Full of light

I snapped this photo last Saturday just before Neil and I went out to dinner. I love it because it captures just how I feel these days: happy. Content. Full of light and invigorated by life.

It feels a little silly to blog when I have nothing to say other than "I am so much happier than I have been in years and years and years," but that's the truth.

Tonight I was at a flower & garden show with a friend. We had such a good time just wandering around looking at things and chatting. At one point we had stopped by a booth that was making customized orthotics, and we were talking about foot issues and she asked if I was training for anything right now, and I said I'd originally been training for a marathon but had to drop down to the half because of plantar fasciitis. We talked a little more about the time commitment involved in marathon training, and as we were talking I realized something--for the first time in years I am not using running as a method of control. I mean, I ran a marathon with a stress fracture, for crying out loud! And I am so happy and so content in my life right now that running is ancillary to my happiness, and I have not been able to say that since 2007.

Literally.

For so many years I felt like so many things in my life were out of my control--that I was suspended in limbo, unable to progress forward. And in the last five months I have felt absolutely drenched in the outpouring of heaven's blessings--literally, I have felt that there is not room enough to receive all that the Lord has given us. I am so incredibly grateful for the amazing friends that surround us here and the way I have just fallen in love with our life here.

I'm going to write that again because I can't emphasize it enough--I am so, so, so grateful for the friends we are making here. I don't think it is possible to feel more welcomed and loved than I have felt.

And my children are thriving. Really and truly thriving. We had a few very rocky months but we're coming through and things are SO good for everyone.

Neil is loving his new job. He feels valued and appreciated & that his work is measurably contributing to the company's success. Such a blessing after the last twelve years of entirely opposite treatment!!! (I really can't write much about that here but most of you probably know what I want to say.)

And I love our home here so much. Every day I just look around and I'm filled with such gratitude that we live here in this beautiful home and that we are able to do projects that make me love it even more (in the last two weeks we installed new double ovens and a Jenn-Air gas commercial-style gas cooktop and ALL THE HEART EYES).

I love our ward here. I love that my children are excited to go to church and that they are learning so much from so many good people. I love love love my calling and the chance to serve with the amazing women in the presidency and our absolutely fantastic group of Primary workers.

I love the library with its heirloom seed library and its child-sized door for storytime and its endless rows of books that make it double the size of any library I've been in before. I love the arts & design district which is always the high point of my runs and I love the trails along the river and the greenway that is full of friendly runners and the roundabouts that drove me nuts at first but now I can't live without them. I love the Christmas lights that are still up on the fountains and pine trees in the center of the roundabouts. I love that my kids can bike to school or to the playground and that there are always kids out playing tennis in the street or biking or starting up a game of baseball. I love the funny weekly paper that always gives me info about what exciting things are going on. I love the parks with their inventive play structures and free maple sugar bush tours (hello that was the best morning ever!!!). I love the schools that give my kids the opportunity to study violin and foreign languages and STEM and ceramics. I love seeing Isaac's excitement when I pick him up from programming club and Abigail's joy after rocketry club. I love that the soccer fields and baseball fields are both within biking distance from our house. I love the ponds and creeks everywhere--it seems like I can always hear the sound of water. I love the proximity to Costco and Trader Joe's and IKEA and Whole Foods and Hobby Lobby--this is the first time in more than a decade that I can be at a Target in five minutes instead of twenty-five! I love our fantastic piano teacher and all our friendly welcoming dog-walking neighbors that my kids always refer to by name & pet as they walk by: "That's Melvin with the sausage dog." "There's Elaine with the frisky black dog." I love the friends who show up at my door with soup when I have the flu and the friends who drive carpool with me and the friends who worry about class changes for next year with me and the friends who lovingly describe pie recipes while we run at 6 am and the friends who stay at my house until 11 pm and tell me we feel like family and the friends who tell my kids they can't just eat tortilla chips for dinner and the friends who drop by to chat & clean my kitchen while they're at it and the friends who invite me for movie nights and the friends who have us over for dinner because they have lots of kids too and don't mind the crazy and the friends who trade playdates with me and text me for spontaneous double date nights and the friends who just text me to see how the day is going and if I want to meet up at a park.

I love it here.

There were so many dark years in West Lafayette where I honestly did not know if I would survive. If our marriage would survive. If my faith would survive. I clung so desperately to the promises I had felt and the peace I had felt when we originally prayed about our choice to attend Purdue for graduate school. I reminded myself over and over of the words of our stake president in blessings that he gave Neil & me during our last years there--that this was where the Lord wanted us; that he was mindful of our family, and that this was all for a wise purpose in him.

And I am so overwhelmed with joy and gratitude to see that purpose now. To know that had Neil not been forced to switch research topics after six years that this job would not have been possible. That had he not been delayed over and over by equipment failures, by funding losses, by research obstacles, that this field would not have been an area of extreme priority for his current employer. That had his funding continued as we had originally planned he would never have been assigned to the research opportunity that introduced him to his employer; that had his funding not completely run out and he literally worked for almost a year for no salary...this job would never have worked out in the way it did. That we would never have experienced the richness of happiness that we are enjoying now.

And I am so grateful for the fact that during all those years I was able to work. When Neil and I were married, my plan was to go to law school, and as I was proceeding with my application and preparation for the LSAT, it was very very very clear to me that law was not the Lord's plan for me, and that I was supposed to pursue a master's in English instead. I was absolutely ENRAGED by this (I vividly remember throwing everything within reach when I got up from that prayer), but my master's program gave me the training and education that has provided for our family so that we never had to take out student loans. We definitely lived on a student budget (and man did I love ordering furniture for our new home over the last few months!) but we always had enough for our needs and some of our wants. Such tremendous blessings and I can so clearly see the hand of the Lord guiding us here over the last fifteen years.

I just really hope that we get to stay put for awhile. ;-)

Last but not least, I have thought of this talk so, so, so, so, so many times over the last years. Neil and I used to listen to it a lot the first few years that we were married--we would go for a drive up in the mountains and turn this on. So frequently I would be praying and just pleading with the Lord to help me make it through another day and I would hear "I am the gardener here. I know what I want you to be."

So I hope this helps someone else the way it has helped me.

"Could I tell you just a quick story out of my own experience in life? Sixty-odd years ago I was on a farm in Canada. I had purchased the farm from another who had been somewhat careless in keeping it up. I went out one morning and found a currant bush that was at least six feet high. I knew that it was going all to wood. There was no sign of blossom or of fruit. I had had some experience in pruning trees before we left Salt Lake to go to Canada, as my father had a fruit farm. So I got my pruning shears and went to work on that currant bush, and I clipped it and cut it and cut it down until there was nothing left but a little clump of stumps.

And as I looked at them, I yielded to an impulse, which I often have, to talk with inanimate things and have them talk to me. It’s a ridiculous habit. It’s one I can’t overcome. As I looked at this little clump of stumps, there seemed to be a tear on each one, and I said, “What’s the matter, currant bush? What are you crying about?”

And I thought I heard that currant bush speak. It seemed to say, “How could you do this to me? I was making such wonderful growth. I was almost as large as the fruit tree and the shade tree, and now you have cut me down. And all in the garden will look upon me with contempt and pity. How could you do it? I thought you were the gardener here.”

I thought I heard that from the currant bush. I thought it so much that I answered it.

I said, “Look, little currant bush, I am the gardener here, and I know what I want you to be. If I let you go the way you want to go, you will never amount to anything. But someday, when you are laden with fruit, you are going to think back and say, ‘Thank you, Mr. Gardener, for cutting me down, for loving me enough to hurt me.’”

Ten years passed, and I found myself in Europe. I had made some progress in the First World War in the Canadian army. In fact, I was a field officer, and there was only one man between me and the rank of general, which I had cherished in my heart for years. Then he became a casualty. And the day after, I received a telegram from London from General Turner, who was in charge of all Canadian officers. The telegram said, “Be in my office tomorrow morning at ten o’clock.”

I puffed up. I called my special servant. (We called them “batmen” over there.) I said, “Polish my boots and my buttons. Make me look like a general, because I am going up tomorrow to be appointed.”

He did the best he could with what he had to work on, and I went to London. I walked into the office of the general. I saluted him smartly, and he replied to my salute as higher officers usually do to juniors—sort of a “Get out of the way, worm.” Then he said, “Sit down, Brown.”

I was deflated. I sat down. And he said, “Brown, you are entitled to this promotion, but I cannot make it. You have qualified and passed the regulations, you have had the experience, and you are entitled to it in every way, but I cannot make this appointment.”

Just then he went into the other room to answer a phone call, and I did what most every officer and man in the army would do under those circumstances: I looked over on his desk to see what my personal history sheet showed. And I saw written on the bottom of that history sheet in large capital letters: “THIS MAN IS A MORMON.”

Now at that time we were hated heartily in Britain, and I knew why he couldn’t make the appointment. Finally he came back and said, “That’s all, Brown.”

I saluted him, less heartily than before, and went out. On my way back to Shorncliffe, 120 kilometers away, I thought every turn of the wheels that clacked across the rails was saying, “You’re a failure. You must go home and be called a coward by those who do not understand.”

And bitterness rose in my heart until I arrived, finally, in my tent, and I rather vigorously threw my cap on the cot, together with my Sam Browne belt. I clenched my fist, and I shook it at heaven, and I said, “How could you do this to me, God? I’ve done everything that I knew how to do to uphold the standards of the Church. I was making such wonderful growth, and now you’ve cut me down. How could you do it?”

And then I heard a voice. It sounded like my own voice, and the voice said, “I am the gardener here. I know what I want you to be. If I let you go the way you want to go, you will never amount to anything. And someday, when you are ripened in life, you are going to shout back across the time and say, ‘Thank you, Mr. Gardener, for cutting me down, for loving me enough to hurt me.’”

Those words—which I recognize now as my words to the currant bush and that had become God’s word to me—drove me to my knees, where I prayed for forgiveness for my arrogance and my ambition.

As I was praying there, I heard some Mormon boys in an adjoining tent singing the closing number to an M.I.A. session, which I usually attended with them. And I recognized these words, which all of you have memorized:

It may not be on the mountain height
Or over the stormy sea;
It may not be at the battle’s front
My Lord will have need of me;
But if, by a still, small voice he calls
To paths that I do not know,
I’ll answer, dear Lord, with my hand in thine:
I’ll go where you want me to go.
. . .
So trusting my all to thy tender care,
And knowing thou lovest me,
I’ll do thy will with a heart sincere;
I’ll be what you want me to be.
[“It May Not Be on the Mountain Height,” Hymns,1948, no. 75]

My young friends and brothers and sisters, will you remember that little experience that changed my whole life? Had the Gardener not taken control and done for me what was best for me, or if I had gone the way I wanted to go, I would have returned to Canada as a senior commanding officer of western Canada. I would have raised my family in a barracks. My six daughters would have had little chance to marry in the Church. I myself would probably have gone down and down. I do not know what might have happened, but this I know, and this I say to you and to Him in your presence, looking back over sixty years: “Thank you, Mr. Gardener, for cutting me down.”

--Hugh B Brown, "God Is the Gardener"

Settling in

A year ago when my mom and I were working on Thanksgiving dinner, I said, "Maybe next year we'll be in a nice big house in Carmel and we'll have a giant kitchen and a guest room." And she said, "That would be lovely!"



And here we are, a year later, getting ready to host Thanksgiving in our new home. I can't remember the last time when I was this happy--I feel really guilty because the move has been very hard for several of our children, and Neil is working like crazy, but I am so, so, so, so happy.




I love our house--every time I come home it just makes me grin like crazy. I love the huge windows in the family room and the miles and miles of counters in the kitchen (Abigail says that it takes waaay too long to clean the kitchen now!). I love the kids pulling up barstools to do their homework and tell me about their day while I'm making dinner. I love the cozy fireplace in the living room and the light-filled sunroom and the space in the laundry room to unload groceries and wash 8 loads of laundry and dump Nathan's frozen coat in the laundry sink to defrost (he left it outside in the rain). I love the beautiful windows in my bedroom that look out over the gorgeous gold and red trees on the front lawn. I love the funny mirrored linen closet that is the BEST thing in Matthew's world (he loves to hide in there and then close the doors on himself and wait until you call for him before he slides the door open and giggles). I love the glass details in the front door and the way my red berry wreath looks against the wood. I love the stone that covers half of the house and the blue wood siding and the white trim that gives it a very New England feel. I love the cozy warm wood-paneled basement even though it flooded when Neil was in Germany (yikes!!!) and it's currently full of industrial fans and dehumidifiers. I love our huge backyard even though something ate one of our chickens when Neil was gone and I had to clean up the resulting carnage by myself--I was just able to take it in stride which is kind of crazy considering how much I love those chickens (I did cry, but it wasn't a total breakdown!).



I love the gorgeous Arts & Design district downtown--this morning at 6 am I was running through it with a friend and it was all lit up with Christmas lights and it was silent and dark and just the most beautiful thing. I love the bike paths that extend for miles and miles and where I've already logged so many happy hours.



And I love, love, love the people here. Everyone has been so kind and welcoming and just amazing. So many awesome and interesting and friendly people that I can't wait to get to know better, and I'm so grateful for how welcoming they have already been, and the friendships that we are already nurturing. I was called this past week to serve in the Primary presidency and I am absolutely thrilled to be working with 3 other amazing women in this awesome ward that has just reached out and embraced us.




So...long story short, I am crazy giddy happy these days. So in love with my life even though there are still lots of hard things and stressful things, but goodness I feel blessed and lucky and I'm just trying to tame my exuberance down for those members of my family who aren't quite feeling the same. It really has been a rocky transition for several of us and I'm trying to build new family traditions that will help ease the sadness. It's been hard too on the kids to have Neil gone so much, but I think we are settling in to some new routines, and I'm really excited that we will have a few days with him over the holiday weekend before he leaves again!

And now it's time to knock out some more painting before everyone gets home. :-) Soooooo much painting! So many renovations I want to do and so dreamy planning them out (and I have seriously been in HEAVEN decorating this house and ordering furniture. All the pent-up design dreams and home planning I've done over the last fifteen years are coming to fruition with a bang! I have a chesterfield sofa on my porch as I type this.) ;-)