Life is not fair. . .and that CAN be a good thing!

July 15, 2011

Life is not fair!
I apologize for stating the obvious. But then again, do we sometimes hope that it will be?  I don’t. We don’t usually notice how unfair life is when we get goodies we didn’t earn or manage to escape the consequences of our mistakes.
I had one such an event recently. I was asked a couple of weeks before a state-wide youth conference/dance festival to write an article for the Church News covering the event. I eagerly agreed.  Though I had a son that would be attending it, the only thing I had done in preparation was to take my son shopping for needed costume items.Someone had sewn 300 poodle skirts and 300 prairie skirts and rehearsed and transported kids for a million hours. . .but it wasn’t me.
 The day of the performance, I showed up and was given an “all access” pass. The pass was on a spring load, so I could pull it up for display and it would automatically retract. The 60 mile drive to the youth conference location was worth that pass, but it got EVEN BETTER. My spring loaded pass gave me access to talk to anyone I wanted, to go anywhere I wanted and an hour long interview with the visiting Church dignitary, Sister Ann Dibb of the Young Women’s general presidency and Church President Thomas M. Monson’s daughter. (She’s a neat lady, the type you wouldn’t mind if she stopped in to borrow something at 2:00p.m. and you were still in your p.js because you had a great book to read.)(And maybe even vice versa)
I gave her copies of each of my books, which she didn’t promise to read.
The show was really fun and entertaining and the story not too hard to write. I sent the story to The Church News an hour or two before the Monday afternoon deadline and received a note back the next day saying that they were so impressed by the story and photographs (taken by Jay Spear) that they wanted to use it for a center spread feature. Since they have the center feature for this week, it will come out on the 23rd of July. They HOPED I wouldn’t be disappointed in the delay. I wrote back that since they put it so nicely, I’d try not to be offended.
No life isn’t fair. I did nothing and hogged two fistfuls of perks. Others worked for hundreds of hours and their names are not only not mentioned, they are not even known to most of the participants and planners.
A few days later, I learned that one of my kids had been swindled out of $2,000. He was trying to help someone. He was duped, gullible and way, way, way too trusting. As he told me the story, I could hardly believe that anyone would fall for the scam, and I felt sick. He’s a smart kid! How does this happen? But as I thought about it, it seemed to me that I would 2000 times rather have a gullible son who tries to help every one he can, than a slick polished thief who got money dishonestly. No make that 10,000. NO MAKE IT A GOOGLEPLEX! How blessed I am to be the mother of the swindled and not the swindler!
But it does point out that life isn’t fair. The swindler’s mother probably didn’t have a tenth the advantages in raising her child that I did. Is it “fair” that I have a son to be proud of and she has a thief?
And I suppose that I’ve been the one in the kitchen or laundry room that nobody notices or cares about lots of times. Maybe the Lord only gives us glory when we can stand it a little bit without it consuming our thoughts with pride. (I hope I can stand it!)

(But just between you and me, it IS fun to have the two fistfuls every once in a while!)

 If our world was perfectly fair, the law of justice would keep us from our Heavenly Father forever. I hope it will never be fair because I need Jesus Christ to bear MY sins and weaknesses and mistakes. He was perfect and didn’t deserve anything but a perfect life. He got the opposite.  So I’m grateful for the mercy of Jesus Christ that allows ‘justice’ to be subdued through repentance. I suppose I’m infinitely glad that life is not fair.

Unexpected tears

July 10, 2011

I hesitated to write too much about the details of my personal life until I’ve had a chance to digest it. But I’ve been wanting to write about a new baby in my family for a few weeks now. The new baby is not mine, nor is she my grandchild. She happens to be my niece’s new baby girl. Her name is “Harper” after Harper Lee, the author of “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Her older sister’s middle name is “Scout”. I’m seeing a pattern here. . .only readers of “To Kill a Mockingbird” will recognize it.
Anyway, this is the same super-talented niece that does the sewing/craft blog called Madmim that I am linked to on the side bar. All the years growing up, her family said she was the niece that looked most like me. Her father is my brother, but her mother and I were look-alike friends since we were teenagers. I think she looks more like her Mom, but I’ll take the compliment anyway.
The point is that my mother called me one Saturday recently and told me that Miriam had her baby but the baby has a cleft palate. I laughed a little, but then I choked up and couldn’t speak for a few minutes.
I’ve been there. My first child and only daughter was born with both a cleft lip and palate. Why the tears? The tears were a strange mix of joy and pain and remembering some of the most powerful moments of my life. Little Harper will not remember the surgery. Cleft palate speech is mostly a thing of the past with soft palate lengthening surgery that is done when the palate is repaired.
She’ll get ear infections. She’ll be hard to feed for the first 6 months and maybe beyond. But babies have issues all the time and we just deal with them. Harper’s lip and gum ridge are not cleft, so her appearance will be normal. I’m not sure how I feel about that.
 I was shocked and surprised at first. But I had been to a lecture at BYU where a renowned plastic surgeon had shown before and after pictures of many surgeries, but most memorable were the cleft lip repair. They went from seeming mutilated to being sweet, normal looking little tykes in a few hours. So I knew in that first revealing moment after her birth that she would eventually look fine.
Once they wrapped her up and checked her heart carefully, (there are sometimes associated heart defects), they laid her in my arms. She was as alert as a four-year-old in a candy store. In that moment, I was filled with a powerful sense of who she was. “Trailing clouds of glory do they come, from heaven which is their home,” Wordsworth wrote and I was nearly overwhelmed to sense her great spirit and the wide-reaching mission our Heavenly Father had in store for her. I glimpsed His wisdom in giving her this defect to protect her from some temptations and pride. I felt a sense of warning, that I had better raise her to be full of faith and love and strength and confidence so that she could reach her potential. I would be held accountable. I’ve won a few awards in my life, but I’ve never come close to feeling the honor of being a mother, and in that moment, specifically her mother. My husband stood by, worried and tender and proud all at once too. I couldn’t explain what I felt but I hoped he had the same sensation that I did.
But I was a new mom, not quite 20 years old, with a huge unexpected challenge. I had just been through about 34 hours of labor, 15 of it hard. They left her in my arms as they wheeled me out. The nurse that had helped me through labor had tears in her eyes as she gave me a slight embrace and whispered, “I’m sorry.”
I started to cry. The moment of feeling the honor and the pain that nobody else would see her the way I did for quite a while, allowed me to glimpse a bit of the pain that she would suffer for this problem.
  Now, Trish is has become everything I hoped and saw she would. She has achieved honors, confidence, multiple talents, wit, etc. She is currently starting an ingenious Internet business that will be ideally suited to her degrees and interests.
So when “Mim’s” baby had a cleft palate, I relived the moment of Tricia’s birth, the sensation of seeing who she is, the pain and inconvenience of dealing with her condition. The mother-pain of seeing a beloved child suffer from teasing and ridicule and the joy of her triumphs. It’s all before Miriam and her family at least to some degree. I don’t know if Mim and Alan feel the honor yet. I don’t know if they anticipate the way the Lord will mold them and refine them through this issue. But I do know that our Heavenly Father expresses his love and trust by giving us challenges that will help us to be better. And He will bear them up and teach them what to do. He is faithful. I know they will listen.    

Responses to “Rasmus, Tales of a Utah Cowboy”

July 7, 2011

I’m starting to get feedback from people reading Rasmus, so I thought I would post one for all of you who have hesitated. For those of you who don’t know, I wrote Rasmus based on the true stories given to me by Jay Anderson in Black Forest Colorado. He had a basic concept in place and the true stories of Rasmus (Jay’s grandfather)going alone to Missouri from Utah to sell the wild mustangs, setting his own broken ankle by falling backward with a rope tied to the ankle and looped over a beam and tied to himself again, Lars leaving on a mission and his wife’s response to that, (not what we usually hear) and some of the other roping feats. I wrote it into a novel by adding some characters, events and in some cases squaring Jay’s events with historical records. I think that though the result is a work of fiction that incorporates real people and events, it is an accurate snapshot of that time, place and culture. I had the freak opportunity to talk to Gerald Lund about what the records seemed to indicate and he agreed that I was right in my conclusions. So the Anderson family is quite representative of what was happening in Utah and Idaho between 1880-1920 away from the Wasatch front.
“Rasmus, Tales of a Utah Cowboy” captures the humor and courage of men and women that went before.
Historical Fiction with a real-life western flair. Here’s one of the recent responses.

hey Beth, I just finished Rasmus, and wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed it! I started it this afternoon (after I finished Jane Eyre) and couldn’t put it down. I thought you did a terrific job with the characters; the stories were fascinating, and I loved how the gospel encircled the people. Wonderful! I will recommend it to my book club friends.     

: Wednesday wondering:What’s this world coming to?

July 6, 2011
I realize that many of my readers are in different countries, but we Americans have reason to be alarmed.  A mother whose child was found dead in a swamp, wrapped in garbage bags was acquitted of all serious charges. The relevant facts are that she didn’t call for help finding her missing child for a month, nor did the child’s grandmother who lived nearby.
The mother had searched for a poisonous gas on the Internet shortly before the child’s death. The grandmother agreed that there were 80 or more searches, but claimed to have done them herself. She was proven to be lying.
The mother spent every night partying and carousing after the child had vanished. She got a tattoo. Even after she was arrested, before the body was found, she expressed no interest whatever in finding her child.
She was “not guilty” of neglect. She was “not guilty” of abuse. If she was not a neglectful mother, why was she unconcerned with the whereabouts of her child? The circumstantial evidence was overwhelmingly against her. No reasonable person could doubt. I SAW portions of the testimony that were untrue, and if she lied about her actions, shouldn’t the truth be sought until proven beyond reasonable doubt? Doesn’t that sweet, innocent little girl deserve it?
Juxtaposed against that case is the case of the man here in OK where robbers came into his store waving guns and shouting for him to give them his money or die. He shot one of them with a gun he kept legally in the store and the other thief ran away. The incident was caught on a security camera. He chased the second thief but didn’t catch him. When he returned to the store,(it is a pharmacy) the man he’d shot didn’t show on the camera, but he says he started to get up, and the owner (the pharmacist) shot him several more times.
The pharmacist was just convicted of first degree murder.
He had been robbed at gunpoint before and somewhat crippled. He’d responded by arming himself and installing a security camera.
First degree murder requires premeditation. This man did not know his victim. This man did not do anything to invite or encourage robbery. Oklahoma has a “make my day” law that  says self defense is an acceptable defense if someone threatens you on your own property. I don’t justify him going back and shooting the downed thief to be sure he was dead, but he had every reason to expect more trouble if he didn’t be sure the robber was incapacitated. I’m thinking aggravated manslaughter would have been pretty well on target.
Someone explain to me how the murdered child’s mother goes free with overwhelming evidence that she at least knew her child was missing and failed to act at all for a month, and then lied and lied and lied to the police, and has never explained truthfully what she thought happened to the child.
A man who owns a store and protects it with a legal weapon from armed robbers will spend the rest of his life in prison.
Kasey Anthony has been offered loads of money for her story.  If she can get it straight, it will be on TV and somebody will pay big bucks to air it. WE MUST BOYCOTT THAT PROGRAM! WE MUST BOYCOTT THE ADVERTISERS! That woman may profit from her evil acts, but we have the power to punish those who give her that profit. PLEASE FORWARD with a note recommending that all join the boycott! (Use the link at the side to forward to your email contacts or facebook friends)

A trustworthy reader recommends “Unbroken” by Laura Hillibrand

June 28, 2011
Jeana Price June 20 at 1:10pm Report

Hi Beth, I just finished a wonderful book that I wanted to recommend. It is called Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. It is a true world war 2 story. My dad recommended it to me and my husband and I finished it a couple nights ago. We give this book 5 stars! We really loved it. I know you love reading so I thought I’d let you know:) Jeana

I notice that this is on the NYTimes non-fiction bestseller list at about fifth position. Comment if you’ve read “Unbroken”  with your own response.

Very unjust, but is it legal? Avoid NE 36th and Coultrane area like the plague it is

June 28, 2011
My sons, Chris and Brian went to the lower reaches of OKC selling pest control. One evening, they had good success in Midwest city and were coming home in the twilight. The area of Forest Park OK was completely unfamiliar to them. What was worse, the headlight I had JUST repaired had blinked off again. They came to a place where the speed limit dropped from 50 to 35 on NE 36th. They didn’t notice the speed limit change. Parked right over a hill beside a stop sign (unlit and well hidden in trees) was a Forest Park Cop. She wrote him two tickets. One for speeding (47 in a 35) and one for having a headlight out. They each cost $149.
There were a number of reasons this seemed worth talking to a judge. Have you ever heard of a blinked out headlight garnering a ticket on the first instance (no warning), let along a ticket for $149? Is is legal to perch a speed trap with a non-illuminated cop car, or a hidden one? Was the speed change really posted between the place where he turned on to the road and the place of the ticket. (It is, but if you start slowing at the sign, you’re still going faster when you crest the hill and come into radar range.)
Chris and I went to the court. It was packed with obviously very poor people. There were not enough seats for everyone and it was quite warm in there. The clocked ticked, ticked, ticked and the room got more crowded. At last, half an hour past the time we were required to be there, we were told to rise for the judge.
He proceeded to give a half hour lecture on what he would and would not do, all the (lists) of excuses he would ignore, and a stern warning repeated several times of who you must call when and if you did not have the money to pay your fines. He spent at least 5 minutes on community service and how entirely UNFORGIVING he was if people were late. “Not 8:30, not 8:15, not 8:05. If the supervisor is displeased with your work, he doesn’t have to say why, he just lets me know and the next thing you know, you’re in handcuffs.” There were a number of significant head shakes and ironic smiles passed around between these people who had gathered to try to get more justice from him than they received from the police officers. Then the docket opened and my ebbing hope faded away completely.
One after another people went up to explain that they had insurance in the car but couldn’t find it in the glove box. If they could prove that it was in force, they were only required to pay ‘court fees’. $50! I noticed that the cops had written separate tickets for every tiny thing. One woman had fumbled getting her drivers license out and dropped it between the seat and the console where she couldn’t reach it. The cop wrote her a separate ticket for not being able to show the license. (When she proved that she had it, the KIND judge reduced the penalty for butterfingers to “court costs”.)
80% of the tickets were written in the exact same spot my son was stopped. It’s brilliant! They need only one cop on one corner and the minuscule town of Forest Park wins the lottery every last Monday of the month.
When Chris’s turn finally came, the court had issued about thirty bench warrants for no shows, ordered about 40 different parties to pay several hundred dollars apiece for missing taillights, missing registration stickers, (penalties always reduced to ‘court costs’ if it was current and had come off or not been applied.).
One man that had apparently done something really awful had chosen to serve 12 days in jail since he had no money for the cost of his tickets. The court promptly mailed him a bill for $500 for his room and board in jail. Does he go back to jail for 5 more days? Then they’ll send him a bill for THOSE days, which he’ll have to serve another two days for and eventually, the days in jail will bring down his “costs” to a day of community service.
All Chris told the judge was that the headlight was repaired, had gone out again and he replaced the bulb again the next day. “$149.for the headlight, $149. for the speeding. Give the clerk payment in full.”
The court was a money machine. The penalties were so out of whack with the offences that I could hardly believe that the judge could sit there without ducking in anticipation of the bolt of lightening that must surely come when he orders impoverished people to pay $149. for driving through their tiny patch of power with a broken light. Luckily, in our case, the cop didn’t notice that a scratch on the trunk was painted over with scratch cover that doesn’t match exactly. I think it was in violation of ordinance 1004950t50-6-49330550066–2 that states that “the owner of anything displeasing to the eye of the duly sworn officer of the court of Forest Park shall pay fine as deemed necessary by stone-hearted judge based on request for field trip funds for upcoming school year by local school-which-has-no-other-income-than-from-traffic-tickets-since-there’s-no-other-business-in-town.”
The judge signed the orders to pay without blinking, with no sign of mercy or interest in justice. He warned the court that it had been seven years since he had approved an application to make payments on the fines and fees. Note that if you proved yourself compliant of the law (for registration or valid license or registration) and just couldn’t produce immediate proof, you still paid an average-in-other-court (according to Internet search) ticket cost for speeding or making a wrong turn, they merely relabeled it “court fees”.
What authority controls infection of this sort? What representative has authority to curb this unfair, predatory policy and these exorbitant fees?
I want to put up a warning sign at every entrance to Forest Park. (just E. of I-35 at NE 36 and Coultrane-area) I want everyone from EVERYWHERE to AVOID that little burg. Avoid the corner of NE 36 and Coultrane like you would a spewing volcano’s mouth, or an infernal pit. Shut down their cash cow by making the only passers be residents who can pay for their own field trips.

Note the new links in my bloglist

June 25, 2011
Pony workshop blog is written by a woman I know only slightly, but find her writing entertaining and loaded with nuggets of frank,(painful) truth. Writers will recognize themselves, I think, but beware, it may pinch.
20somethingsaver is a useful tool for those trying to live like princesses and princes on paupers’ budgets. I found her link on the Giveaway Corner blog on her Saturday bloghop. Fun stuff!

Story coming…The Pig Wife

June 21, 2011
The story I will post tomorrow, (late because I’m on vacation in CA,) is called “The Pig Wife” I think I will just post chapter one of the short novel I’m thinking of. I want to see how many days it takes to write a whole novel when I have a good premise. I’m starting today. . .I’ll keep you posted.

owwwwwwww!!!

June 17, 2011
I can verify that a pulled hamstring is a VERY painful injury. I guess I will never be a professional waterskier. Of course, I was beginning to wonder if that was in my future. . .since we don’t have a boat and I have never been up longer than about 5 minutes. But I wasn’t showing off. I was just trying to stand up and the corner of the right ski caught the edge of the wake and yanked me into the splits. My legs went every which way and a twanging pop ran up from my knee to my hip…If I hadn’t been wearing a life jacket, I would have drown. As it was, I bobbed, immobile in the lake as my brother in law Barry brought the boat around.
I’ve seen lots of football players writhing on the field with a pulled hamstring. They weren’t faking.
The ER doc said that it would hurt. . .a lot. . .for a couple weeks. He gave me some prescriptions to put me out of my misery… “Now if the pain is bad, take one of these.” The doc said. “If it’s really unbearable, take two.” He didn’t have to say, “If you swallow the whole bottle, you’ll go into a coma, but you might not mind. . .” I knew it already. Maybe I’m just imagining that part. The other meds tear up my stomach, (small sacrifice), and today my shoulder hurts when I raise it above a certain level. Whine Whine Whine, Whine. But it was a very,very fun day, right up to that point.
So if you see a little crippled lady hobbling on crutches, that’s the new, (humbler), me.

dark sun, red moon hmmmmmm

June 9, 2011
“The sun shall be darkened and the moon will be turned to blood.” This is one of the many prophecies describing the last days. That is, the “last days before Jesus Christ returns to the earth.” The wicked and slothful and disobedient will be destroyed and the sincere disciples of Christ and the innocent, those who have no law or do not know the law will be protected. It will not matter what your position in a church is. There are pure in heart in many denominations. There are insincere members in every denomination. It will not matter who your family (good or bad) is. It won’t matter if you’re rich or poor, smart or . . .well, if you’re slow enough to not be accountable, you’ll be all right.  Before you read on, take an honest, naked evaluation of how you would feel meeting Jesus today. When the Lord gave the parable of the Ten Virgins, the Sheep and the Goats and the Talents, he was addressing those in our day who claim to be in His Church. I note that in each example they may not be overtly wicked, but slothful and disobedient.
 Have you noticed the hot, dirty dishwater sky and and the blood-red moon lately?

There’s something that all of us should recognize about prophecy. A prophet sees the future. But as is apparent in the Bible’s book of Revelation, John saw things that he didn’t understand at all until the Lord gave him the translation. (He saw candlesticks that stood for churches in seven places) etc.What would Isaiah and Ezekiel and John and Jesus himself have said when they saw the conditions of our day?

Prophets describe what they see in the best language they can. It doesn’t do any good to tell a bunch of 32 A.D. shepherds that fiery explosive missiles will rain down from the sky. But watch a night video of Gaza and you’ll see exactly what he described. He said “The stars will fall from the heavens.” They looked into the future and saw violence and vanity and sin at night and the moon looked like blood. It was an apt symbol of our bloodthirsty ways, but it was also what he saw. They also saw the sun and moon darkened by smoke and massive storms.
They didn’t need to say that it was explainable by a volcano to the west or massive fires burning in Arizona or Texas or the vast pollution from factories in other countries that tint the moon red. They just described what they saw in the best language they had.
There is another prophecy that is almost self-fulfilling. After Nephi quotes Isaiah and prophecies himself, he says that many in our day will be pacified and in their carnal security say, “all is well in Zion. Zion prospereth.”
If you smile at the notion that prophecy is being fulfilled all around us, you are pacified, failing to watch and to be preparing diligently as Jesus admonished.
Regardless of the exact day and hour of the return of Jesus Christ, we are all told that NOW is the day to prepare. Our little children need to be taught to avoid the ugly, immodest, inane, vain, blasphemous, dishonest, Sabbath desecrating ways and styles that they will be surrounded with. We need to teach our teens to stay far from the line of inappropriate and to stand for righteousness in all times and places. We need to be active adults in living according to the Sermon on the Mount. We have everything we need to align ourselves with our Heavenly Father.
“How oft would I have gathered you as a hen gathereth her chicks under her wings. . .but you would not.” Will we now?
    

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