A Few Thoughts About Kids

Sometimes it feels like I am very lucky to be working with these kids. Other times it feels like a strange consolation and an imitation of family life that I see in my friends' lives. One that perhaps I am not prepared to consistently handle. Other times I feel I've had enough practice and that I'm turning into an old man. At all angles, I am gaining experience that helps me become a better father or father figure to someone. I also get to make detailed observations of systemic issues within families with acute symptoms, and that will prepare me for my career. Having the trust of children is a joy I can't describe. And at the end of the day I am happier for having spent my time with children who need attention and guidance. And that is very fulfilling.

Today I feel a bit deflated. I feel a bit irritable and incompetent, but renewed in spirit. Only partially though. Last week I had something else shining in me and today it feels a little dull. Maybe I'm just tired or hot, or too focused on me. That's probably what it is. I'm a little bit afraid of what comes next in my life, though I have a pretty definite plan now (sort of). My head hurts and I can't pay much attention to anything today. But I'm faintly grateful for a lot of people and a lot of things. Things as they really are.

Word to Your Moms, I Came to Drop Bombs

I'm so proud of my mom. And grateful. She's done so much for me and I owe her so much. Sometimes we can barely connect; I'm trying to stop the advice she's giving and she's trying to play battleship with what my problem is. But sometimes we do connect and she knows exactly what to say to make me recognize my worth as an individual and makes me feel like the impossible challenges in my life are very possible. She makes me feel less weird and more accepting of myself. When I'm crouched in the corner away from my family I lose this incredible benefit and I become this strange anomaly to myself. She reminds me of good things I've done, like she told me some things I said that I was like, "Really? I said that?" but also reminds me that I can be a jerk so I should do better. But it's not a shower of shame, it's a playful reminder. I can tell her just about anything and I probably have. She doesn't coddle me though. She softens the blows of my own self attacks, but she doesn't let me delude myself into believing that I'm a helpless victim. I don't talk to her as much as I should. Oh yeah I'm proud of her because she's doing good things for herself. When I was still living at home, I used to see how she sacrificed for us all the time to the point where she didn't take time to do the things she loved. I think she was depressed a lot. Now I kind of see how that happens. She's exercising and eating better and has a lot of energy. She is able to be present and just seems happy. And that makes me happy.

Viorica is my surrogate grandmother from Romania. She is my inspiration of faith and gentleness. She is so kind to me (as long as I don't refuse to eat!). Today I came over and saw her and we got to talk for awhile. I've never considered myself a real poet, but this is a poem I wrote about her about 2 years ago...

Bunica Mea (Feb 10, 2008)

Warm, sensuous meal;
An unsought perk with the light of eyes.
She deals me acres from her years.
I sit in silence; or grunt back feeble fumbling phrases
Glossing over wobbly points to finish half aware.
Her well worn smile moves with fragile faith.
Slows my blood, soothing as the summer sun.
These strange tastes become familiar friends
Sour, oily, delicious feast.
She is a world of wonder to me.
I laugh and shrug, we scale a wall to speak.
She refreshes my soft love for life.
And briefly today, I am her child.


It's a little bit easier to talk to her now and we laugh and can talk about serious stuff and I can almost understand it. Today I helped her fix her TV and showed her pictures of my kids and my sister on a mission and she fed me tomatoes, telemea (salty cheese) and a bologna sandwich and told me about a sacred experience she had in the temple in Frieberg, Germany. She described the spirit in a way that I hadn't heard before and she has vivid experiences and miracles that happen to her, because of her faith frequently. She often says in broken english, "Father in Heaven so good to me. Perfect Doctor." I remember feeling this intense gratitude to have her in my life. I honestly love this lady.

My bishop kept saying that one of our speakers canceled and I secretly wished he would have asked me to fill in. Some of my most salient experiences in life have been appreciating motherhood in some way. In Romania it was seeing what life was like for those without mothers. There is a whole world of emotional fragility and darkness that opens to these children and probably more so to those children who can understand it better.

At house of hope, I'm realizing how important mothers being present is. Most of the children I work with have not had their mothers consistently present. They have watched their mothers slowly come back into their lives and they crave them now. I don't know how much of this is a natural tendency, but it seems that having their mothers less present has created a love and attention hording behavior pattern. There has been some research on the subject, but I don't know how to really apply it to better my interactions with them or to comfort them. That is something that has been stripped from me in a way. I have been loaded with process information and instead of an instantaneous comforting reaction, there is a deer in the headlight analytical overload that occurs. And then I can come to the rescue. Maxwell said it like so...

A marriage counselor can become encrusted with a protective layer of clinical indifference brought on by the routine and incessant nature of his chores. If so, his techniques will never compensate for his lack of caring.
-Maxwell (Grounded, Rooted, Established, and Settled)

And I haven't even practiced or gone through grad school yet. Ergh.

I miss that reaction some, because more often than not, that is what is needed in the face of an emotional overload. Just a hug or a small touch. A kind word and a gentle tone. In trying to maximize the comfort I give, I offer none. In some ways my family (all of us do this) we've witnessed enough lashing out at attempts to comfort that we're afraid of it sometimes. We all have it in us though. We trust each other on individual levels, but there is still something withheld. I believe this sometimes, and many times it is proven wrong. When we see people have gone past the point of what we consider trivial. We're afraid of overdoing it. I'm working on it. I don't think moms get enough credit for this initial reaction to their own. The moms at house of hope struggle with this. There's no out in motherhood and this concept seems foreign to them. Or perhaps I see more into it than there really is. Like all of it.

I love my mom though.

Downs and Ups

Today I'm sick. So I'm at home. I was playing guitar again hoping to be able to string together a few more chords. I still can't sing while I'm playing most songs except a few I've learned of other people's for fun and even then I'm usually stammering a bit. Maybe it's the futility of the activity (I'm half asleep in the process and uninspired), but I have this vivid flashback of being back in Mississippi as an elder. I can't remember the city, but I see government duplexes all around me. There's the incessant rumble of subwoofers in the background and kids passing on torn up bicycles. We are walking through an empty basketball court and the broken chain from the goal can be heard clanking in the wind. There's also a tint of darkness that isn't from the sky. Maybe it's the bleak attitudes. Or maybe it was from the sky. I think it was clouds. We're here to see a woman and we come by and she lets us in, but it is different today. She's hiding something. And then my mind splinters and it's a different woman, a different interior, and a different city probably. But it's the same pulse in that room. And it's nearly the same noise outside. We're supposed to check to see if she stopped smoking or chewing tobacco. I remember then it was such an easy thing to suggest to our strangers of hosts. And I can feel the same prayer in my heart as we walked in there. The feeling I tend to forget is the wariness and guilt that comes from wondering whether we were wasting our time there. It was something intangible we hoped for, though only slightly. Until we prayed with them and heard the sincerity of their hearts open. This varied. Rarely did someone really want what we wanted for them. And rarely did we bend our view of the gospel to promise them what they really wanted.

I don't remember a lot of details from the mission. I remember what the spirit did to me at times. After a powerful discussion once or twice I needed to just pull our bikes over and sit down. Or maybe we would ride home and I'd be completely silent. I remember the time in Bay St. Louis when 3 of our investigators who were ready for baptism turned rejecting at once. And I just started bouncing a ball off the wall over and over humming, "I saw a Mighty Angel Fly" and wondering what I did wrong.

The first, Mr. Spiller, I can never forget. His was the most powerful prayer experience I'd felt up until then and I don't think there was another more powerful afterward. He was a big ex-biker. He prided himself in being a tough guy and was into government conspiracies, but other than that he was very sane. I loved the guy and he was ready. He had some tough concerns he had to get over though. A niece of his had been molested by a bishop. We don't think that stuff happens and thankfully it is very rare, but it happened here and he was very skeptical at first. He had a good friend that we kept trying to get contact info for from the records guys in our ward there. He knew his bible and we would frequently discuss Revelation. When he got the Book of Mormon, he inhaled it. We came back for our next appointment and he had questions about Alma or Mormon (he started from the beginning). He went to conference and loved it. He told us there that he was ready to be baptized. This was immediately after the experience we had on our knees. He was praying for an answer to a question about the Book  of Mormon and we helped him resolve this by suggesting prayer. I was concentrated on our recent emphasis on kneeling in prayer and so this made me feel good to know he was willing to do this. He prayed and there was a warm washing silence in the room. This intense love like feeling entered with a subtle onset but rolled like a snowball into a feeling so fragile none of us could really speak without care. And then our host held his arm out to show his goosebumps. He knew. That was the take home message. He knew and we all knew. A couple days later, just a few days before his baptism, he had a coldness in greeting us. He told us about how he finally got a hold of his friend and then brought up a lot of anti literature concerns. The thing that happened next was devastating. I could not defend against them. Neither could my companion. The man was belligerent and his eyes had completely changed. "I almost let you get my son too..." those words stung like a hot iron. And I felt powerless and flooded. I tried to bring up a few things, but I couldn't do anything. He wanted us gone and that was it. There is no ending to this story. Just a painful resignation. I gave up blaming myself or the men involved awhile ago, but it still stings to think of it. The contrast. But contrasts are what Jesus endured more than anything. I had tasted only a sample and couldn't drink anymore.

Reflecting on the mission brought a great joy to me though in the form of an electronic reunion with a child from a family we baptized. I had been trying to contact her mother off and on for years, but her phone changed and I lost touch. They were kind of my last contact with the memories of my mission. I thought, she's about 16 now (she was 9 at the time I met them) and I did one of those random facebook searches that I rarely do. I messaged her and she remembered me! I can't really say how happy I was. I'm just really excited to talk to all of them and find out how life is. It really was a miracle running into them too. It was my first door, haha really. I knock and this big black lady comes to the door and I'm like a deer in the headlights. I was way nervous. And she just looks at me with pity for a second like, "seriously?" then gives a chuckle and says come in. We teach her. She's not interested. But her sister, who lives close by is and then we start teaching her husband, and then her two kids. And a strange thing happens. We love these people. One of the best moments of the mission is the last day that we hung out with them. I've only got a couple pictures to remember it, but one of the elders in our foursome brought a guitar over and started playing some blues and we all kind of sang to it. And I started chasing the mom around with a camera cause she was like don't take my picture. And we were just playing with the kids and it was like the perfect day. They were excited about church and seemed happy and it was my first time getting transferred, but they made the mission for me. I tried to keep in contact with them, but mostly tried to keep them connected to the ward members who could love them on a regular basis. Thank God for facebook.

And of course I got to talk to Shtebbadie on the phone and that was the awesome. She's such a stellar missionary and I was excited to hear about the people she's teaching (and baptizing).

Next entry is mother's day.