Daily Reporting Table
Task
|
Completed!
|
Partially Complete
|
Not completed
|
Physical/Emotional Goals
|
|||
2 ½ cups vegetables
|
X
|
||
Caloric intake < 1500/day
|
X
|
||
300 min/week moderate exercise
|
X
|
||
Sleep 8 hours per day
|
X
|
||
Complete a brain exercise daily
|
X
|
||
Clean hands per CDC guidelines
|
X
|
||
Professional Goals
|
|||
8 hours focused work daily
|
X
|
||
Arrive at work before 8:30 am
|
X
|
||
Wear make-up and fashionable clothes
|
X
|
||
Leave work at work
|
X
|
||
Spiritual Goals
|
|||
Read scriptures 10 minutes per day
|
X
|
||
Pray on my knees twice daily
|
X
|
||
Meditate 10 minutes daily
|
X
|
||
Parenting Goals
|
|||
Absolutely no harsh treatment
|
X
|
||
If I say it, I have to do it immediately
|
X
|
||
Family meals (No TV, sitting at table)
|
X
|
||
One-on-one listening time
|
X
|
||
Limit screen time to 2 hrs or less
|
X
|
||
Read for 20 minutes daily
|
X
|
||
In their own beds by 8:30 pm
|
X
|
||
Home/Finance Goals
|
|||
Stick to a strict budget
|
X
|
||
Clutter-free home
|
X
|
||
Social Goals
|
|||
Listen more than I talk
|
X
|
||
Speak only positive ideas
|
X
|
||
Call someone on the phone
|
X
|
||
Score: 16/25 = 64%
I won't be offended if you thought "Yikes!" I was a little surprised by the score. It's been such a busy week and getting busier. So... I need to contemplate how to make this all work when I get swamped.
Now on to what I really need to write today:
NPR today featured a poet named M.B. McLatchey who wrote a book of poetry called The Lame God. Her poems were beautiful and she adequately captured an event about which I am, unfortunately, too keenly aware: the murder of a child.
I won't slam the book because it's beautiful and well-written, but I don't like the title or agree with the experience deciphered in the title poem. Yet, I recognize that maybe I'm in the minority.
My best friend's sister was murdered in early June when I was 4 years old. The clearest spiritual memory of my life occurred that awful morning, so maybe that's why God was always my partner on this journey. I was sitting in my sister's room, playing with a toy now long forgotten. While we played, I felt this amazing stillness descend over the bedroom. A voice in my head said, "Something horrible has happened. You need to be strong." The stillness disappeared as the doorbell rang. A few moments later, my mom called out to us in a muffled voice. I stood, knowing that I was about to hear news that would change my life.
And it did. As McLatchey describes in her book, the murder of a child is a dirty shrapnel bomb - the shards tear through your existence in painful, irreparable ways. You are never the same. It's impossible to be the person you were before the murder. A part of you descends into the cold ground along with a person you loved innocently and without fear. In fact, you never love the same way again - you are too aware of how every relationship and every person holds the power to take you back to that dark place of devastation and despair.
I was strong. I held my friend's hand. I listened. I tried not to feel thrust aside since the victim wasn't my sister, but as I had spent every other weekend with her and countless other hours; my heart loved her as I love my own sister. But I did whatever I was told. I tried to contain my own fears and grief whenever I was in the role of best friend. Only once in all those difficult years post-murder did I ever lose control of my fear in the presence of my friend's family.
Instead, I depended on my own family and God. At age 4, I had to confront the hardest, most complex question of spirituality: why did God let this horrible thing happen to us? Where were his legions of angels? Why didn't he make that bullet rebound off the glass and kill the murderer? I was taught early to pray about these questions, and I did. I spent hours on my knees.
No voice ever answered, but every time I fell to my knees, the memory of that peaceful stillness on the horrible day would be back in my mind. I didn't have answers, but I was never alone. Later, God would begin to teach me the answers. First, He let me get through the emotions and learn to be resilient by always being present whenever I needed comfort. He listened to every fervent prayer (especially at night when my terror seems almost overwhelming to this day and despite years of therapy - some things, when they happen to you very young, just don't get undone in the brain).. Then, He taught me the doctrine.
I suppose maybe I would believe in a "lame God" if I weren't Mormon. We are an exceptionally practical faith. We don't believe in magical tortillas (my apologies to the many faithful Catholics for whom this is a talisman) or even a magical God. We believe in a God who exists to see us through the tests of mortality. We believe in a God who honors human choice and who withholds justice until he has sure proof of our devilishness. We believe in a God who champions human progress.
Mormons believe that God was very aware what pains would exist in this world when He created it. We don't believe that The Fall of Adam created this paradoxical world where God elects not to save us while He, I assume, plays a game of planetary golf. We believe that He created a world where humans would have a bevy of choices and then He set a plan in motion where we would experience justice based on the choices we made. There is no lack of fairness. We make choices and we are rewarded or bear consequences based on those choices. For those of us who are victims, He sent Christ to this world to come to a complete understanding of our pain (you may remember He was murdered and had loved ones murdered) so that Christ can comfort us, give us strength to overcome, and help us to make something lovely out of the ugliness that comes when evil enters our world.
So, you see, there was no magic to save my friend's sister. Had God intervened, justice could never have been doled out. I know it's hollow comfort (please don't tell me that in comments - I've had 33 years to deal with this painful experience, I don't need anyone spouting philosophical ignorance.), but it's true. A micro-managing God eliminates human choice. He just shows up to put everything right. We would forever be little more than pawns in His immortal game of Barbies.
I give my mom credit for teaching me who God is when it comes to bad guys. On one of our (I'm sure it felt) endless trips to Idaho Falls where I wanted to talk about the murder, I asked her (for the millionth time) why God didn't save my friend. My mom said to me, "Honey, what if He had? What if He had struck the bad guy down at the crucial moment? How could He judge Him? Couldn't the bad guy wake up in Heaven and say, "Hey, man, I wasn't going to do anything. I was just going to scare her!" In order for God to know who we are, He has to watch the entire scenario play out. Now God knows that Amy's killer is a killer. I'm sure God tried to convince Him otherwise, but you are pretty far gone when you take a life. I doubt He was listening to the Spirit at that point."
Most people want God to be a vending machine. They say a little prayer to be safe or to win the lottery. When the vending machine fails to respond, they kick the machine and move on to the next quick fix. Prayer is relatively meaningless in this way. It's the I'm whipped prayers that get results. The results aren't amazing turns of fortune: they are quiet comfort to an exhausted heart, an infusion of much-needed energy, or a little piece of inspiration that resolves a problem.
I think the vending machine problem speaks to another problem: people want to believe in God but not the afterlife. If you have no belief in a world where God reigns, then this world does seem like an unjust pile of excrement. Good people play victim to bad people. Greed wins over charity. So, I think people pray to the vending machine hoping that He will make heaven on earth. However, it's the fact that God knows that death is hard on the living and not the dead that also makes Him not need to rush in to save the day.
I learned this lesson on another very spiritual day. At the urging of a therapist, I went to a river to "say goodbye" to my friend. I was a freshman in college. Living away from my family had led to a resurgence of grief and fear. So, I went to perform the therapist's prescribed ceremony. I took a picture of my friend and I cried for hours. When I was finally at a quiet place, I felt that usual spiritual feeling descend. While I'm not sure who or what or if anyone was there, I felt a presence. In my mind, I heard my friend's sweet voice say, "You know I'm okay, right? I'm not suffering. For me, it was a moment of pain and now I'm happy." Maybe I was just comforting myself, but I took my biggest step forward in no longer carrying this burden every day. I realized that my sweet, wonderful friend was not a victim for eternity. She was one of the best people who had ever lived. She was okay and it was time for me to be okay, too.
The last spiritual insight the awful experience of my friend's murder taught me came during the trial of her murderer. I wanted him to be evil incarnate. I sat in a court room praying for him to be sent to jail. However, as I prayed, the opposite feeling started to come over me. The familiar voice that I equate with Christ was in my mind. "He is so sick," I heard it say. For years, I was angry at the swell of compassion, but as I've learned more about mental illness, I understand more of Christ's infinite compassion.
John Walsh said, "It's not about closure, it's about justice." I understand his desire, but standing on the far end of justice, I realize that once a murder has occurred, tragedy is the only bedfellow. Everything associated with my friend's death is a tragedy. Every life has suffered and the death of a mentally ill man would only add tragedy. Her murderer is now dead, though at the hands of God after a stroke rather than the injection of man. In the wake of evil is only tragedy. Murder is simply tragedy and only the Atonement of Christ can ever heal the hearts beaten down by such an event.
I think I felt I needed to write this post so that the world can stumble upon the reality that not everyone who experiences great tragedy rants and rails at the heavens for being unjust. For some of us, it's the beginning of a lifelong journey to know God. I have no doubt that God tries to intervene in the ways He uses: He tries to teach, console, and get us to help each other. But once a person makes a decision to walk an evil path, He will let it play out and merely help us to mop up the mess. In the end, while it's painful, it's a better choice and I love Him for it (even though it does nothing to quell my night terrors, but that's what prayer is for).
However, Father, if you decide to be that vending machine one day, I would really LOVE a Prius, a trip to Italy, and a few million dollars. And a baby girl. And maybe a tame lion as a pet. That would be really awesome.
1 comment:
I love this post.
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