my nearly ninety-one year old grandmother was the perfect way to end the gorgeous drive. She is undergoing cancer treatments for lymphoma, so she's weak and fragile, but still cheerful and lucid. We snuggled on the couch and looked at photos from Europe and California and she asked me about every little thing, as Grandmas do. My auntie came home from work and we got some Chinese take-out and had a little dinner together. It was good to see them both. 

From there it was on to my youngest brother's house to visit with him and his family. What fun I had being snuggled by little ones and regaled with stories and all of that. My sister-in-law has skills in homemaking and motherhood that are really inspiring. She had beautiful details all over her home. Seeing her creativity made me want to freshen up my own little Burrow a bit. Here are the hilarious attempts to get a self-portrait with the two youngest, ages 3 and 1.5: 

Finally I got some help and snagged at least one with little C. She was my little sweetie and spent a lot of time curved perfectly into my lap during my brief visit.  I'll always remember that. How I hated to leave all these little ones scattered all over Arizona.

 But of course I did, and I even did it memorably. A snowstorm moved into central AZ while we slept and there were 6 inches of snow in Flagstaff by the time we woke up on Wednesday morning. Remember what I was doing the previous Friday night? Yep, sitting in the hottub in the mild, deserty temperatures. Arizona is like that and it's one of the things I like best about it. So, I got to drive south in this:

It's hard to see scale in this photo, but if you count the broken lane lines till the visibility goes away, it was actually only about 3 car lengths. The roads were pretty good though, and there were only a couple of miles of twisty mountain downhills that prompted a little white-knuckled gripping of my steering wheel. Eventually I drove out of the storm, stopped back in Anthem, just north of PHX, where it was sleeting, then back into it incarnated as an ice storm just inside the main PHX valley, then out again and by the time I got to the airport, it was rain and gorgeous, changing skies and this was my final view of AZ:  

California, here I come!

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