I was visiting with one of the therapists yesterday by myself, about myself, which I haven't really ever done. We were talking about traumatic experiences in general and varying reactions to them. He shared with me that these kind of events are very revealing. They bring to light the feelings of those impacted by the event in a very extreme and intense manner. In particular, we were discussing religious beliefs and individual relationships with God, our Heavenly Father. If having a relationship with Him was important to you before the trauma, you will find yourself seeking an even more close relationship with God in an effort to heal. If believing in God and following His teachings was not a priority before the trauma, then you will most likely turn away from God because of your anger and confusion. This isn't to say there isn't a little bit of both going on no matter what side you started on or that this is true for everyone who finds themself traumatized, but it became clear to me that this fact was true for me...I have been angered, I have questioned, but more than anything I have felt loved and know that God is aware of me and my aching heart. Makes no sense...I feel confused at my ability to continue to have faith when so many of my dreams have been unexpectedly yanked out from underneath me. But I can without any doubt state that I know that God loves me and continues to watch out for me and the girls.
I want to write today about testimony and the lack of or gaining of it. Testimony...an interesting word. It is a word commonly used in the Latter Day Saint language. I use it to describe what I believe and know to be true on a spiritual level. Out of curiousity I looked it up in an online dictionary. The two definitions that I thought applied best were, "An open acknowledgment" or "A public profession of religious experience". We all have spiritual experiences every day, or can have them every day, if we choose to. We can either shut those experiences out of our lives and turn off our internal honing device that leads us to Him or turn it on and become skilled at recognizing the Lord's embracing love and influence on a daily basis. Either choice requires quite a bit of practice. You can get really good at either one.
My hopes are that my girls get really good at having their own little devices turned on and tuned in so that they can have the kinds of experiences that help and teach them to realize the greater purpose and meaning in their precious lives. Having their Dad die has rocked their boat of a testimony quite a bit, and for some, has completely capsized it.
Since I've known Naki, one of his favorite things to do at this time of year is to go Christmas caroling. He always manages to drag me along. If I were left to my own devices I probably would go once per season and call it good...If I missed a year it wouldn't eat away at my conscience. I'd check it off of my list as one of the kinds of things I know I should do and one of the kinds of things that I want my kids to experience but wouldn't be troubled if we didn't do it absolutely every single year. There are many great reasons to go Christmas caroling. But I know Naki's ultimate purpose for doing this was because he loves people and he loves serving them. He just wants everyone around him to be as thrilled to be alive as he is and to show each and every person how much he loves them. So last year he told me that he wanted to start a new tradition within our Maile family. This would include us and our kids, his two brothers and their families, my sister and her family, his parents, and several other dear friends and their families. For the month of December he wanted to take the kids to different places each Monday night to carol to people and visit with them afterwards. Uuugh. Thrilling. Just thrilling. All I heard him say was that now I have to rush home from teaching piano on Monday afternoons, help the kids inhale their food so that we can have enough time to swing by the church and pick up some hymnals in time to get wherever we're caroling that week, and also plan enough time for making sure everyone went to the bathroom and get all bundled up...that means making sure we can find everyone's winter gear each Monday. Oh yes...and at that time I had a 3 month old baby...so that also meant that I had to make sure she was fed and well insulated for the weekly cold excursion. Add to that that one of my girls, 3 years old at the time, has extreme phobias of elderly people and in general people that she doesn't know, and we definitely made the perfect caroling group. Oh Christmas Tree...
So we started the weekly caroling adventure. And as much torture as it was for me I can only imagine that it was even more torture for him. Not only did he have just as many crazy kiddos to deal with as I did...he had to deal with psycho post-baby Abby too...not a pleasant Abby, I assure you. And yet as every Monday night rolled around, here comes Mr. Cheerful home from work, excited about wherever our Caroling would take us and more importantly, to whom it would take us. He loved it! And his attitude was contagious. Despite my private grumbling the girls immediately caught the attitude of service and couldn't wait for Monday night to come. And so, as this Christmas season approached, I started receiving text messages from his brother letting us know that the Caroling would indeed still be happening. Even after learning last year that the invaluable lessons my girlies learned completely outweighed the difficulties I experienced in doing the service, I still privately grumbled to myself. There were so many reasons I didn't want to do this.
1. Singing now makes me cry WAY more than it used to, especially when I'm singing songs about the Savior.
2. Doing anything without Naki that I used to do with him is indescribably painful.
3. I have grieving children...the hardest parenting challenge I've ever faced. They are obstinate, disobedient, rude, beligerant, and argumentative. Dealing with that is so much easier at home than in public.
4. I'm exhausted. I did not want to expend the energy to do this that I knew it would take.
Despite all of that, I knew that to honor my husband and to give the girls another opportunity to have a spiritual experience by serving others, I needed to go. *sigh* We went. I was chatting about a couple of things with the girls before we got there, one of which was that when you sing about Jesus it really is like singing your testimony. What better way is there to spend this Christmas season than to sing about the actual purpose of the holiday.
The girls started to unload out of the car and into the frigid night as Line, in her now ever present worrying and anxious way, had the following conversation with me.
Line: Mom..what should I do? I can't sing tonight.
Mom: What do you mean you can't sing? Are you sick?
Line: No...but you said that we should sing our testimonies, and I don't have one.
Mom: You don't think you have a testimony?
Line: No, I don't think so.
Mom: Okay. Do you believe in Jesus Christ?
Line: No. (hiding her head because she was having a hard time telling me this)
Mom: Well, do you believe that Jesus was born?
Line: I don't know...I'm not actually sure.
Mom: Line, I can tell you absolutely that it is fact that there was a baby named Jesus born to a woman named Mary in a town called Bethlehem...it's recorded historical fact. Okay?
Line: 'Kay.
Mom: But what purpose he serves in your life you're not sure about?
Line: Yeah.
Mom: Well, do you believe that God loves you?
Line: No.
Mom: Well, do you believe that your Dad loves you?
Line: Yes, of course.
Mom: Then sing about that. That's what your testimony is right now, today. You know that for sure and can sing of the love you feel from your Father, okay?
Line: Okay, Mom. Thanks for helping me.
Mom: Of course, sweetie. But I want you to do something tonight while you're singing.
Line: What?
(Don't remember exactly how I said this next part...it's a bit of a blur, considering I was trying to have this significant conversation while simultaneously making sure none of the girls were running into traffic in the parking lot. I was trying to get Eva to stop making the little sores on her hand and face bleed. And I was also trying to get Boo out of her carseat. Not to mention my heart was racing while I searched inside my heart and mind and prayed for the guidance that I needed to help my sweet Line. So my memory's a bit foggy as to how my response went...)
Mom: I want you to pay real close attention to how you feel inside tonight while you're singing. Your feelings are going to be the things that will teach you and show you what you actually have a testimony about. Okay?
Line: 'Kay.
So we went on inside and caroled our hearts out. To me all I heard was the missing Bass. Man how I miss hearing that Bass. Even at church singing the hymns just isn't the same without him singing beside me. But even while trying to sing as the only alto while chasing Eva and holding Boo who didn't want to be held I knew that we were in the right place doing the right thing. In this nightmare of my life one of my only lifelines to sanity and someday hopefully some peace is to keep putting my spiritual feet one in front of the other. I am richly blessed when I remember God and others before myself. I knew for certain I'd made the right decision to go as I listened to the chatter behind me in the car as we were driving home. "That was so fun!", "I loved singing to all those people!", "I love doing things with our family!" were just a few of the exclamations I heard. But the one that caught my ear was when I heard Line say, "It just feels so good doing things for other people".
Mom: What did you say Line?
Line: It just feels so great to do things for those people, Mom.
Mom: Whats it called when you do things for other people, Line?
Line: Service?
Mom: Yeah. Remember what I told you about listening to your feelings tonight?
Line: Yeah...
Mom: Well, now you know from the feelings you're talking about that you definitely like thinking of others before yourself. You can now say with a surety that you have your very own testimony of service.
Line: Oh yeah!
I thought that was a phenomenal opportunity that God gave me. Remember what I said about testimonies? Acquiring one and keeping one require a lot of practice. I was so grateful to the point of tears that night as I drove home that I had been willing to go and do something hard because I knew it was the right thing to do. It was a very difficult night logistically, but was more than completely worth it when I realized the impact it had on a little girls' heart who was struggling to feel the love of God since her Dad died.
A couple of weeks after that we were in church for our monthly testimony meeting...an hour when any individual can share from the pulpit their personal testimony. Those meetings are so incredible to listen to and participate in. For me they help me redirect that honing device in the right direction so that I'm trying to be as tuned in as possible. Early on into the meeting Line frantically leaned over to me and with a bit of a terrified face exclaimed that her and Dad used to talk to each other about whether or not they were feeling like they needed to share their testimony that day, and now she wasn't sure whether or not she should do it. Again, picture me corralling Eva and Ane on the pew while trying to say the words God would want her to hear...I calmly told her to stop panicking...she would know, again, through the feelings in her heart, if she should stand that day to share her feelings. No one can make that decision but you, I told her. So take a deep breath and just follow your heart.
Sure enough, a couple of minutes later she stood to go and take her turn at the microphone. I could not stop the tears rolling down my face as I heard my baby share her first pure testimony borne through her own trials. Line has shared her testimony in these meetings many times and has always expressed what she felt in her heart...her love for her family, her love for those that live around us, her love for the scriptures, and her love for God. And I don't doubt that she was following the promptings she felt to do so. But for the first time I heard her share what she now knows to be true on her own, through her own soul-searching motivated experiences. She told the story of how her Dad started a caroling tradition last year and how it's given her the opportunity to know that she has a testimony of service and what it means to her. It was simple and sweet, and only I knew of the efforts it had taken on her part to earn that sweet testimony and was so proud of her for all of it: going caroling when she didn't think she had a testimony to share, recognizing what service meant to her, calming herself down when Naki wasn't there during the meeting to talk to her about sharing her testimony, and then actually having the courage to stand and share her own private experience with hundreds of people. Did I mention I was so so so proud?
I am reminded of a paragraph I highlighted in the book I'm slowly but surely reading. I know I've mentioned this book before. It's titled 'When You Can't Do It Alone' by Brent L. Top. This was the paragraph I've had in my mind for some time now, especially after this experience.
"True learning -- life-changing learning -- cannot be obtained without an immersion in the font of personal experience. I am not just talking about a kind of common sense that inevitably comes with personal experience or the education acquired in the "school of hard knocks," but a deeply spiritual linking of experience and intelligence, "or, in other words, light and truth" (D&C 93:36), that causes a person to see with new eyes, hear with new ears, and feel with a new heart."
Even though all of us girls over here are struggling to mend our broken hearts, I am so immensely grateful for our 'immersions in" our own "font(s) of personal experience". Those immersions continue to bring peace to my spirit at a time when we need them the most.
