TJ Hirst

The start of summer signals the season of going places. Summer vacations, summer lessons and summer activities stir our sense of adventure beyond the routine. The adventures that start with summer weddings, summer moves and summer graduations promise new opportunities when we reach our destination.

I adore the discovery of new paths leading to unexplored places. Going anywhere opens my eyes. Going somewhere changes my vision. Except, I am not going anywhere right now. I am not moving or vacationing or starting anything new, even though everyone around me seems to be.

My close friend, on the other hand, is moving across the country. She lived more than 80 miles from me here in Minnesota, but we connected despite the distance. My children and I drove to her home and spent several hours cleaning with her on moving day. Another friend was there who commented that it surprised her that I would “drive so far just to clean a bathroom and clean out a fridge.”

I told her I would go anywhere to help, but I would especially do that for this friend. She and I grew close over the years of an important responsibility we shared, but more than that, our hearts connected one-to-one.

Last year that responsibility ended, and she went on in that place without me. The purpose and passion we shared became just hers. My state of rest, though needed, left my vision and goals without momentum to move forward or a desire to look back. My communication circles shrunk. Loss and loneliness filled my place while she and others continued going. For them, nothing had changed. For me, everything had.

I wish I could say that it eventually was the same again for me and between us. Yet, while shared places bring shared experiences, ultimately, different places bring different experiences. This week, though, we sat together in her empty house, remembering—and feeling—that friendship that still binds us.

As I passed her loaded moving van on my way out, my thoughts did not linger longingly or enviously upon the adventures ahead of her. Ironically, stopping in my own place took me to the place I wanted to go. That inaction, over time, refined me to see every day of the glorious world right around me.

This is an entry in the June Write-Away Contest at Scribbit.

Try-It With-Me Tuesday, an interactive weekly time and place to foster connections that challenge and encourage the process to become a well-rounded person.

Thus far, I have mostly posted challenges that stretch me and those who try it with me. But an equally important part of my goal in writing for Try-It-With-Me Tuesday is to give and receive encouragement. Yes, I need encouragement to overcome discouragement—especially now as I jealously await (from my snow-covered locale) the spring-time weather that has arrived in other parts of the country.

To encourage is to inspire with hope, courage, or confidence and to give support. Personally, I need courage and inspiration to continue in a worthy purpose, whether it be writing on this website, being a good wife and mother, or serving God by nurturing my own spirituality and serving others. We all need encouragement in our process to become the person we want to be. For that reason, here is my challenge for the week:

Encourage someone this week by giving genuine praise or positive feedback.

Interestingly, this challenge comes from the reflective thoughts I have had since writing Commonality in a Community of Mothers. Many women across all religions share a common desire to use our time wisely to accomplish meaningful and inspired purposes, including being good mothers. Sarah at Genesis Moments considers this question as it relates to earning an income but concludes with the inspiration she gains from women who encourage her:

Most importantly, I am learning through these humble spiritual giants to pray above all things, on all things, about all things, under and through all things and that God is faithful if we believe in Him. He knows our comings and goings and will see us through.

I loved reading her thoughts and followed her link to Musings of a Housewife, where I read some more:

I often wonder what I’m doing with the blog. Is it a waste of time that I should be spending on more holy pursuits, or is it an opportunity for me to put my gifts to use by bringing women together and bringing new products to moms? Is it simply a place to socialize and ramble, or does it serve a greater purpose? Do I share too much, or should I share more? Am I really being myself? I evaluate these questions often.

Another forum posed a similar question To Blog or Not to Blog? in response to this excellent talk given by an LDS leader on womanhood and motherhood.

I took from that talk this important message:

There is no one perfect way to be a good mother. Each situation is unique. Each mother has different challenges, different skills and abilities, and certainly different children. The choice is different and unique for each mother and each family. . .What matters is that a mother loves her children deeply and, in keeping with the devotion she has for God and her husband, prioritizes them above all else.

Elder M. Russell Ballard
Daughters of God

As I consider all of these words from varied religious perspectives, I know that I can be tough on myself or overly sensitive to the reaction of others in regards to my own priorities and purpose. Knowing, however, that this is not a struggle that I alone face, I am inspired to trust in the personal messages of encouragement that I receive from my own prayers and to look for opportunities to give encouraging words to others.

Do you want to Try It With Me? Share your thoughts next Tuesday, April 22, at Finding What Inspires on this week’s challenge. I am also spending some time trying to memorize something inspiring for the April Reading Challenge.

Join in by trying the challenges with me, commenting, linking, or suggesting a challenge. If you want to write a post on your blog about what happened when you took the challenge, I will publish your link. Just link to my website in your post and send me your link.

Have I seen the hand of God reaching out to touch us today?

I was reading the March Redbook Magazine while I waited to get my haircut. More than 15 minutes into the wait I found myself reading an “advice” question and answer about what do with a friend who has a blog and is always pestering you to comment. The answer was to set boundaries on the time you can give to what your friend is pressing upon you.

I ended up waiting for 30 minutes beyond my haircut appointment. That was 30 extra minutes to consider what all my friends must be thinking about me for asking them to read and comment.

When my stylist finally called for me, I paused in my thoughts about what I might say (or think) about her inevitable apologies for being late. My gut reaction was to hope that I could express that dissatisfaction without just saying, “Oh, It’s all right.” (When it really wasn’t.)

Fortunately, her apology didn’t play out until the end of my haircut. I say fortunately because that gave me time to understand.

Her children were unexpectedly off school that day. She had taken someone for “blood work” in the morning and those tests took longer than expected. One child was home with a possible ear infection. So, she was contemplating how to schedule a trip to the doctor between working that day and returning to work that night. And she was worried about another child who hadn’t arrived home, yet. Plus, she just broke the salon coffee pot. And now her haircuts were backing up.

I accepted her apologies and offered to style my own hair at home. I left the salon only an hour after arriving, which wasn’t more than ten or fifteen minutes longer than usual.

I was grateful to be given time to understand her.

“Have I seen the hand of God reaching out to touch us today?”

If you have been paying attention to anyone, anywhere lately, lots of us are sick right now, and this week was my turn. Sickness comes full force to me. I feel everything fully, wretchedly, painfully.

I feel my mind and my emotions activated, too, with each part seeming to plunge in to solve my pain. And if this messy pot is being stirred together in the night-time hours, the loneliest hours of the day, it creates one very needy sick person.

When I am well I teach my children that fear and faith are opposites. When I am ill I involuntarily fear, not the sickness as much as the unknown it brings.

That is when I most need faith to comfort and heal me but when the setting and the circumstances just don’t bring that spiritual calm I desire. More often than not, my recurring prayer given at such hours is simply, “Help me remember this feeling, that I may have compassion.”

In this state of exhausted sickness, unable to settle my body or my spirit, a friend called. She may have been calling for some compassion of her own, she’d had a horrible morning with a car that wouldn’t start and plugged up toilets, but when she realized my needs she said, “I need to forget myself and serve.”

She lives nearly two hours away, but her words were her service. My mind relaxed, my spirit was soothed, my body stopped trembling. I felt calm restored.

Throughout this brief every-day illness, I was not only able to see but feel the Lord’s hand reaching out to relieve my suffering as she and many, many others learned of my sickness and gave aid.

Compassion is His tool to connect us to each other and Him.

When I married my husband, we both agreed that we didn’t need a holiday to tell us when or how to express our love to each other. After a few years without extra romance on Valentine’s Day, however, I sensed that I was the loser in my opinionated stand against the candy, card and flower industry. I softened that stand and have since given and received thoughtful expressions of love on that day and others. Now, I may be hardening my heart, again, toward this holiday with the current trends in Valentine’s giving amongst elementary school-age children.

When I was in elementary school, we distributed our valentines into foil-covered boxes decorated with paper doilies and construction paper hearts. We anticipated opening those identical white envelopes to read the messages from our friends and to see if we received a surprise candy heart or two. While this is probably nostalgia for the “rosy-age” of elementary-school Valentine’s parties, the focus did seem to be on our feelings for each other.

When my oldest daughter was in first grade, eight years ago, I noticed the change. While cards were still a part of the celebration, candy dominated. She came home with as many bite-size candy bars as she did on Halloween.

Now, my third grader and fifth grader are preparing for this year’s celebration. At the grocery store a couple weeks ago, I rejected the sorry selection of Bratz cards. Then, I found a crafty idea. But, it just didn’t say 10-year-old boy. I finally made it to an unnamed super center and walked up and down the seasonal display aisles looking for the usual boxes of 24 cards. When I couldn’t find any, I discovered the real truth—the card is now right on the candy. We seem to have left the cards altogether and now just give the candy.

So, my daughter ended up making construction paper cards and attaching lollipops to them. And my son? He said this, “I’m not going to bother even writing the names on mine since it’s just candy anyway.”

I said, “Please bother.”

And then he gave me a Valentine when he said, “I’ll write them tonight,” and my heart softened again.