To Elevate

Aren't you all very lucky that Kevin decided to actually take a nap this afternoon? It was a hard fought battle, but eventually she surrendered, and now I get a minute to breathe and think and figure out what inspirational, "GREAT emotion-filled article" (in the words of my dear friend SKPG) I am going to write for you all to read today.

Is it cheating if I borrow something I wrote earlier this week?

I hope not, because that is what you're getting today.

Especially since the crying in the crib just resumed and it is confirmed for a third time that Kevin is not going to take a nap this afternoon, which probably means her mom doesn't get one either. Side note: yes, I still "sleep when the baby is sleeping." Don't judge. I can't function without a power nap in the afternoon. So if you are one of these moms who also needs a little extra snooze during the middle of the day, please don't beat yourself up about it. We all need recharging. If you are one of those moms who "can't nap" then please don't take the joy out of napping for the rest of us.

As many of you know, my little brother is serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. He is currently in the Provo Missionary Training Center (MTC), learning the Korean language and preparing to teach the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the people of South Korea. As of yesterday, he has been there for two weeks.

Now, let me tell you something.

The MTC is hard.

If you've ever had to live there, you know this. The MTC is a great place, a wonderful atmosphere, and can give you just the right start for your mission, but it will probably also be the hardest 3-6-9-12 weeks of your life (luckily, very very few have to stay for 12 weeks since the missionary age change). I only lived there for three weeks and my stay was about as idyllic as they come--it was early fall so it wasn't sweltering hot but we could still go outside for gym time every day. I had a wonderful group of missionaries as my district (the group you are assigned to eat and study with, usually missionaries headed to similar missions as you). We played hard and we worked hard and we got in trouble for laughing too loud more than once. It wasn't all roses, and we had our moments, but my MTC experience was a very positive one. My little brother hasn't had it quite so easy.

This week as I was writing to Elder Burningham I was reminded of an experience I had far later in my mission, and because I am lazy and don't want to relate the whole thing over again, I am simply going to cut and paste part of that letter here. Then we will get to how this relates to you and me right now.

"At one point on my mission I was serving in a little town called Copperas Cove with a companion I mostly got along with (she had her moments and drove me nuts at times, but she felt the same about me, I'm sure). We split the town with a set of Elders. Our District Leader, Elder Taulanga, was a good friend of mine. We'd served around each other before and he had a sister on a mission so he was especially kind to the sisters. His companion, Elder D, was a piece of work. Elder D was really hard to get along with, awkward, and disobedient at times.

"During our mission interviews that transfer President Thurston asked me how this particular Elder was doing. I was surprised because I didn't think that Elder was any of my business or responsibility. What President Thurston said to me during that interview changed the rest of my mission. He told me that he'd wanted Elder D to serve around me because I "elevated" the missionaries in my zones and districts. I don't share this to brag, but to share with you the lesson that his comment taught me, because after that conversation I was a little more aware of my actions towards my fellow missionaries. To "elevate" was not to preach at or push along, but to motivate them to WANT to serve better and work harder. You never know who you are going to elevate on your mission, so be kind to everybody you meet. The MTC is a unique experience because instead of serving Korean people, your responsibility is to serve the Elders and Sisters in your district and zone. The best way to elevate is to be a good example.  

"Did you know that when Scott was in the MTC he had to come home for a while to have knee surgery? He was in the MTC for 10 and a half weeks total, and his first experience was very different than his second. His first district didn't really want to be there. They goofed off, complained, and didn't put a lot of effort into learning the language. His companion was the worst of the lot. Scott was picky about keeping the rules, but the other missionaries knew he wanted to be there, so it really shocked all of them when he had to go home. It changed their MTC stay. His absence elevated them because they thought, "the one person who actually wants to be here doesn't get to be." When he got back to the MTC a few months after his surgery, missionaries would come up to him and say, "Oh! You're Elder Fowler!" like he was famous or something. Then one of the missionaries took him to his old classroom and told him, "we were instructed to keep this  sign up until you got back and then to give it to you." This was over two months later, which in the MTC is a long time! The missionary handed him the sign, which said, "What Would Fowler Do?" His first district had put the sign up to remind them to work hard like Elder Fowler. He made a difference, even after he was gone." 

Since I wrote this letter on Monday, I have been thinking about the word "elevate" and how it relates to me and my life right now. Yesterday I read a chapter in a book (Here is Where--I finally got to check it out again so I could finish reading it) about the inventor of the elevators, Elisha Otis. Did you know that he didn't patent his design for an automatic safety elevator for seven years? That is a ridiculously long time in the world of innovation. The author, Andrew Carroll, briefly touched on his assumption that Otis himself didn't realize "how drastically his work would reshape the global landscape." The skylines of the world's greatest cities, and even many of the smallest ones, would be different without the elevator. There really isn't a good way to measure just how far Otis' influence is felt in our day.If there is one thing Elisha Otis succeeded at during his lifetime, it was elevating people to new heights. Quite literally.

This week there has been snow in some of the highest elevations in Utah, where we currently live. Every year when fall rolls around, we take as much advantage as we can because it is such a fleeting season. As the leaves fall to the ground, our gaze turns up to the mountains as we watch the white creep further and further down into the valleys until children are being dressed by their mothers as Christmas Carolers on Halloween because it is simply too cold to wear any other sort of costume.

The elevation in Utah is much higher than other parts of the world--though it cannot claim to be the absolute highest. Still, when you move from this elevation to a much lower one, there is a difference, and it is a noticeable one. When I left on my mission, I could barely run half a mile without wanting to die because I couldn't breathe well. When I got to Texas, however, I found I could run faster and longer because I didn't have to fight as hard for oxygen. In the lower elevation, all of the hard work I had put in (granted, not much, since I am not much of an exerciser/runner, but work with me here) showed greater results than I ever thought capable.

Sometimes I feel like right now I am working in a "higher elevation" climate of life. The littlest things take so much effort, more than I feel should be necessary. I often look around me and wonder why others seem to be able to do so much more, but then I realize, I am living my life, not theirs. I have my challenges, not theirs. Right now, even though I am *just* a stay at home mom of *only* one child without very many responsibilities on the side, I struggle more often than not. I don't struggle because I am not content with what I am doing. I struggle because being a mother is hard. I struggle because, although I am working hard to elevate myself, there is only so much I can do. I struggle because have you ever tried to elevate a toddler into a higher way of thinking and living? Yeah, it's like trying to run a marathon during a tsunami.

Regardless, I know that someday all of this work that I am putting in--teaching her how to share, how to work, how to help, how to be resilient, how to accept the answer "no" (still working on that one), how to recognize Heavenly Father and Jesus, how to show love to those who need it most--will be evident when she gets older and we experience a lower climate. There, she will be able to shine brighter, last longer, and work harder.

And I will be able to see that these early days of her life have elevated both of us into more than we ever thought we could be.

Love Grows

This post is dedicated to the one thing I love most in the world.

Books.

Just kidding, sweetheart, you know I mean you.

Now back to the books.

It occurred to me this morning that if you were to look at my "For the Home" board on Pinterest, you'd see that it consists of 80% pictures of in-home libraries and about 20% other stuff. That might not be an exact estimation, but really, I'm an English major, math is not my strong suit, and it's almost true that the one thing I am most concerned about in our current home-buying process is having enough room for all of my books. I say "almost" because really my first concern was that I wanted to have room for the living, breathing people in our family and, if possible, a guest bedroom for our parents because I know they will just want to visit us (okay, their adorable grandchild) whenever possible.

So...guess what our new house (hopefully, if everything works out!) has?

A room for a library.

Guess what it doesn't have?

A fourth bedroom (aka guest room).

So, parents, you have until we have our next child to come and stay in a bedroom with a door. But the third bathroom will always be available to you. The good news is, that is located right off the library, and you are welcome to sleep there anytime you wish.

I guess by now we've established that I dearly love my books.

Do you know what I love even more?

Possibly Texas and chocolate.

Possibly.

All three rank pretty high on my list.

But even more than chocolate, even more than Texas, and even more than my books, I love my husband and daughter.

Scott and I celebrated our third wedding anniversary yesterday. Somewhere in the minutes before I fell asleep last night, I remember him saying something about he didn't love me when we first got married. Granted, I was half asleep, so I probably am not quoting him correctly, but I think what he meant was that when we were married 36 months ago, neither of us had a clue that our knowledge of true love was about at the level of a preschooler's knowledge of the alphabet. We could recite it, we could recognize it, we could even make all the correct sounds, but really...there is so much more.

And when I really stop to think about it, though I'd like to think I have at least a Bachelor's degree in love, the reality is that we're probably "reading" on a third-grade level at the moment.

The good news is, if there was an accelerated reader program for love, I'm pretty sure we'd be racking up the points. Why? Because Scott is really good at doing the dishes. And I am really good at keeping him in clean (albeit wrinkly) clothes. And when our daughter woke him up at four am, he got up with her without disturbing me. And then when she woke up again at six am, I got up after only briefly checking to make sure he was still breathing (clearly I didn't know that he'd been up at four and not getting up was his way of informing me that it was my turn, thus I had to check to make sure he was still alive). And then, when Kevin started whimpering and I whispered to her to be quiet so she didn't wake up daddy and she started crying as loud as she could in what has become termed as her "grandpa cry" (as in she isn't hurt, hungry, or wet, so all she really needs is attention), Scott heard, got out of bed, and the three of us played until it was time for him to leave for work.

My grandma gave us a little book for our anniversary entitled, "What Love Is." For the fans of Sounds for Sunday out there (LDS music you can find on stations 92.9 in Cache Valley and  FM 100.3 in Salt Lake City on Sundays and online streaming anytime), you probably have heard a version of the song that this book is based on. (I tried to find a version of the song to post here with no luck. The author is Carol Lynn Pearson, and as a side note, her personal history is quite interesting--more could be written about that but I digress.)

This song/poem/story was first introduced to me by my Grandpa Browning. I remember visiting and staying with my grandparents for a few days, probably as a teenager. My grandpa was teaching a Marriage and Family Sunday School class. I noticed a version of this little book on his side table, by the chair where he did his reading/studying. He saw me reading it and told me that it was one of his favorites, and that was how he felt about my Grandma. His message to me then, although he may not have put it in these particular words, was that love grows.

Their first touch was at seventeen when the 
moon was high and her hair was soft and her skin was
warm and her lips were full and her heart beat fast against his chest.

As he looked at her looking at him he had never seen
anything so beautiful--

And he thought, "Now I know what love is."

I remember Scott's smile as we read the little book together last week (I knew the wrapped gift was a book, like I was going to wait until our actual anniversary to open it!). We scooted a little closer together on our loveseat and our lips curved upward as we thought of our early relationship. While I can't say we fell in love at seventeen, we were around that age when our friendship started to grow and later on that blossomed into love.

Our next touch was at nineteen, a hug before he left on his mission. And then a kiss at twenty-one, engaged at twenty-two--

Another touch was at twenty-three when rings were placed...

We were both twenty-three when we were married. We thought that we knew what love was then. We thought it again as we held each other in the NICU and watched our baby girl fight for her life (there was no lovely little moment after she was born where we turned to each other and said, "I love you." There was no time for that, and the loss of that moment is something I still grieve about).

And every time we face a tragedy, a graduation, a mistake, a job change, a move, a big decision, we turn to each other and we think that we know what love is.

And then we look at our grandparents--two sets together in heaven, one set together on earth, and my Grandpa and Grandma Browning patiently waiting to be reunited--and we see how their love has continued to blossom, despite death's interruption.

And I know that we have so far, so many years of learning, so many reading levels to conquer, so many miles and years to go before we find out what love really is.

But isn't that the beautiful thing about it?

Love keeps growing.

A few thoughts on failure

I have had lots of things running through my mind this week--so many things going on. On Monday, we had a long-distance family meeting with my side of the family and afterward my mother-in-law started teaching me to can. My baby girl turned 18 months old on Tuesday. My little brother started his LDS mission on Wednesday. On Thursday, we did some more house hunting (I am so over house hunting, by the way).  And all day yesterday, as these experiences co-mingled in my mind, I put pressure on my myself to write something inspirational about all of it. The problem was, the inspiration just wasn't there.

So I waited.

All day.

And it never came.

So here it is, Friday morning, and I am writing my Thursday post, and I am thinking about failure.

There is a term used in the medical world with infants called "failure to thrive." Generally, "failure to thrive" is used in reference to a child who has not met certain expected patterns of growth.

Perhaps this week, I am failing to thrive according to certain patterns of my expected growth.

Really, though, maybe that could be said of our whole year. You see, in January we thought we were on our way to buying a home. By the end of February, it became clear that a home wasn't in our foreseeable future (you've all read that post, it's my most popular one). In March, we started to feel like another baby was in our near future. By April, it became clear that another baby was just not the right thing for us right away, so we decided to put that conversation and plan away for a time. In May, when my husband graduated from USU, we thought for sure he'd be in graduate school by the fall or at least start sometime during the winter. Throughout June and July, that plan also fell through, as we realized he was too burnt out from studying to do well on the GMAT (have I mentioned my husband hates to study?).  In August, without really discussing it, we decided to let go of what we thought were our cemented plans for the future and let the Lord's plan for our family take over.

And do you know what?
It's working out.

It hasn't been an easy road, not being able to really see what is ahead of us. But over the past four weeks since Scott has started his new job and we've slowly been able to piece together what we need to be doing and where we need to be doing it, we have found that a feeling of failure has almost disappeared. And if you know our current track record of rejections from our offers on homes, you would know what a big deal it is for me to say that.

Sometimes in life it is necessary to let go of general expectations. I have two friends with babies that were once labeled as "failure to thrive." Do you know what those littles are doing now? Blowing away every single doctor and therapist and nurse with their achievements and improvements. These little ones have their own time table, their own growth milestones, ones that aren't necessarily in line with the medical world, but ones that their Heavenly Father has set out for them. It is a lesson every parent of a NICU/PICU baby learns--the timing will be different, the plan will be different, there can be no set expectations because these babies learn and grow on their own terms. When you let them do that, they do well.

This is a lesson I am trying to teach myself. Just because so-and-so bought an expensive house at this age doesn't mean we have to also. Just because another person might have five children doesn't mean we need to have that many. Just because someone has a master's degree doesn't mean that I need one right away too. Just because one mother can balance work and parenting doesn't mean that I need to go out and get a job. That is their plan, their path, not mine. Not my family's.

I am learning to love discovering the Lord's plan for our family. I am growing closer to Him in the searching. I am finding that He knows me better than I know myself.

And I think, to Him, there is no "failure to thrive." There is only a failure to try.

I Write so She Knows

Ahh, Thursday. We meet again.

I have lots of things on my mind today, mostly frustrating thoughts. Perhaps this is a bad practice, but I find that it takes a lot more effort to write about the negative things in my life, so I usually avoid recording them unless I have learned a particular lesson from that challenge/trial/mistake. I already wrote a whole intro to this post and it detailed just three of the things driving me nuts today...and after I read over it, it seemed so petty so I decided to delete it, start over, and get to the meat of the post today.

I thought I would share a quote I found last night while putting together a book for Scott's grandparent's 60th wedding anniversary (shh, its a surprise, but I don't think they'll somehow find this blog in the next two days). You know how sometimes you hear things, like maybe praise or a compliment, or when you are reading a parenting article and you think, "I am doing something right!"

That is how I felt when I read this little piece of advice from President Hinckley:

"To you women of today, who are old or young, may I suggest that you write, that you keep journals, that you express your thoughts on paper. Writing is a great discipline. It is a tremendous education effort. It will assist you in various ways, and you will bless the lives of many--now and in the years to come, as you put on paper some of your experiences and some of your musings."

I often hear remarks from friends and family about how much I blog (note, most of these remarks are positive, but occasionally my brother asks me if I can just do a cliff notes version). I know it might not seem like much to write a post once a week on this blog, but I try and keep our family blog current and sometimes it becomes over-detailed with experiences and pictures. I rarely know reactions to that blog. Maybe sometimes it makes people jealous or sad or angry because we seem to be getting blessings others aren't receiving. Maybe sometimes that blog makes me look like a mom who has it all together (which, for sure, I am not). Maybe sometimes it talks about how much time we get to spend with Kevin's grandparents when I have friends and family members that aren't as close in proximity and don't get the same opportunities.Maybe it shows us as a happy family with no problems.

We are a happy family, yes.

But we certainly have our fair share of problems!

I just wanted to get that out there.

I don't keep a blog to find out others reactions to it. I don't even do that for this blog! The reason I keep our family blog is that it is the easiest way for me to keep a journal of our day-to-day happenings. When I was in junior high and high school, I kept a pretty decent journal, and someday our children will find it funny when they read about their parents sixteen-year-old selves meeting. And because I loved reading my Dad's missionary journal, I made a goal to write in my journal every day of my mission. By the end of my mission I had five journals all filled up, plus mini-journals of each day in my planner (and somewhere in the middle of those journals are two pages detailing that inappropriate intermission kiss and its aftermath!). Sadly, once I got home, I failed miserably at keeping that up. I was in love and I was too busy planning and daydreaming and I got out of the habit.

And then, two and a half years ago, I had a job opportunity and one of the interview questions asked if I had a blog, so I created one. And slowly, as life began to pick up for us, I developed a habit of writing about my family. It was easy, actually, because I had been writing about my family since I was in the eighth grade. My family had just taken a different shape. I don't often get things down on paper, but I do get them down on screen. I don't think President Hinckley would mind my interpretation.

I love what he says about it being a "tremendous education effort." I've talked about education on this blog before. You all know it is important to me. Writing is one of the ways I've found to keep my mind going. I think when President Hinckley talks about it being an educational effort, he doesn't necessarily mean that it is an academic one. You see, writing, for me, has always been a tremendous effort toward educating myself about the world around me and who I am. You come to know yourself better when you write--because sometimes things end up in your paragraphs that you hadn't realized before. Sometimes it helps you see another's point of view better. Sometimes it helps you recognize the Lord's hand in your life when it seems He just wasn't listening. He is listening. He's always listening. And He's reading your journals, be they online or in paper, too. I kind of love the idea of Heavenly Father and Jesus following my blog. I think it would make them happy. At least I hope so!

This time in our lives is so precious to me, as a wife but especially as a mother. Kevin and I will never have this much one-on-one time again.

And you know what devastates me? Chances are she won't remember any of it.

She won't remember that we play with her farm together every day and that I taught her how to make Cinderella fly off the second floor by sliding the hay bail across. She won't remember that sometimes I sit by her in her bedroom while she plays alone just because she likes to have me near.  She won't remember that some days she begs for string cheese and I let her eat two instead of just one. She won't understand that from the very beginning she has had an amazing relationship with all four of her grandparents--she will come to understand that they have always and will always love her dearly, but she won't remember wagon rides with Grandpa Fowler and eating an extra helping of Grandma Fowler's treats and watching football with Grandma and how Papa literally drops everything when she is around just to play with her. She won't remember that Uncle Ben loves the way she pants to get something she wants and Uncle Flan never gets mad at her when she wakes him up in the morning and Auntie Liz taught her how to put her face in the water. She won't remember that she got to spend lots of time with her cousins on the Fowler side and her aunts and uncles were always willing to give her an extra love. She won't remember that every day when her daddy comes home she gets so excited to hear the key turn in the lock, she starts running in whatever direction she is facing and then she giggles and waits while her dad comes in, kisses me, and then chases her.

She won't remember what our days are like.
I'm afraid I won't either.
So I write it down.

I write it down and take pictures and put it on our family blog. I don't care that others can see it too--that was a lesson I learned on my mission, to let people, especially my family and close friends, share in my experiences. But even if nobody read it, I would still write it. Why? Because I want her to know that she is absolutely loved and always will be. I want her to know she did funny things that made us laugh. I want her to know that when she was 17 months old she started dancing because one day her dad wanted to show her mom Sara Barreilles' new music video "Brave" and when she saw the people dancing on the TV, she started moving her hands and feet too.

I keep a journal, a blog, because if I ever have to leave her early, if I don't get to be there for the rest of her growing up, I want her to know I love her. I want her to know, and I say it time and time again, that she is THE best job I've ever had and I wouldn't trade that for fame or wealth or travel or anything, anything else.

I write because I want her to know.