Lately, our
daily devotionals have centered around gratitude, in honor of
Thanksgiving Day. We have talked about being happy to receive
something versus being grateful to receive something. The first is
more self-centered and the second is more other-centered.
In the midst of all this teaching on
gratitude, another lesson came to us through a sweet and simple book
called, “Porter Earns a Quarter.” In it, four-year-old Porter
repeatedly whines when he is given a “no answer,” which he is
supposed to accept calmly. In our family study of the Four Basic
Skills of Self-Government, we have learned that Accepting No Answers
or Criticism is one of those basic skills that is necessary to our
own happiness in life. In this children's book, Porter earns a
quarter for helping his Grandpa build a doghouse, but then the
quarter falls out of a hole in his pocket and sadly, is lost. Porter
grumps and whines and cries about his loss. He calls Grandpa, who
teaches him that he needs to learn the skill of accepting it when
life gives him a “no answer.” He says that when something happens
that you don't prefer, it's like getting a no answer.
Up until reading this book, I had
thought of no answers as those times when Mom or Dad has to say “No”
to their child in response to the plethora of requests that come from
children every day. As I read this and considered its application in
my own life, it was as though I could feel the pathways in my brain
remaking themselves. My paradigm shifted and I felt it spiritually
and temporally. I began to re-frame everything in my life. What about
all the times life had given me something I didn't prefer and
rather than humbly, calmly accept it, I pouted and complained, whined
and stressed and used it as an excuse for destructive or addictive
behaviors and attitudes?
After this, my daughter and I had
another one of our confrontations where I attempted to do my best at
disciplining her appropriately and explaining once again why I wanted
her to learn the skill of accepting no answers. With this new
understanding now in my mind, I wanted to explain to her how
accepting no answers could really lead to living a happier life with
more room for gratitude. As I often do, I began to use myself and my
husband as examples. I wanted to demonstrate how not being very good
at accepting life's no answers was one of the primary reasons we were
unhappy in life sometimes.
Caught up in the zeal of explaining, I
asked a question and once it was out of my mouth, it was like a
ticking time bomb. But I already knew what her answer would be. I had
known it for months, if not years.
“Do you think Mommy and Daddy are
happy most of the time or unhappy most of the time?”
Tick-tick-tick. I could feel my heart
beating. I was curious to hear what she would say, yet her answer had
already haunted my parenting nightmares.
“Unhappy.”
Well, unfortunately, by her own
perspective, she was right. She can't see all the prayers I have at
night, where the Lord puts peace in my heart again. She can't feel
the peace in my heart all those times I was not smiling, but just
doing the housework with a straight face. Just her perspective,
right? Even so, I had to ask myself whether her answer was really
true.
After relating this experience to my
husband, I witnessed an amazing change come over him. After hearing
that his daughter saw him that way, he dedicated himself to making
sure his family knows he is happy when he is home. The most amazing
part is that in doing so, he has actually felt happier, too. In fact,
he is choosing to be happier and it is contagious and
infecting us all! We've laughed and played more, joked more, and just
enjoyed being together more. After four days of this, my daughter
said to me, “I'm starting to like Daddy a lot more.” We laughed
and I told her she should tell him that when he got home from work.
She did and he told her he was glad and that he was trying to be a
better Dad.
This story gets even longer, but this
is my life. With the coming of the first Thanksgiving Day without
Grandpa, I have been thinking of him a lot lately. I have been
missing him dearly. Some of those feelings I never thought I would
feel have been rearing their ugly heads – anger, bleak sorrow, and
wondering why it all had to happen this way. Feelings like that come
from not accepting the ultimate “no answer” that was his death.
They leave little room for gratitude.
Wanting to soothe myself, I went onto
the memorial website we made in honor of Dad. I read the stories that
are posted there in his own words. One of those stories is Muffin theAristocrat, a story about a sweet little baby bird that he rescued
and kept as a family pet until six weeks later when its life was
suddenly ended. Dad's moral to the story was that we all should make
the most of our time together, for it seems that time is always too
short. He said, “His spirit also taught us to notice and learn to
love the small and simple things in life, thus slowing the fast pace
of life and the steady march of time.” He noted that “Perhaps the
secret to immortality lies in the close association we share with our
Creator, having the effect of bringing time to a happy and blissful
standstill.”
When I read that, I thought of how my
husband's happy actions had caused our family to experience that very
thing of bringing time to a standstill and helping us notice the
beauty in life and one another and feel grateful for it.
As I have pondered over what I might do
to help the family honor Dad's memory this Thanksgiving, I have
fretted over making a scrapbook, gathering photos and thoughts to
assemble together, and other ideas that just seem to fall flat. When
I read Dad's story, I realized that this is how we can honor him.
We can actually make the most of
the time we have together with friends and family. We do this
precisely by not dwelling on our sorrow that he is gone. He is, in
fact, right around the corner. If he peeks in on us, I want him to
see us smiling and joyful, making the most of our time together,
having learned an important life lesson in honor of him, and being
grateful for it.
