Gratitude

I have been meaning to write my feelings of gratitude for some time now. So many dominoes have fallen into place in my life these past seven months. Some of the dominoes have crashed hard and the pain was almost unbearable, but still, they crashed in a line to get me to the place I am today, at this moment, letting the words trickle down to my fingertips. Of course, this celebration of memor is not premature. I know there is still a long road of falling dominoes ahead, but it seems doable.

Seven months ago, I lost my East Coast family when he left. His family, literally, became my family in the years we have lived here. Birthday parties, holiday celebrations, baby blessings, wedding showers, weddings, reunions, baby showers, and just simply hanging out have all but vanished from my life. I put from my mind the holiday celebrations I won’t be invited to this season. Picturing His family gathered around a table of thankful splendor, with my children, without me is already very painful. I have no family out here. I am alone.

But I am not, because of you…

So many people have reached out to me since the beginning of all this. It seems a simple text or private message has had just the perfect timing to get me through a moment where loneliness tried to be my ugly, unwanted friend. A plate of cookies, a special treat, even a jar of chicken curry soup, showed up at my door from dear friends who were thinking of me. A gift certificate to the movies so my children and I could escape for a few hours made its way to my inbox from my sister. Cards of love and encouragement coming from far and wide, made my day much brighter and bearable. In moments where I was down to the last cup of milk for breakfast, a check has made its way to my hands without payback as a condition. There have been countless hours of care to my children when I need help. Many an ear on the phone or a living room couch has been offered so I can pour out the pain in my heart. A job offer on the weekends I don’t have my children…

Because of you. Because you know love. Because you listen.

The list of names is huge. You have brought me such hope, gratitude, and humility into my life. Each of you has helped soften the hardest domino from falling. The light you have brought into my life at just the right moments will never be forgotten and I promise to pay it forward.

Dad. Mom. Jenny. Christian. Candice. Laura. Rob. Francesco. Evelyn. Jenna. Elizabeth W. Mark. Meleana. Lindsay. Brian. Ellen. Kimberley. Shane. Robin. Amanda. Matt M. Abby. Sue. Michelle Y. HOB. Tracy. Carissa. Jim. Kim. Edward. Rosemary. Jessica. Jennifer H. Marissa. Kaly. David H. Aunt Nancy. LibbyChick. Molly. Camille. Jamie N. Anne T. JGD. Matt R. Shelly.

Even EWM, who was a rock, but who is no longer a friend.

I am sure I will add to this list as more names come to me, but for now my deepest and most sincere love to all of you.

Hummingbird

Separation is tough. Being mistreated by someone you have 18-years of your life with is disheartening. The 18-years of history has evaporated in just a few short months. 

Today was a tough day and, I admit, I gave up in the middle of the day. I just pulled the covers over my head to make myself unconscious of the financial stress and emotional stress that weighed me down today. I couldn't do it. I couldn't live today. I couldn't keep holding in that sour bulge in my throat. It kept swelling and I could feel the explosion of tears and helplessness were on the horizon. I hate that feeling.

I sat on my front steps this evening as my children laughingly road their bicycles without worry, wondering what I was going to do. How was I going to make it through the end of July on an empty tank of gas and pennies in my checking account? I felt the tightness in my throat and a hollowness in my gut getting stronger. Any second, the volcano of feelings was going to explode, right there, on my front steps.

I took my last deep breath in. As soon as I exhaled, I knew the fiery pain would sear my throat and burn eyes, and make me feel nauseous. I was so alone. Empty. For a split-second, I imagined not being here. I imagined putting that final end to my pain. I closed my eyes, ready for the sting of salty tears. I was ready for you Loneliness and Helplessness. Let's just get it over with...

And then I heard that familiar summer hum whisper in my ear. I opened my puzzled eyes, and there he was, only a few inches from my face. His little body, shifting metallic green-tones in the setting sun, hovered next to my face. With robotic motion, he looked at me. He saw my soul. He hovered for a few moments, humming in the evening air. He was tempted by the fuchsia petunias in my terracotta pot on the front porch, but instead he looked at me again. 

I gasped a bit and in a moment he zoomed away, taking my pain with him. That small, green humming bird gave me hope. As if lassoing the lump in my throat and the hollowness in my stomach, he pulled it from my body and took it with him to dump somewhere far away from me.

And I said to myself, "Okay, Universe. I will go another day. I understand and I thank you."

All because of a hummingbird. 

Old Endings. New Beginnings.

  Well. Here I am again. Talking to myself and feeling blue. I am 18 again. Freshly graduated from the hell they call high school and ready to start my big grown-up life. 18-years ago, I was enrolled to take my first classes at the University of Utah. I had purchased a '93 Trailblazer which was paid monthly from the tips I got working at Cowboy Grub. I hated that job. It took years for the nightmares to subside.

  My future was unknown. I didn't know what I wanted to be or what my interests were. I was immature and somewhat relied on the fact I would probably start dating a bit, me in my awkward, late-bloomer stage. Maybe I'd find a guy and fall in love, a Mormon guy if course. Someone I could check the Returned Missionary box off with. Then we'd date. Get married in the temple and start our life together. The plan was to wait to have kids because I wanted my schooling completed. Then, I'd be a stay-at-home-mom and raise babies to be righteous Mormons. The Mormon Circle of Life rotating on and on through generations of its people. 

  And I would be happy.....

  This was a perfect plan for a naive 18-year-old with no life-experience. It was the plan I absorbed growing up in my faith community. But it didn't work out that way. None of it did.

  18-years later, I never finished school. I am 9-months into a five-year bankruptcy plan. I have two beautiful children, and I am four-months separated from the man I was taught would be my eternal companion. I am looking down the same road I was 18-years ago, wondering what the hell do I do now? How am I going to pay the damn electric bill? That money went to my lawyer. 

  I am ready to reinvent myself. I have a few ideas, but will my past failures haunt my future endeavors?

I guess we will see. I process my thoughts through writing. So welcome to my new beginning. This is gonna be fun. So stick around. It might be a train wreck.

Well-Endowed Barbie

Lately, there has been quite a stir in the bloggernacle regarding the issue of modesty. Over the past few months numerous articles, Facebook posts, and blogs have taken on the issue of modesty and how it pertains to the young girls and the young women in our church. Many of these writings tell of the young women being solely responsible for maintaining the purity of our youth. Yes, it is a heavy burden to carry, but, alas, we of the fairer sex have come up with many ways to help keep modest hottest, starting with our youngest members.


First, through clever pinning on Pinterest, we saw one modest mother's idea of helping Naked Barbie maintain her modesty and the pure thoughts of little boys who might see her in her birthday suit. With just a few minutes with a Sharpie, Naked Barbie became permanently tattooed with undergarments fit for the eyes of innocent children who might play with her. 

See how Naked Barbie is now Modest Barbie in her shiny, new, skin-tight body suit. The purely transformed Modest Barbie is now suitable for playtime for both little girls and the impressionable little boys who might see her. This is a good first step in policing our children's thoughts, teaching them that nakedness, even when it comes to toys, is not suitable for their eyes and is something to be ashamed of and covered up.

Now, just in case Modest Barbie, is not quite to your modesty standards, you have other options, another mother has taken modesty maintenance a step further. Even though Modest Barbie has her private parts covered, there is still a bit of skin showing. With just a few minutes more, you can transform Modest Barbie into Shade Clothing Barbie, another idea from a different Pinterest mother.

Shade Clothing Barbie has the coloring extended down to just above her knees, and covers her chest and shoulders. I think this is a great second-step in keeping children's thoughts pure, but also, this may also help prepare little girls for the day when they will seek their own endowments for the temple. These colorful underclothes do give a sense of the garment a young woman receives after her first endowment, but they do lack the importance and sacredness the garment holds. 

To really prepare preschooler and little girls for the temple and the future of being the guardians and stewards of pure thoughts and sexuality for men, I give you Well Endowed Barbie.

Well-Endowed Barbie teaches little girls to hide their nakedness, but not be ashamed of their underwear. Having Well-Endowed Barbie as an example of what a true modest woman wears will help teach her what clothing she can and cannot select for her doll, and later, for herself. When your daughter takes Well-Endowed Barbie to a non-endowed house, she will be able to judge the other Barbies and their poorly chosen, immodest clothes. Also, Well Endowed Barbie's clothing will help protect her from the uncontrollable sexual urges of Unaccountable-For-His-Thoughts-And-Urges Ken Doll.

Starting from a young age and having Well-Endowed Barbie as a visual guide, will help your daughter pick the right clothes and the right friends for her future. It will help her stay away from the girls who show their shoulders, clavicles, thighs, and belly buttons and what impurity "those" types of girls hold.

So with just a little white nail polish and a pencil, you can transform your daughter's Barbie into something more suitable for her to play with... And coming soon, the "Barbie Burquini", it is not just for "Muslim Barbie" anymore.


(Other takes on Modest Barbie here)

The Bad Mother

I am a bad mother.


I buy birthday cakes for my children at the grocery store. I don't make those hours-long, fondant-covered colorful creations that would impress even the great Martha Stewart. In fact, you would be lucky to find enough birthday candles in my house for the cake. This year, I could only hunt down three, so when DaughterNotSo had her fifth birthday, she blew out the first three and I relighted two for her to blow out again. And when we had a birthday party for her with her little friends, I bought a number "4" for her cake instead of a "5". Fail.


I don't do DaughterNotSo's hair everyday. I rarely make those hair creations with the twists and braids, and bows, and floral arrangements other moms create. I do try to have it brushed though, but most of the time she looks like she could belong in an orphanage with Little Orphan Annie. I cut SonNotSo's hair by myself and he hates it. The poor kid ends up with hair in his eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and bellybutton. I think I am going to buzz his hair for the summer just to ease the process for me.


Sometimes I recycle outfits they have worn from the day before. A few stains can last through another day. Sometimes their clothes are wrinkled from staying in the dryer for days because I haven't gotten around to folding them and I have a pile of button-up shirts that need to be ironed for the kids. I question my sanity as to why I even bought clothing that would need to be pressed. 


My children don't get bathed everyday and sometimes playing out in the sprinkler is counted as a bath. When they do get bathed, I leave them in the tub just so I can have a moment to meditate on my bed as they splash around, making a swampy mess. I should really be doing something like straightening up their rooms from days of neglected ciaos.


Feeding the kids 3 square meals everyday is even rarer than folded laundry. Getting SonNotSo to eat veggies and coaxing DaughterNotSo to eat her meal without issue, would be like a New Testament miracle. Sometimes I forget to give them their gummy vitamins. Most of the time, DaughterNotSo reminds me.


Yes. I am a bad mother. No pretenses here. I hardly pretend to be a perfect mother who has it all together. Putting on a facade of perfectionism would require more work. If you bump into us at the store, the kids may have crusts on their faces and stains on the clothes and their hair will probably look unkempt.


You may even wonder what my problem is...


Now if between the crusts of gunk on their cheeks and sleep in their eyes, I could just wipe the smiles off their faces, I could be a worse mother.

Time Out, Brad Wilcox

I know. I know you will find this extremely hard to believe, but I attended my local Time Out for Women this weekend. My MIL purchased tickets months ago for my SILs and me to go. Well, each of my SILs bailed (well, one of them DID have a baby last Tuesday), so a good friend of my MIL and me went with us. Yeah, I wasn't looking forward to the whole context of the conference, but the perks of spending the night in a hotel, going to dinner, and having a break from the kids outweighed any potential annoyances the conference might have in store. What's more, I love my MIL and wanted to spend some time with her. She is a good woman.

 Going to dinner + fresh hotel sheets + not waking up with the kids > TO4W

I decided ahead of time to go as an objective observer with a positive attitude. I was not going to be looking for opportunities to be offended or annoyed by the speakers or the attendees. I was going to be very real and practical about the whole thing. 

The Friday night session was okay. The first speaker, Brother NotFunny, had a  pretty dismal talk. A person who is truly funny does not need to try to be funny, but somehow Brother NotFunny never got that memo. People around me were cracking up and I just could not fathom why. I wondered if subconsciously I had a bad attitude affecting my funny bone, but then I looked over at my MIL and my GF. There they were. Arms folded. Faces serious and somewhat puzzled. Good. It wasn't just me and my uncorrelated self. 

Next, Virginia Hinckley Pearce spoke and she was, meh... Again, I thought perhaps a bad attitude was influencing me, but no, my MIL and GF later confirmed my same thoughts. Fortunately, the night wasn't a total bust because Jenny Oaks Baker, a Julliard-educated violinist saved the night. Listening to her play the violin was a treat. She was absolutely brilliant.

So the Friday night session went well for me. No major or even minor annoyances. We topped the night off with a trip to the Cheesecake Factory and a pillow fight before bed. The next morning my MIL and GF headed over while I caught a few more zzzzs. Then I got up. Got ready and got over to the conference. I summoned up my positive energy and open mindedness. I was ready for round two.

I made it in time to listen to Linda Eyre and her daughter Shawni Pothier. My MIL knows Shawni personally, so that was much of the reason she wanted to go to TO4W. They both did a fine job and I was feeling fine...

Until...

Enter Brad Wilcox from stage right...

Cox started out his talk relating a story from when he was a mission president. His story was of a disheartened elder who wanted things to be easier. "Wouldn't it all be easier if we just had to do baptisms for the dead?" He then goes off into this diatribe mocking people who say things like, "But Brother Wilcox, don't you know how hard it is? I was born this way. Do you know how hard it is to change?"


From there I began to feel a little uneasy in my seat. I was afraid this would turn into Packergate from that one General Conference. Remember that one? It went something along the lines of gays not being able to overcome what they feel to be inborn tendencies and then he asked why would Heavenly Father do that to anyone, meaning create someone who was gay. Somehow I felt Cox was hinting around on the whole "I was born this way" excuse that he must think is illegitimate for the gay population. 


But I digress. The best was yet to come. Cox then went into this rant of mockery saying the following: It is easy to not going to church. It is easy not going to the temple. It is easy finding the anti-Mormon website to question church history. It is easy to ruin your testimony...


As though I had springs in my butt, I popped up as quickly as I could and angrily walked out in the middle of his self-righteous rant. It was all I could do not to flip him off on the way out, and now I wish I would have. I was pissed and hurt. I immediately called Husband NotSo to relate what had happened and I started to cry. I cried because he was so wrong, so wrong about how "easy" he thinks it is. It is not easy at all.


There have been many, MANY times in my faith crisis where I have thought how much easier it would be to just go back to church, continue to ignore the things that bother me, and continue to be spoon-fed the baby food of what I should believe. It would be easier to have someone else do the thinking for me. It would be easier maintaining relationships with my family and friends if I continued to go to church, instead of taking the initiative to ensure those bonds don't crumble.

Perhaps the most damaging part of all this, was the permission Brother Cox gave the hundreds of women and young women there to judge people who question the church or who have left the church because that is the easy way. No doubt each of those women know someone in their family or ward who has left the church or who is struggling with the church. Now instead of hearing a message about compassion and Christ-like love, they heard a message that they could judge those they know for taking the easy route. Now, because they stay in the church and continue to do what they are told to do, it is deemed harder and must, therefore, be better because it is sanctified by Brother Cox.


I promise, I tired to go into TO4W as open minded as I possibly could be. I knew some things might bother me, but I accepted that fact ahead of time. What I did not expect was the blatant rudeness and judgment coming from one of the more renowned persons of the church.

Ugh. I could not help but note the different feeling I felt at TO4W and the Mormon Stories Conference we had last weekend. At TO4W I felt like an outsider. I didn't feel the collective power a group can cast when it gets together for the common good and I so wanted to. At the MorStor Conference, I felt so much love and power. I truly and honestly loved each an every person who was there. I felt bonded to these people from their many walks of life. I loved those people and I know they loved me. It rejuvenated me and I have craved that feeling, like crack, throughout the whole of last week. It felt like a little piece of heaven on earth.


And to Brother Cox, I recommend taking your nasty foot out of your mouth and walk around in my shoes for a day before you deem what is "easy" and what is not. 


For that, I award you the SisterNotSo WTF moment. WTF, Brother Cox. WTF.

Washington DC Mormon Stories Conference

What a weekend. What a crazy, fantastic weekend. It was like Christmas Eve, Christmas, the Super Bowl, and election night all crammed into one afternoon. If you don't know what I am talking about, I am talking about this. There is a small group of Mormons out there who have either left the church or who are unorthodox on some level and desire to interact with people like themselves and who still feel a communal pull. Through Mormon Stories, we have formed regional groups to help fill the void where ward and stake communities once resided in our lives. It has been refreshing meeting up, conversing on facebook, and emailing these regional members from all walks of life.


This weekend, we had our regional conference for the Washington DC area. I was fortunate enough to be part of the planning committee for the event. Our team was so incredible. The bonus was having varying degrees of faith represented in the planning. Through that we were able to create an event inclusive to all. I would love to give the run-down of the whole thing, but, rather, I am going to highlight some of my more poignant experiences. 


I have not been around very many openly gay people. Of course I had my own thoughts influenced by the church regarding same-sex attraction. Then Prop 8 happened and that compelled me to think deeper about the issue. Around the same time I listened to the podcast John Dehlin did with Carol Lynn Pearson and from there, my views have evolved. 


At the conference, I met and conversed with many openly gay people and for the first time I saw them for who they have always been: Just normal men and women, trying to lead normal, happy lives. They were no different than I. It is not that I expected warts or horns. I was not expecting anything really, but for the first time my heart opened up as I listened to their own Mormon stories. I saw pain and sorrow and then I saw relief. Relief of finally being accepted by a group who all have a common denominator in Mormonism. 


I loved our conference and I love the people who were there. More to come in the following days, but for now I am exhausted. Exhausted and utterly fulfilled.