Happy #99: Learn to frame it differently.

I was having dinner with my son Jackson last night when he shared personal sentiments about struggle that surprised me. Jackson is exceptionally articulate, with a vocabulary that requires nearly everyone to look up word or two. So his choice for common language at a key moment in our conversation caught me off guard. But in a good way, oddly. It was refreshing. And I think the first time I’ve ever heard my son swear.

I find the older I get, the more quiet I become. So when I expressed how I was feeling to Jackson, it was with very few sentences. I finished what I was saying and looked out the window to push the tears down and pull myself together. I took a deep breath, then turned back and looked in his eyes.

We sat quietly for a moment, just looking at each other. Then he said, “Yeah, sometimes life feels like shit. And you can see it that way. Or you can see that shit as manure. Fertilizer meant to help you grow, to fortify you. Shit or manure. It’s the same thing and it comes from the same place. How you see it is up to you. You were just sharing John 15 with us yesterday, that the Lord purges us and prunes us, to make us more than we are. He's got you, Mom. It's all fertilizer.”

Perspective on the shit of life. From my 24 year old son.

The bamboo plant only produces seed once in a long human lifetime. So the seeds are rare. And expensive. And for the first year after they’re planted, they appear to have no growth.

They require care, attention, and fertilization for years before they begin to show signs of growing. If the seed is adequately cared for, the growth happens below ground, in the roots. After three to four years the bamboo shaft breaks through the ground and grows 60-90 feet in six weeks.

But this only happens after the bamboo seed has been fortified and strengthened over time. In the ground. In the dark. While the seed grows in ways nobody can see.

“Did the plant grow 90’ in six weeks or in five years?” Elizabeth Smart asked on Sunday. She shared the story to illustrate her personal perspective about the importance of the growth we all experience when it seems like nothing is happening. “It is during the times of trial that we grow our 90 feet”, she said. “I would encourage you to consistently try to give and do your best.”

Perspective on the growth that comes from the dark times. From Elizabeth Smart ...

Jackson, 24.
Elizabeth, 23.

They’re more than half my age. And I learned from them both. Perfect lessons with perfect timing. Because God is good like that. I'm grateful.

It’s my 50th birthday today. It's almost 2:00 in the morning and it's raining. But I wanted to write this.

I wanted to salute the young people in my life I learn so much from and enjoy so thoroughly. And I hope for another 50 years with all of them--learning to frame things differently, receiving unexpected pearls of wisdom from their beautiful hearts and minds.

May we all grow up together.

Happy Birthday, to me. :-)

PS. I promised my dear friend Lori Roadhouse I'd announce the book, Happy Regardless with this 100th post. Just need a publisher. And an audience. And more ideas. And a few writing classes. And people who would buy the book. And a good editor. And...

Details. ;-)

Bring on the birthday trip to Hawaii and me on the beach in a bikini. Frame that. :D

Happy #98: Education, education, learning.

Graduation at any age from anything is a victory. Just the ability to push through and finish deserves to be celebrated.

Education is difficult--under the best of circumstances. But for those of us who have struggled to complete our educations (all things considered), the work is worth the sacrifice.

A friend of mine, Randall Mackey (sits on the Utah State Board of Education), has been very supportive of my hope to complete a PhD. Every time we bump into each other, he asks how it's going. And he urges me, in every conversation, not to give up. One time in particular he said to me, "Kathleen, it will do more for you than you can imagine. But it's not the degree that will hold the real value when you're finished. It's who you will have become in the process." His expressed belief in what I'm doing encourages me to finish. Whatever it takes...

Thomas Jefferson said, “To penetrate and dissipate the clouds of darkness, the general mind must be strengthened by education.” And we all know what education does to break the cycle of poverty.

Education and learning are not always the same thing. But in the process of getting an education, we learn. (Though maybe not in the ways we were supposed to about the things we were supposed to...)

And learning is fundamental to progression.

In an effort to share some very inspiring writing about education and learning, I'm including my friend Peggy's recent blog post here. Peggy writes about her experience in trying to finish her own education with honesty, humor, and grace. It moved my daughter and I to tears.

I've shared the link to her blog in other posts. But here it is again. Peg's Blog .

Here's Peggy, and "Get schooled."

I started college in 1979. Oldest of nine children, I went off to Brigham Young University with high hopes, in clothes I had made for myself and with money saved from three summer jobs. The eight kids still at home meant my folks could not help much financially. I worked in the college bookstore, and majored in art. This was a poorly-considered choice, but it took me a year to figure that out. Art was a highly-competitive major, and I was just not that good at it. I chose BYU in the hopes of getting into their song-and-dance group, “The Young Ambassadors”, and when I was not successful at this, I decided to return to Arizona for the summer and regroup.

I secured a full-time custodial job at Arizona State University. As an employee, I could take classes for next to nothing, so stayed at ASU. I took French and Weightlifting. I stayed up too late and could not choose a major. I leaned toward Photo-journalism, although music was my first love. After a year at ASU, I decided the 4pm to midnight custodial job was interfering with my social life, so I quit and enrolled in Mesa Community College. Working my way backwards, high school was sure to be my next stop. Instead, I met a drummer. He had a band. I wanted to be in it, and I wanted him. Going back to high school might have been a better idea. But I was sold. Quit school, sang in bars and hotel lounges for a year, and married my drummer. Six kids and twenty-three years of marriage boot camp later, I graduated from the School of Dwindling Self-Esteem and found myself in a world where that particular education held no earning power. I knew I needed to go back to Real College. I had enrolled in a couple of classes at MCC a year or two before divorce, but that was quickly halted. I was “using too much gas” and “neglecting my duties at home” in this silly pursuit.

While working out the post-divorce financial arrangement, I quickly learned how fast $300 an hour in legal fees adds up, so naively settled for only four years of alimony, in spite of the guideline for a marriage as long as ours being three times higher. Divorce Math 101. I knew my soon-to-be ex would fight me on the higher numbers, and I figured I had a year of school under my belt, so I would be done in three, giving me a full year to secure a job, and then I would no longer be reliant upon a man who hated me for my support. It seemed logical, and it speeded up the process considerably, while eliminating legal costs.

I had no idea that I would have to withdraw from two semesters in a row because I could not keep my youngest son in school. Or that my 15-year-old daughter would require major spinal surgery, and that her father would use this surgery to try and take possession of both her and her younger brother. After two years of not sleeping at night because I dreaded the morning, which usually greeted me with a kicking, screaming, anxiety-ridden child who had to be stuffed into the car by his brothers and then relegated to the Principal’s office where he would kick the walls all day, I finally opted for an online K12 education for him.

I found some irony in the fact that twice I enrolled in Psychology 101, and twice I had to withdraw from that class to deal with the real-world psychological issues taking place in my own home. And this was upper-division stuff. But I got no college credit for it. What I had learned in two decades of raising children was only marketable in the form of child care, so I took a nanny job for a year, working for a very wealthy blended family. This was an education in social class and morals, and did not end well. Again, no college credit.

After four years of trial and error, I have become most creative in the balancing of my real-world education with my academic education, both of which are ongoing. As I have learned to navigate the world of Financial Aid and online possibilities, and also with the help of family and friends, I am finally within a year of securing that elusive Degree. If asked to sum up what I have learned thus far, my answer would have to be that I have learned that no one is ever fully educated. The lessons will continue to come long after the cap and gown have made their walk.

Onward and forward, Pegs. You will finish. :-)

Happy #97: Spark fun. Spark love.

Conversations stimulate connective thinking.

Conversing with family and friends, I've been reflecting. Re-thinking. Doing a mental map make-over. :-) Dot connecting.

Naturally, in the process, I've been reminded of something I believe has relevance to our exercise of finding peace (and happiness), regardless. This may be a no brainer for you. If it is, just check the box that says, "Yah. I knew that." And good for you. ;-)

Dot #1: There have been a few times in my life when I've experienced true well-being, when the light of God rested upon my soul like the warmth of the sun. Truly. One season in particular was during the death of my mother. The light I was given was measured out several times over a number of weeks and months. It was the answer to the prayers of a friend in my behalf. Even now, all these years later, I am able to draw from it. The experience changed what I know about the power of prayer for someone we love.

Dot #2: Kelsie came home from church last Sunday and said, "We're supposed to go into these situations where we're all young and single and supposedly have so much in common, and we don't know how to connect. We're so used to texting and Facebooking to interact, we've lost the social graces it takes to make friends. Never mind date or build community. We don't know how to do it."

Dot #3: When I asked Roman (27, single, the young engineer working with the principal engineer on a project I'm doing) about his view of the dating issue (and what's changed) he said to me, "It was different back then. When you wanted to spend time with someone, you called them on the phone and you went out on a date. Because that was the only tool you had to work with. Now, if you want to hang out with someone, you send a text out to a bunch of people. Those who can make it show up and those who can't don't. So the chances of actually being with someone you like are slim."

Does anybody else see what I see in Dot #3?? There was something to that phone call to one single person, a personal invitation, and spending time together one on one. Connecting...

Here's a brief synopsis of my dissertation:

We're separated from each other. Isolated and disconnected. And our health and well-being is suffering. Layer one: The home is separated from community, isolating the family. (Homes are placed out and away from the market place.) To deepen the issue (layer two), the family is separated in the home and the individual is isolated. Within the walls of their own homes, family members retreat to bedrooms (or wherever), and "connect" with the outside world via computers and phones.

Naturally, well-being is compromised because both community and the family are undermined in the break-down of (real) social support. Our soils are depleted, so our food is empty. We drive everywhere we go, so we don't get the physical activity we need. People are waking up depressed, struggling to feel good unless they're on meds, and our emotional well-being (and that of our children) has taken the hit. Our bodies, our brains, and our hearts are starving.

Essentially, it's separation by degrees. And it's happened in layers over time.

But this isn't true everywhere. Read about the Kaluli people (no depression) of the New Guinea highlands here .

Education, awareness, and a change in course and direction aside, we can uplift each other in very simple but powerful ways.

Connect the dots.

Happy #98 is simply: Pray for the well-being of someone you love and make that phone call....

Spark fun. Spark love. :-)

Enough said.