“When you meet someone, treat them as if they were in serious trouble, and you will be right more than half the time.”- Quoted by Henry B. Eyring *
Last week my friend was diagnosed with cancer. She’s only fifteen.
Last summer I learned two loved ones were battling addictions. They both served missions. They rarely miss church.
Last year I watched a family suffer debt, depression, and unemployment. Their kids ride bikes, play sports, attend Scouts. They wear clean clothes, eat fresh food, and live in a comfortable house.
What looks hunky-dory outside sometimes proves hideous underneath.
Like my next-door neighbors’ porch. They purchased a can of paint to repair what looked like weathering. As they scraped off the peeling exterior, they exposed the entire structure—rotted.
I was thirteen weeks pregnant and my only living son was sixteen months old when I noticed during his bedtime stories one Saturday night that I was bleeding. I phoned my midwife. She said I was miscarrying. “You’ll have a lot of bleeding,” she explained briefly, “and then it will subside.”
A lot of bleeding. Okay. I put on a maxi pad, asked my husband for a priesthood blessing, and went to bed.
The next day was Sunday. My bleeding seemed to have slowed. “I guess that was that,” I assumed naively; and, childlike, I went to church.
I survived Sacrament Meeting but spent most of Sunday School locked in the bathroom. I nursed my living son to sleep and swapped my saturated maxi. I might as well have stretched forth my puny arm to stop the Missouri River (D&C 121:33). By the time Relief Society dismissed, I was in serious trouble. I stood in the hall, my backside to the wall because that backside was covered in blood.
People passed—virtual strangers; we’d only lived in the ward for a month. Acquaintances stopped to chit-chat. “Cute sweater.” “Great lesson.” “Your baby’s peaceful when he’s sleeping.” “Nice hair.” “Full hands.” “Looks like snow.”
I need my husband, I wanted to whisper. I need help. But I didn’t know how.
Within a few minutes, he came. He shielded me with his coat, shuffled me out to the car, and drove me home. Within twenty-four hours, everything was over; my body seemed to think it had never been pregnant. Within ten months, we had another son, and four have followed him—no long-term anything to sniff for. But I’ll never forget those five or ten minutes of serious, unseen trouble.
I wonder how many false fronts conceal blood-stained backsides. I wonder how many sorrows masquerade in plastered grins. I wonder. Sometimes serious trouble sports a slick facade.
Don’t get me wrong. I don’t fault the friendly by-passers. I don’t propose intuiting perfect strangers’ shrouded needs. Ultimately, I needed my husband, not the nice ladies leaving Relief Society—which is maybe why the unseen service inside homes is most sufficient.
But not all homes are healing.
Not all women in crisis have husbands.
Not all sorrows last twenty-four hours, ten minutes, ten months, or ten years.
I can’t reverse miscarriage, cure cancer, heal addictions, erase depression, offer employment, or even repair a front porch. Still, I mustn’t forget what I can do. Like the Old Testament’s Naaman, I’m usually looking for some great thing: ten-hour projects, twelve days of Christmas, casserole, cake, and the complete home make-over. Sometimes I'm so stressed trying to execute the elaborate, I neglect the essential small, silent, and simple. Sometimes I'm so busy cooking or cleaning or composing that I fail to smile, hug, listen, or ask. I too frequently forget that by small and simple means, great things are brought to pass (Alma 37:6-7). Christ fed five thousand not with casseroles and cakes, but with a few loaves and fishes. He opened deaf ears and blind eyes with His spit; He cleansed the leper and raised the dead with His words; He healed the woman's twelve year's issue of blood with her touch on the hem of His clothes. And while my words and my touch can't eliminate ills, they may lend the needed courage to bear the on-going struggle.
Another Sunday, ten years after my miscarriage, I stood in the hall of another church building, cradling another sleeping baby. I should have been in Ward Council, but my son's squalls drove me out. Locked in the bathroom, I'd nursed him to sleep. Now I wanted to go back to my meeting, but I couldn't bring myself to interrupt it one more time. So I stood outside the Bishop's office, superficially serene but stormy within. It wasn't just one meeting. This was the third such Ward Council in a row. Who thought to call you as Young Women's president? my thoughts seethed. You can't even quiet your baby. Serious trouble? Maybe not. But in the moment, it felt serious to me.
Another ward's Sacrament Meeting dismissed—my sister-in-law's Sacrament Meeting. People passed. "Hi there." "Hello!" "How are you?" My brave front fooled friendly acquaintances; but my sister-in-law wasn't deceived. She stopped and put her arm around my shoulder. Our familiar, familial relationship and that simple gesture invited my tears. She took her daughter to the nursery and then returned to my side. We talked until Ward Council adjourned; then she hugged me and left for her meetings. She didn't change my circumstance. She did change my heart.
“I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,” wrote contemporary Palestinian-American poet Naomi Shihab Nye (80).
I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.**References
* Eyring, Henry B. “In the Strength of the Lord.” Conference Report April 2004. Web. 2 Nov. 2013.
** Nye, Naomi Shihab. “Famous.” Words Under the Words. Portland: The Eighth Mountain Press, 1995. Print.
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