Part 4 - Adjusting Our Grip on the Iron Rod
“Our doubts are
traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.”
William Shakespeare
Remember
that I am a long-term waiter. I’m not going to insult your intelligence by
telling you that solving for loneliness, bitterness and coveting is as simple
as going out and getting a new hobby or staying at the “Linger Longer.” I have
so many hobbies that there are three rooms in my house dedicated to all the
hobbies. It’s ridiculous. The last thing we all need is pressure to add more
time-sucking business to our lives. Most of my hobbies I do alone - and
remember - Satan works best when we are alone.
Neither
do you need the guilt of missing a singles dance or walking out of church when
the lesson is on temple marriage, for example. I’m not going to be the person
to say “stay in your seat and just endure it.” Nope. Not me. Sometimes I can
and there are times when I need to leave to protect myself because the human
beings who are called to teach, bless their hearts, can’t be held responsible
for scratching away at the protective emotional walls we have each built up around us. We waiters
need to thicken our skin, get a sense of humor and react to all things in love.
But we are human too, first and foremost. We must be human for a while.
It was in 2012 that I looked back
and said. What truly is the end goal? If I died tomorrow, the people who spoke
at my funeral would say - “all she ever talked about was wanting to be a wife
and mother. Though she eventually received those things, sort of, in God’s time
anyway, all she ever dreamed of was sitting down with a large family of her own
in this life. Too bad. So sad. Wahhhhhhh! But her carrot cake will change your
life!” Is that what I wanted people to say?
I was working as an administrator at
a charter school in Southern Utah, full time and then some and I needed to find
slivers of time in which I could raise my head out of the whirlpool of my pain and look around. But I didn't. I worked and worked and worked. I thought I could hide from pain at work.
Poor pity me. I didn’t get the traditional life I
wanted. Could I open my eyes to see others in my pity pool? Could I give a
little and not just take whatever sympathy anyone would give me? I was expecting people to know my pain, read my mind, and side-step any topic that might offend me. What was I thinking? I wasn't thinking about anything but me and my pain. I was toxic. To myself.
If you are looking for new ideas to
pull you out of the pity pool, I don’t have any. But let’s look at those things
that we already DO or are supposed to be doing as a child of God and see if we
can put them in a waiters perspective. Let’s not add, let’s just re-adjust!
This will serve me a lot better than a new hobby anyway.
Chapter 11- Love Yourself First
“Self-esteem
goes to the very heart of our personal growth and accomplishment. Self-esteem
is the glue that holds together our self-reliance, our self-control, our
self-approval or disapproval, and keeps all self-defense mechanisms secure. It
is a protection against excessive self-deception, self-distrust, self-reproach,
and plain old-fashion selfishness.”[1]
James
E. Faust
When
I was in Thailand in 1988, we missionaries shared a film strip projector. There
were very few televisions and VCR's in the homes of the people we taught.
Occasionally we would get to teach a family past the initial Joseph Smith filmstrip
so we could talk about our relationship to God. I loved to show the filmstrip
of Johnny Lingo. Most of you know what I'm talking about. But for those that
don't - here's the 50 cent version in a nutshell:
In the story, Johnny Lingo is a
well-respected Polynesian trader. He comes to an island to bargain for a wife.
Mahana is the girl he loves but everyone on the island considers her withdrawn
and ugly. Her own father calls her "Mahana, you ugly!" (Which is what
we used to call each other when we were kids.) As the bargaining begins the
women of the island brag about how many cows they "sold for" and they
are sure that Mahana's father probably ought to give Johnny Lingo cows just to
get rid of her. But when Johnny comes the next day he brings eight cows!
Unheard of! The crowd go nuts! He pays the dowry for his wife and they go off
on their honeymoon. When they return, Mahana appears different. She is
beautiful, confident and happy. Johnny only had to prove to her that she had
incredible worth and it had nothing to do with what other people thought and
everything to do about what she thought of herself. In the end, it was Johnny
Lingo that got the bargain.
So cheesy. Makes me cry every time.
Isn't there a little Mahana in
everyone? For so many years of my life I wondered, when I was asked out on a
date, “WHY is this guy asking me
out?” I knew for sure that there was something wrong with him - and that was my
marker. I gave them no credibility in their choice, because not even I would
choose to go out with me. No matter how hard I worked, or how much education I
got, I wasn't taken seriously because I didn't take myself seriously. I never
let my eight-cow self out. I considered myself a no-cow gal.
There
was a time in my life when I thought I didn’t matter to anyone. I was in my
thirties and watching my siblings, all younger than me, get married one by one.
I was married to my job. Most days I didn’t have time to find a bathroom let
alone find a companion. I was so lonely. Thank goodness I didn’t know is that I
would be headed into another 20 years of loneliness, bitterness and aching for
the blessings that were blossoming around me.
Well, here is the big idea: YOU MUST
LOVE YOURSELF NO MATTER WHAT OR YOU WON’T UNDERSTAND THE LOVE OF OTHERS OR THE
LOVE THAT GOD HAS FOR YOU.
You
are not half of a whole. You must become whole yourself so that you can offer
yourself and your abilities to God and his children. You must accept yourself
for who you are instead of wishing you were someone else.
One
of the concerning answers I had in my survey about expectations was from a
woman that I have been friends with my whole life. She said “...without the
ability to have children, I felt worthless to God.” I understood that
completely. Another one of my brothers said “I want to feel like I am worthy of
love even though I am gay.” My own mother said “I feel that I wasn’t given the
talents that my children have.”
I was given this piece of advice
from Sarah Bauer Hernandez. She is a licensed therapist and life coach. She
said:
“Pursuing loving kindness towards
yourself and others can help you release bitterness, because there simply isn’t
room for both. When you fill your heart with love instead of resentment, you
retrain yourself to see the best in yourself, your life, and the world around you.[2]
I
also sustain James E Faust in the following advice he gave at a BYU devotional
back in 1983! What a find! He gave this talk the week I was entering college
myself. I sure could have used it then. So timely for me today. The talk was
entitled Self Esteem: The Great Human
Need. He gives six ways we can learn to love ourselves.
- Keep
your free agency
He warns that addiction, habits and behaviors that destroy
your agency will destroy yourself respect first.
- Cultivate
humility
He isn’t talking about “sackcloth and ashes” but merely
remain teachable and open to learning.
- Be
honest
“To thine own self be true."
- Love
work
He gave an incredible example of the flood of 1983 and how
more than a million sandbags had to be filled. “The former head of one of the
biggest companies in Utah wanted to be helpful in his neighborhood. Some of the
work was being directed by the bishop, and the bishop asked him to find the tie
strings and tie sandbags. He found tie strings in many places, some of them on
the ground, and he went around picking up the strings from the ground. It was
an emergency. Someone had to do it.”[3]
- Love
self and others
Are we secure enough to laugh at ourselves, admit our
mistakes, and learn from them? IN order to love another human (including yourself,) you must have a sense of humor about being human.
- Love
God
“So it is
that nobody is nobody. The seeds of divinity are in all of us. There will come
a day when we will have to account to God for what we have done with that
portion of divinity which is within each of us.
I testify
that God loves each of us, warts and all. I testify that he knows each of our
names. I testify that each of us has a potential in this life and beyond the
grave that exceeds our fondest dreams.”[4]
“Nobody is nobody!” Don’t you just love
that?! The worth of souls is great in the sight of God. Not just the worth of
married souls or those that are bringing children into the world. Our worth is
inherent in our nature as a child of God. We are sealed to Him individually.
That will never change.
And for all those ladies in waiting
out there (and I speak to myself as well)…Stop chasing after someone or
something. It occurs to me that all that time I spent chasing somebodies and
somethings, I should have spent chasing the beautiful me instead. This above
all to thine own self be true! I want to shout back to the 25 year old me and
say : “JAN!!! You be you! Do your own thing and work hard! If you stay positive
the right people will be drawn to you and will stick around. If you are
patient, exquisite blessings will be yours forever! I wouldn’t have believed it
then. But I do now. Well, I’m working on it.
Chapter 11 The Love Yourself Recipe
The Ultimate Carrot/Pineapple/Applesauce
Cake
It
seems like a waste to spend money on uncommon ingredients if we are only
cooking for two people. Isn’t that a shame? This is my favorite cake recipe but
I never make it because it takes time and a trip to the store. Well, dang it!
Let’s make it just for us!
Mix dry ingredients together
3 cups flour
2 cups sugar
2 tsp ground cinnamon
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
Add wet ingredients and just mix in
about 2 minutes - don’t over mix
4 large eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
1 cup sour cream
1 cup applesauce
1 tsp vanilla
FOLD in the good stuff last until
just incorporated
2 cups shredded carrots
1 15 oz can of crushed pineapple
drained
1 cup chopped walnuts
Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.
Divide the batter equally between 3
8-inch round cake pans
Bake for about 40-45 minutes or
until a toothpick, inserted in the center comes out clean
Cream
Cheese Frosting
1/2 cup unsalted butter - room temp
1 8 oz block cream cheese - room temp
4 cups powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla
Whip
together for about 7-8 minutes until you add a lot of air into it. It will hold
its shape better if you whip it longer than regular buttercream. Refrigerating it will also help it keep it's shape.
Chapter 11
- The Love Yourself Homework
1. Identify
the main character in the current story of your life. Think carefully. Is
it you?
2. If you answered no to question
number 1, why is the answer someone other than you yourself?
3.
If you answered yes to question number 1 - name FIVE positive character
traits that you like about yourself.
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.
Just kidding, one more…
f.
4. Think about someone you easily
and wholeheartedly love. How can you love yourself in that same way?
5.
Think about someone that you
wish all the happiness the world has to offer.
Concentrate on the feeling that you
have for that person.
Now offer the same kindness to
yourself.
What do you wish for yourself? PLEASE TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY. WRITE IT ALL DOWN.
[1] Self-Esteem, The Great Human Need, James E. Faust,
BYU Devotional, August 23, 1983
[2] www.sarahbauerhernandez.com
[3] Self-Esteem, The Great Human Need, James E. Faust,
BYU Devotional, August 23, 1983
[4] Ibid.
