TJ Hirst

My Daily Question: Have I seen the hand of God reaching out to touch us today?

Building or remodeling a home brings daily questions to the forefront of a family that require continual problem solving and decision making. I’m following Michelle’s story at Scribbit of their family’s major remodel with interest, including her latest experience in choosing and applying paint.

My husband is an architect and building a home together was always our dream. When we proceeded toward this goal four years ago, the reality looked a little more like a nightmare. I never realized the challenges involved.

Despite the imperfections in the process, we now have a beautiful home. Summer sun highlights one of my favorite parts—the garden and natural landscape that surround it. We even grow grass and vegetables in a garden on our roof, which is a whole series of posts in itself.

The negative side of that story or the positive photographs of the end result may present a false impression of life on opposite extremes—one filled with problems or the other as picture perfect. Right in the middle of these extremes is a rather ordinary but hideous hillside connecting our front yard to our back.

During home construction this hillside was a sandy slope that eroded away with the constant foot traffic and dropped off in an even steeper pitch down the side. When we landscaped our yard three years ago, I wanted to terrace it and Paul wanted sod. We chose sod in the end so the hillside could become a pathway for the lawn mower to the back lawn.

Still, the slope is steep, sandy and exposed to an unshaded southern exposure. The grass didn’t survive the faulty sprinkler spray, the poor soil or the harsh sun and is once again eroding. I could blame and insist that I was right. I could say, “We should have terraced it.” But I knew that wasn’t the right solution either.

Life’s problems never seem to cease, but trying hard to deal with the problems somehow makes you dig deep enough that you learn things you’d never understand without the digging. A happy life isn’t about getting what you want; it’s about the attitude you develop toward whatever happens to you, an attitude that lets you grow . . . There is something mellow and enriching about living this way as husband and wife; trying to discover what’s behind life’s problems, together, as a team.

Bruce C. Hafen, Covenant Hearts

My feelings and opinions were subdued enough to listen to Paul’s proposals to put down paving stones and his reasons behind it. In the course of proceeding on that plan, he replaced a part in the sprinkler and adjusted the spray. The slope received water from a new source for the first time ever and the grass began to grow again. On the day we scheduled to perform the work, we determined that we might resolve the problem if we reseeded and nurtured the lawn with consistent care.

With a new outlook on solving problems in marriage, we dug into that hillside together. It became our problem and our blessing.

Our family takes a Finnish Sauna every Monday night, boys and girls separate of course. We work in our yard together on Saturday mornings. We eat pulla bread for breakfast every Sunday morning (see recipe here tomorrow). Family prayers always take place on our colorful, round rug from Garnet Hill. We ask and answer The Question at the dinner table. After Sunday dinners, we take a walk together—the same route every time.

Creating ritual in the early years of the United States was as important as creating rules of law:

Ritual—defined as “a public ceremonial affirmation of community”— satisfies a deep collective human need . . . The only ritual built into the American system is the presidential inauguration, as decreed by the Constitution. Through its First Lady (Dolley Madison) the United States took its first tentative steps toward constructing national rituals, and embraced a national identity.

Catherine Allgor
A Perfect Union:
Dolly Madison
and the Creation of the American Nation

I have discovered I am the “First Lady” of my family to set routines, rituals and traditions that create a family identity. I don’t mean the traditions related to holidays (which seem to be initiated more by marketers than mothers). I mean those regular actions we do together in the course of ordinary family life that make us unique and bind us together.

What are your family rituals, routines or traditions? How important are they in creating your family circle?

Normally, I post polls on Fridays, but this “poll” topic is more conducive to comments, so please leave a comment below with your answers to these questions.

When I was just a young wife without any children, my husband took me to visit his mother’s homeland in Finland. We toured familiar places where he lived and visited. He shared his favorite food at the train station in Helsinki, grilled makkara with mustard eaten from white paper envelopes as we rushed to our train. He showed me the characteristic arts and design from Finnish architect Alvar Aalto, composer Jean SIbelius, and artist Akseli Gallen-Kalela. He gave me the beauty and solitude of the forests at a mökki on the Kemi River. And I knew when he introduced me to his Mummi, his mother’s mom, it was like he was going home and bringing me with him.

My heart and my cultural sensitivity expanded. I attempted to memorize every piece so I could adopt it into our eventual family’s life. About 13 days into our trip, though, my inspired perspective waned, and I longed for the familiarity of my actual home. I desired conversations without translation and cool water from a drinking fountain. I wanted to replace the foreign lifestyle with the routines I knew.

When we arrived at New York’s Kennedy Airport, the environment felt nearly wholesome to my travel-weary body. Another long flight and a short recovery restored me to home. It was nothing more than a basement apartment in an old house, but it was home to us. There I unpacked our vacation purchases from iittalla glass and set a vision of our future home alongside our eveyday reality.

We haven’t taken many far-off adventures since our children were born, but whenever we leave home, I always bring back the souvenir of a wider perspective. Whether we spend a few days camping nearby, cross the country to visit relatives, or travel to another time and place while watching a movie together, my new eyesight gives me insight. The return trip is a journey home again, connecting what I learned to what I will do.

Our family began like many others, in a struggle between the nostalgia from two childhood homes. While we built on the foundation of these traditions, our individual circumstances and goals also required an expanded vision. I found that when I step outside my own door to seek solutions, the windows of my mind open to receive new truths that I can bring home. Through the years of collecting, displaying and using these mental souvenirs, we have built a home of our own on this pattern of inspiration.

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

The beginning of this conversation started in a suburban St. Louis high school in the late 1980’s. Alison, a member of a Conservative Jewish synagogue, and Teresa, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, were best friends during those years.

After years of pursuing educational and career paths in different parts of the United States, solidifying their own belief systems and establishing their own families, Alison and Teresa are now reconnecting with something new in common—they are both wives of clergy.

Alison is the wife of Morrie Zimbalist, a rabbi of a Conservative synagogue in Suffern, NY. Teresa is the wife of Paul Hirst, a bishop in the LDS Church in Brainerd, MN.

Their seemingly different life paths have brought them together in a common conversation about their husbands’ roles. This series is a comparative look into those roles. These conversations begin where they started, from the wives’ perspectives:

What kind of involvement do you as the wife have in the congregation? How do you support him there?

Alison: As a rabbinic family, we strive to be examples, in all ways, for those in the congregation to follow. This is true not only in our religious observance in public and at home but also in our dedication to the synagogue. When Morrie became a pulpit rabbi six years ago, I decided that my dedication to and involvement in the synagogue would be focused on the things that most interest me and where I can be truly useful, rather than spreading myself too thin across every element of synagogue life.

For example, I’m not really very active in Sisterhood (the women’s branch of the temple), and I don’t attend every service that many probably think I “should” attend. But, when our son was an infant, I decided to start a mommy-and-me class that would hopefully develop into a nursery school.

We started that class twice a week in one classroom with eight moms and babies, and now, four years later, we have over 50 children ages 4 months through Pre-Kindergarten, five days a week, taking over six classrooms. We even have a summer camp!

I help direct the school and serve as its registrar and as a baby-and-me teacher. I also saw the need for toddler services (we call it Tot Shabbat), and I designed and lead those. I am a founder of the Young Couples Club, and I run junior congregation for the kindergarten through second graders on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

In terms of directly supporting my husband, I think he’d agree that I’m his right-hand woman. I support him in every way, from being a sounding board to helping him develop programming to nagging him to get things done (people tend to nag me to nag him!) to occassionally filling in for his secretary.

Teresa: In the LDS church we do not have a paid clergy. All leadership, teaching and service is provided by the members themselves. In our congregation, called a ward, each member is given a responsibility, known as a calling, which is prayerfully determined by the bishop and his counselors who work with him. As a member of the ward I also receive a calling, just like the other ward members, but out of respect to the burdens placed on a bishop, the calling for a bishop’s wife is generally not a leadership responsibility.

When Paul was called to be a bishop in April 2007, I was a president of the Relief Society, the organization for women in our church, and served women and trained presidencies in the eleven Relief Societies in our area. Shortly after he became bishop, I was given a new calling as a family history consultant, helping members to research their own family history. I also teach a youth religion class two days a week, and I am a visitng teacher, which is an assignment in the Relief Society to watch over several women by visitng and calling them regularly.

Although I do feel my responsibilities support his efforts, I often want to do more when I know that human resources to meet needs and accomplish goals are limited. However, I restrain my tendencies to offer my own time and talents (or even opinions or reminders) so that other individuals can have the opportunities to develop their capacity by fulfilling assignments.

What is the personal impact of his responsibilities on you? On your family?

Alison: As much (or more) as he is a spiritual leader, Morrie is an employee of the synagogue. His “employer” is about 1,000 members. Thus, he’s on call 24 hours a day, and days off are scheduled but certainly not always used. We are fortunate that we live on the synagogue grounds, and he is able to arrange his schedule so that we usually have three meals a day as a family! And with Zachary in the nursery school and me as a work-at-home mom, we do see each other a lot. I would say that’s a very, very rare situation for a rabbinic family.

Teresa: Paul gives a lot of time as bishop. He has a full-time job in addition to being a bishop, and so he fulfills most of his church responsibilities in the evenings and on the weekends, more than 20 hours per week. Much of that time is put in on Sundays, which can be long and a little lonely for me, at home and at church. Sometimes I feel somewhat invisible as the bishop’s wife to other members of the congregation.

We do set aside time for just our family, though, like Sunday dinner followed by a walk, Monday night for a family home evening, and Friday night for dates. Despite the sacrifices, I see more positive impact than negative and appreciate the blessings from his service. The most important blessing is the increase of spiritual strength I feel in our home because he and I and our children are more focused on living the doctrine he is teaching and leading others to live.

How do you give him support at home for his responsibilities?

Alison: The biggest way I support him at home is making sure things are being taken care of so he doesn’t have to worry about them. In Yiddush, the expression is “ba’alah bust’ah” - the woman head of the house who basically is a whirlwind of psychotic energy. I’m the very hands-on mommy, the cleaner, the cook, the fishtank cleaner, the bill payer, the laundress, the errand-runner. I’m also his at-home secretary, sounding board, and head cheerleader. Fortunately, he is all of those things and more for me too.

Teresa: In a temporal sense, I make sure his needs are met. My husband always wears a suit with a white shirt and tie when he serves, and I keep busy ironing white shirts. While he does have an office at the church and an executive secretary, he still receives many phone calls and all his mail at our home, which involves me staying organized. He used to cook dinner on Sundays when I was a leader; now, I do that for him. In a spiritual sense, I try to create a calm, spiritual tone in our home with regular routines like family and couple prayer, eating dinner together as a family, and studying the scriptures. We try not to add too much mental and emotional stress to his load. And all this creates a good atmosphere so that he may receive the inspiration he needs.

Alison and Teresa continue their conversation next Wednesday, April 7, when they introduce their husbands, the rabbi and the bishop, and share some of the similarities between the congregations they lead.

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.

I completed the March Reading Challenge with a day to spare and have the April Reading Challenge to try. Want to try it with me? Details are at the end of this post.

I have to admit that the challenge to read a biography this month was a challenge. Biographies in general are not like reading a novel in which the story carries you through without concentrated effort. Let’s just say that this wasn’t something I could just read on the elliptical. But overall, I do love biography and understanding the lives of interesting and inspiring people, and I was glad for the challenge.

What is/was your experience reading a biography? Even if you did not complete what you are reading, I would love to receive a comment from you about it. Just tell me what biography you read (or are still reading), a few facts about the person in the biography, and something that person did or said that inspires you.

I will do a full review on Saturday of the biography I read and just give a short synopsis as part of the discussion on biographies here today.

I read A Perfect Union: Dolley Madison and the Creation of the American Nation by Catherine Allgor. To be perfectly honest, I did not choose this book because I admire Dolley Madison. Rather, I was inspired by the idea that she was an integral part of a marriage “team” and that team of James and Dolley Madison established some important characteristic foundations for our country.

Dolley Madison was the wife of James Madison, the principal author of the Constitution and the fourth president of the United States (after Thomas Jefferson). He took office in March 1809. Although women could not vote at the time,

Dolley brought the feminine values of civility and emotion into government business. The presence of ladies in the audience at governmental proceedings shaped how the ruling men presented their arguments and chose their issues, with the effect of toning down the usual violent rhetoric.

^{Catherine Allgor
A Perfect Union:
Dolly Madison and the Creation of the American Nation}

Her tempering influence was inspiring to me in that she “did her best to bring everyone in the capital—locals, officials, and visitors—together under her roof” in a way that provided a non-confrontational and hospitable forum for understanding and discussing many points of view. I think we cannot underestimate the influence of the tone a woman sets in her home. This biography revealed that Dolley’s tone helped establish national rituals which cemented the foundation of our nation’s capital and the symbolism of the White House.

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The theme of home is deep in my heart and my mind as I present the April Reading Challenge:

During the month of April memorize something you have read that inspires you.

Before you think this is too challenging, please consider that this does not have to be long unless you want it to be. For instance, it could be an important quotation, a meaningful scripture, or a short poem.

In the past year I have discovered the joy of memorization as a way to overcome discouragement, control my thoughts, and think positively. I had never memorized anything until I was inspired to memorize a written testimony of Jesus Christ. Now, I have been working toward memorizing a proclamation about home and family.

I need some help and encouragement to complete my memorization by the last Tuesday in April, which is April 29th. Will you offer your tips and Try-It-With-Me?

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 by Monday April 28 at 6 p.m. (Central Time).