The Game of Life

My children play video games and really who doesn't these days. I have even been known to dabble in a golf game on the Wii. I can tell you it isn't pretty folks. Jaxon has several favorites that include many variations of the favored Mario games. It got me to thinking how our lives are a lot like being in a Mario game.

The fight never ends with what ever outside forces that comes to stand in our way. We have to keep moving forward. Standing still or going backwards is just not one of the options. If the character keeps moving to the "right", they will usually continue to move in the direction that keeps them moving forward. Occasionally a little side bar or bubble will appear with "notes" that tell us where or what we are suppose to be doing to keep moving forward. Which on a side note is my Jaxon's motto - Keep Moving Forward. It is from the Disney show, Meet the Robisons.

There is evil all around in one form or another. Sometimes the evil forces come in the most innocent form - even cute but they nevertheless they are dangerous and very destructive. There are portals or places that will move us onto the next level. Situations that once we have the keys that open the "door", we are allowed to move on.

As we do what is right, we get stars, hearts, or other things that are rewarded to us.

We all play at different levels. The level that I play best at may not be where another person plays well. That is why there is a beginning and expert and every level in between. There has to be a place where we can experience some level of success. Just because I have conquered a major villain, does not mean I didn't struggle to get there.

Often no matter how good I am, I just cannot pass a certain area or move forward in the game. There are occasions when no matter what I do, I expire. It is at those times that I hope that I have built up enough "lives" or good experiences to pull from that I can start anew and keep playing. In the game, I have friends who help me along the way. They are invaluable to helping me arrive at my destination. My weapons are usually the talents given to me or my character.

So in examining the world as if seen through the eyes of Mario, it really isn't too far off from what reality is like. Only I could use a little more time between what is thrown at me and definitely more motivational music. Also I could use a few more indicators when I am doing good and generally when I am just failing.

And if I am allowed to put in requests for what I want my game to be like, I would like to bounce just a little higher.

So the next time my children tell me that I just don't understand their games, I can honestly look at them and say, "I think I have a pretty good idea what it is all about. I have played this before:)"

Generations of Time

I have been born of goodly parents...and grandparents...and generations of parents that preceed those parents. There has always been the push for us as Latter-day Saints to find our ancestors but I have guilty of the "there will be a season for that and this is not it" excuse. Sorry I know that comes as a huge disappointment for those of you who thought that I was a avid geneologist. However, I have turned over a new leaf (get it, leaf on my family tree!) and I am going to try to do better. My thought process is that I can really only do temple work for one at a time anyway so if I start with one at a time, it is one more than I was doing. Ok, I know I should be doing more, but this one is going to have to have baby steps to get it done.

Anyway, I found a relative that is on my paternal grandmother's side and Alyssa is going to go do her baptism with the youth today and then I will finish it. I really am very excited to be a part of bringing progression to someone who has my genes or I guess I have hers. I remember going to the temple once - Tom and I thought we were suppose to be there to do sealings at 5 am only to find out that we were 12 hours off - so we stayed and did inititories as we didn't have time to do a session before Tom was suppose to be to work. I was so grateful that we decided to not waste the opportunity to serve as during the inititory process both the temple worker and I strongly felt that the person whose name we were doing was there. The sweet worker said with tears running down her face, "Can you feel that? She is here!" She, the woman whose name was on the pink slip of paper had lived four hundred years ago in a country far from mine during a time when religion was more of a cast system based on when and where and to whom a person was born. She had waited a long time for this opportunity and I believe she knew how important the work being done for her was to her progression. I was honored to be there that day.

I had been scanning through names and dates the other day and in the not to distant past on my mother's side of the family. I realized that my great-grandmother Hillegonda DeBoer died when I was nine years old. I do not remember her. I really don't remember anyone talking about her other than she and my great-grandfather Harm came from Holland to live in the Salt Lake Valley before my grandmother was born. That and they gave me a chest of drawers when I was born or very small which I still have in my possession. Because of this realization, I have decided that it is our responsibility to talk about our ancestors and their lives. How else do they become real to us? Or how else do we learn from their trials? I'm not talking about the preachy, "what not to do's" but respect for what they have been through and learning from it.

You know when you are a child and the teacher asks for some amazing ancestor story. Well I remember being the child who could lay claim to a relative knowing Brigham Young or something like that. Nothing too terribly exciting. Then a couple of years ago, a general authority stood up in our stake conference and told this story about a husband and wife who buried a son in Nauvoo just before the saints were drove out of the city, so they had to leave the grave and travel West. Later, the man was serving a mission and his wife had asked him to go back and rebury the child in another cemetary where he could be found later. He found the grave in disarray and thought not to move it, when a voice told him " Don't leave me here". The man moved the grave and placed a stone for identification so that future posterity would be able to find him. Everyone was so touched by the story about our responsibility to make our past part of our future. As it turned out, that husband and wife where my ancestors, Israel and Elizabeth Barlow. That would have made a great story in primary when I was younger.

Or the story of how Naomi Randell (the woman who wrote the primary song, "I am a Child of God") came to my Grandma Barlow (Helen) and asked her to put together a children's choir in Ogden so that they could sing the song. I didn't learn about that story until my grandmother died several years ago.

I have come to believe that if we want the past to become part of who we are and learn from those who have gone before, we have to know them. Learn to love who we are by staying in touch with that which is good in our own posterity. I am going to attempt to find myself by finding my ancestors. If nothing else, I will have a good story to tell the next time someone asks:)

Trust

I have been stressed a bunch lately. Some of it is stress that has come about because of the events of time. Some of the stress is the stress that I create myself. Some of it is just stress that happens from being a mom and then you put me into the equation and that doubles it. Type A personality doesn't even begin to express my mentality or demeanor. It has taken me years to "let go" of some of the control that I think that I need to have over situations. For instance, I have been the nurse manager of one clinic or another for more than fifteen years. During that time I have been in charge of other nurses and this includes scheduling. For that same amount of time, I have listened to nurses be unhappy with the scheduling mostly because they are only thinking of themselves and their own situations. I understand that. But I, for whatever reason, took this very personally even to the point of making myself sick about what was going to be said concerning the schedule. Recently, I came to the realization that I did not have to put myself through this every month and especially at holiday times, if I let them choose themselves what they would work and not work. Not always does it work out that they get exactly what they ask for but when grumbling arises, all I have to say is, "who scheduled you for that day?" Funny but rarely do I have to defend myself.

I have been racking my brain for a solution to the difficulties that we as a family are experiencing which range anywhere from financial to emotional to just simply what do we want to be when we grow up. I have made myself not just a little crazy attempting to come to a conclusion when today I attended an institute class that our Stake President puts on once a week. His subject was on the first chapters of Luke. I went with the attitude of learning and I am grateful that I did because I was most definitely taught. He talked about trust and faith. I never thought of them being interchangable in meaning and value. The commandments are there for our safety and benefit and how much do we trust or have faith in Jesus Christ that we will follow them. Do we just have a little so we rely on our own understanding and knowledge or do we turn it over to the Lord. I have fallen far short of turning it completely over to the Lord and frequently forgotten to trust that He knows what is best for me and my situations.

The other thing that President Marcum touched on was adversity. He asked who we thought we were that we didn't deserve adversity in our lives. Did we think were were above trials? Or did we think that we should just sail through life free of care or worry? After this reprove, I have attempted to rededicate myself to thinking more positive of the blessings that I have enjoyed because the Lord recognizes me, my type A personality and my constant pleadings with Him for help. He wants me to ask because it opens up the lines of communication so that He can hear and answer and I can listen and serve.

This is just like I remember

Christmas always brings back some of the most sweet memories for me. I remember Christmas in Southern Idaho always involved lots of cousins and time at my grandparents houses. In a way I am a little sad for my children because the excitement and chaos that flash in my memories are so different from what theirs will be. We don't hang out with Tom's family because their lifestyles and habits are so very different from ours (that would have to be covered in an entirely different blog) and my family is close in spirit but live farther away. It is a different time for all of us.

First memory - my Grandpa and Grandma Schlund lived in a little home on a big farm about thirty minutes from my home. We went there at least once a month and spent about every third Christmas or so at their home. My grandmother was an excellent cook and always made the foods that my dad liked. She was a really happy lady or at least she seemed so when we were around. My grandfather was a quiet, subdued man. He didn't have much to say and seemed kind of grouchy. As I got older, I figured out that he would do just about anything for me if I would sing to him. He loved to listen to me sing.

I remember going to their home one Christmas and somehow we talked them into opening most of our presents on Christmas Eve. It was the most anticlimatic Christmas ever. The funny thing was that my grandmother warned us that Christmas just wouldn't be the same, but she let us do it anyway. We played pool with my grandpa that Christmas. I don't remember if that was was their Christmas present or not but they had finished their basement and put a pool table down there. This was not something that people did in the seventies. Basements were supposed to be cold storage for food not playrooms. I remember my grandpa laughed a lot that Christmas and his laughter made me really happy.

Second memory - we lived next door to my mom's parents and we spent a lot of time at their house. But every Christmas it seemed that on Christmas eve, we had a party at the Barlow's. It seemed like everyone came, even though to a little girl it probably was just the family. We had a talent show of sorts. I loved this because my aunt and uncle would play organ/piano duets. My grandparents had a pitched roof upstairs that had two rooms, a small bedroom with a fluffy full bed and a bigger bedroom that had lots of twin beds in it. The cousins got to sleep in that room. I remember watching the automatic outside light for most of the night wondering what Santa would bring us. It was always so much fun to be there for Christmas.

Third memory - I had just gotten married on December 19, 1985 and I wanted to go see the lights at Temple Square. I had heard my mother talk about how beautiful they were and how much she wanted to go see them and that never happened because my dad hated to go to Utah. The Christmas we got married was bitter cold and snowed constantly. So I still don't remember how I talked Tom into going to Utah except that we didn't have much money to go anywhere else. As we got closer to Utah, I began to realize that my new husband also didn't care for Utah much. We arrived at Temple Square, drove around the block attempting to find a parking space, nearly getting into three weather related accidents only to have Tom say..."See, there are the lights. Have I ever told you how much I hate Utah?" With that he turned around and drove back to Idaho. We didn't stop until we reached Pocatello.

Fourth memory - Mikael was about eight and he needed to have surgery on his femur. He was tripping himself when he walked because his foot turned in so much. The surgeon at PCMC thought that a left femoral trochanterosteotomy would fix the problem. This meant that his femur would be cut in half, twisted and then plated back together. The surgery would last approximately six hours or so. It wasn't the first surgery that he had ever had but for some reason I was really nervous about this one. Sometimes knowing is scarier than not knowing. Being a nurse, I knew all the complications for this particular procedure and I was afraid for my little boy.

We chose to do it at Christmas because Mike had a hard time in school anyway and so we didn't want him to miss too much and this would give him the four months after that he needed to recooperate before he started baseball. He was going to have to be nonweight bearing for four months to give the bone time to heal. Actually Christmas turned out to be an amazing time to be at PCMC. There were opportunities everyday for the kids to have good things happen. Someone famous came to visit everyday and Mike was adorable so we were signing a press release just about everyday so that his picture could appear in or on one media venue or another.

Before we went to the hospital though, I thought that something really special was in order so I arranged for us all (Tom, Mike, Alyssa, Grandma Schlund, and myself) to visit Temple Square to see the lights. It was amazing and the kids loved it. Because it was below zero outside, the visitor centers were void of visitors and we pretty much had the place to ourselves. The sister missionaries were delighted to have someone to talk to and were more than willing to take us around on our own personal guide tours. In one of the visitor centers, there is a room where the lights are all turned out at one point and it looks like you are standing in the middle of the galaxy. I was not aware until seconds before that this would happen and being the mom that I am I searched frantically for my little ones when the lights came back on. My mother was crying when the lights came back on as was the sister missionary. When we got upstairs, both attempted to tell us what happened when the lights went off. Mikael was standing between the missionary and my mom and he grabbed both of their hands and whispered "this is just like I remember from before." My mom asked him "Before when?" And in his sweet eight year old voice, newly being baptized by just a few weeks said, "Before I was here. You know in heaven."

I am grateful for these moments that I remember. The sweet Christmas memories that come flooding back when I choose to allow myself to place myself back in time. Merry Christmas!

24

Twenty-four years ago, I was a very unsure nineteen year old with plenty of dreams and no common sense. But I knew one thing for sure, I loved Tom Edelmayer. We were standing on the edge of the rest of our forever together. Somedays I wish that I could go back to that day and feel the excitement of not knowing what was going to happen and dreaming of all that could. Yet there is a pleasant satisfaction in knowing that I know him and he knows me. I am grateful for the little things that we have hung onto throughout the years that identify our love for each other. I am not even sure that we remember anymore why they got started in the first place but we continue to use them like comfortable blankets.

I fell up a mountain for him when we met. We went up to Meadow Lake for a picnic. I challenged him to a race up a short trail (full well knowing that he would let me win) and half way up, I tripped. I slid without even getting my hands out in front of me. I believe I had dirt in my teeth and other odd places that are not ok to talk about on this blog. He stiffled his laughter long enough to pick me up and attempt to dust me off without inappropriate first date touching. I was mortified and truly believed that he would drop me off at the end of the date and sigh "Good riddence". But instead he smiled with his grey blue eyes, kissed me on the cheek and told me that he would call me. I told my roomates that he was the man I was going to marry. Fortunately for me he allowed me the opportunity to fullfill that prophecy:)

As a nurse, I frequently care for people with chest pain and I ask them to describe the pain to me. I usually have to ask questions like..."Is it a sharp pain like someone is stabbing you? Or a dull ache like heartburn, radiating down your arm and up into your neck?" I think this is a lot like what happens after this many years of being married. I remember when we first met and for many years after we were first married. He would walk into the room or brush up next to me and my heart would quicken its pace, beating rapidly, sharply. Now it is more like my heart moves in rhythm with his, radiating through our whole home when we are in sync. I loved the quick excitement that our youth brought but I am content with the strong, radiating comfort that our maturity brings.



I am grateful for his involvement in his children's lives. This is a man who was involved in many activities, hunting, fishing, golf, sports of all kinds. He was almost 26 years old when we married and I can honestly say that for many years I felt like I ran a "close" second to activities and his family. However, as our children have grown up following their dad around and frequently participating in those activities, his love for those activities became something more. It became about his love for his children. He no longer goes to play golf for himself. He goes to watch and tweek his children's golf game as they develop their own loves for the things he once loved to do. I love his enthusiasm for their talents and his willingness to share how he feels about them with anyone that will listen.

Over the years, if there were one word that I could attach to Tom it would be honest. Honest in every aspect of his life. I think if there were a gene for honesty, Tom has it in the nucleus of every cell of his body. He tells it how it is. Never pulls any punches. He would never slight anyone or anything. Take for instance his employment. I have never known any foundation that he has ever formed and poured that was more than 1/16th off square. For any one that knows concrete, that is extremely difficult to do. He has never asked anyone that has worked for him to do anything that he wasn't willing to jump in and do himself. This work ethic also applies to his spiritual work in the church.

Twenty-four years is a long time for anything. We have beat the odds in so many ways. I remember going to Mikael's neurologist when he was about ten for a check-up. It had been years since Tom had gone with us as he was busy making a living and I had kind of taken over that job. The doctor was surprised to see him and made the comment that he never would have bet that we would have stayed married. Marriages have a difficult time surviving normal everyday struggles. Add in there a chronically ill child, mounting medical bills, and a plethora of other odds and it really is amazing that we still like each other. As we face each new challenge that seem to arise at every corner we turn, I am so very grateful that we are doing it together, 24 hours of everyday, for the last 24 years.

I loved this man when I met him and I will continue to love him for many more years to come.

5 Deep Breaths

Do you know that on the inside of a Dove's chocolate that there are quip little quotes, comments, or future suggestions. I probably didn't know that because I don't usually eat Dove's chocolates, I am a mini Reese's peanut buttercup kind of gal but Jaxon chose those as his treat after his game last night. I was kind of surprised because normally Jaxon does not like to eat chocolate but this was his choice.

Today, Tom and Jaxon were going to McDonald's for breakfast (Jaxon's favorite pre-game breakfast) when Tom accidentally backed up and even though he had looked a little Jetta came around the corner and Tom caught her passenger door with his back bumper. Our pickup came out of it unscathed, the Jetta has a dent. Not so cool...

Later, our little boy's Madison Cats team that Jaxon plays on lost a game in a tournament that they have been playing in. We have decided that the boys are just not morning players as anytime they do play in the am, it takes till the four quarter to wake up. Hello, that is not your alarm you are hearing, that is the four quarter buzzer! They were bummed and as always the dad's (I blame testosterone) were on edge and full of suggestions of how they could do better. Needless to say, voices were raised and nerves were on edge.

The family hopped into the car and proceeded to "pick" at each other for one thing or another. I am certain that this never happens to other families or at least that is what Lifetime television has led me to believe. While this family togetherness is occurring, Alyssa opens up one of those Dove candies and reads the following: Take five deep breaths. She immediately relays this information to all of us. In fact she demanded that we follow the instructions from the chocolate wisdom. Amazingly enough five deep breaths are just the thing to do the trick for tense situations.

Maybe the exact cure for what ails us is something as simple as chocolate and deep breathing. Who knew?

Grasshopper and the Ants

So I have been thinking a lot about the economy. Really who hasn't. Over the last year, millions have lost their jobs. My husband included. What started out as "Things will be OK" has turned into "They are just things". Although it is very liberating to know that in a months time I have only spent money on bills and food, it is also somewhat scary to know that as Christmas approaches...well it is definitely going to be different.

I remembered recently the fable of the grasshopper and the ants. The grasshopper plays and plays and the ants work and work. Not only do they play and work but they are somewhat nagging each other as they do it. The grasshopper refuses to acknowledge that winter is coming and the ants refuse to take a day off, working their little antenna to nubs (or something like that). Winter comes quickly and catches the grasshopper "off guard" while the ants are prepared, warm and happy. The grasshopper begs the ants to let him in and they refuse and rebuke him for his idleness and he dies.

I personally like the nicer version of this fable in that the ants have pity on the grasshopper and help him repent by giving him jobs to "pay" his way to staying with the ants and sharing in their hard work. So here is what I have been thinking about...lots of us were playing the "grasshopper" roll. We refused to heed the warnings for the impending gloom and doom. Tomorrow, I will stock my food storage, save extra cash and get out of debt. . .Tomorrow is a long time away. . .we don't have to worry because it is tomorrow. I believe there were a few smart "ants" that paid attention to the signs and warnings and "followed the Prophet". So now I have spent time in the cold (so to speak) and I am repentent. I want to be with the ants, maybe let them embrace me and tell me it will be ok. Maybe they will allow me the privilege to warm myself at their good choices and forgive me of my foolishness.

I am grateful for the few wise choices that I did make. Jaxon asked the other day if we were done eating food storage cause he is not sold on this food concept. He really likes food for anyone who doesn't know that. Good thing he likes mac n cheese and ramen noodles. My little home is cozy not extravigant or showy. Heats for less and has a managable payment. I have an education that although I have to leave my "little people", they will be fed by my hard work.

I am exceptionally grateful for the little blessings everyday that help me to understand that the Lord loves me and is mindful of my needs. He forgives me for my foolish ways and allows me to show him that I can change. Indeed this has been a long winter. . . and I am looking forward to the warmth that I hope the spring might bring.