“To Love Another Person is to See the Face of God”

As an ESL teacher, I often get the opportunity to notice some of the differences between English and other languages (usually resulting in English being a very hard language to learn—friendly reminder to give a shout-out to any English language learners you know!). We have such a rich vocabulary, in part because so much of our language comes from so many other languages, and also because English has been around and been spoken increasingly widely for so long that it’s changed and evolved significantly over time. This richness is a blessing and a curse—it makes the language that much more difficult to learn, but also lends it to some pretty amazing possibilities in communication and literature.

So, with this richness of vocabulary, it’s surprising to me that we manage to make it by with only one word for love (whereas many other languages have several). The love I’m referring to when I say, “I love cheesecake” is clearly very different from the love I mean when I say, “I love my kids.” And that love is still quite different from the romantic love I’m talking about when I say, “I love my husband.” In Spanish, for example, you’d likely use a completely different verb for all of these situations.

I’ve been thinking about the kind of love God says that He has for us.

God’s love is unconditional. I’ve seen some pushback on this idea recently, and I think it’s because people are concerned about the idea that God doesn’t care about the choices we make in our lives. I believe that’s a valid concern; scriptural text, oral tradition, and logic all seem to indicate that a divine parent would care about the choices we make—the way we treat others (especially considering those others are His children too) as well as the personal choices that He knows will either help or hurt our ability to grow, progress, and be happy long-term.

However, I think it is just as dangerous, and probably more so, to start thinking of God’s love as conditional. He may not always love our choices, but He always loves us. We may also struggle—because of our choices, or simply because of hardship—to feel His love, but that doesn’t make it any less there. He sees our immense potential, and because He loves us, He is not going to be satisfied with leaving us where we are. And yet He isn’t waiting to love us. He loves us where we are, warts and all.

God’s love is sometimes tough. He says that he chastens those He loves. We can feel that chastening when we make bad choices and experience the consequences, including the feeling of guilt. We also feel it when we experience trials that aren’t our fault, but He which allows. In some cases, He allows trials to teach and shape and refine us. In others, He’s looking out for us and protecting us from some future harm that we can’t see. He also gives us the agency to make our own choices, which means we’re susceptible to the pain caused by the choices of others—and they are susceptible to pain caused by our choices. And sometimes, I wonder if He must allow our suffering because of a bigger plan that we can’t see, one that is much bigger than our individual lives or our ability to comprehend, and we won’t get those answers until after this life.

At the same time, God’s love is full of tender mercies. He fills the earth with reminders of His love. He puts beauty, experiences, and people in our lives that He knows will bring us joy. I believe some of those tender mercies are by cosmic design, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that some of them are “just because” He wants to see us happy, even for a moment.

God’s love is selfless. I wonder what kind of pain is involved in being God. He is constantly aware of all of us, and at any given moment there is nearly immeasurable suffering going on in the world. There are times He intervenes and times He doesn’t, for reasons we may not understand, which must be incredibly difficult. And yet He doesn’t shy away from the complexity, the grief, the frustration, and the sorrow that comes from loving us. Somehow, He has figured out a way to find enough joy to keep going—and I think He is trying to teach that to us.

I’ve had a few moments lately to see evidence of my own love under a bit of a microscope, and uncomfortably found it lacking.

I think that my love is unconditional, and yet I feel myself pulling away when I don’t like someone else’s choices. To clarify, I’m not talking about removing myself from an abusive situation; I believe that’s simple necessity and is, in and of itself, a show of love for both ourselves, who are God’s children, and even for abusers, who are also God’s children and must learn and grow by feeling the natural consequences of their actions. I’m talking about allowing loving thoughts to be replaced with critical, vengeful, or judgmental thoughts because someone’s choices make me feel defensive. I’m talking about catching myself wanting someone’s choices to backfire because I hope to be proven right. I’m talking about feeling the frustration, disappointment, or anger which is natural when someone makes a bad choice, but which becomes problematic when it’s empty of the empathy and patience that I would want to be afforded for my own bad choices.

I think that my love is tough (at least, when necessary), and yet I shy away from opportunities to offer help and advice or share opinions if I don’t think they’ll be welcome. In other situations, I struggle to let go of the impulse for control and to allow others to make their own decisions and feel their own pain (whether related to decisions or not) with the trust that things will work out. There’s a conflicting balance to be found between these discomforts, but it’s a balance worth finding.

I think that my love is tender and merciful, but I miss so many chances to do the small things that show my love to others. I take it for granted that they know I love them, and then I occasionally get a painful reminder that they may not always feel that.

I think that my love is selfless, but then find that some of the reason I struggle to love more fully is because my love for others is centered on myself. I want to be loved back; I want to be thought of in a certain way; I take the choices of others personally; I want to avoid the awkwardness or potential hurt that comes with feeling and showing love.

 A lot of these reflections have come in parenting. It’s amazing how parenting exposes all kinds of things we didn’t realize about ourselves, in a raw and simple way. But other moments have been more nuanced—moments in my marriage, extended family relationships, and even relationships with friends and acquaintances. It’s humbling to see how much there is to learn when we start looking.

Wishing you all a (belated, as usual) happy Valentine’s Day, and hoping to learn to love more fully going forward. I hope those of you who read this and know me know that—though it’s an imperfect love—I love you!

Life Is Hard: What Helaman’s Army Taught Me

Life is hard.

No, nothing is wrong. Actually, I’m doing very well. Far better than I deserve. However, I know that every blessing I have—and even some of the things I don’t recognize as blessings—represents one that someone else is wanting and suffering for. I know that many of you, my friends and family (as well as those I don’t know yet), are struggling with something right now.

I remember walking down the streets of northwest England, having the opportunity to talk to a lot of strangers. As a missionary, it’s amazing how willing many people are to tell you all kinds of things. Maybe it’s because the badge makes them feel a little more comfortable, or maybe  it’s just because someone asked, but I feel like I heard a number of life stories that I otherwise wouldn’t have. Inevitably, many of those venting sessions would return to the ever-present, “Why?”

Why? Why is life hard? Why does God let suffering happen? Especially to good people?

I soon found that most people weren’t really looking for an answer. They just needed someone to listen. But the question frustrated me, as all questions do when you can’t answer them in a way that really satisfies. Sure, I did have some answers, and they were answers I believed in (and still do):

• We live in a fallen, imperfect world.
• Life is a test.
• We need to struggle in order to learn and grow.
• We have agency, the ability to choose, and that is too valuable to take away—even if it means we will sometimes hurt one another and ourselves.

Yet none of these answers seemed to do the trick for me, and so the question stuck around in my mind for quite some time.

Missionaries have a special privilege of blocking out a couple of hours each morning just to read, study, and think about questions like these. I was spending a little of that time every day reading the Book of Mormon. One morning, I found myself reading the story of Helaman’s stripling warriors. For those unfamiliar with it, this is one of the best-known Book of Mormon stories; most LDS primary children can tell it to you:

There are two groups of people: Nephites and Lamanites. The Nephites have the scriptures and are (usually) trying to follow God. The Lamanites, at this point, hate the Nephites because of some ancient family drama (It’s always family drama, isn’t it?). A few Nephite missionaries decide to go live with the Lamanites for a while and try to share the gospel. God’s love and the love of neighbors proves more powerful than deep-seated enmity (because it is), and a group of the Lamanites are converted.

Now, the Lamanites, at this point, are a people who really like war. These Lamanites who convert have killed many, many people before, and they recognize that that’s going to be hard to come back from. They are so committed to making sure that they don’t kill again that they bury their weapons and make a solemn promise never to take them up again—even in self-defense. However, other tribes of Lamanites are not happy with their fellow Lamanites getting chummy with the Nephites. They attack and kill many of the converted Lamanites. The Nephites decide to send their own armies to protect the converted Lamanites so that they can keep their promise.

Eventually, the Nephites need some reinforcements. Around this time, the next generation of converted Lamanites is growing up. There are a group of 2,000 young men who have not made the promise never to fight (because they don’t have the same history as their parents). So they volunteer to fight to defend their people. A Nephite named Helaman leads them. At more than one point, they are faced with a battle in which they are extremely outnumbered and out-experienced. However, they trust in their cause and they trust that God will be with them, so they meet the challenge. Miraculously, they beat the odds and not only do they win, but not one of them is killed. They praise the Lord for protecting them.

That’s usually where we stop. These amazing young men had faith and were good people, and God protected them. The end.

This time, though, I was caught by half a verse that I never seemed to pay much attention to before. In this passage, we learn that a few hundred of the 2,000 young men fainted because they lost so much blood. We also learn that not a single one of them escaped the battle without injuries—in fact, they all received multiple injuries. The scripture doesn’t expound on those injuries, but I don’t imagine that battle-hardened ancient writers usually bother to record scratches, so we can probably guess that a lot of them were pretty major injuries. Yet that’s not what the story seems to focus on.

Helaman and these young men don’t record that God abandoned them and let them lose limbs, faint, collect nasty scars, and maybe even think they were going to die. Yet I’m sure they expressed sorrow. I’m sure they screamed and cried at the pain, and that they struggled with the lasting effects of their injuries. What was most important, though, was that they survived. And they won.

As I read this story, seemingly for the first time, I felt like the Lord was giving me the clearest answer I’ve ever received to this question.

“Why is life hard, Lord?”

“Because it is. Isn’t there a better question you want to ask?”

It doesn’t matter whether I’m young and inexperienced like Helaman’s army, or older and more experienced like their opponents. It doesn’t even matter whether I’m “good” or “bad.” War is hard, period. We frequently compare life to a battle, and in this way it seems to be a valid comparison. It’s hard. The questions I really want to be asking are:

What am I fighting for?

Can I win?

Those questions change everything. The first one is up to us, and then God can answer the second: “YES!” The story of Helaman’s army is not typical of battle stories. The “good guys” don’t always win, and they don’t all survive. But the story is true of life. Ultimately, at least if you believe in a grander scheme than what we have here in this life, we can survive and we can win. Even if it hurts. We just need to decide what we’re fighting for, and make sure it’s worth it.

I hope all of my loved ones who are wounded right now know that they can win this fight. I hope you know you will survive, and I hope you know you aren’t fighting alone. I hope you feel the worth of what you’re fighting for. I hope you feel the power that is sustaining you, especially when it hurts. I hope you keep fighting, and keep finding reasons to be happy.

 

My New Year’s Resolutions for My New Year’s Resolutions

Here it is! The end of an old year and the start of a new one, complete with everyone’s resolutions to lose or gain weight, to read so many books, to save money, etc. all wonderfully documented by social media so that those of us who haven’t thought of any goals yet (who, me?) can recognize their lack of responsibility and ambition…

But really, I like the tradition of New Year’s Resolutions. I am just as guilty as anyone of taking my resolutions seriously until approximately January 3rd…but it is an exciting thing to be able to set goals for a new year. Well, exciting and overwhelming. So as I start to consider my new year’s resolutions, here are some pitfalls I’ve noticed in myself that I’m going to try to avoid. Maybe you’ll see some of your pitfalls too:

1. I’m going to limit myself to two or three specific goals. God must laugh a little when I take New Year’s Day as an opportunity to outline every aspect of my life (spiritual, mental, physical, emotional, creative…) and and all of the attributes and accomplishments I want in each of those areas–and then I wonder why I can’t remember all my resolutions, let alone keep them up longer than 72 hours. (Let’s be honest, it doesn’t even last 72 hours.)
2. I’m going to pick MY New Year’s resolutions, not someone else’s. I’m happy and excited to see my friends’ resolutions to get healthier and stronger (complete with inspiring before and after pics), to finish creative projects, to get control of their finances, and so on. I really am. But just because these are your resolutions–and even if they are areas where I could use some reform, too–doesn’t mean they need to be mine. I need to focus on what I feel I need most, what is most feasible for me, and what is going to make the biggest difference in my life. We say it all the time, but we really do have to stop the comparison thing.
3. It’s okay if my resolutions are goals that I’ve set a gazillion times for myself and still haven’t accomplished yet. When I was a kid, our family joked about how one of my mom’s resolutions for about six years was to change her name. But you know what? It did happen eventually! And even though I’ve committed on approximately 200 different occasions to read my scriptures every day, or to get myself out of bed and exercise in the mornings, or to write this stinkin’ book I’ve been wanting to write since I was in the third grade, I haven’t failed at that goal until I give up on it. So here’s to those goals that we really are going to accomplish this year…for real this time…
4. I need to see my goal. It’s a nice thought that I’ll remember it on my own, without writing it down–but it’s false. I need to write it down and put it somewhere I can see it if I want to have a prayer of actually following through.
5. I also need someone to keep me accountable. I get out of bed in the morning when I have a class or a meeting or I know someone will be waiting for me to show up. When I have no outside accountability…the bed wins. Every time. Accountability buddies are a real thing.
6. I will remember that my goals are important, but not markers of my value or my happiness. My worth is just as high now, before I’ve accomplished the things I want to, as it ever will be. I also choose to be happy and grateful for the life I have now, even as I work to make it better and more useful.
7. My goals will be things in my control. I can’t control the actions of others, but I can control how I respond to them. I can’t control (usually) what trials or challenges arise in my life, but I can control my attitude toward them. I can’t fully control my relationships with others, but I can control how I treat them. These seem pretty obvious, but it’s hard to stay motivated to work toward a goal if we measure success by outward results that we can’t really do anything about. So I need to find ways to measure my success based on my own choices, and not necessarily on “results” (unless those are results in my soul).

I still haven’t figured out what my resolutions are, but this is a start. It’s really empowering that we have the opportunity, not just at New Year’s but all the time, to change things about ourselves and our lives. We really are who we choose to be, and that’s daunting…but it’s also wonderfully exciting. Here’s to choosing to be better and happier this year!

 

 

Are You a Thinker or a Doer? (P.S. This is a trick question.)

Do you have a scripture or an inspirational thought that you turn to whenever life is tough—one that uplifts and comforts you? I can think of a few of those. Now let me ask you this: do you have a scripture or an inspirational thought that completely terrifies you? I have one of those, too. It’s Doctrine and Covenants 82:3: “Where much is given, much is required.”

We have been given much. We have been given life in an incredible time in history. We have been given miraculous physical bodies. Most of us, at least most of the time, don’t have to worry about where our next meal is coming from, or whether we will have a home tomorrow, or whether we will survive another day of war and political turmoil. Most of us have been given vast opportunities for education. Most of us have loving and supportive family, or friends, or even both around us. Many of us who have religion in our lives enjoy the peace, purpose, and perspective that it provides.

We have also been given intellect, talent, ambition, diligence, and curiosity—gifts that enable us to take advantage of our privilege and opportunities. Sometimes we are hesitant to acknowledge these gifts for fear of being proud. A friend of mine recently posted a quote from C.S. Lewis, who said, “True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.” Not only is it okay to acknowledge our gifts, we must acknowledge them. But we must also recognize that they have been given to us for more than just our own benefit. Just among the people who will read this post are the talents, perspectives, and experiences that, if used with purpose, could change the world.

The philosopher Rene Descartes coined the Latin phrase cogito ergo sum, or, “I think, therefore I am.” This short phrase encapsulates the idea that our ability to think is what assures us of our existence. In my mind, often coupled with this statement is an image of Auguste Rodin’s bronze statue, The Thinker. Sitting on a rock, crouched over, with his chin resting on his hand, the pensive image of the Thinker has become a worldwide icon of the power of thought.

Many people have recognized, however, that thinking alone does little to solve the problems that the world faces. The Thinker on his pedestal may be brilliant, but he does not accomplish much from there. I recently saw this comic depicting The Thinker:

The post was shared on Facebook, where a few comments followed, hailing the virtues of the doers in the world. Yet I couldn’t help but think that the world has plenty of “doers” who don’t think…and they’re usually the ones creating the problems that the “thinkers” are trying to solve! So the Thinker has great ideas, but doesn’t accomplish much. The Doer, on the other hand, accomplishes a lot—but not necessarily for the better. Isn’t that depressing? But it doesn’t have to be, because we can choose to be both.

Now let me draw attention to one other figure, who was not alongside the Thinker and the Doer in this comic, but who perhaps could have been. This figure is the Feeler. I don’t know what the Feeler would have been doing in the comic—perhaps crying over a tub of ice cream and an episode of Grey’s Anatomy. But we can’t ignore the value of our feelings. As human beings, we have been given an immense capacity to feel—to feel love and care for others, to feel sadness for the misfortunes of our brothers and sisters (and for our own misfortunes), to feel righteous indignation at the injustices in the world, to feel wonder and joy and hope. Though we sometimes dismiss them as weaknesses, these emotions are often the motivating forces to turn our brilliant thoughts into productive actions. Eventually, as those thought-out and heartfelt actions pile up, we find ourselves waking up to a better world.

You can be a thinker—and a feeler—and a doer. The brighter future that you want to see is waiting right now in your mind and in your heart. I look forward to seeing it.

Sharing Humanity and a Setting

This summer, Jordan and I went on the trip of a lifetime. We spent five fast-paced weeks in Europe, visiting friends from our missions (to learn more about what Mormon missionaries do, visit this page) and seeing some incredible sights.

Among our unforgettable experiences was a particular night in Athens. To back you up, at this point we had been travelling for almost two weeks. Because we had had three flights at crazy hours, we had never properly gotten over jet lag and our bodies’ sleeping and eating schedules were all weird. So on this particular night, we found ourselves wide awake at midnight—and hungry.

Well, Europe isn’t as accommodating of late-night cravings as America (probably for the better), so most places would be closed and it probably wouldn’t be the best idea to go exploring Athens as lost tourists in the middle of the night. So we went downstairs and asked the man at the reception desk of our hotel if he knew of any ideas of places we could eat.

He said that the hotel had a deal with a nearby pizza place, and he could call them up and order for us. He even pad with his own credit card and let us pay him in cash (with no extra fee) to make it easier on us. While we waited for the delivery, we sat and talked.

Somehow, this always happens to us when we travel. (Not the late-night pizza thing, but the talking thing.) It’s impressive when you consider that, if you know us, neither of us are terribly social; in fact, we’re both quite the introverts. Yet the highlights of our trips are almost invariably the conversations we have with strangers that make the world just a little smaller and more meaningful.

Thakis, a native Greek, and his partner Patrick, from Holland, owned the hotel. They were working absolutely ridiculous hours to keep it going in its first years. Some nights they didn’t get more than two or three hours of sleep. He told us about how difficult it was to start a business in Greece, especially because of issues with government corruption. For example, though they were called a “bed and breakfast,” they were not allowed to serve breakfast. “It’s as stupid as it sounds,” he said. He told us about the mandatory year he had served in the military, which, though he disagreed with, he felt had given him discipline and other values that had helped him in his business.

He also expressed frustration about his experiences with religion. He saw the Greek Orthodox church hand-in-hand with the government that seemed to be crippling his country. He talked about the high number of Muslims in Athens who still couldn’t build a mosque there because of religious intolerance. He also knew of a nearby religious leader who regularly spouted some pretty hateful things about homosexuals—and Thakis and Patrick are not just business partners; they are a couple.

Intrigued, we sat listening to this man, his experiences and his opinions. We told him that we really hoped his business took off. I really hope it does. I’ve met few people so determined to grow and thrive where they are planted, even if their environment is stale and thorny. We also joked and laughed about some of the experiences we’d had on our trip to that point, and how they aligned with some of his experiences of the vastly different cultures in Europe and the world: the love of the French for their own language, the Greek forwardness that is not always as endearing as it is to tourists, and all the quirks of Americans.

Then he asked about us. When he heard that we were from Utah, he was curious about the Mormons. He asked if they dressed differently, if they integrated with society, etc. (I guess some people might have differing opinions on that!) We told him that we were Mormons, and I guess he thought we were normal enough. He asked questions about our religion and its origins, about our belief system, and about the way being Mormons affected our lives. He was surprised to learn that Latter-day Saints were not just in Utah, or even just in the United States, but could be found even in places like Greece. “I’m glad,” he said, and I think he meant it, “that there are Mormons in Athens.” He listened to us with the same sincere curiosity and empathy he had found in us.

When our pizza arrived, and we began to head upstairs, we wished him a good night, and for once found ourselves glad for our severely interrupted sleep and appetite routines. We had more great conversations over the next couple of days with him and with his partner—who made sure to tell us, as he helped us put our things in the Uber we were taking to the airport, to call them if we ever needed anything in Greece.

It’s a simple story, right? We met nice people. Nothing out of the ordinary. But later I started wondering. How would that conversation have gone if it had happened on Facebook? Maybe just as well, I don’t know. But my gut tells me that it wouldn’t have happened. Because we were strangers, our interaction on the internet would have had to be over some issue, opinion, article, or other post—and probably one we disagree on (because I’ve never seen a comment chain conversation about an agreement). And I’m sure there’s plenty we disagree on. We are from different countries, cultures, religious views, sexual orientations, life experiences. The only things we really had in common were our setting and our humanity. But that was enough.

I think that’s usually enough. I think that—at least most of the time—when we get to know people for people, instead of getting to know people in terms of ourselves or our views or our experiences, it’s hard not to respect each other. It’s hard to care too much about our differences, and when we do, it’s easier to find common ground. It’s easy to assume the best intentions in each other instead of the worst. It’s easy to see the good in others, both in their similarities to and their differences from us. And we’re better for it.

So my challenge is to go meet someone. All you need in common is a setting and humanity. You just might come away with a friend.

The Scientific Reason Not to Worry Too Much About the Future

A little while back I started realizing that I spent a lot more time thinking about either the past or the future than living in the moment. I realized it when I was enjoying a great weekend with a good friend, but found myself unable to properly enjoy my time with my friend because I was thinking about how the weekend was almost over and I was consoling myself by trying to mentally plan out my next trip to visit this friend. At one point I realized that we had been in the car together for nearly an hour and had hardly spoken because I was too busy thinking about when we could get together again.

I’m sure I’m not the only one who gets caught frequently with their mind somewhere else, often in some imaginary version of the future. It’s pretty easy to argue why we shouldn’t spend too much time in the past: we can’t do anything about it. But we can do something about the future, so what’s the harm in spending too much time there?

You’ve probably heard the saying, “The past is history, tomorrow’s a mystery.” Well, a couple of years ago, I did a little bit of studying to figure out why it is that tomorrow is a mystery.

Imagine for a moment a glass of water. Now imagine that I drop a single drop of food coloring (of your favorite color, of course) into the glass. Can you see how the color starts in a tiny, confined space, and slowly spreads out until it fills the glass?

Now here’s a question: can you imagine trying to predict exactly in which directions the color would spread and when? You’ve got about as much chance as a fish does of climbing a tree. But that’s exactly what we do when we try to plan our futures!

The second law of thermodynamics (no, I’m not a scientist, so pardon my lay explanation, but this is really cool) states that time is the measurement of the increase of entropy in a given system. In other words, the passage of time is literally just the increase of chaos. So in that glass of water, every second increases the possible movement of each of those particles of color. And in our lives, every minute—or hour, or day, or year—we think into the future introduces more variables that make our imagined version of the future less and less likely.

So what does this mean? YOLO? The heck with planning and long-term decisions? Umm…no. We still make choices based on tomorrow, because when that “today” comes, we want to be grateful for the choices we made in this “today.” And sometimes tomorrow’s reward requires the sacrifice of today’s pleasure. But it does mean that we shouldn’t procrastinate happiness.

We already knew that, but in case you needed a reminder, now you have scientific proof.

It’s Okay to Agree to…Agree

My husband and I were able to take a few days last week to travel to San Diego to celebrate our first anniversary. We bought tickets to Belmont Park, an amusement park by the beach. On our way into the park, we were stopped by a young man working for Save the Children.  He did his job well, we had a nice conversation, and we agreed to sign up to donate (and then realized we were just a few months shy of the 25 year age requirement…but hey, now it’s on our radar!).

That same day I saw a link from Save the Children on my social media feed, in addition to a few others of my favorite charities, such as the AMAR Foundation, O.U.R. (Operation Underground Railroad), and LDS Charities. Something in particular stuck out to me about these interruptions in my news feed.

I follow these organizations, and so I see their content on social media, but this time I was compelled to wonder why I enjoyed seeing them so much, why they felt like such a breath of fresh air. So I paid a little more attention to everything around them, and I realized something: I enjoyed the fact that they weren’t political.

Okay, so that’s not totally true. In a strictly etymological sense, just about everything important in the public sphere is political. These organizations deal with people, community and global problems, policy and government, and money just as much as anything else does. The difference is that they center on issues just about everyone agrees on. Everyone agrees that children should have access to food, water, medical care, and education. Everyone agrees that human trafficking is despicable and tragic and must be stopped. Everyone agrees that it’s a shame that people are displaced from their homes and (regardless of views on war and immigration) refugees around the world are in need of help and support.

When you think about it, we agree on a lot. And we agree on a lot of very important things. So I wonder why we spend so much time talking about things we don’t agree on, often just for the sake of the disagreement. Don’t get me wrong, it’s important to disagree, and it’s important to talk about the things we disagree on. We’re arguing about what LGBT rights are and how those rights should be protected; we’re arguing about issues facing women and how to address them in public policy and culture; we’re arguing about climate change and to what extent government should impose regulations for the environment; we’re arguing about a lot of things. And we should be, because that’s part of the privilege of being in a governmental system where we have a voice and a vote.

But why is it that controversy goes viral, and things we all agree on don’t? Shouldn’t the things we all agree on and the things we all care about be the things we share and publicize the most? The potential benefits I see two-fold:

1. If we focused more on what we agree on, we’d be a lot less miserable. We’d have better friendships and family relationships; we’d feel less inclined to judge and be defensive in all of our interactions; we’d be more encouraged by the goodness in humanity.
2. Even more importantly, we’d actually get a few things done. 

Arguing about what we disagree on is an important step toward change, but it only becomes change once we can get (at least most of us) to agree on something. Yet we seem to enjoy the argument so much that we don’t want to move on to the action stage of the equation. LGBT issues, women’s issues, and climate change issues (as just a few examples), are important, but why do I see sooo many more conversations about those things than about trafficking, or abuse, or poverty? Do we realize that if we all agree on those issues, we have immense manpower and resources to solve problems? Do we realize how much we can do just by agreeing?

If we, especially as Americans and other very privileged citizens of the world, put our time and energy into issues that we already agree on, how much could we accomplish? I’d even venture to say that the issues we disagree on would work themselves out more completely—because we’d be united, we’d be looking outside of ourselves, and, having established common ground, we’d be more willing to understand one another and work together.

I recognize that I’m just as much a part of the problem as anyone. I don’t have ready solutions and I’m not doing enough. But I strongly believe that if we focused more of our conversations on issues we agree on, we’d spend more time finding solutions and less time finding more problems.

It’s okay to agree to (respectfully) disagree. But there’s also a lot of value in just agreeing.

What if we started just by trying to give controversy and unity equal time? Here’s a challenge: the next time you share a post or a comment that you know will be controversial or contribute to an argument (and by all means, do participate in that conversation), find something to share that will bring unity. Something that you know will only find agreement. Something positive, or something that everyone wants to change for the better. Something that compels people not to argue, but to act.

Agree to agree. And enjoy it.

Women, Fairness, and Abortion: What Choice Do We Really Have to Make?

I’ve always been proud to be a girl. You could say I’ve been a feminist, even before the fairly recent resurgence of the term—I believed that a girl could do just about anything a boy could do (and thensome), and assumed it was common knowledge. Anyone who thought differently, in my mind, was just stupid. In fact, when it came to figuring out what I wanted to do when I grew up, my biggest struggle was that I felt like I could do anything and be good at it. Because I could.

It’s not that I didn’t realize the world was unjust, and that women often get the brunt of it. Experiences with assault and abuse (physical, sexual, and emotional), manipulation, discrimination and abandonment of women by men were very, very close to home, and so were the consequences, including poverty and mental and emotional health issues that led to generational cycles of abuse and neglect. In other words, I knew that life wasn’t fair, and that the things that made it unfair were not pronouns and wage gaps, but bad people and bad choices. I learned that the way to deal with that reality is to be a good person, make good choices, and choose good people in your life. And I learned, from strong women around me (especially my mother), that I could handle anything life threw my way and I could solve problems and I could make a difference. Because I can.

I remember the first time I had a real fallout with the word “feminism.” It was in a high school English class. We read “The Awakening.” The book is powerful, giving insight into the struggle of a woman living in an oppressing society and feeling stuck. I read, sympathized with her, and felt grateful for things like my calculus class, my track team, my career prospects, my social independence, and all of the opportunities I never would have had without pioneer women (and men!) who opened the world to my half of the population.

The book ends when the protagonist, suffocating in a life she isn’t really living, swims out on a beach and drowns herself. I thought it was a tragic story, first of all for her, but secondly for her children, who never get attention from either of their parents for the entire book and who are now left not only without a mother, but with the emotional scarring that will come with knowing they weren’t wanted.

In class, however, I was surprised to find that as we dissected this main character, we attributed every element of her final suicide to the situation created by someone else. Because she couldn’t change her situation, she had no choice. I was a little baffled. Of course she had a choice. She chose to kill herself. The consequences of that choice were real, and would be imposed on others who didn’t have a choice.

This isn’t a condemnatory comment on suicide; remember that the first tragedy was that the main character was so miserable she felt she had no other choice. That’s a situation most of us will never understand and cannot judge. But what do we do when we find someone who is in that situation, who feels so trapped that they think the only option is to end it all? We don’t encourage it, do we? “You’re right, you might as well do it. It’s not your fault life is so hard; you have no choice but to end it.” Of course not! We love them, we offer them all the help we can, and we do everything in our power to convince that person that they do have other options.

Ironically, I think my deathgrip on choice has disqualified me from being a “feminist” in the current major sociopolitical trend. I believe a woman always has a choice. She doesn’t always get to choose what happens to her, but she always gets to choose what she’ll do. No one can take that power away from her. So, when I hear of women who find themselves pregnant and who aren’t ready—too young, too poor, or not ready to handle parenthood, and feeling trapped—I want to love her, to offer all the help I can, and to convince her that she still has options.

Many women get pregnant because of a reckless decision, and are just as responsible as the men who got them pregnant, yet they face the heavier consequence. Many women are taken advantage of by men and are less responsible, sometimes not at all responsible, for the consequences that come. Like I said earlier, there are some bad people out there and there are some people who just make bad choices, and because of it life isn’t fair. It isn’t fair that men don’t  biologically have to be responsible for their actions (or the actions of others) like women do. And I believe wholeheartedly in doing what we can to counter that biological inequality with social justice.

What I don’t see as an option, however, is passing off the unfairness of life to someone else. Party A should take more responsibility, but they leave it to Party B. Not fair. Party B doesn’t want the responsibility either, so they give it to Party C, who had less to do with the original problem than Party A or B. Have you ever been the Party C in this situation? Even less fair. That’s often how we get cycles of abuse and bullying, and sometimes it’s the reason the people closest to us get our worst behavior. Two wrongs have never made a right, especially when the second wrong happens to someone who didn’t commit the first one.

That’s why, as someone who considers herself a feminist and who refuses to give up the idea of fairness no matter how unfair the world will always be, I do not consider abortion a women’s rights issue. I do not consider it an issue of choice any more than I consider suicide a choice—one that I pity rather than condemn, but nonetheless an escape in the face of feeling trapped when, in reality, there are always other options. If abortion were just another form of birth control, that would be one thing. I’d say that anyone who stood in the way beyond sharing beliefs and opinions was infringing on a woman’s right to her own body. And I’ve never found it acceptable for someone to infringe on someone’s right to their own body.

But a baby’s body isn’t his/her mother’s body. Everyone agrees that we can’t kill babies or children, or anyone for that matter, for our own convenience or even well-being. As much as we try to make this issue a social or political one by lumping it in with women’s issues, LGBTQ issues, healthcare and welfare, and other sociopolitical causes, I think we know that the issue of abortion’s morality and/or legality can only be a question if we settle the question underlying it: is a fetus a human?

Scientists say it isn’t. Oh, but other scientists say it is. It’s dependent on its mother’s body, yes, but it also has its own genetic sequence, and its own blood type, and a brain, and sense perception, and all the physical parts of a separate human body. And it has potential. (I’ve never known a tumor or a parasite to grow up into a human being.) We’ve had such a  hard time pinpointing the moment that a fetus becomes a human, and our definition keeps changing. We have to ask ourselves, really ask ourselves, not in heated political arenas but introspectively and seriously, when we try to define a human, are our attempts genuine, or are we looking for a convenient answer? We’ve found convenient definitions and rankings of human beings before; try slavery and social Darwinism, both of which drastically improved lives—well, some lives. We’ve learned. We’ve learned to really ask the question.

What if we are never able to adequately answer the question? Can we be comfortable killing this maybe-human and ignoring the question? Even knowing that it might be a human, and will be a human, and feels what we do to it, just because it is silent and we can’t ask it? Aren’t we trying to stop silencing victims? And could our attitude toward unborn babies possibly affect our attitudes toward other “inconvenient” individuals? The elderly? The mentally or physically disabled?

I think this needs to stop being a political issue, because it will never be treated fairly as a political issue. Liberals will see it as a feminist issue, and conservatives will oversimplify it and won’t acknowledge the complexity and (sometimes un-chosen) pain and fear felt by an unprepared mother about stigma, birth, parenthood, or adoption. We have work to do:

• We need to remove the stigmas associated with pregnancies whose conceptions we weren’t there for and therefore have no business making assumptions about.
• We need to strengthen families and communities to be able to help each other when unexpected pregnancies happen.
• We need to improve sex education, teaching
  • what is and isn’t acceptable, to target sexual assault
  • self-discipline, and
  • the positive and negative physical and emotional consequences of sex.
• We need to work on quality, accessible healthcare, including birth control and prenatal care.
• We need to work on our adoption processes and foster care systems.
• We need to be more free with our money to make these things happen.

But until we’ve answered that fundamental question, we can’t consider abortion acceptable. Because we, women and men, do have a choice. And even if life isn’t fair, we can be. We can.

Live Life With Regrets

Dumb question: Have you ever made a mistake?

I’m still waiting for someone to invent a “delete” button for personal choices. Or at least a “do-over” button.

I think about my mistakes a lot. Some of them have been one-time occurrences: giving in to some temptation or other, saying something stupid that I didn’t really mean (or maybe I did mean, but I shouldn’t have), chickening out of something I should have done. I’ve found myself thinking about that mistake for days, weeks, months, and even years. I replay the scene over and over and over again, with all the endings it should have had. What’s actually happening is that I’m trying, vainly, to mentally “delete” it. It’s a painful, crippling, and downright exhausting process.

Some mistakes have been more complicated: misaligned priorities, selfish attitudes, hypocritical mindsets. Those kinds of mistakes are the worst, because they aren’t about what I did, but about who I was (and sometimes, still am). The imaginary “delete” button doesn’t even work for them, because I’d have to delete entire segments of my life, and I don’t really want to do that. So for these mistakes, instead of “deleting,” I apply the equally crippling and exhausting, though not quite as painful, process of mental “editing.”

I have some help in these processes. My inner Perfectionist is usually in charge of “deleting,” and my helper in “editing” is someone I call the Justifier. She just tries to convince me that my mistakes weren’t really mistakes, or that I couldn’t reasonably have done things any better, or that those faulty attitudes were really just personality traits that made me me. She does this by exaggerating the faults of others, blaming people and circumstances, and telling me all the great things about myself that have absolutely nothing to do with the mistake in question.

The Perfectionist and the Justifier are constantly fighting, but neither are ever right. They just fight because that’s what they do. The Perfectionist is bent on making me feel like a failure for not being perfect, and the Justifier is bent on making me think I’m already perfect. The only reason I keep them around is because they shield me from this awful thing called Regret.

I was sitting in church one day as a missionary in Preston, England. I was thinking about how fast my mission had gone, and how I wished I had known and done more. If I could go back and do it all over, I thought, I’d do it so much better. Then a Romanian sister spoke from the pulpit. She’d had the exact same feelings about a mission she had served several years earlier. She must have been acquainted with the Perfectionist and the Justifier, too. But she’d gotten rid of them. How?

She said that she finally realized, “If I could look back and say that I wouldn’t have done anything differently, I would be failing. That would mean I hadn’t learned anything! How depressing!”

This was a great “duh” moment for me. It made sense: no journey or finish line is impressive that didn’t start somewhere, and I’d rather be moving forward than backward. Regret isn’t my enemy; the presence of Regret simply means I’m better now than I was before. Which means I’m actually winning at this whole “life” thing. Sweet!

I  can evict the Perfectionist and evict the Justifier. I’m probably not going to go looking for Regret or ask her to move in with me, but when she stops by we can have lunch and a nice chat. She’s good for me. Way better than keeping around those other roommates, anyway. They’re pesky, and they still drop by pretty often, but I’m working on standing my ground.

So if you’re struggling with Regret, remember that it only means you’re improving. Why is it so hard then? Well, to start, see if there’s a Perfectionist or a Justifier hanging around.

Unalienable

On Friday, (yes, Holocaust Remembrance Day, and yes, a week after coming into office), President Donald Trump issued an executive order to reform immigration policies. This included, among many other things:

• stopping immigrants from 7 countries from entering the U.S. for 90 days, and those of refugee status for 120 days
• a provision for banning Syrian refugees indefinitely
• reducing the number of refugees the United States will accept this year from the pledged 110,000 to 50,000
• a statement (not part of the order itself, but made at its signing) that the United States will give preference to immigrants and refugees who are Christians over those who are Muslim

There are other implications of the order, but these are some of the highlights. Currently, there are several federal courts that are pushing back against parts of the order, especially in regard to U.S. residents with green cards who have been travelling and are suddenly being detained at airports, as well as refugees who have already been through a thorough vetting process and who are also being detained.

These courts, because their job is to defend the Constitution of the United States, are looking to prove that parts of this executive order are unconstitutional. I believe that in regards to green card holding residents, they will be able to do so pretty easily. (I think the fact that they have to is evidence that, while timely action can be a virtue, there is a reason that major actions usually take more time and more people. This one was obviously not thought out or implemented very well.)

However, I am doubting that they will be able to find anything in the Constitution to combat the actions to keep out refugees. Why would they? The Constitution was created to dictate how the United States government treats United States citizens. Under the Constitution, the government’s primary responsibility is to protect American citizens, regardless of anything else. In addition, it covers some of the basic rights of immigrants, travelers, and others who find themselves in America. There simply are no rights guaranteed for refugees or people in other countries who want to be here.

So that’s it. America has no responsibility for people outside its borders.

Except…it does. The Constitution is not America’s only defining document. Well before the Constitution came the Declaration of Independence. The declaration doesn’t have much hold on what the government does. But if we claim to be Americans who uphold the principles upon which this country was created, it has a lot of hold on us.

The Declaration states that we believe “all men [mankind, of course]” are “created equal” and are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,” including “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

I’ve studied Latin for about 7 years now. In most circles, it’s not a terribly helpful area of knowledge, but once in a while it does lend some insight. Unalienable is important word. It comes from alienus, which is an adjective used to describe the strange and foreign. In other words, if certain rights are unalienable, they are so intrinsic that they can’t be made foreign.

Do we actually believe that? It’s beautiful rhetoric, sure, but do we actually believe each person is completely equal in their inherent worth? Or does that present too many moral questions we don’t want to face? I mean, it does bring up the question of whether we have a “Creator.” It makes us wonder who qualifies as “created” and endowed with the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness – like unborn babies. But those are discussions for another day. Today I’m thinking about what that means for those who are alieni.

The writers of the Declaration were writing for a country of immigrants. Many of them were refugees, fleeing poverty and religious persecution. Why would they have been persecuted because of their religion? Well, because it conflicted with state religion and therefore made believers dangerous. How can we trust that someone who places higher faith in God than in man, and believes in Him differently than we do, will obey our laws and be loyal to our country?

In fact, many of the first settlers came to the United States and set up theocracies (think Puritan witch hunts). That’s a little scary, huh? The Mormons tried to do the same thing, and they were persecuted from Missouri to Illinois to Utah – which wasn’t even an American state. So we’ve struggled with this question for awhile. We’ve even had periods of our own religious terrorism – the KKK was alive and well in the South not too long ago. (My mother can tell you some stories.) Yet we’ve always managed to work through it and figure ourselves out eventually.

Why have we managed to work through it? Is it because we’re a fearless, perfectly tolerant, amazingly cooperative people? Honestly, no. It’s because we’ve had to acknowledge that once we doubt the rights of others, we’ll find them slippery in our own hands.

If we place preference on one religion over another when it comes to life-changing decisions, and if we make it okay to label a religion as dangerous and un-American, we’ll soon find we’ve paved the way for our own religion to be seen that way. We can’t ask to preserve religious freedom if we don’t mean for everybody.

I’m a Christian. I’m even a Southerner, and my family has deep Southern Baptist and Pentecostal roots. I’m not a member of the KKK. Duh. I also went to high school with about 4,000 other teenagers, and none of them turned out to be high school shooters. Go figure. Yet it does happen. There have been more deaths in America from white supremacists and from messed-up (American) kids who find solidarity in groups like ISIS or who come up with their own vendetta than from any foreign terrorists.

I’m not saying terrorism doesn’t exist. I’m saying it exists on a far wider scale than we think it does. If we think we can keep out Syrian refugees and protect ourselves from terrorism, we’re kidding ourselves.

Again, the government doesn’t have responsibility for refugees. It has responsibility for us. But if it turns away refugees because we are scared, we are in trouble. My life is not worth any more than a Syrian refugee’s. If a few Americans like me have to add an extra sliver of risk to their lives to the huge risks they already take every day (I mean, I get on the road in Utah in the winter; that’s saying something) in order to save 60,000 refugees from suffering on a level most of us can’t even fathom, it’s worth it. If I lose my life, or I lose someone I love, it’s a tragedy. There’s no taking that away. But it would have been a tragedy 60,000 times over if I had let those refugees lose their lives or, probably just as bad, lived lives with no liberty or opportunity to pursue happiness.

If we think that a refugee doesn’t have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we’ve lost our own claim to it. If we have the ability to offer those rights in our country when they are denied in other countries, we have the responsibility to do it. The government isn’t responsible, but I am. And so are you. Because we’re Americans.

We gave ourselves that responsibility in 1776 when we used the word unalienable.