Joy and the Accidental Miracle

Joy was driving to the Dallas temple in the very early morning tenish days ago (as we start writing this post). She was nearly at the temple, still on the freeway. She saw a chunk of metal on the road ahead, but there were cars to either side of her, which made avoiding it rather difficult. It attached itself to her car's underbelly and she dragged it for some distance until she was able to get it dislodged and move to the side of the road. She parked on a narrow shoulder and started calling people.

J: After I pulled over, the first thing I did was see if I could put it in gear again. It wouldn't even rev, which meant it wasn't really in gear. It was more like in neutral.

She called her temple coordinator first, to let them know she might be a little late. She called me next, and I had woken up by that point to get her call as soon as it came in. She reported that she was okay, no injuries, and not even particularly rattled. I was very impressed with how calmly she was taking the situation. But it sounded quite clear that she could not continue driving just now.

After me, she called a friendly tow truck, that took her first to a mechanic who said he couldn't repair that.

J: That's when I saw - because the mechanic looked underneath - all three of us could see that the transmission was hanging down that had been broken off of the casing. He only repairs them, but that one needed to be replaced. So the tower took me to another place that was recommended by the first place.

They hadn't opened just yet

J: So I had my key, we left the key at the gas station next to it

Because there was no room for them at the inn

J: I mean, really, all the parking was stuffed with cars in different directions! Like, on their property there was no space. We could maybe fit the nose of the tow onto the property.

And then the tow drove her to the temple, which was only a few miles away. She called me again from the temple, and we spoke with tearful gratitude about her safety and now being at the temple. We both had the odd feeling that this accident happened with deliberate timing - that having something go wrong now was much better than it happening later. She was safe and completely uninjured. She felt peace!

J: I would go as far as to say that I felt joy bubbling up inside me.

... time passes ...

It's been three weeks since the accident. Insurance decided to replace the transmission, but conversation between them and the mechanic has been exceptionally spotty, so repairs haven't really started yet. We have been very thankful that we inherited my great aunt's car a few years ago and that one can take care of us. In another post we'll probably talk about how this week my parents drove up from California to gift us their car (same year and model as ours, but with 130k FEWER miles on it) (!!!!). We are indeed very most fortunate and blessed!

Nia and the Box of Medicine

Favorite song: Three Kobolds in a Trenchcoat

 Our dear Nia now has a small box filled with medications she is to take every day, and every day. The most recent saga began 4-6 weeks ago, when she got what we suppose was strep. The strep gave her a cough, which sounded absolutely terrifying.

N: It WAS terrifying!

The doc gave her some antibiotics, some steroids, and a new friend. Georgina is her medical assistant turtle. Put the medicine in the turtle, and the turtle helps her breathe. It takes maybe half an hour to very slowly breathe in all the medicine. Nia likes her friend, the turtle.

N: I wanted to dress her up in doll clothes, but Mom said no. It would be a bad idea because it would clog her pores, or something like that.

J: It shouldn't cover the filter anyway.

N: Yes, but "clog her pores" sounds funnier.

She was getting better during the week, just like she should. We were hopeful that all would soon be well. 

One week later on Saturday evening, she started to cough. She kept on coughing. She couldn't stop coughing. Anything we did to help her, seemed to make it worse. She tried one of the breathing medicines, and that seemed to make it worse. So we called the missionaries to help me give her a priesthood blessing. She had been coughing for 45 minutes by that point. The blessing told her that she would be able to breathe and commanded her lungs to open. Within moments, the cough had stopped and she was breathing easily and normally. She continued to improve over the course of the week.

One week later was General Conference. Saturday during the evening session, she started to cough. 

N: That was the one where I choked on the cookie! Of all the dumb ways to die, choking on a cookie is not how I want to go, just saying.

She kept on coughing and everything we tried seemed to only make it worse. I gave her another blessing, but this one told her the doctors would know what to do. Unfortunately, the only doctors available in the later evening on a Saturday, are in the ER. So Nia got her very first trip to the emergency room!

They got her settled in the bed and confirmed that she WAS getting enough oxygen, which was our primary concern. They gave her some medicine for anxiety and had her breathe some lovely mist using a plastic mask.

N: It was really hard to read my book. Really hard. Try reading a book when you've got something in front of your face! And reading through the mist was not the easiest either.

Nia talked to her grandmother on the phone, which always helps her feel loved and calm. They took x-rays, did all the lovely tests, and decided that the breath medicine had worked well enough. She could go home again. Here's some more breath medicine and two new steroids to enjoy. She seemed to get better.

N: And then the Fire Nation attacked!

She's running out of her steroids again, and felt her throat tightening and the cough starting to get just a little bit worse, in preparation for another wonderful Saturday evening surprise in two days. So Mommy took Nia to the doctor and got something that ISN'T a steroid. Several somethings, in fact. Nia organized them all prettily in a little box.

She's working on a Little Mermaid parody, centered around the idea that if you want steroids, she's got twenty!

Memories of ImaigNiff

We have a board game called ImagiNiff (imagine if). You write the names of people everyone at the table knows on a board. You roll a die to select which name comes up and draw a card that asks a silly hypothetical, like "Imagine if ______ were a book. Which book would he/she be?" or "Imagine if ____ received a prestigious prize. Which one would he/she win?" There are 6 options. Everyone votes for the one they think the most other people will vote for and score points accordingly.

We've learned we can't play this game with our kids. I tested JT on one yesterday and asked who he would have over for dinner: Mother Teresa, Mohammad Ali, Groucho Marx, or several others. He could identify Mother Teresa, but none of the others. It's a game designed for our generation and our common knowledge, and just doesn't work for the family. Since there are other games we prefer playing with company these days, we're finally letting this one go.

But once upon a time in Ithaca, we would play this with friends. I delightedly remember one game in particular when we all decided to put the names of a senior missionary couple in our church on the board. He was known for being a golf fanatic. If you could come up with a way to further God's work through golf, he was your man!

So one of us drew the card: Imagine if [his wife] had to select a way of dying. Which would she choose?

1. Peacefully in sleep
2. Hit by a golf ball
3. Fighting in war
4. Murdered by a jealous lover
5. TV falls into bubble bath
6. Overeating

And we laughed uproariously, because of course she'd want to go by being hit by a golf ball. It would ensure that her husband was with her when she goes!

As we were getting rid of the game, I found that particular card and needed to write down the happy memory.

Thoughts on Pres. Oaks' comments on the family

At the October General Conference yesterday, Pres. Dallin H. Oaks - now the senior apostle - described a few points of how family life has changed from when he was a child. To summarize, he contrasted how it used to be an economic necessity for families to have a highly organized structure, with all members pushing towards a common goal. There was much more family oversight of children, and therefore also time for real connections to be made and instruction given. In today's urban environment, he contrasted, families tend to be units of economic consumption, rather than production. It is too easy to treat home as a boarding house, where people share a common address to eat and sleep, but where children receive little guidance, direction, or connection.

In his comparisons, I do not hear him wishing that we all went back to those poorer times, but rather that we need to take proactive thought and consideration for how to create "consistent, family-centered" activities, to make time together, to create a vision of what we want our family to be like and work together towards those goals. 

I was a missionary in eastern Germany shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. I cannot recall a day going past when some middle+ aged person would recite the same litany of miseries East Germany had experienced since reunification, most especially unemployment (which was 40% at the time) and the lack of connection between neighbors. Under socialist rule, there was such scarcity that it was an economic necessity for you to know your neighbors and work together. If I had a hardware store and you had a grocery store, I might offer that the next time I got a shipment of nails in, I'd set some aside for you if you would set aside some oranges for me next time you got a shipment. With the arrival of capitalism, nails and oranges were in such abundance that being connected was no longer an economic necessity, and communities fell apart.

It seemed to me then that the solution was not to go back to the poverty and repression of the socialist state, where secret police without showing identification grabbed people off the street who were never heard from again, but rather to make deliberate, proactive choices to get together with neighbors and form community activities. 

In both cases, some very important things that used to be supported as natural and normal necessities of survival, fell by the wayside as the urgency for them fell off. "It is vital that Latter-day Saints do not lose their understanding of the purpose of marriage and the value of children." He urged us to follow Jesus' example by giving ourselves in service, and to create meaningful family activities that build family relationships and ties.