Tribute #6 What Connection Looks Like to Me

            I’ve been thinking about my uncle Todd today.  He is a possessor of my personal favorite spiritual gift, that of making people feel special.  And when I say ‘people’ what I really mean is ‘me’.  He makes me feel special and has done so for as long as I remember. As a well-respected leader in his immediate family, extended family, church, profession, and community, I’m sure he has a large network and yet yesterday I casually checked my email and found a page-long letter to me.  This might be my favorite ‘in-box’ moment of the day…on the occasion that Uncle Todd sets aside all of the other cares and relationships of the day and gives me a few minutes of his dedicated time.  This is a poor replacement to real face-time, but after all, we have lived over a thousand miles away from one another for most of my life.  How do we maintain such a bond?  

            Uncle Todd communicated to me very early on that what mattered to me mattered to him.  When I was a little girl…maybe in my early adolescence, I became a haphazard scrap-booker…not talented in the least, but may I assure you that what I lacked in talent I made up for enthusiasm.  The typical trouble of any hardcore scrap-booker is finding someone who cares enough to fully and deeply appreciate the hours of care that were poured into the glue, glitter, cut up photos, and random color-coordinated stickers.  But Uncle Todd did.

            Every kid wants a someone special to stop everything and just be interested in what is interesting in that random thing that he or she thinks is wonderful.  Having this intuition isn't easily come by, and every kid needs something a little different, but somehow Uncle Todd knew that this is what this kid needed.  On several occasions, he’d came by to visit my family and he’d spent an impressive amount of time looking at photos, asking about specific friends, pointing out especially well-crafted designs, and generally just saying ‘you matter’.  I feel a little bit weepy even composing this memory of his kindness.  Man, that was sure good of him. 

            The way he valued my opinion stretched into my adulthood as he would occasionally call or more frequently send over an email asking my opinion on an issue that he was facing in one of his many leadership positions in his life.  He would present me with a somewhat complex question and ask me what I would do about it.  I strived to squeeze out any trace of wisdom that I might have hiding within me for his benefit, always subconsciously bearing in mind that with his two-dozen years more of experience in all things life and leadership- related, my thoughts certainly would not enlighten him in any real meaningful way.  I think maybe he must have just enjoyed connecting with me and learning about how I saw the world.  Maybe what we talked about didn’t always matter.  He just wanted to reach out and say in his own unique way, “I want you to know that you are important and that you matter.” 

            Just recently, he had business in my part of the country.  He flew in and drove three hours to see me and my family.  We visited for two hours and he got back in his car and drove the three hours back to the destination of his business.  If you do the math, that just doesn’t make sense.  But it made perfect sense to me.  He loves me. He’s been quietly telling me that all of my life. I matter to him and that’s the kind of thing people do for those they love.   

Rope Braid Variation

Funky Loose Ponytail Braid

Tribute #5 My Own Story...

     I’m going to talk about myself this week…breaking my established protocol and acknowledging that I am neither quiet nor overly good on any given day.  But I have a story that is aching to be told, so tell it I will.  In my current graduate studies, the time recently came to seek out an internship. 

 
     I somewhat hesitantly confess that in approaching this chapter of my training I was completely unconcerned.  God, I had reasoned, had directly my path so entirely since the very beginning of my journey to this field, He would certainly continue to do so now.  I interviewed at several locations and felt extremely secure in two of them—having experienced what one of my favorite professors had recently called ‘kumbaya moments’ with both interviewers. We talked, laughed, very nearly cried; really connected.

   
     Fast forward a few days and I got my first rejection phone call.  Ouch.  This is actually the only site that I was interested in and it would appear that my positive outlook on the interview had more to do with the therapist’s skills at helping me feel accepted, heard, and felt, than it had to do with my fitness for the position.  

      A few more days passed accompanied by rejections from each and every internship site.

This is about the time that the panic kicked in.  I was baffled.  I mean, God and I had a thing going and He had helped me so much up to this point. Crumbling a little bit, I recalled the prayer I had offered continuously over the past few months appealing to Him to guide me to the internship that would help me have the experience that would best prepare me for the work He wanted me to do while not imposing too much on my precious family time.  When these words came back to me I paused and reflected that perhaps this painful moment was just a part of the fulfillment of his answer.

 
    Within the last couple of weeks I had had two very poignant experiences whereupon I had lost something insignificant—I think a text book and some swimming gear—and after having scoured my home, I had knelt and prayed to my Heavenly Father that he would guide me to my lost item. Upon closing my prayer each time, I had immediately stood up and walked directly to each of the lost items.  

   
     In my current distress, these small manifestations of God’s goodness flitted back into my mind. I knelt again and appealed to him that I knew that He could always find that which was lost—this time that which was lost to me was a bit more of a stretch…I needed him desperately to guide me as He had done before, but this time to my internship.

 
     Upon the heels of the final rejection, the crumble, and the prayer for strength to regroup and see God’s hand in this new development, I happened to be headed out the door to the temple—a place where, as a Latter-day Saint, I go to make and renew sacred covenants with God and moreover, a place where I go frequently to stay centered, safe, and guided by the hand of God in all of my various roles and responsibilities.  While driving this well-traveled route, my ‘auto pilot’ somehow misfired and I found myself headed in the wrong direction.  Before I could recalculate my journey, the distinct (and somewhat irrational) thought came to my mind that while I was already headed in that direction, I might as well stop in and visit a gentleman therapist employed by my church to re-enquire about an internship opportunity.  

   
      I chided myself—God’s prompting voice—in response to this impression, reminding myelf—Him—that I had already spoken to this particular gentleman, and that he had already said that he could not take on an intern.  “Go by his office and speak with him” came again into my mind with clarity and force.  Wow.  Okay, I thought.  This seemed crazy but I was admittedly desperate. At any rate, the odds were very high that he would not be able to see someone who just walked in off of the street.  But, I am familiar with these feelings and I have long since learned that sometimes the more irrational the impression, to more I ought to take heed.  

   
     So I did so, and turned and car towards this therapist’s office.  I walked in and was seen by him…immediately. This was uncommonly fortunate. He welcomed me to his office and in the stillness as I explained my plight, I felt a certainty that I was directed to him and that he would help me somehow.  He again reiterated that he was not set up to work with interns but brightened up in remembering that he referred frequently to a local private practice therapist who currently had an intern and may be interested in working with me. 

   
     A week has passed since this brief unfolding of events.  An immediate phone call to the recommended therapist was followed by a phone interview and a face-to-face interview and within only a couple of days, my completely ‘lost’ internship was found and secured.

     As I reflect on the clarity He lent me in these moments, I am amazed at His special attention to me. Certainly, I’m not saying that I’m his favorite. That would be silly.  But sometimes I think it is okay for each of us to look at a little series of incidents in our lives and imagine a loving Father turning away from the struggles and strifes of the more ‘real’ or ‘serious’ problems of the world out there (which there certainly are) as He looks upon one of us in our own personal extremities to show his loving kindness and special attention. And the real beauty about this whole thing is that He doesn’t have to turn his heart from you to show special attention to me.  That is the beauty of the nature of God.  Actually, I like feeling like his favorite every once in a while.  It’s a feeling that I hope we each feel before our time is up.  J

Valentines Heart Hairstyle

Tribute #4 Inner City Valiance

Visiting with our friend John is somewhat exhausting.  There is so much wrong in the world—this being a point on which we all agree—but when we get together, I wish that just even once in a while, we could just leave the world and its troubles alone for a brief moment and catch up on something more—uhm—shallow…(did I just say that?) like my discovery of a great new Greek yogurt flavor, for example. Whatever.  Just a few less rants…that’s all I ask.  

No matter where we begin, it is not long before we find ourselves immersed in a swamp of the world’s ineptitude, corruption, lack of discipline, and become privy to his general disgust for a variety of institutions large and small—beginning and ending always with the government and incorporating a heavy dose of the word “disaster”.  I leave these gatherings tired.  These issues are so much bigger than we are. We each throw our own tiny pebbles of good  into the ocean of need and hope that a ripple will form but soon walk away as the water envelopes our futile fragments, not even so much as forming a dent in the vast expanse. John’s passion is palpable and exhausting.

But far from exhausting John, I recently learned that it moved him to quiet and courageous action. A flawed world filled with suffering people.  What to do? Well, a few weeks ago, John knew what to do.  Late one evening I received a text from John’s wife that simply said something like, “John has gone downtown tonight to save his bridge people from freezing to death (literally). He doesn't think they will make it in this cold.”  I punched into my phone the city where John lives and was shocked to see that this normally balmy city’s temperature had plummeted to a frigid 20 degrees. 

Mind you, as his wife so succinctly said, these were John’s people. His passion for the injustices of the world indeed did not burn itself out in talk but rather ignited in him a desire to plumb the depths of human suffering with the homeless and nearly-homeless population in his own metropolitan area. That night, he left his own warm home and drove downtown, filled his vehicle with his homeless friends and found them a warm place to sleep that night. He has helped them learn employment and other life skills. He has bought them bicycles. He has even helped them with their laundry. He has shown a remarkable amount of courage, integrity, and compassion. He is fearless. Talk on, dear John.  The floor is yours. 

Basket Weave Hairstyle