Every group of people has patterns of behavior…ways they interact with one another. Families have sooooo many! Some are positive….some may be negative. Maybe there are things you do with your family that you didn’t even realize are patterns. Stop and think for a moment. What does your family do? Do you have special holiday traditions? Celebrations for family milestones? Individual milestones? Just things you always do on Sunday? Monday night football? Weekend getaways? Even weekend chores! All of those things can be seen as traditions.

For our purposes today, I want to discuss healthy family traditions, things you do or can do in your family that creates a sense of belonging…..a meaning attached to ‘Being a [fill in your last name]’. As you read through some of my thoughts, think about what you might want to intentionally institute in your family to help create the feelings you want to enhance with your loved ones.

Most families have holiday traditions. In the United States, where I live, we even have shared community traditions….you probably do in your country, as well. Here are a couple of things we do in the Lund house.

Holiday Traditions

We are a pretty casual family. Our food preparations are simple (usually) but we all really like food and it needs to have flavor and taste good. (We are very spoiled.) Sometimes for our meals, we don’t even sit at the table. But for certain holidays (Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter) we set a formal table with extra silverware (two forks, dessert utensil, sometimes a soup spoon), and usually a salad plate. We use china dishes, crystal glassware, cloth napkins, and sometimes we even have place cards. Before we eat we talk with our family and remind them of proper table manners: polite dinner conversation, asking to be excused, not reaching across the table, passing to the left (or however we are doing it that day), using the outside utensils first, etc…. We are not trying to be exclusive or better than we are. Here is how we started doing that. My mother had all of these amazing china dishes that she bought with green stamps (I don’t even think they do stuff like that anymore!) Anyway, her dishes were always in the boxes and never saw the light of day. She didn’t want any of them to be broken, so we never used them. I do not even know what they look like! I didn’t want to be like that. I wanted my children to feel special and important (like they were worth using the china on). And I recognized that as they got older, they may be asked to attend an event that was more formal in nature. I wanted them to have some experience and know what to do. So Drew and I decided that if we had a formal dinner a couple of times a year, that would satisfy those thoughts and feelings. As the children have gotten older and I was pretty tired from cooking all of the food (because those are feast days) sometimes I didn’t have the energy to set a fancy table. At those times, the children jumped in and did it for me. It was important to them. So they helped me with the work so the tradition continued.

Like most American families, we carve pumpkins for Halloween. It is a big deal at our house. Sometimes we fight over which pumpkin we get or if we have to share it with someone else. We cannot carve our pumpkins too early because we live in a very soggy area. If we do it too early, our pumpkins mold and it is no fun to try to remove squishy, moldy squash from the porch! Here is what we did last year.

Faith traditions

In our faith, we have General Conference twice a year….the first weekend in April and the first weekend in October. It is a time where we would all gather together to listen to the prophets and apostles speak to us and tell us what God wants us to know and do for the next six months. As parents, we knew this could be difficult for little people to do as it is four hours on Saturday (sometimes six) and four hours on Sunday. We have two hours of meetings and then two hours of break and then two hours of meeting. We wanted the children to look forward to this time even though it is long for little people. (Sometimes it is long for big people too.) When the children were little, we bought them new coloring/activity books and new crayons or colored pencils. A couple of times we tried other activities (like eating a particular piece of candy every time we heard certain words….but that just made us all sick and the candy was gone after the first meeting….sometimes our traditions come about after a little trial and error). But we decided to couple conference weekend with really fun and special food. So on Saturday of General Conference, I would make cinnamon rolls or blueberry muffins or apple crisp for breakfast (yes, dessert for breakfast….) and we would buy pizza in between sessions of conference. Then on Sunday, we kept it simple and just had sandwiches and chips. It is time just for our family to be together and to talk about the doctrines and principles of our faith and how we are doing to apply those things in our lives.

Now, even though we are all spread out, I know that is what most of my kids are doing on that weekend! We still call each other, or text and talk about the things we heard and felt and what we are going to do about it. Here are some photos of all of us doing that this weekend!

Just because traditions

One of the things we also do as a family is March Madness!! Every year, the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) has their tournament to determine the National Champion. It always, obviously, happens in March. Selection Sunday tells us who is in the tournament, what seed they are, and which section of the bracket they fall into. Between Sunday and Wednesday night, every person in my family fills out a bracket. Darren has even been writing and testing an algorithm to try to determine the winner…good luck D! But the rest of us just have to use our raw skills and best guesses. Then Thursday through Saturday we all stay home from work and school and watch college basketball from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday we go to church and update our brackets as the scores roll into our cell notification systems! We razz each other about our choices and who is winning and who is loosing…we call and brag….we eat more food (that is a part of all of our traditions…have you noticed?)….then the next weekend we finish a few more rounds. By this time, the basement dwellers have been established (this is usually where I am…..) and only a few of us are left to vie for the glass slipper award (that’s what we call it). We do it every year!! It is us! And the bigger we get, the more people we add to the competition!

Kyle is a soccer man. He is trying to get us to participate the same way in the World Cup Match ….every four years, I think? (I am obviously not as big of a soccer fan….)⚽

Regardless of the traditions you establish in your family, the idea is to create a sense of belonging, of unity, of love and harmony something that all can enjoy and participate in. These experiences help to bring us closer together as a family and give us a sense of identity. The best part of family traditions is that it can really be whatever you want it to be.

The tricky part comes when you are starting a new family where both people come from a family with established traditions. Drew and I have not had to navigate that too much, but where we have, we just talked about it and brought what we wanted from each family into our new family. You just have to communicate what your expectations are and what is important to you and then be willing to compromise. I will just use Thanksgiving as an example. Drew and I hate pumpkin pie…so we don’t have it, even though both of our families did. My family always had a fruit salad with marshmallows and whipping cream. Drew’s family had Great Grandma’s special green salad. Well, all of my children and Drew and I are allergic to milk and two of the kids are allergic to corn…so that made the decision easy….fruit salad out, green salad in. Of course, even though we have corn allergies, my mother made the best stuffing I have ever eaten! It is cornbread stuffing, not that gross soggy crouton stuff. I was unwilling to compromise on that…so we just make sure we also have mashed potatoes. And much to Drew’s dismay, I really only like dutch apple-pie. I am not a pie girl. I think most pie is just disgusting. So since I am the cook, I only make apple pie. Once in a while, we will buy another kind of pie, for Drew.

Another thing that makes us Lunds? We LOVE the beach and the redwood trees. THAT is home. THAT is the place to be. We may be landlocked while we are in college or establishing our careers. But the beach and the forest feed our souls. My kids love those things, and so do Drew and I. Whenever we can take the chance, we go. Luckily for us, we don’t usually have to go too far 😎

Starting on the back row from the left….Johnathan, Jacob, Joshua, Payton (Dani and Richard’s daughter), Richard (Kyle’s best friend), Dani (Richard’s wife). Front row starting from the left….Allison, Tammy, Sarah, Darren, Spencer, Iasmin, Kyle…..and the little guy in the front, Kyle’s mini-me, Ryan (the Lord knew they had to be 20 years apart because I could not handle both of them in the house at the same time!). The only one missing is Daniel…because he is serving his mission in Redlands, California. Daniel falls between Jacob and Allison.

I love that they are willing to spend time together and help one another.

Now, you need not suppose that our relationships are just super easy and happy all of the time. We fight and argue plenty. But we don’t take pictures of that. Plus, we have spent A LOT of time learning how to talk to one another and understanding our own personal feelings. There are still the occasional times when one or more of us will not be talking to another one because emotions are running high and we are trying to manage the relationship and/or the situation. But for the most part, we have learned to love and help one another despite each of our individual weaknesses. AND we recognize we are all works in progress and sometimes we are going to make mistakes and hurt each other. The trick is not to let our relationships stay in that place, but to work through our issues.

You just need to know that even though it has been a lot of work to have such a large family, I wouldn’t trade any of them! I love them all! Each one has taught me something unique and I have had to change and grow in learning how to parent that individual. I could go through the list, but it might just take too long. And they can just read it in my journal after I pass away. We are at a very fun stage…we are adding new people to our group….and from here, I think we will explode! I cannot wait to see who else will become a part of us!

Well….it is time….time for me to write. I have been AWOL on the blogsphere for quite awhile. That is because for the last two years I have been doing some serious grieving. I haven’t known how to talk about it, without talking about IT. So I have just quit talking, and brought everything back into my little cocoon, to go through the grief and loss metamorphosis.

What happened to me? That is not necessarily significant. It is just a deep, deep loss that involves other people, who are still living, so it wouldn’t really be fair of me to drag all of the details out into the public arena. It isn’t even really new…..although, I am experiencing new grief associated with the old issues. That is an interesting phenomenon. And I will talk about that in a little bit.

I guess today, I just want to talk about how I have changed because grief has been a pretty constant companion for the last two years. It has been very private. I have eluded to it here and there. But even most of the people who I interact with every day? They don’t know. I haven’t told them. It is so very private and personal. My husband knows. God knows. And I have a couple of close friends who I have shared bits and pieces with but most of them do not know the entire picture or how deep the sorrow and sadness really are.

Two years ago I had the opportunity to attend a Time Out for Women. One of the speakers, Virginia Pierce, spoke about grief. She said this, “Only you will know when it is time to peel yourself up off of the floor.” For some reason, her words really hit me and I wrote them down in my notebook and put a star next to them and then I thought, that is really good. Now when I need it, I will have those words. I had no idea I was just days away from needing them….days. I have been hugging the floor. I have not been totally down and out. I am still extremely functional….but that is because I learned to shut my emotions off a long time ago. When I need to, I do that. But for the last two years, I have been trying to process the grief instead of stuffing it. I have shared bits and pieces of these thoughts in other posts….how I use food to stop feeling, how I have been learning about myself and stuffing my feelings, and how Heavenly Father has been trying to teach me that is not a healthy way to live. Then when all of this hit, it was like He was saying, OK, now you know the skills and you know your preferred patterns of behavior…..now apply your new learning…..GO!! And I hugged the floor….because the pain was so deep and severe I didn’t know how to manage, even though all of the theory was running around in my brain. The application was a LOT more work. And now, the instructions are to write….process…..stick it out there. Ugh!

I have a friend whose mother became terminally ill….about the same time this all hit with me. We were all supportive of her in our little group. A year into things, her mother passed away. Now it has been a year since her passing. My friend was going through all of this while I was managing my grief, but at that point, she didn’t know. At one point when she was really struggling, she called me and said, Hey, can I come over and talk to you? I don’t really know why, but I just feel like I should talk to you. Definitely, come on over! She did. As she was expressing her grief and sorrow and the difficulties she was having, she said, I really don’t know why I needed to talk to you, except you are so easy to talk to. It was then that I told her…..I know why. It is because I am experiencing the same grief you are but for different reasons. Heavenly Father knew we needed each other. We talk pretty regularly now. We share stories of how we are managing. We recognize some days are good. Some days are bad. We have shared how we cry in the middle of the night and wake up our husbands because we are trying to sob quietly, but we are shaking the bed. Then they roll over and hold us until the sobbing stops.

Here is an amazing experience I had with that friend. We were at a social gathering for our church. She came to sit with me and started talking about something she was learning about managing grief. Another woman who was sitting with us started sharing the grief she had been experiencing because her best friend had passed away. I was aware of her friend’s passing, but was not aware of the relationship between the two women. And then a fourth woman started sharing the grief she had been experiencing because of the passing of her sister three years earlier. When I chose where to sit, I was completely unaware of the grief of the other two women, and if my first friend had not started discussing grief, I would have never known! But here we were, all four of us, unaware of each other’s realities and all struggling with the same emotion! It was definitely a blessing for each of us to be aware of and share with each other our feelings……one of the Lord’s tender mercies in our grief.

This year, I have had two sons get married. I LOVE the women they have chosen! They are good people! My boys LOVE them! And they are so happy together! At both weddings, I am suppose to be happy, celebrating this momentous event in the lives of my people. It is suppose to be full of joy, happiness! I know that. I am happy for them. I really am. But the major life event (the wedding) is reminding me of the grief I am experiencing. I am so full of sorrow and sadness that I have to try to hold back my tears until after the ceremony and the celebrations and then when it is all over I come home and I just cry and cry and cry…for days. And I was crying before too. Does that happen to anyone else? It is so strange to have happiness and grief occupy the same space. Each wedding has been a little bit different in that I have cried about different things….nothing really related to the wedding itself—just different things that remind me of my grief. It is all just old stuff. Because of my super compartmentalizing skills, I can usually put my tears away to manage the events but if I am really trying to be true to myself and my feelings, I have to allow myself time and space to express my grief. So weird.

Here is what grief has done for me:

• It refines the feelings of the heart. I am more sensitive to others, more willing to reach out to help those who are hurting.
• It causes reflection and timeout. I have slowed life waaaay down. I use to pack my day full. Now I intentionally leave it open. I spend time sitting and doing nothing but thinking and feeling. That has actually been some of my very most productive time in helping me to define who I am and what I want and where I am going.
• It refocuses priorities. All of those things that I once thought were so important and HAD to be done. They aren’t that important. They can wait….even if that means other people are not happy with me. The important people have my time and my energy, my children and my spouse, my family. All of the other things other people would like me to do to accomplish their agendas? I don’t have time for that.
• It enlarges perspective. I see more–more people, fewer things; more light, less darkness; more joy, less worry.
• It realigns desires and purposes. I evaluate why I want to do something and how important it is to me in terms of the happiness and joy it will bring to enhancing my relationships. If it doesn’t make life sweeter? Why am I stressing about including it in my life? I don’t need that.
• It makes life/decisions more intentional. I live life much more intentionally. I spend less time doing the things others wanted me to do and more time doing things that matter. I spend time smelling flowers, watching beetles, enjoying the sunrise or sunset, helping others, talking to my kids, spending time with my spouse.
• It draws my heart to God. I am so very thankful for the gifts and blessings he gives me! I am grateful for the people in my life! I like living!
• It exposes my weaknesses (per my friend). I can see where my priorities have been out of line with where I wanted my life to go and how I wanted my relationships to be.
• Grief touches all aspects of my life. It is everywhere!

I probably spelled that wrong….. (just so you know, I did….I spelled it Jerri….but then I asked Sun for the proper spelling…and I fixed it 🙂

I can tell it is really important for me to be writing today, because I decided to do it awhile ago and everything keeps getting in my way of sitting down and actually doing it. Sooooo many life changes have been happening this year! I think I will blog about some of them later. Today, I wanted to document something cool that has happened.

So my little daughter, Sun, is off at BYU I this semester. She graduated from high school, had an eventful summer of college decisions, and eventually landed at the I. She called earlier this week because she was having her second week away from home meltdown. She didn’t have one when she left. She didn’t have one the first week. It hit this week.

For you to understand the significance, you will need a little background. My dear, sweet daughter does not like to think about or deal with her emotions. She has plenty….more than the boys, so much more than the boys. But she is super stubborn, especially when it comes to knowing how she is feeling and acknowledging that. (She is more work for me than the boys too….as far as getting her to talk about her emotions.)

For the last seven years, we have been working with her. I recognized that she has this pattern of behavior: When she feels overwhelmed, she just quits working and finds some way to distract herself from her responsibilities. She keeps ignoring the piling work until it is so overwhelming or the deadline is so close that she just completely implodes and has a breakdown. She doesn’t usually ask for help until I press her so hard that she finally admits to me where she is and what she is struggling with. When she was younger, I rescued her. As she has gotten older, I have reminded her of the pattern, tried to help her plan for the pattern, and encouraged her to ask for help before the problems are so overwhelming that she cannot manage them. Every year, for the past seven years, we have been adjusting the process and her responses, recognizing the triggers, and dealing with some major catastrophe, usually school related. If the truth were told, there was a question of whether or not she was actually going to finish the work for graduation. But she did it! And she didn’t need the safety net that we put into place!! YEA SUN!!

As part of this process, at one point in her junior year, I think, I was completely exacerbated in trying to help her. I prayed silently for insight. I was pulling out all of my hair trying to get her to talk to me about what she was thinking and feeling. “I don’t know” she would say. OK….I relate to that. When I was her age, whenever an authority figure starting berating me, my emotional functioning would completely shut down and so would my brain. I think I just turned everything off. I really could not think. NO thoughts…..zero. So I understood what she was saying.

And THAT was the birth of Gerry…..

My daughter is visually oriented. She learns through music and what she can see. I recognized that she needed a go-between in her head between her conscious mind and her emotions that she could SEE. I told her to create a little person in her brain….Is it a boy or a girl? She told me. What does he look like? She told me. What is his name? She told me. What does he do? She told me. He doesn’t talk. He holds note cards. Sun can ask Gerry questions and he puts the answers on the note cards….in her head! She can say, what am I feeling? Why am I feeling that way? What should I do instead? Gerry is a non-threatening tool she can use to identify what is going on inside of her without having to come up with it on her own or feeling pressure when she needs to recognize what is happening. It was a painful process the first time we used Gerry. Sun thought I was weird and she did not want to participate. But when she would close her eyes and look at Gerry and think and relax….Gerry always came up with the answer. Sometimes that surprised her….that Gerry knew. Gerry ALWAYS knows. Because Gerry is really just Sun…..she just didn’t have enough confidence in herself to identify the problem. But she has learned that she can trust Gerry. Gerry loves her and wants her to be happy. But most importantly, Gerry is not afraid. And Gerry can just tell her without any drama or pressure….and Gerry answers when she is ready for the answer.

This week Sun called to say, Mom, I am doing it again. I am overwhelmed. I have recognized that I am not doing my work. I am avoiding my homework. Well, you did just make a major move, change all your people, your environment, your schedule, your food, how you spend your time……I can see how you might be overwhelmed. But you are calling me during week two!!! You are asking for help!!! That is HUGE for my little girl! HUGE!!! She doesn’t usually ask for help until December. What are you going to do about that Sun? No one is there to bail her out. No one is in Idaho with her. She has to do it! She can do it! She is ready to do it! She was sharing her process with me of how she was recognizing that she is doing it again. I won’t go into all of the details, but she said, “Mom, I saw Gerry. On his note card, it said, “STOP SELF-DESTRUCTING”! I wanted to start crying! We talked through her strategies….strategies for success….the behaviors we have put into place and practiced at home. She is doing them! She is doing them without me! Way to go Sun!!! I knew you could do it! Gerry knew you could do it!!! Keep going!! Every day, waking up, feeling the fear, and doing it anyway! One day at a time!!

Often when we are trying to help someone else, we have to try and put ourselves in their place and see things from their perspective. What would help them? What do they need? When we do not think or learn like they do, our efforts to help them can be completely frustrating because they cannot do it like we do. And we cannot always think about it the way they do. We need help. We need a go-between. Thankfully, for all of us, our Father in Heaven knows each one of us. He can help us to adjust our words or our behaviors so that communication flows more clearly and easily between two people who are completely different. But we have to ask for the help. I am always amazed at the help I receive in such matters, when I ask. With my sweet daughter? Sooooo grateful for Gerry! I don’t think I could have ever come up with that!

This is my Aunt Janell and my Uncle Ed! They are the most amazing people!! I LOVE them dearly! They are a great example of what marriage should be and how it should look! It is hard for me to write about them because my feelings for them run so deeply!

Today my aunt is having surgery. Pray that all will go well for her. I called her on Saturday just to chit chat and catch up. I love talking with her!
 I am more like her than like my own mother. I LOVE her attitude and her spunk! When I visit with her, I feel like I know where I came from. I am a Biggs (but she would tell you that I am a Knapp….her mother’s side)!! I have the same attitude, the tenacity, the work ethic, and the same tastes for food and sugar and the ability to cook and unwillingness to eat stuff that tastes like garbage.

When I was a girl and we would go to Janell’s house, the food always tasted better. It was later that I learned her secrets. She likes fat :-)….mayonnaise instead of miracle whip, butter instead of margarine, sugar instead of artificial sweetener. My mother used all of the other things. Janell’s house was the place to be! It was where we gathered for the good stuff! Halloween? Janell’s house. Thanksgiving? Janell’s house. Christmas? Janell’s house. Hanging out for the summer? Janell’s house. Janell is the glue that keeps us all together.

I remember the entire family would gather at her house….me and my parents and siblings, all four of Janell’s kids, their spouses and their children, Ed’s parents, Nellie’s parents (as they got older). We would each bring our specialty dishes for the big feast. Janell had made homemade candies a lot of years and we always topped everything off with homemade ice cream and freezer preserved strawberries. My mouth is watering just thinking about the food. Then we would all sit around and talk and visit with each other. The women would work or clean in the kitchen….which was HUGE! And the men would all hang out and visit and watch TV in the family room. Most of the time the kids were out running in the pastures, chasing the cows, or down by the river, or jumping on the trampoline, or swimming in the pool. We were there for hours and hours….from as soon as we could get there in the morning until it was way past bedtime. Those were great days!!

The hallway in her house was so long and dark that as children we would see who could stay in the hallway the longest and try to make it to the end without scaring ourselves and each other silly. All the doors were pocket doors, so if someone was in one of the rooms and came out while we were playing in there we would all freak out and run back to the light! So much fun!

Sometime during high school, they moved back into town. After my freshman year of college, I came home to a divorced family and things not working very well at my father’s home. After a month at his house, I called and asked my aunt and uncle if I could stay with them. They readily agreed. That is where I was living when Drew and I got engaged. We were sitting on their front lawn on a warm August evening. It was late. And my aunt and uncle’s bedroom window faced the street and was open because they didn’t have air conditioning. As Drew and I were talking, I heard my aunt say, “Ed, get away from that window and leave those kids alone!” That is still one of my favorite memories! Not too long after that, they moved again, back out to the country. When I go home for a visit, I usually stay at their house. It is just home to me. Wherever they are, that is home! They are the constant!

This last year their health has not been very good. My uncle is 87 this year and my aunt turns 82! My parents are about 10 years younger. But it is my aunt and uncle who I look to for guidance and example. I know they will not be around too much longer and then I will dearly, dearly miss them!! How grateful I am for their love, their support, their example of righteous living and leadership and how life should be lived. I really don’t know what my life would have been like without them! They are such a HUGE part of my heart and my life and who I am.

I am my uncle’s baby. When I was born, my father was serving over seas in the military, so my mother and I lived at Ed and Janell’s house. Their youngest child is about nine years older than I am. So I WAS the BABY! I don’t know how long we lived there, but it was for a while. My uncle has always called me ‘Sweat Pea’. They both love me dearly, and I know that! Nellie told me on Saturday when I called that she has always loved me like I was her own….and she has. I have felt that. As I was getting off of the phone with her, I told her that I loved her and she said to me, “Ya, but I love you more!” So today I pay tribute to her and to my uncle and express my total and complete gratitude that my Father in Heaven sent me to a home where I would have access to their example!

Here I am at WordPress….it has been a journey.  It has been a while since I have posted.  There are good reasons for that.  Hopefully in the next few days I will enlighten you, if you’d like to know!  In the mean time, take a look around.  I updated the header, family photos and the general look and feel here in my space on the web.

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter. — Izaak Walton

Spike Spike came into my room at 3 a.m. sobbing hysterically.  I had him climb into bed with me while I held him….since I was mostly asleep and needed to be up in two hours. 

Buddy, what’s the matter?? 

Why didn’t you put my name in the concrete??

(We have a cement slab in the backyard that needed to be replaced when we moved in, April of 2009.  To commemorate our new home, after the slab was poured, we all wrote our name into the concrete.  Spike was born in July of 2011.)

In the back yard? That concrete?

Yes, (sniffle, sniffle, ….sob)…..

When we poured that concrete and wrote all of our names into it, you weren’t here yet and we didn’t know you were coming.

But you should have put my name in the concrete too!!

But you were still living with Heavenly Father and we didn’t know you were going to be coming to this house.  We thought everyone was already here. 

You should have known I was coming!!

Well, Heavenly Father knew you were coming and He knew when.  You arrived at exactly the right time to be able to do all the very important things Heavenly Father wants you to do.  If you had come earlier, you might miss some of those things.  He sent you at exactly the right time.  Because He doesn’t make mistakes.  You came exactly when He knew you should.  And we are so excited that you came to our house!!  We love you!  Having you come, when we didn’t know you were coming was like getting an extra Christmas present!!!  Who wouldn’t want an extra Christmas present????!!

That seemed to quash the drama.  I still had to let him sleep on the couch in my bedroom. Such a sensitive little soul that boy!

I decided I wanted a few of my stories down for posterity.  I don’t know how many I will write, but this is the first one.

LOVE the purple eye shadow! 😜

My senior year in high school, my parent sat us down in April to let us know that they would be getting a divorce.  I was just devastated.  I knew my parents had problems and fought sometimes, but I had no idea things were rough enough to consider divorce.  My dad sat us all down and said, “Your mother loves someone else and she is leaving us.”  The truth was that my dad was kicking her out. 

Anyway, you already know I am the oldest of six.  I knew with my mother leaving, and the fact that I would soon graduate from high school, my dad was going to want me to step into her role and keep things functioning.  I did not feel up to the task and I had plans for my life.  I was just getting to the point where I could fly and I was terrified that I was going to get stuck cleaning up a mess that wasn’t my responsibility.  Inside, I recognized that I was not responsible for the position my parents had put themselves and their children in.  But at almost 18, I also had no idea what to do or where to go.

So I did what you do when you don’t know what to do—I asked a trusted adult.  My band director, Mr. Elkington, was a member of our Stake High Council.  He knew my parents.  He knew me.  I had worked with him in band for the last three years. We were both trumpet players and I knew he cared about me. 

The day after my parents told us, I didn’t feel up to attending school.  I was too sad.  I knew I would just cry and cry and cry the entire day.  I was the happy girl at school.  I helped other people change their attitudes and see the brighter side of life.  But I was not in a place to do that on that day.  So I stayed home and sobbed all day.  The only problem was it was the day before a band concert.  I was the first chair trumpet player in the top band.  Missing rehearsal the day before a concert was death.  Never a good choice.

After school was over and I was sure I wouldn’t run into any of my friends, I went to find Mr. Elkington to tell him why I wasn’t in rehearsal.  I found him in the teacher’s lounge and asked if I could speak with him.  We went out to his truck and I sat in the front seat and poured my heart out to him.  I expressed all of my sorrow and my fears and told him that I didn’t have any idea what I should do or how I should handle the situation.  He listened to me cry for two hours.

Then he asked me some questions.

Do you want to go to college?       Yes.
Do you know where you are going?   No clue.
What kind of grades do you have?      Great ones.
Have you taken the SAT or ACT?      No, what is that?
Do you have any money?      Some, but not a lot.
You need to go to BYU.  Great, where is that?
Utah.  Utah??!

OK, Carin, I need you to do a few things.  Are you willing to do them?  I will do whatever you tell me to.

First, sign up to take the ACT.  Then go to counseling center and ask about a FAFSA application and start filling that out.  Call BYU and have them send you an application for enrollment.  You will need three people to write you letters of recommendation.  I will write one and then you need to find two other people to do that for you.  Can you do that?

By May I had received my acceptance letter to the University.  Mr. Elkington had connections at the University.  He called one of them and told him that I was coming and that I had to have a job in order to be there.  Would he please save a spot for me so that I could pay for my expenses.  He would.

Once I was accepted, I applied for housing.  I had always wanted to be in a sorority.  The dorms were the next best thing.  I had a friend from church who was also attending BYU.  She wanted me to room with her in an apartment building because it would be so much cheaper.  I appreciated her logic, but I just wanted to live in the dorms so badly that I decided I would do it for a year and then reevaluate.  I wanted to live in Heritage Halls, but they were full.  There was room in Helaman Halls, however.  At this point, I didn’t care too much.  I just needed somewhere to live.  I got in!!  And I had enough money saved to pay for my initial deposits and rent. 

I was super excited!!!  I had housing!  I was admitted to the University!!  Now I just had to get there.

Once again, a miracle occurred.  An older friend, who had graduated from the University, was returning to get her teaching credential.  She would drive me out there with her.  I didn’t even pay her for gas.

My father was not happy.  He begged me to stay home and attend U of O.  He would pay for my expenses.  I could live at home.  He would pay for tuition…….just stay home!

I knew from past experiences that my father would start out with the intentions he promised.  Then, over time, sometimes not even very much time, he would find other reasons why he just couldn’t keep his promises.  Then I would be stuck, with no options. 

I decided that the chance for freedom outweighed the promises that would not be kept.  Once I had decided I was going, I just kept plowing forward. 

I will forever be eternally grateful for Mr. Elkington and his counsel.   Literally, he affected my eternity.  I met Drew at BYU in the dorms.  We now have ten beautiful children.  I recognize that getting into the Y in May of my senior year for the fall was a miracle!!  With my children who have attended the Y, applications are due December 1st the year prior to enrollment.  Decisions are made by March!  I didn’t even apply until April!!  I LOVE my education and I use it every day!!  I wanted to document this story in my life to remind myself and others, that God can do His own work!  He doesn’t need us.  But He allows us to participate in the process for our growth and development.  If I had known the process for enrollment and how competitive it was at BYU, I may never have applied.  But I was completely naive.  I just did what I was told, and because I acted in faith, the Lord did the rest.

Well, this ‘get back into blogging thing’ is harder than I thought.  My emotions for the past year have been all over the place.  I am learning to manage sadness better….past sadness and present sadness.  Lucky for me the Lord is giving me plenty of opportunity to practice it.  I am just tired of it.  Crying all the time is really stinky, in that your nose is stuffy and you have puffy eyes and your make up runs everywhere.  And then when people say, ‘what’s wrong?’ and you just say, ‘I’m sad’ but can’t really tell them why because there are so many reasons.  Blah!  Too much sadness.  Guess I have been stuffing it for only 30 years…so I can’t really expect it to be over in a day or two.

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Today, I am actually feeling really happy….grateful for my life and the blessings I have—frustrated about plenty of things, but feeling like I can actually accomplish some goals and make some headway.

I have to remind myself, as I feel frustrated with where I am and how slow this whole healing thing is going. that I am doing so much better than I have in the past, even if the scale doesn’t necessarily reflect the progress I have made.

It is time to recommit myself to taking care of me–not just emotionally, but physically as well—eating right, sleeping more and exercising more regularly.  I used to exercise all the time!  I loved it!!  Then I had so many babies so close together that consistent, hard exercise seemed unrealistic.  Now I have the time and the desire, but my body is having trouble cooperating. Do you have any idea how much harder exercise is with an extra 60 pounds?  Blah!!!  Now I have to be diligent in my food intake as well.  More self discipline.  Ugh!

I was going to give you an update on the fam, but I think it is wrong of me to post the kids lives on my blog, since six of them are adults……I should probably let them share or not share their own news.  But just to satisfy your curiosities, no marriages yet.  At this point, I am not sure how much they are even dating…….  Nosy mothers don’t get very far.

I am rereading that book series.  That might be why more of the sadness is surfacing.  I think I cleaned out some or even a lot of it, but obviously not all of it.  So more work on that front.

Guess what?  Yesterday was my 28th anniversary!!!  Twenty-eight years of marriage!!  Can you believe it?

copyright:  Karen Larsen photography

I should probably actually get to the reflections part.  Here goes.

• I love my husband more now than I did when we first married.  He is an amazing man, who is kind, sweet, adorable, and he loves me and worships the ground I walk on.  He is gentle and sensitive and he cares.  For all of our differences, and disagreements over the years, we know each other better and appreciate each other more.  What would I do without him?
• Parenting is just plain hard.  I thought after so many children that I would know what I was doing.  True, I am a better parent than when I started, but each and every child makes me learn something new in parenting that individual.  They are all exhausting.
• I am going to venture to say that the older they get, parenting seems more difficult.  Not kidding.  When they were little, I was in charge of everything–from what they ate to when they slept, who they played with, and what they wore.  I almost always knew where they were and what they were doing.  Now, I have no clue.  Though I love my adults and love being their mother, I rarely know where they are or what they are doing, and sometimes when they tell me, I really wish that they hadn’t.  And our conversations take way more time!!
• Money really doesn’t matter so much.  I really thought while we were so young and struggling that when we made what we are making now, life would be so easy to manage because we would have plenty of resources.  Not so.  We spend a ton more and not on anything fun like huge family vacations or new automobiles or even a house.  We pay for travel for children, tuition that was short, housing that couldn’t be met, food at the end of a college month.  And we haven’t even started paying for wedding things yet.  Yikes!!
• Though I hate moving, it does make you clean out your stuff!  We have not moved for almost 10 years.  The garage will testify to that fact.  I hate cleaning the garage.
• As life slows down, I have more time for reflection.  People don’t ask me to do as much as they once did.  Most of my friends with little people don’t ask me to watch their kids.  I still have tons to do.  I just tend to do it by myself.  All of my friends who are my age, have gone back to work and the young moms all hang out with each other.  I spend a lot of time preparing for seminary, and working around the house and just cleaning out my emotional closets.  I am ready to start managing some yard work and tackling housing projects.
• The Lord has been so very good to us.  We have definitely had our trials and our heartaches and we will undoubtedly have more.  I mean, think about it.  Life is hard for all of us.  There are a lot of learning experiences, for everyone.  As my children grow, they will each have their own.  I know it will be a different learning experience to watch them struggle through their issues while I just do what I can to help them.  We have had some things like that, but nothing like watching your children manage the issues of their children.  I would bet that is a whole different ball of wax.
• The gospel is still true.  I hope I will continue to be true to the gospel.

copyright:  Karen Larsen photography