He hates sad endings. I suppose I do too.

Movie Critique: Upon finishing the movie The Visitor with my family last night, my dad (who missed the first half) volunteered his opinion first:

“Well that was a stupid movie.”

Observation: Our young are not so very different from the young of the rest of the animal kingdom.  Young animals engage in aggressive play fighting with their siblings and parents to learn necessary survival skills.  We are doing the exact same thing with Caleb.  I assure you, if he is ever attacked in a dark alley by a gang of pillow-wielding thugs, he is going to clean house.  I haven’t been counting, but I’m guessing we’re on something like round 37.

Observation: It doesn’t matter how much you THINK someone loves you, no one loves you enough to be in a ward choir.  I sent out an email yesterday BEGGING people to show up to choir practice this morning before church.  You see, we had to sing today, and since no one showed up to practice last week, and the week before that had been our first practice on this song, we desperately need participation today.  So, certain that people would finally see the dire straits I was in, and since it IS after all the season of giving and compassion, I was confident that THIS practice would be a success.

Well I showed up to find about three girls and a guy, so I scoured the building for recruits.  There were four more people in the chapel who were just sitting there 45 minutes before church started doing absolutely NOTHING.  I explained the situation and they were all like “I’m not good at singing,” and “I heard the choir is really difficult.”  WHAT?  We only sing HYMNS!  Even if I WANTED to make things difficult, I don’t have any cool arrangements to make that happen.  So finally I hauled them all over to practice, even though one girl that I graduated high school with whose mother is even MUSIC FACULTY on campus ROLLED HER EYES at me in disgust.  So as time went on, people were slowly showing up, and we had to keep going over things that we’d just gone over, and then we only had 5 minutes left of practice because church was going to start.  And suddenly this group of guys comes in that just got out of some meeting and they didn’t know what was going on.  So I finally had to say, “Okay, forget this stuff we were working on.  All girls sing melody.  All men sing bass.”  And then we ran the whole thing once and went to sacrament meeting.  

It actually worked out fine considering the circumstances, and in the end we had a pretty good group up there.  We sang “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” and they sang the third verse in a minor key because it’s depressing.  So maybe they really DO love me, just in a really begrudging way.

Epiphany: It was announced that my branch president, President Palmer, is going to be released.  President Palmer is one of those people who is so incredibly positive all the time that it’s hard to know if he’s sincere or not.  It took me awhile to trust him, and even though I eventually did, I still never warmed up to him the way he did to me.  I talked to him about some really difficult things in my life.  You know, different religious views and doubts and things, as well as my psychological crap.  I always felt ashamed talking to him and was certain that he would look down on me, especially since we both teach at BYU-I and I’m supposed to be on this high level or whatever, but he never did.  He always tried to understand.  He always called me his colleague and talked me up and told me to call him sometime so we could go to lunch.  He even dared ask me to speak in sacrament meeting in the midst of all this stuff I was going through.  I almost didn’t accept, but my talk on charity turned out to be one of the best things that happened to me this year.  Though I always thanked him verbally, I always kept my distance a little because of my unsettledness with the church, and I never felt like I really got to show him the appreciation I’ve felt.  Well now he’s being released.  I went up to him after church and tried to give him a final thank you, but I can’t help but feel like I’ve let something slip by.

It’s easy to take relationships for granted.  I’m realizing that I don’t recognize what I have until it’s gone.  I need to learn to recognize what I have while I still HAVE it.  I haven’t had enough empathy to really appreciate the effort and selflessness and love people are expressing when they reach out to me.  I mean, when someone reaches out to you, that’s a BIG DEAL.  Someone cares enough about you to go out of their way to make your life a priority in their life.  It’s NOT a small thing, but sometimes I treat it that way.  Anyway, I hope to look for more ways to get the most out of the relationships that I have and quit shutting out people who care about me.