Stay Dry My Eyes

My wallet got stolen last week. Besides having to close all my cards and then having them all reissued again I also had to get a new temple recommend.

Sunday I am sitting across from my bishop. He is new to the calling so we sit and visit and become acquainted. Of course he asks the fatal question and I tear up again. After five years you would think I could just answer. 

In the seventies a fad started as we cruised Main, they were flip cards that you could hold up to the window of your vehicle and have a generic conversation with the car next to you. I think I need a set of those. After all these many years my answers remain the same, but the disadvantage is when I have to say them I cry. I think shuffling through my flip cards for the answer could become cold like I wish my heart would be. It is hard to cry with a cold heart.

I looked up and said “I could never do this to anyone, not even my worst enemy.” Then I told him the latest from my lawyers.

I could not take something from someone that is rightfully theirs. Especially if they loved it dearly. 

Many times I thought it had to be hate. I've even voiced that they must hate me. But I have to stop that. Hate is a secondary emotion. Hate masks the true emotion and until we can name that emotion we can not work on improving it.  

“In a Star Wars, Master Yoda explained secondary emotions perfectly - “fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.” “

https://www.betterhelp.com/advice/general/what-are-primary-and-secondary-emotions/

Plus, can one really know why someone does something?  That is another of my flip cards, You’ll have to ask them why they did such a thing. I can't think like them, nor reason like them.

Have you ever been so mad or hurt by someone you hoped the worse for them. It's funny but when I did fall pray to thinking that way I was never part of the punishment that I hoped would befall them. You know the ordinary boulder falling on them, a lightening strike, or a bear eats them. Just everyday stuff like that. Nothing I caused, just nature providing hope for the hopeless. But to take physical action against another is unthinkable. Even if the most you did was paperwork or sign in agreement.

I would love to hear the answer myself. “What is/was your motivation?” Not just from my brother and sister that are the trust executors but from all those that signed that they were satisfied with the trust distribution.  I wish at least one would share with me how the money or assets they acquired came at such a time in their lives that it had to be the hand of the Lord, a great blessing, saved them from some financial doom, that way I could see the larger picture of all that was torn from me and left me hurting for so many years. I too could take joy in another's happiness and realize my hurt played a part in fulfilling a need.

By April's end this should be resolved and over. I am ready. My heart has weathered the worse. I've been told I have truly lost what I have been fighting for all these years. I am ready to cross that bridge. Funny thing is every time I step forward, hear the creak of my weight on the first board, someone, mostly my lawyers, say “Barring a miracle or time may change the outcome”  it makes it harder to just cross it. I know they see the pain in my eyes and hear the hurt in my voice, and like me, they can not do this to their worst enemy let alone a friend or family member. It tears them up just relaying the truth.

I am ready to see what the Lord has in store for me. I know He loves me. Not to many people asked for severely challenged calf and receive one. Not very many mother's have watch their family implode and experience it's healing while she still has time to enjoy them.

With all my heart I know there is a judgement day. I will stand before my Lord and Savior I will see my life pass before me, I will feel the cool breeze of happiness and the searing rod of shame. The suns warming rays of joy and the bitter cold of unresolved sins. Those will be a beautiful elation and a awful realization. But before that happens I will embrace my parents, they will look me in my eyes and know I tried, I truly tried.

Near Tears

The other day my emotions were back and forth. At one moment I was over joyed, the next I was so melancholy I was close to crying.

One of the many stories in the Book Of Mormon is of the people of Limhi. They had fallen under the hands of a very burdensome king. Limhi sent some of his men out by night to find a people that might help them break free of the king that ruled over them.  His men soon returned without finding the people they were looking for but they did find a place where people had been annihilated and stumbled onto some plates with writing they could not interpret.

Modish 21:28 

  And now Limhi was again filled with joy on learning from the mouth of Ammon that king Mosiah had a gift from God, whereby he could interpret such engravings; yea, and Ammon also did rejoice.

These next verses tell of Mosiah interpreting and reading the plates to his people.  This best describes how I felt on what was in my heart that day. How my emotions could swing in such vast directions.

Modish 25:7-11

  And now, when Mosiah had made an end of reading the records, his people who tarried in the land were struck with wonder and amazement.

  For they knew not what to think; for when they beheld those that had been delivered out of bondage they were filled with exceedingly great joy.

  And again, when they thought of their brethren who had been slain by the Lamanites they were filled with sorrow, and even shed many tears of sorrow.

   And again, when they thought of the immediate goodness of God, and his power in delivering Alma and his brethren out of the hands of the Lamanites and of bondage, they did raise their voices and give thanks to God.

   And again, when they thought upon the Lamanites, who were their brethren, of their sinful and polluted state, they were filled with pain and anguish for the welfare of their souls.

I mentioned to Tom when he came home from work how I struggled with emotions all day. Later I messaged my baby daughter of my struggle also. 

I felt overjoyed knowing in just a few days the puppies would be going to their new homes. My days spent loving, feeding, cleaning up after, and training pups, and my nights helping mom care for pups were about over. I also felt sadness of not doing all that.

Besides my puppy time coming to a close I just found out we have a mediator agreed upon and a date to start on my, family feud, my, range war, my, I never saw this coming, insanity. After five years I was so happy to see the end was within my grasp. When it is all said and done it will ending the way I had asked from the beginning. Not in a court but in front of a mediator. With all to sit in the same room and see the pain we had all levied on each other. No matter how it is resolved, it will be a personal experience for each of us. Not two lawyers speaking in a practiced script to represent us. Then again I am scared it won’t be the cleansing I hope for, that maybe the healing I hoped for won’t begin once we see from each other’s perspectives.

Years ago while on a family trip we stopped at a museum and there was a calf with two heads or faces like Tom calls it. It wasn’t alive, just stuffed and mounted. I thought on that little creature. Wondering so many questions, like so many others most likely have. 

I have come to believe that creatures, the creations of the Lord, man on down to what is believed to be the last or least, that all are born with challenges. Some are seen or recognized right away. Others are hidden from plain sight. But nonetheless we are to help each and everyone, everything with these challenges.

I pestered or maybe peppered the Lord with many questions about this calf. For the last three years I would ask the a Lord when he was going to send me my “cash cow”. I had come to call it that. Not that I would gain a wealth in monies but a wealth of understanding, answered to my questions. I didn’t pray for one to be born this way but that one that was going to be born this way would to be sent to me.

I was given one. I have yet got to touch it, feed it, study its behaviors. Like every lesson that has been sent to me, it comes dragging a sack chucked full of patience. I am three hours away from Poly the polycephaly calf. I am a few days shy of finishing up my stewardship of puppies. 

This little calf won’t live long. They just aren’t built too. I do find it ironic that when humans are born this way they are assisted and cared for, as to live a full productive life. But in the same breath, humans are allowed to kill their unborn. But it is the complete opposite in animals. We protect their young but it bothers some that I choose to comfort this “oddity” instead of putting it down. I believe in life. And as long as any creature desires to try and live it should be allowed to endure what it can to survive. But with that said over the years we have put things out of misery when the light of life, the striving to live, has ceased to exist. 

My day of tipping back and forth between happiness and sadness has been interrupted. The Lord has sent me a diversion. He knows how I can rock back and forth between reality and “what if” until like a new mother, I have rocked this unfounded infant in my arms and stay down in a depressed state as not to wake the baby enfolded in my arms. In other words, I worry over nothing until I have no desire but to worry and do nothing.

Like Tom said “Ginny, the Lord truly loves you.” When he learned that I had asked for a two headed calf.

It is a weird conformation of having your prayers answered but it is a testimony of the power of prayer, of our Lords love for us, and sending us what we need when we need it. I think as time passes I will gain many other blessing from this calf being sent to me at this time. As with all my other challenges, as the dust settles I find more to them as time goes by, but for now I’ll take the assurance the Lord heard my questions and knows as I leap from one project that has consumed me that I will need another.

By the way, two faced it what we become if we allow ourselves, two headed is a challenge we learn to live with. I have met two faced people, I can’t wait to meet my two headed friend.

And a big sorry to Amanda who stated “I wonder what the Lord wanted us to learn from this calf.” It’s just me again sucking you into my vacumme of “Wierd questions with weird answers.” Be patient with me I think I have run out of question for now.