Anchors

Roy was made Bishop in our church last week. It was an amazing day with experiences too sacred to share on a blog site. My soul was full and my mind was on overload. When I was speaking I mentioned my inadequacies and questioned my ability to be a strong support. But when Roy was at the pulpit speaking, he gave me a tribute that I want to remember into the eternities. I don't know if it was the words exactly, or the feeling I could feel teeming inside him that made it so memorable. But when he spoke it was like poetry. I will share what I remember, but I'm sorry that I've lost his phrasing and words that made the imagery so beautiful.
























He said... "Catherine thinks of herself as an anchor that drags me down, but what she has never realized is that she has a depth, sensitivity, and knowledge of the gospel and life that one can only get if you have been to the depths and gained it there.

I see her as my anchor, in the best of ways. I'm able to grow and stretch and learn because she anchors me. Without her I would have been crashed on the rocks long ago."

Thank you, my dear and cherished partner. I will always treasure your image of an anchor. I love you.

Goodbyes Are Hard

My Abbie's gone to London.
I started going through all the art work of my children, trying to make space in my home after the holiday haul and I found this self-portrait of Abigail, when she was in kindergarten.

She still has a beautiful and infectious smile. She still has a little left of her original very strawberry blond hair. Her eyes have morphed into a kaleidoscope of greens, grays, and blues. And she still has a gorgeous and very huge nose (exactly like the portrait) Just kidding, about the nose.

And I'm wondering where all those 20 years went. After her four months in London she will go back to BYU and finish her education, and I realized that these last four months, while she's been home earning money for her trip, have been an unexpected and probably not repeated gift. I already said goodbye when she went off to college and now this goodbye is even more painful, cause she's grown into such an engaging and loving adult.

Goodbyes are hard, whether they are school, or a mission, or long distance moves, or even deaths. Sometimes it's hard to live in the present when our memories of treasured moments of the past entice us to linger and long for a repeat showing.

Pain

Angela spent the night in the hospital in horrible pain all by herself. She even drove herself. I get a call at 7 am from the hospital. It's a kidney stone and it hasn't passed! She's got a few more days of misery until they will consider doing surgery, hoping it will pass on it's own.
I had a kidney stone when I was first pregnant with Patrick. It was pain on a scale from 1 to 10 - a 10!!!!! (for those medically interested, it was a staghorn stone, the one in the above picture called agony - they can't pass on their own they have to be removed surgically) We don't know what kind of stone Angela has, yet.
But - my little baby - is in terrible pain and I can't do anything to help. When I went to pick her up she was trembling with pain and had a green face. She said, "There was a little baby in the other room all night, I'm just sooo glad it's me hurting, and I'm not here with one of my babies."
She also said, " I was hoping that at some point the pain gets so terrible you pass out." Yeah, like in the movies - at what point is the pain bad enough you get to experience oblivion?