Random Musings Because I Can't Sleep ;)

Life is so good and so hard.  So brim-full of everything.  These past few weeks our little world has contained so many contrasting emotions.  My tears have been more regular than usual, for reasons both familiar and unfamiliar, both happy and sad.  And at the end of the day, love feels so valuable.  And I want so much to choose it.  To cultivate it.

We started a Christmas book advent the day after Thanksgiving.  It was a pain in the neck to wrap all 28 of those books, but thus far, the unwrapping and the reading have made the effort completely worthwhile.  I'm anticipating all the usual favorites, like Great Joy and Christmas Day in the Morning, but there are also a few new additions this year, like dePaola's An Early American Christmas - a simple, sweetly told tale that for some reason chokes me with emotion at every reading.  

And the nightly stories feel like enough for a minute.  I'm in no hurry to put up the tree (although the tree will make our evening readings cozier, to be sure).  

I have, of course, been thinking a lot about Mom.  Reading about dePaola's "Christmas family" tonight, with their candles in their windows, led to Lucy and Spencer happily singing Grandma's version of "This little gospel light of mine..."  

Their sweet voices have lingered in my head, and I've thought about how the light we put in our windows, the light we try not to hide under a bush, is love.  I've thought with *such gratitude* about the Savior's love for us.  Love that is so merciful and generous and forgiving and long-suffering.  

At Mom's funeral my dear friend Heather played the hymn, "As I have loved you, love one another."  Heather's beautiful touch on the violin turned the Savior's simple, familiar words into the moving plea I think He meant them to be.  

And yet our spheres differ so widely.  And the task of loving as the Savior loves ranges from so simple to so difficult.  And it makes me wonder if it was ever hard for Him to love.  Was it hard for him to ask from the cross, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do?"  Did his godly nature make it easier for Him to love?  Or was cultivating love through greatest difficulty what gave Him a godly nature?  

Regardless, I honor and praise Him for His choice to love us.  

And I welcome this season commemorating His birth and life and love.

The first Christmas book we read the day after Thanksgiving was President Monson's story about his boyhood Christmas train (the kids love listening to the CD recording of his own voice telling the story).   The book ends with a verse from Matthew which Lucy and Spencer thought we should add to our "green books."  Studying that verse led us to find others like it, including Acts 20:35 which urges: "remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive."  

We talked about that verse in terms of President Monson's train set and all the usual better-to-give blah blah blah, but the concept has lingered in my mind, and tonight I realized, I've always thought about that scripture in a material sense: "It is more blessed to give {gifts, money, food, a train set} than to receive {gifts, money, food, a train set}."  And certainly it is.  

But then something whispered to me: LOVE.  And when I filled in the blank with love and all its attendant, immaterial virtues... "It is more blessed to give {love, praise, compassion, forgiveness, appreciation} than to receive {those same things}"... the verse became even more powerful to me.  And the principle seemed simultaneously more difficult and more rewarding to live.  Difficult because how hard is it to give/express love, or appreciation, or forgiveness, etc, etc, while going unloved, or under-appreciated, or unforgiven, etc, etc.  But in spite of the difficulty, the new (to me) interpretation felt more rewarding too!  Isn't "blessed,"  in fact, an English translation of a word that means "happy"...i.e. "It is {happier} to give {love, appreciation, kindness} than to receive {those things}"?  

Maybe that's because it puts us in more in control of our own happiness.  Maybe it invites the Spirit's companionship more fully into our lives which fills the various voids in our hearts more completely than other mortals can fill for us.  I'm not sure I understand all the reasons why it's more blessed to give love than to receive it, but I do know that the happiest people in my life are people who have cultivated that habit of giving love without expectation of anything in return.  

The kids and I listened to Pres. Uchtdorf's "Summer With Great-Aunt Rose"  story last week.  I love Aunt Rose because she is reminiscent of so many good women in my life, but especially Mom. We pretty much teased and under-appreciated Mom all of her life, and all the while she noticed and acknowledged even our smallest successes and praised our most minuscule virtues.  I still remember her visiting my house one summer when, as usual, I was in a mess of laundry, and crumbs, and clutter.  But I happened to have recently cleaned out a few kitchen cupboards.  Somehow Mom found them and after her visit I found a note:  "You are an organizational queen!  things are looking awesome around here!"  

I still find myself looking to her for that acknowledgement of my tiny victories.  Like the other day when I managed to get the hard water ring off of my toilet and I couldn't help saying out loud, "Mom!  You better be seeing this!!"  ;)

I'm so grateful to feel her sincere smiles and love in those moments.  But I hope, more importantly, that I'll learn to give more freely, in all of my relationships, the kind of love, praise, appreciation, and support that she continually showered on me and everyone.