Accepting Life's No Answers

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.