Mother's Day

Sunday is going to be my first Mother’s Day with a son, and the holiday has made me feel reflective this year. For some reason I do not think of my own role as a mother, but how the people around me feel who have tried to get to where I am. I love you. This is a letter to my friends who long to be mothers, but for various reasons are not. Because I am weak, I wrote to you collectively instead of reaching out individually.

I keep thinking of how hard this Mother’s Day is going to be for my friends who struggle with infertility or have lost children.  I can’t get it off my mind, I obsess daily. This means I need to say something, but I don’t even know the platform. I don’t know if you’ll feel what I’m saying is wildly inappropriate and that you’ll know I just don’t understand. I don’t. I want to tell you how much I love you, that I pray for your circumstance every day, and I feel some of your pain deeply. I know I cannot feel it all because it is not my pain, it is yours. Only Christ can relate.

I don’t know if my pictures and anecdotes of my son are hard for you, I’m sure they sometimes are. I feel your pain intensely. Sometimes I hold my son and I weep and pray for you. The most deserving men and women seem to have the hardest time growing their families. Sarah, Rachel, Hannah, and Elisabeth all spring to mind. I pray every day that your circumstances will change. May you be a Sarah, a Hannah, or a Rachel one day, as they all saw their prayer answered. I can’t give that to you because I am not God. I can’t pretend to know his plan for you I just know what I want his plan for you to be. It’s probably not comforting for me to say that He knows the bigger picture and has His best plan for you, even though it is true.

I watch you. I think you handle your situation gracefully, even though I know it hurts. I love the way you live your life. I love the way you tackle new adventures and you are constantly doing your best to become the best person you can be. You took the opportunity to coach people to utilize their time better. To exercise self-care and live our lives to the fullest.

You were open with your situation and your loss. You communicated your circumstance the whole time and you let me/us see your reality. You let us cry with you, even though you suffered deeply personal loss. You probably didn’t even know some of us were watching.

You took the opportunity to care for other people’s children. You moved globally and in one nation after another you made the entire world better. You are always on the move and every place you have set foot his better for it.

You have taken children born to other people out of desperate circumstances and you loved them. You provided them the home and love you ached to share.

You did this privately, yet openly. You didn’t show us to show us, it is just what you did with your life. You couldn’t hide your magnificence.

I hope it doesn’t always hurt for you when I share my son. I share him with you because I love you and I don’t want our different circumstances to get in the way of our friendship. I don’t want to pretend I don’t know you are in pain. If it were me, it would be every day. I want to be your advocate, but sometimes you will have to tell me how.

Please my loves, have a wonderful Mother’s Day. I love you. You are always in my prayers.

Love,

Rachel

My testimony of overcoming obstacles

Yesterday I had a wonderfully long drive down to Utah to do some Mary Kay parties and I got to be alone with the most wonderful thoughts. I felt the spirit so strongly as I looked back at my life. It was interesting because I don't like to look back. I (who I am now) don't like who I have been up until the last three or four years.

I'm not writing this for myself, I'm writing it for other people. Everyone has a hardest thing, something particular to them and who they are at that point in time. Our hardest things are specific to our personalities, situations, dreams, and nightmares. I endured one of my hardest things and it nearly destroyed me. Some of the damage was due to my responses to someone else's behavior, but a lot of it happened because of that behavior, which was subtle emotional abuse I endured but did not yet recognize.

During this difficult period I had the most severe depression I've ever had. For an entire month I lay in bed, head under covers, crying over my personal living hell. I thought it was all my fault, so I didn't tell anyone what happened. The tricky thing about emotional abuse is that it's difficult to identify from the outside, let alone from the inside.

After about a year and a half of enduring by myself I finally recognized my abuser as abusive. I decided to get out. This is not my first move in my life toward personal happiness, but it is the first defining move.

I know what it's like to feel like you can never be happy again, to be ashamed of yourself and of your entire life. I also know what it's like to overcome it and find joy that surpasses anything you'd ever experienced up until that point.

When it was over I stayed a victim and I'm probably not alone in this. I wore my experience on my sleeve, keeping it a secret, and labeling myself as damaged. I did not handle my rehabilitation into normal life gracefully in most respects, with one exception: from this point on I knew I was worth something, and would never allow someone else to convince me otherwise.

A few people knew what happened (I opened a little bit, it's always easier to do that after the fact) but their knowledge and understanding didn't help much until I told someone who had the power to help me heal. I hope anyone who has endured heartache can learn from that experience. Talking it out helps best when you talk to the right person. I told a few close friends, and my family knew as well. All of these people are incredible and were very comforting, however, when you are broken, you don't need to be comforted, you need to be healed.

This is my testimony of the healing power of the atonement of Jesus Christ. For a long time after my experience I tried to be perfect. I thought that I could heal on my own by helping people, going to the temple, and reading the scriptures. These are all good things that should always be done, but I needed more. I had used the atonement to repent and to forgive, but not to heal. After a couple of years I told my (new) bishop. This man was almost a stranger to me, just barely called, but the gates of heaven were open to him. He set me on the right path and I started to move forward and let go. He had the power and the authority to lead me to peace in my heart.

Jesus Christ is the only being in the universe that has the ability to heal me or anyone else who suffers.

My eyes opened to how I had labeled myself as damaged, and in doing so limited my personal growth. This was my experience and it was over, the atonement works, and so then matters a lot less than now.

I am writing this because it is over and I want to tell everyone who is suffering or recently suffered that my experience ended. I know what happened, but I don't remember it. You don't remember the bad stuff, you only remember the good when you use the atonement. My life right now is incredible, I have fantastic memories. I have the best husband, he is a good man with a pure heart.

I feel like I've become a functional and powerful woman. I like myself and intend to continue becoming happier day by day. Life can still be hard, but every day it gets progressively better. My goal is to share my convictions with everyone I have the power to touch so they can feel the way that I do now.

I love my savior and am so grateful that he not only atoned for my sins, but all of my sufferings. I'm still learning to give him my burdens, it's really difficult for me to admit that I can't just fix it/let it go myself. Every day I feel like I unload so much on Him, just to get a good nights rest. When I mean it, when I repent, He always helps. I am writing this to promise that if you use the atonement, too, those horrible experiences will stop being a part of who you are and happiness will come.

Freedom - Is it really what it used to be?

I've had so many thoughts stewing up in my head. Anyone who's ever read my blog (and it is likely no one has read it in at least a year, as I haven't taken the time to just sit and write) must realize that my political leanings are conservative. I hope that doesn't stop anyone, Aristotle said it is a mark of intelligence to be able to entertain an idea without accepting it. I hope my ramblings are at least semi-coherent, and my opinions are at the very least worth entertaining.

So what I keep thinking about is what people used to say when I was a kid, that obnoxious phrase when you want to do something, they don't want you to, but they can't really stop you, "It's a free country." I have always disliked that phrase, because I think in even the most controlling sects of communism there are simply some things the government just doesn't care about. Some things that our national government does now just sits and nags at my brain. Joey is probably bored to death hearing about them from me, but I think he agrees.

 For example the income tax is a much higher tax than the Stamp Act or the Tea Tax our founding fathers found so abhorrent. I've always been bothered by the income tax..it's money I earned, money my employer intended for me to receive, and yet, I don't even get to see it. We even try to protect ourselves by overpaying our income taxes and then get so excited to get a tax return, even though it's still a small percentage of what we paid in the first place. I understand the military, and international diplomacy might get a little expensive...but why do I spend more on my national government than my local one? I get a lot more out of my local taxes (schools for local kids, roads (well, not in Rexburg....but generally), libraries, parks....nationally I get very little.

 Alexander Hamilton, one of the more elitist founding fathers, likely would have found the state of taxes incredibly troubling. And our modern presidents blatant power-grabs must make George Washington turn in his grave, after all, the most wonderful thing about him is that he could have become a dictator, but he didn't. But then we have our Bushes and Obamas threatening our freedoms in their various ways...No Child Left Behind and the Patriot Act are the two great legacies of Bush that I believe really hurt our freedom. I don't even agree with Lincoln suspending the writ of habeus corpus, let a lone a man who started a preemptive war in the middle east. Obama's bother me even more, and, more personally. The increased airport security is irritating, but I only have to deal with it in the airport. I HATE OBAMACARE. I don't hate that it might make it easier to get insurance, but I hate the heavy regulations on insurance that makes it so expensive, and I REALLY hate being denied the opportunity to take risks.

The thing I hate most about Obamacare is how it affects my wallet. I am one of the uninsured Americans the "Affordable Healthcare Act," was instated to protect. HOW?!? I either pay a hefty fine when I do my taxes next year, or I have to sign up for healthcare that I will not use because the deductible is so high and I am an incredibly healthy person. It is cheaper for me to finance my healthcare with a hospital than it is for me to get insurance (they have excellent payment plans and are so kind to their patients....doctors are not evil beasts out to steal all of our money!). I have always intended to get health insurance....when I have more of a disposable income and maybe it could be offered by an employer....or health issues are more of a risk. But so what if I get hurt? Isn't it my risk?I will be the one footing the bill.

Why do we have to be so safe? Why are we fined for taking a little risk? I get speed limits and stoplights, and those sorts of things, but a seat belt law?!? And I understand car insurance, not to cover myself, but whomever I could collide with, but we are so preemptive. Bush went to war in Iraq because he felt they could eventually be a threat, so is this healthcare crap. When Joey and I sat with the insurance agent, he said that Obamacare is the highest tax increase in the history of the country.  WHY am I being governed by a little city on the opposite side of the country? Why can't capital hill allow city and state governments to take care of things like that? If you want mandated healthcare, live in a state that mandates it, don't force all the other ones to do it. If you're terrified of guns, live in NYC, I hear gun control's getting pretty big there.

Why does this have to come nationally? Why do we have to have all these safeties and regulations? We're not children, and even children need to go outside and risk skinning their knees, it's not a big deal. Everything seems to be turning into plastic rail and padded knees, if we don't take risks, will we really live? Who are the wealthiest people in this nation? Did they get there by taking the easy way, insuring everything? I don't think so! They were innovative, creative, and got their hands dirty. They took a risk and didn't know what was going to happen, when I don't have health insurance I risk losing A LOT of money if I get seriously injured, but isn't that my risk to take? I know it's not going to make me millions, but maybe I'll learn a lesson, maybe I'll sign up with a health insurance company all the wiser and tell all my friends about how great it is. That is not how it is for me, though, I'm forced through the wallet to sign up for insurance, and I'm going to tell my friends, no matter how injured I get, that it sucks, that I'm paying so much money for something that's not going to help me until I have at least a $5,000 problem.

I think my point is getting away from me, so I want to return to it. How free is my life? What good do all of these regulations do me? Don't I have the right to take risks?
I love my life, and I know that's because I did not take the path that everyone else took. I'm just starting to feel like my freedom to make my own way is being threatened. I believe in local authority, I don't believe in empowering an island at least 1,000 miles away that I will call Washington D.C., even if it does have five representatives from my state in there (five is such a small number on Capital Hill). Aren't we a nation because some intelligent men didn't believe in being overly taxed by an island a couple thousand miles away from them?

The Right to Speak With Love

If you haven't understood from my past entries, I will say it again. I hate political correctness. I believe in the first amendment. Every man and woman should have the freedom to say what they believe and have their beliefs acknowledged.

I want to talk about sin, and definitions of sin. I was just thinking, people sure get offended if you say something is a sin and it's something they do. They call you a Christian bigot, and you haven't even personally called them out on their sin. They're mad you called it out as a sin, why? People don't get mad when you say lying is a sin, they don't get mad when you say stealing is a sin. Greed, gluttony, jealousy...these are all recognizable and non-offensive as sin. Let's throw in lust..fornication, homosexuality....you define those as sins and people come up in arms against you. Why? We all sin, we just sin different from one another. Have you ever lied? Have you ever been jealous, greedy, or cheated a little to get ahead? Are there any times you did than, got your way, and didn't really regret it. REALLY think about it....yes, there probably are. Why aren't you upset with everyone for calling that a sin.

I'm doing a poor job of saying what I want to say: if someone believes something is a sin, let them. If you don't believe in the action they take of it, acknowledge their right to their belief and take action. People whine, they cry, they take action, but they rarely acknowledge that people can believe different things than themselves.

I am a Mormon, I am a Christian. I love the Book of Mormon, I love my savior, and I will defend what I believe. I have a clear definition to myself of what sin is. I love sinners but I hate sin. I love my religion so much, it makes me so happy, I want to share it with other people because I believe it will make them happy to. Do I believe my religion is better than others? YES! That's why I chose it! Do I believe others are awful nasty people  because they don't believe what I do? NO! They are not me! If you don't want what I have, I will never force you to take it, but you can't blame me for trying to share what makes me happy.

I believe in waiting until marriage to have a physically intimate relationship, and I believe intimacy should be between a man and a woman (if you want me to, I'll give my non-religious rant on that some other time, but I'm only doing that one if you ask me to. I haven't so far because I don't want my friends hurt or feeling attacked because I vehemently believe that action is wrong). If you participate in pre-marital physical intimacy I will not hate you, I will love you. If you are gay, I will love you. That is also something I learned from my religion. If someone with my belief system doesn't try to call out these sins as sins and try to get people to repent and be as happy as they are they really don't love the sinners.

Religious people don't fight sin because they hate or don't feel love. We call out sin because we believe there is something higher to strive for. We believe a life absent of these things will fulfill a true measure of joy you may have never felt before. It truly has for us.

Feel free to disagree with us, but don't try to silence us. Don't shun our love! Discuss, argue, but do it lovingly, don't be offended because we want to share with the world what we have, believe me when I say it is what makes me happy. I have had some tough experiences, and I never would have gotten through them without my savior. I feel like my sins have been pretty bad, and I'm so grateful for the love and mercy that came through repentance, can you blame me for wanting others to feel that sweet, sweet gift?

I will let you speak, please allow me to express myself, is all I'm saying. This is all my response for A&E trying to shut Phil Robertson up. That is my inspiration, he tried to share his love and beliefs, he uses his public position to try to get people to come to his savior, because like me, he has felt the love and mercy that comes from believing in Jesus Christ.

Creation

There is something about the night sky for me. Driving home, late, while bright moonlight tries to peek behind black, bleak clouds. This is where my thoughts become the clearest, deepest, and most sure. Tonight, as I drove into the night, streetlights and a paved road helping to guide my way the creation of human beings pressed on my mind. The vastness of the night sky brought the scope of creation into my mind, as I began, tonight, to think about what separates human beings from other animals.

I thought about the other creatures of the world, most of which are faster and fiercer than we are. They have better hearing and sensitivity to their surroundings. The surety of the man's creation hit me as an invisible gust of wind that knocked me to my knees. I was created. There is no way human beings could be this unique of a creature. If you look at all creations as physical beings you'll see that humans can't survive in the world the way animals can. We don't have fur, we don't even have claws. We were created to think, building tools to help create a way for ourselves. We are the some of the weakest creatures, yet we have power over creations larger and more powerful than ourselves.

As I pondered this, I pondered the reasons and the implications. Without the ability to communicate with other human beings, we would not have survived quite so well. I can't name one animal with such advanced methods of communication. Is there an animal with any power remotely close to the ability to read and write? That is by far man's greatest achievement, what most clearly separates us from the other creatures of the earth.

Using hands, minds, and some muscle, we have the internet, houses, tools, gadgets...knowledge building upon past knowledge. We have machines and tools with one thousand times the strength that we possess. We also have a method of communication so clear it is possible (in a way) for the dead to communicate with the living: writing. What other creature can do this? If it was just evolution, then why are we the only ones? What makes us so unique and lucky? It's just too much for me, I cannot accept that this is mere coincidence, for me, this means we were created.

Not using my hands, but other tools I have the power over the lives of other creatures. This is the way I was created, it is the way our creator designed human beings. Many animals rely on us for food and shelter. When we provide them these things, they will come to rely on us for other things, even relief. When my mom accidentally cut my dog's nail a little too deep and I took a rag and held it on her paw until she stopped bleeding, my dog turned to me for relief. She could see the power of humans, I think, in so many ways, animals can see it clearer than we can. She knew I could stop the bleeding, she didn't understand why, but that understanding kept her near me for a few days, possibly until she was sure she wasn't going to be hurt again. They don't understand how we take care of them, but they, unlike us, understand our power, and humbly allow us to exercise it. This, to me, is further proof of how we were created. Only the greatest predators or largest animals could be as arrogant as humans are.

I am blown away by what man can do. We can create such magnificent things, great buildings, skyscrapers, pyramids, etc. We also can communicate with each other, tell our fears, our hopes, our dreams. What I write could reach complete strangers, on the other side of the world. We also have the power of great destruction, massacres, we could bring the stink of death upon all the creatures of the earth.

Some super hero movie says "with great power comes great responsibility," and that is so true. There are so many other people, so many other creatures in this world. Building on the knowledge of humans today and humans of the past, we can create whatever kind of world we would like. I hope I can live up to being human, what an honor to be endowed with such responsibilities.

Frankly, my dear....

I have to write this while it’s still fresh on my mind. A few minutes ago, I felt very angry with people. All sorts of people, right-wing, left-wing…all of us. We spend so much time focusing on things that don’t really matter….(Paula Deen saying the n-word, for example) and not enough time focusing on things that are actually important. There are hate crimes in the world a lot worse than an aging southern woman fitting in with her culture (believe it or not that’s not what inspired this, but I believe it is the most applicable example I could use).

If Paula Deen used that word and then followed it with a lynching, yeah, I’d pay attention, I’d care, but she didn’t. People die every day, through hate crimes. It happens both inside and outside of the United States, but we’re so bogged down with petty issues we don’t see it, recognize it, or take the real actions to eradicate it. We’re too concerned with political correctness or titles to notice the man who hits his wife, or the woman who screams, yells, and emotionally abuses her family. Not only do we all know someone affected by drunk driving, we all know someone who has driven drunk (unless we are incredibly lucky, and if you don’t think you do, you’re probably wrong). People are homeless on the streets of Minneapolis (and yes, they are frequently that way of their own addictions and doing, but still, they are human beings). There are homeless people here. Now, let’s leave the United States.

There are people starving to death every day, adults, children, everything. Some resort to cannibalism because they can’t think of another way to survive. Children (little girls, mostly) are forced to cater to the sexual whims of monsters, and are forced to live their lives abused and in fear. Drugs destroy families. Unemployment leaves hungry mouths.

Wars rage, people steal, and yet, we’re concerned with healthcare systems, language, and sexuality. I’m sorry, but these things seem so unimportant to me in the big picture. I feel like my efforts (or tax money, or even media attention) would be better spent appreciating heroes, like those firefighters that died in Arizona, or fighting wrongs, like the human trafficking so rampant in Africa and Asia. We could feed the hungry, build rehabilitation, but we’re so wrapped up in our “first world problems” (silly video, but it has a point), and our desires to be more comfortable, or to prove we’re not racist, or that we’re accepting that we don’t really help anyone who actually needs help. I do it just as much as anybody else, but tonight, driving home, listening to the radio as they touted these petty issues I really realized something: that’s not who I want to be, and, with Paula Deen for example, I feel like Clark Gable in Gone with the Wind, Frankly My Dear, I don’t Give a D***. I really don’t, it’s not important, I care about things that really are important. Things that seem a lot more life-or-death. Things that if I make a difference in them, I’m really going to change the world, I’m not simply going to make it more uptight.

I guess what I’m saying is that I’m really realizing that we, here, in the US, a lot of us, anyway, we don’t know what it’s really like to be harassed. If the worst things are harsh words (and yes, it is a terrible term, but forgiveness is a beautiful thing!), then we’re living pretty well. Instead of trying to control how everyone else makes people’s lives “better” (better, or different?), maybe we should just act ourselves. No more laws, no more taxes, real people, making real differences. Maybe I’ll even take my own advice, it really would be good for me.