Where do I Start...What I've Learned Part 1

Fort De Soto, Florida
Florida Fireside Trip, 2010

I have sat down several times to write posts about past events and/or about pictures I've taken that I want to journal here on my blog. But every time I start, I find myself just staring at the screen, unable to find within my writing brain the words to adequately journal. Some may call that writer's block, but I know better. The real reason that I've been unable to write is because my heart is elsewhere. Every time I've written something on this blog it has flowed freely from my heart, through my fingertips, and onto the keys. Putting words to my emotions helps me to see myself more clearly. I feel my heart and emotions in the words that I've written, and that is exactly what is missing when I've been trying to write lately. I am not surprised to find this to be the case, as my heart has been wrapped up in an unexpected situation I've found myself in over the past two months. The details are not significant enough to share here. But what is significant is what I've learned through those details. And goodness, how I have learned.

I have learned that fear, in all it's forms, is a very real thing. There have been times over the past two months where I was very, very, scared. Scared like, lock all your doors all the time, jump at weird noises, or look over your shoulder constantly scared. Experiencing this type of fear has helped me to have more patience with the girls when they express to me their own fears, whether they resemble mine or not. Being so afraid brought me closer to God because where faith is fear cannot reside. I have lived that statement more keenly than I thought possible. Despite all of my unanswered questions that I had been talking to God about over the past 11 months, I knew, just knew, in this moment of crisis that He was there and continues to be there. I have conflict in my heart still, for sure, regarding a Father who has allowed for my heart to be broken so completely. But despite that conflict, I have felt the absolute assurance and comfort that He knows I am afraid, and that He wants me to turn to Him for all the strength I need.

There are times now and have been in the past when I'm walking in crowds with my girls all by myself, and worry that I'll lose one of them simply by them taking their next step a little off of the path that we as a group are taking. Many times I have used my hand, palm placed on their back, their shoulder, or the back of their head, to direct or redirect their steps, so that we can all end up at our destination, whether that's the cookie counter at Maceys or in our pew at church. I have felt that same generous, powerful, and guiding hand on me over the past several months, helping me with the direction of the next step I need to take. In my minds eye the hand itself is as large and long as my entire body, head to toe. I have felt small in size compared to such a strength-filled hand, and yet have not felt insignificant in the least. Just the opposite. Having so much fear, and feeling so frightened at circumstances beyond my control, has taught me that it is okay to be afraid, and normal considering the situation that I found myself in. But having faith is having the ability to continue on in the face of your fears. God is more powerful than any fear I may have, and I have been changed with that knowledge.

The girls watched a Veggie Tales recently about being scared. There is a song in it that they have since memorized, and sing it all the time. The lyrics are

God is bigger than the Bogey Man
He's bigger than Godzilla and the monsters on t.v.
Yes, God is bigger than the Bogey Man
He's watching out for you and me.

Totally silly, but it is such a great reminder for me every single time I hear them sing it.

Returning to the Blogging World

In July I decided it was time to see some very much missed family in Northern Idaho. When I returned, my internet refused to cooperate every time I wanted to use it. That does not make for a very good relationship. My modem and I had several lovely arguments about why it should be behaving much better than it was, but still, it wouldn't work. After going back and forth on the phone with our provider many, MANY, times, I gave up. My dear friend came over and looked at it for me, and it was decided that no amount of arguing would make it buck up and cooperate. It was time to just get a new one. I am so so so happy to say that I am returning to the blogging world, having missed it greatly. I must admit, it's amazing what one can accomplish when you don't have the internet as an option. We have had a crazy fun summer, filled with more than enough ups and downs. How refreshing to be able to admit that for the girls there have absolutely been more ups. We just returned from our Florida Fireside trip last week, where we had the best time. I am posting briefly, since we're doing cake and presents today for our September girlies and we still have things to do for it, but wanted you to see one of the most happiest faces ever. Here is one of the only video clips that I managed to get while in Disney World, but it is a doozy. Ginny and I laughed so hard after watching it over and over and over, that our cheeks hurt afterwards. There have been times over the last 11 months when I wasn't sure I'd ever see such pure happiness from this baby of mine again after all she's been through.

Hey everyone. I am posting the flyer today for what is hopefully our Fireside Group's last and final fundraiser for Florida. They were able to purchase tickets for some of the families from the fundraisers already done, and I felt so guilty when they purchased our family's tickets in the first batch. It has motivated me to do all I can to ensure that the rest of the group gets to purchase their tickets as well!

I am super excited about this last fundraiser. We are doing dinner and a show, with the dinner being nummy poly barbeque and the show being live entertainment including our group's band, hula dancers, and a fire knife dancer. We've been accumulating some fantastic items for a silent auction, and will also be giving away fun prizes throughout the evening. You just have to come! It will be held at the Tahitian Noni Gardens in Provo on this coming Monday, July 26th at 7:00. Prices are a steal, $15 for all those over 12 years old and only $3 for those 12 and under! Line and Malia will most likely be dancing also.

I admit to procrastinating starting selling my share of the tickets. I would love to be able to sell at least 20, so please pass the word along. It will be an excellent activity for a group of friends, couples, and even families. At the time of our last fundraiser many of you expressed the desire to post a flyer at your work. I know there's not much time left in the week, but I would love to bring you a flyer to post at your offices if you're still interested.

If you're unfamiliar with the Florida Fireside Group that I'm talking about, click here to read about our last fundraiser and why we're doing this.

We are just SO close to getting the whole group to Florida, and know that this will be a fantastic way to complete our fundraising. Feel free to call me at 801-787-8653 to reserve your tickets, or you can email me at thamailez@yahoo.com. Can't wait to see you all there!

...kay...having a hard time getting the flyer to upload. I told you most everything on it, and will post it as soon as I can figure out why it isn't uploading it. But when you contact me for tickets I will give you the address of the Gardens.

Naki's and my dear friend Mark Payne died yesterday morning, leaving his wife, my friend Connie Payne, and his three children and his four grandchildren. It is so rare in this life for me to find people that I honestly feel kinship with. Lucky for me when we bought this house we moved in right beside some of the best friends Naki and I could have ever asked for. Strange how that works. Here we were, in our twenties, admittedly young and naive, trying to navigate parenthood and adulthood the best way we knew how. Homeowners for the very first time, we found ourselves asking them all sorts of questions, borrowing all sorts of homeownership types of things, and trying to glean any and all knowledge they felt so inclined to share. I felt completely inadequate as neighbors and friends, having bought the house from the Paynes' friends and our friends as well. I knew that we would never fill their shoes in the same way and lucky for us Mark and Connie never expected us to. I feel they were constantly on watch for us, warning us about things we would never have thought to consider, and provided many a good chat over the fence. We'd occassionally sneak over at night into their house when the kiddies were asleep to talk with them, and I love remembering the feeling of love and acceptance that Mark and Connie show us. Somehow it meant a great deal to me to be treated as an equal instead of the youngsters that we were. Mark is ever the kidder. Anyone who knows him knows that. I realized that his joking and poking at me was a genuine sign of his compassion for me, and grew to welcome it for what it was.

Mark oversaw the entire State Hospital before he retired several years ago, and thanks to him Naki was able to get a job there and navigate his way through the road of State Employment. How Naki loved to talk shop with Mark. I can't count the number of times that he would go out to take the trash out and wouldn't come back for an hour. Mark had heart difficulties his entire life and I'll never forget the day I was downstairs, probably either pregnant or having just had a baby, and I heard some sounds out my basement window. It was a Saturday and Naki was at work. I was horrified to see Mark climbing up a ladder, taking down our Christmas lights off of the house. Only he could know Naki's heart, having been in Naki's same position himself, and that Naki would've loved to have the time to do it himself, had he not been working two jobs, serving in a busy calling in church, and working on his Masters Degree at the same time. Mark was serving as Bishop when he was Naki's age, or therabouts. I remember just after Naki died there were people over at the house, working on the yard for me, getting everything ready for winter. They were trying to prune the grapevines that grow over the fence that Mark and Connie planted years ago. I didn't know how to do it. Mark had taught Naki and the two of them had always done it. Of course when I called him for advice he dropped whatever he was doing to drive right over and oversee it himself. I wish I'd watched him and had him teach me, but my grief was too fresh and I was sitting in my room crying at the time.

Mark and Connie moved a couple of years ago just up the street into a place that he felt would take good care of Connie when he someday died. Although I see the wisdom in that, how I wish she was right beside me so that as she starts her uneviable journey through grief I could hold her hand more directly through it than I can with her living elsewhere. I wish that there was some way to take this away from their entire family. How is it possible, I still ask myself, that such a good man could no longer be here with his family? Isn't there some way that when such an honorable and loving patriarch exists, that it could just be arranged for all of the family to die at the same time so they'll never know life without each other? Shortly after Naki died someone emailed me this saying, and I've actually seen it on plaques for sale in a store since then. The general idea is, "I hope you live to be 100 years old and I hope to live to be 99 years old so that I will never know a day without you." It sounds selfish, I know, because it means that the other person will have to know all the sadness. But when I sat down on my couch yesterday after having come back from Connie and Mark's house, it occurred to me that the sadness on her face and in the eyes of all the family there, seems too much to endure more than once. The reality of how many times I may have to feel the pangs of the death of a loved one shook me, and I wondered at the ability to do this more than once. I started wondering how I'll survive both of my parents dying, the possibility of living longer than any of my siblings, or just the possibility of those close to me dying, and it seems like more than I can process emotionally.

I started to wonder at the lack of preparedness that we are equipped with when dealing with the death of a friend or family member. We study all kinds of things from the time we're able to, learning how to read, learning the history of our country, and how to add 2+2. We are schooled in all kinds of topics, some of which we never even actually use. I personally prepared for marriage and children, studying both topics so that I was armed for success. I've googled so many different topics since I can remember, learning random facts even just today, such as why flamingos are pink, and why the United States entered World War I. How is it, in all of that, that I and those others who death has burned and disfigured, that we have never studied a day in our lives for it? Yesterday I thought that I knew for certain that we have crippled ourselves as a human race by not preparing ourselves for something that no one will ever escape. As I lay in my bed last night tossing and turning to find a cool spot on top of my covers, I couldn't stop thinking about Connie, going to bed for the very first time without her husband beside her. I thought of her waking just that morning at her and Mark's cabin, walking outside to find the shell of him laying on their front porch with his flashlight still on from sometime earlier, and the trauma that she will forever live with from that very moment, as I still try to live with the trauma from my death moment. Couldn't we have been better prepared? Why is death such a shock to our systems when we know the inevitability of it?

It was then, as I tried to imagine all of us walking around day to day, preparing for death, studying and learning about it, that I saw the bleak picture it painted. How empty a life would be if you were constantly preparing for the end of it rather than living it. The joy and memories that I have of Naki's life, and I know that Connie has of her life with her Mark, come because of our ability to cherish those times spent together, unmarred by the bleakness of imagining that same experience without them.

It seems to me like there should be some kind of balance of the two levels of awareness, but I don't know what it is.

I just know that today at church I walked around, frustrated to see so many people's lives going on untouched by the loss that the Payne family will forever feel from yesterday and on through the rest of their lives. I felt annoyed that the earth's axis continued to spin when theirs has come to such an abrupt halt. I wore black today in honor of Mark and his family, something the Polynesians taught me. It was my outward expression of respect, love, and remembrance of such a great man.

As I layed trying to sleep last night, I pictured Mark and Naki, together, concerned for their wives and their families. Would we all be okay without such strong men, sons, fathers, and brothers? It just struck me that whatever questions I am struggling with about the eternities, one thing I know for certain, is that these men will forever care about the well being of those they left behind. It brought me peace to imagine them together, two peas in a pod, two friends with another common purpose, and I can picture them talking shop once again, this time having their "shop talk" be the future of their family still on the earth.

Hershey's Track and Field Event

There's an annual track and field event put on nationwide by Hershey. It starts locally and as you do well, I think placing 1st and 2nd, maybe 3rd even, I don't know, you move on to the next meet. Line had so much fun this year participating in a relay with two of her cousins and one of her cousin's friends thanks to her Uncle Rex getting her involved and for taking her to and from the first two meets when I had sick kiddos. The girls were so dang cute! They had their first meet in Provo, then moved on to the next meet I think south somewhere...and then they moved on to their final meet in Kamas, Utah which is close to Heber and Park City. We have the best family, and I love that we can spend time together that ends with us always wanting to get back together soon. I know that this isn't always the case with families, and feel so blessed to be a member of a family that works hard at staying unified and unselfish.

We had a lot of time to burn since the girls needed to be there early to register/sign in and yet their race was one of the last events of the meet. After a bit of exploring we discovered some sand volleyball courts behind the Rec Center that the track was located beside. I don't know exactly what I was thinking, since bubble solution and sand are some of my most irritating textures that I try to avoid, and yet we spent a good amount of time playing in both. The kids had fun, and I tried to not cringe every time I saw sticky fingers covered in bubble solution then become covered in sand. Most didn't seem to mind it. I had this huge wand that I would just wave around and tons of bubbles would result. The kids dubbed themselves 'bubble warriors', and when you take into consideration that in order to be a warrior meant you were required to run around with a stick popping all the bubbles, it was quite the miracle that no one ended up getting poked in any way. Ane quickly became irritated at the amount of yucky stuff that somehow kept ending up in her mouth, and decided that it was more fun stealing everyone's shoes.





I spotted Uncle Matt with a stop watch around his neck, which I thought was a cute touch. I asked Katie what it was for, and she said that she'd decided it was best not to ask.

I love watching these uncles with the girls. Matt helped them stretch and get ready to run. The girls did a couple of trial runs passing the baton, and before they knew it their event was being called. It was roasting hot so we only sat on the bleachers during the girls actual run. Some were creative in their attempts to find shade there...









These last pictures are of the scenery on the drive home, I believe. All the pictures are from Ginny's camera. Thank heavens she brings her camera along. For me, just getting to, enduring, and coming home from anything these days is about all I'm capable of, and some days not even that. Being on the ball enough to capture the memories has landed in her court, and she's saved me multiple times by always having her camera handy.

It really was a stunning ride home. It turned out to be the same road that we'd traveled on a couple of summers ago when we took a Maile trip to Rockport State Park for our first camping reunion. Naki had picked the site after much research and deliberation, and so it was sweet to be driving on that same road that the last time we'd been on had been together as a whole family. For me it was as if somehow, just by traveling on that particular road coming home, that he'd been a part of the days events despite his absence.

I Miss My Optimist

Can someone please give me tips, tricks, tools, anything, to help me quiet the pessimist in my head that never ever stops giving me it's two cents? I've battled that my entire life, feeling naturally pessimistic, and since Naki's death and consequently losing my eternal optimist, it's ridiculous the way I have to fight against that part of myself. This week I'm not doing such a hot job at filtering through all the negative to try and find just a bit of positive. Usually I'm able to see my thoughts for what they are...a mortal weakness that only impairs my one-step-forward-two-steps-back progress towards what used to be my eternal goals. I was able to look past my here-and-now focus and balance the negative with the positive thoughts of life after this one. I am surprised to see how the issues that I'm struggling with spiritually are making it impossible to do that at all. When I don't have that strong confidence and trust in God nothing seems worthwhile anymore. I wish that I could figure out all the answers that I'm seeking already, so that I can get balanced again. The silly thing of it all is that I've already gone through these thoughts before. But just like all of the other emotions that I spiral through with grief, these keep coming back around, reminding me that I am still unsatisfied with the results from the last time around. I would love to hear if anyone else has ever found themselves in my shoes, and how you were able to get past it.

The True Purpose of Summer

As far as we're concerned, summer is only summer so that we can spend our days in the water, rain or shine. Literally. We've actually been swimming in the rain before. Of course for Mom, the best swimming days are the sunny ones, since I love trying to get as brown as all these beautiful Poly babies I'm surrounded by. We added a couple of new toys to our swimming collection, and it looks like the girls are loving all of them.