Letter # 1
September 3,
2012 (I’m mailing this on September 15th…because I kept forgetting
to buy stamps.)
Provo, Utah
Dear Family,
I keep
getting the nudge to write letters to you, my children, your spouses—who I love
every bit as much as my children—and grandchildren, and so, to quiet whoever is
the nudger is, I am writing letter number one. The person behind this gentle
reminder to write to you might be Grandma Rasmussen, or Aunt Pat, or your
cousin Matt Gleave, or even one of the babies I lost. I hope I do a good job, I
think they want you to know you are wonderful. And I do too.
This letter
will probably ramble. That’s how I think and how I write too.
When I
started this letter I was sitting in a meeting, organized by John Pontias, who
writes a blog that Dad reads, called Unblogmysoul. A woman in the
audience had brought her baby, maybe ten months old, and as soon as she sat him
down on the floor, he crawled off. Just then John introduced a speaker or
performer and the audience applauded. The baby stopped, sat up, and looked
around, as if the clapping was for him. When the applause died he took off
again, and again the audience clapped. Again he stopped to the applause. My
applause was double minded—once as a polite acknowledgment for the
presenters/musicians and enthusiastic applause for the darling crawler.
So it is how
I feel about each of you. You can’t hear it, but I am applauding for you (Dad
is too), for every good thing you do, for every tough trial you face and either
overcome or continue to work through. For the mornings you want to pull the
pillow over your head and instead, get up and stumble to the bathroom. I
applaud for when you make mistakes and right yourself and try again. The
world’s opinion of you, even my opinion of you (which is greater than I have ever told you) is not who you are. Only
God and the Savior know who you are. You don’t even who you are. Let go of your
harsh self-judgment. Mistakes make us grow and so, when you are sad or
discouraged, or when you think no one can love you, then listen…that will be me
you hear, applauding, having faith in you. And loving you. Dad too. Always.
There was a
woman at our table—at the meeting—that was eating Cheetos. She had access to a
napkin, but no matter how hard she wiped, the evidence was still there. She
finally licked her fingers. So it is with our unwise actions, they stain our
spirit. No matter what we tell ourselves, or others, or how well we hide it,
when we stand before God the evidence will be clear. For us the “licking of the
fingers” for the soul is repentance.
Then the evidence is gone, not just “licked off,” but gone. All the Savior asks
is for us to be sorrowful, it doesn’t matter how bad we are stained. He will
clean us up and complete us* and we
can have no fear of standing before God. Don’t be a Cheetos finger licker. Let
Christ do it right.
On Saturday
morning I found a recipe on allrecipes.com for tomato soup, using fresh garden
tomatoes. Judy and Glade Hunsaker had given me a lot of tomatoes so that was
what I was going to make: Garden Fresh Tomato Soup. And dye my hair. And go to
this meeting. I put the dye on my hair and then cut the tomatoes and onions,
added spices and simmered everything for an hour. Of course, as always, time got away from me. I barely
got my hair and face done, and we had to go. (Dad didn’t actually tap his foot
but I could hear it in my head.) We got home at 10:00 o’clock and I made a roux
for the tomato soup, simmered it again, adjusted the salt and seasoning and put
the pot in a sink full of cold water. When it was cool enough to bag and freeze
it was midnight, and I was tired and just wanted to be done with it.
I have a new
kitchen gadget; it holds bags open so you can fill them w/out spilling stuff
all over the place. I hooked up my handy-dandy, bag-holder with a gallon Ziploc
bag and filled it with tomato soup. I used a 2-cup measuring cup, because I
wanted to fill the bag quickly but it was way too wide and soup got all over
the outside of the bag, so I had to rinse it off. I was not smart enough to use
a smaller cup the second time, so that bag had to be rinsed too.
I was
grateful to be almost done. I zipped the second bag with an “I’m done,”
flourish, and put it under the faucet. The bag opened! It opened under the faucet. The most beautiful, fragrant,
redish-orange soup pored over the sink divider. I stood there with my mouth
open, doing nothing. When I came to my senses, I whipped the bag up and looked
at the soup, cascading down the drain and for one insane moment I considered
using a spatula to scrape it up and even considered licking the sink.
I didn’t
realize that until tonight that if I had put it the bag in the freezer, and it
opened once I closed the door, I would have had a far worse mess than the one I
did have. So now I don’t feel sorry for myself. I’m grateful I lost all that
soup in the sink. Remember this—whenever you think life is just awful, it could
always, always be worse.
At the
meeting on Saturday, John Pontius told a story about when he was teaching a
class. There was a girl—he called her Lynette--who always sat on the back row
in his class. She had made herself as unattractive as possible. “She even
smelled bad,” he said. But she was bright. She knew the answers to any question he asked. (She didn’t raise
her hand but she mouthed the answer.) One day he asked the class a personal
question and wanted each of them to answer. He started in the front of the room
and went row by row. The closer he got to the back row the further she slunk
down in her seat. When he got to her she barely shook her head, signaling she
didn’t want to answer.
At that very
second he had a vision. (Don’t disbelieve. Visions happen, impressions come,
and voices are heard. This comes from the Holy Ghost. In fact I think all of
you have had some kind of experience with the Holy Ghost, a feeling, a decision not to go somewhere. You might be prompted to make a phone call.
You might have uneasiness about something. Even when cooking, you might have
gotten an impression to add or delete an ingredient. You might meet someone so familiar, like you know them, and yet
you’ve never met them before. Be open to the gift, the great gift that you are
given at baptism. ) In John’s vision he was standing in a lovely little glen.
There were steps leading up and the most amazing woman was descending. “She was
brighter than the sun. I have never seen a woman so beautiful,” he said.
When she got
to him she said, “You don’t recognize me, do you?”
“No, I
don’t,” he said.
“I’m
Lynette,” she said.
And then the
vision closed and he was looking at the unlovely, earthly Lynette. “I have
never looked at anyone the same again,” he said. And neither should I, and
neither should you. We come to earth and do not have any idea who we are, or who our children are, or the guy down the
street is. Our unlovely mother—I’m speaking of myself here—might really be the
most slender, fit and organized person ever. But here I am, in this life,
looking like the Pillsbury Dough Boy, in cluttered chaos.
Let’s not
judge. It won’t be easy because people everywhere,—in our own family, even—hurt
our feelings (sometimes we’re “snarky”), others have things easier than we do,
have talents we would love to have,
look better than we do, etc. We don’t know who anyone really is. Not even
ourselves. If the vision about Lynette can be believed, and I think it can, we
are all as glorious as she. Let’s at least think of other people as amazing and
everything good that we could ever imagine, no matter how they look here. And
then let’s give ourselves a break and look at ourselves with some kindness and
maybe awe. You are an amazing human being with an amazing spirit, here on
earth, doing hard things, and good things, and stupid things, too. Do the best
you can and always know that you are here on earth for the experience, and what
an experience we are all having. Dare I ask you to be grateful? I will. Be
grateful for your interesting
experiences. Aunt Pat had the word “interesting” all figured out. None of us
are boring and none of us will escape this life w/out having our fair share of
times when we want to tear our hair out or someone else’s. Aunt Pat always
called those times interesting.
When I was
in high school I really wanted to sneak into a girl’s house and put Nair all
over her head, I wanted to tear her hair out, but was too chicken, so I thought
up a less aggressive way. Of course I didn’t do it, but for a while she gave me
lots of reasons to want to. Now I
look back on it, and am grateful that she did some of the things she did. I
might be in a totally different place, today, if she hadn’t. And yes, it
involved a boy. (I was young once.) My point is that she gave me some times of
real grief. I cried a lot. What she did wasn’t fair. Life isn’t fair. It was never meant to be fair. But that’s how we
grow and change and become better people, by dealing with the unfairness of it
all and working through it.
On Saturday
night, before the tomato soup fiasco, Dad was on his way to bed. He had to
leave the house at 6:00 to be at his new BYU ward. But, my toenails were a
mess. The polish was chipped and there is no way that the Pillsbury Dough Boy
can paint her own toenails. I asked Dad to touch them up. Not re-do them, mind
you, just paint over the worst spots.
He was tired
he was almost staggering, but came to do my bidding. Let’s use the magnifying
light, he said. (It’s the one from Grandpa Snyder.) So we positioned it over my
foot, which was on a chair, and I was holding the arm of the light so it
wouldn’t fall off the table. We looked like contortionists. Dad did pretty well
on the first foot. The big toe of the second foot just needed a bit at the base
of the toe, so he got the nail polish on the brush and immediately painted the
left side of my toe. “Erp,” I said.
“Oh dear,”
he said and then he tried again and painted my toenail and my toe a quarter inch
up onto the skin.
“Oh dear,”
he said again.
He grabbed a
napkin and wiped it as much as he could get off, but there was a big blurry
mess on my toe. It looked like a toe that had some kind of a communicable
disease. I didn’t have the nerve to ask him if we could use the nail polish
remover and start again, so I went to church with one big toe looking normal,
and one looking huge and blurry and infectious. And after his kindness, I
simply didn’t care—well, I almost
didn’t care. I tried to walk with one foot always behind me. It’s hard to do
that at church. People ask if you are all right. “Do you have a broken leg,”
they ask. You can’t say, “I just have a big, fat, red toe, but it’s not
catching.” People will think you’re mad.
Dad is a
kind man. He tried his best to help me. He got red nail polish on his hands and
on the bottom of my foot, too. Probably on the table and kitchen floor, I
haven’t checked. But he did his best for me. He always does his best for me. And
I got a good story out of it, to tell my Personal History group.
So, today,
don’t judge, and do the best for someone.
I love each
of you. You are amazing people. How amazing, we none of us remember.
Love,
Mom
PS Repent
and forgive. Hugh Nibley says that is the two things we need to do here on this
earth. Repent and forgive.
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