At first glance, you might think this post's an excuse. But it's not. It's a resolution.
I'm a month late, you say. Perhaps. Some things take time to percolate.
I guess that's what my goals have been doing all month. I've been reading like Seth does: ravenously. Somewhere between Rich Dad, Poor Dad and the BYU Studies' personal essay contest instructions, I formulated enough aspirations to run a half-marathon and head a corporation, not to mention spend time outdoors daily (Richard Louv's Last Child in the Woods), read all twelve titles on Oliver DeMille's book club list, and finish those five un-sewn jean quilts I never could squeeze into Christmas.
And be meek. Almost as an afterthought.
I listed some of these dreams in Sunday School, pondered others at weeknight Relief Society, then bagged all but one in the bedroom at 2:30 last Saturday morning.
"It's going to be a big week for me at work," Jared mused. Neither of us was sleeping. "The double-blind study comes out on the 30th, and we'll have to work hard to capitalize."
I nodded, but it was dark, so Jared probably lost my affirmation. Especially when I followed it with musings of my own: "I was really hoping for some time this week to work on an essay for a contest. The deadline is Friday, and I haven't begun . . . unless you count outlines for three different essays I can't really write, after all."
Both of us knew what I meant: "Which night this week could I count on your taking the kitchen clean-up and the kids?"
He didn't respond, and I understood his silence. He wanted to be supportive, but he really couldn't spare any evening. In fact, he was asking an evening of me.
I sighed. It was tempting to throw a conniption fit, but I might have awakened Benson. Besides, I was working on that afterthought goal---the only goal, from all that I'd drafted, that I'd been able to clear with my Manager, and conniption fits were in express violation.
So instead, I took the matter up with Him.
At 2:30 Saturday morning, I flopped beside my bed, folded my hands, and lowered my forehead. "Father in Heaven," I whispered, "I want to enter this essay contest. But Jared needs me to support him at home. I think I should give up the contest. Am I getting this right? Is this Thy will?"
I didn't hear a voice or a see a vision. I still knew His answer was, "Yes."
"I feel like I should give up the essay contest," I mumbled, crawling back into bed.
"I will truly appreciate that," Jared breathed in relief.
"I'm just frustrated," I confided. "There are so many goals I want to accomplish. I've been studying. I've been reading. I was so inspired at our Relief Society goal night. I want to achieve, to learn, to create---yet I run it by the Lord, and the only thing He sanctions, the only goal that comes back to me with His seal of approval is this one---just one: be meek."
I lay there for a minute to let the silence underline my disappointment. "Be meek," I repeated, while Jared nodded into the darkness. "That's it. What will I ever accomplish on that?"
Jared proceeded to extol all things worthy about being meek. He congratulated. He philosophized. He even quoted scripture. But my heart wasn't right, so even Mosiah 3 and Moroni 7 didn't soothe me.
"I'll sleep on it," I finally concluded---a wise enough goal itself, at three o' clock Saturday morning.
Turns out, sleep held the answer.
I dreamt we'd arrived with six stir-crazy sons at what we'd thought would be a five-star hotel. We'd driven all day. Anticipation mounted as we lugged boys and baggage to our room. Visions of spacious surroundings, luxurious furnishings, and an in-room jacuzzi lifted the strain of both baby and hockey bag slung across opposite shoulders.
But shock socked the sugarplum daydreams the instant we opened our door. Sea-green walls---a dull, doctor's-office shade of lily-pond---all but swallowed a shabby, rumpled bed. Little more than a body's width cleared the bed's perimeter. The room's only other feature was one more door in the opposite wall.
I held back another conniption fit; we had a vacation to rescue. I refused to let my reaction distress my family.
"We're tired," I reminded them cheerfully, dumping the hockey bag on to the bed. "Let's just go to sleep, and tomorrow, we'll sort everything out."
Everyone grumbled consent.
Our bladders begged for a bathroom. Holding out hope for the jacuzzi, we unlatched the opposite door, thinking washroom---only to find a larger space crammed with multiple families and beds just like ours.
"Where's the washroom?" we asked a lounging dad when at last we'd organized our outrage into intelligible speech.
"It's just a community toilet. You'll have to get in line."
I gawked at Jared and hissed through my teeth, "How much did we pay for this place?"
"Three hundred sixty dollars."
"What?!" my disbelief sputtered, unrestrained. "Well, can't we get it back?! It would be one thing if it were just us, but our children can't live this way. I'm going to speak with the manager."
I did. In a made-over kitchen-office, painted the same sickly green as our room, I confronted a humble manager with simple, dark, shoulder-length hair. She wore nondescript sweater and blue jeans and looked at me softly as I spoke. She may have been thirty. She may have been me.
"I apologize," I insisted unapologetically, surprised by my unprecedented boldness, "but I cannot afford $360 for this kind of service. We don't even have a private bathroom. I cannot keep my family here. I demand a refund."
She didn't reason, refute, or reprimand. She broke down sobbing and made out a check. She reimbursed me ten extra dollars for my trouble. I concealed the compassion tying knots in my gut.
When I woke, it was seven. Benson was crying, refusing my offer to nurse. It took just a moment to come to my senses and realize I no longer felt incensed but subdued.
My heart heard the Manager's message: "Your plans will cost more than they're worth."
Jared helped the boys with my Saturday chores before he took Ammon and his other eleven-year-old Scouts to the Ridge. I hosted a nephew and took the resulting six boys to the library. After claiming our holds, we tromped two blocks to Phillip's Playground. The sun felt more like March than January, and we climbed up the slides and sailed to Hawaii and ate bananas and granola bars until my nephew had to go.
I never once missed the essay contest.
A few days later, I read President Dieter F. Uchtdorf's January 2014 First Presidency Message. "The best time to plant a tree," he quoted the old proverb, "is twenty years ago. The second best time is now."
I could plant trees in my assets column, saving for acres of raw, rugged nature. I could plant trees entering essay contests and maybe whole forests investing my winnings. But what will I say to the Manager when I feel dissatisfied with all my trees' fruit? How much will so many trees matter if I fail to first plant, "Be meek"?
Jared's words came back to me from Saturday morning's heart-to-heart, and this time my heart was meek enough to embrace Mosiah 3, Moroni 7, and God's other word in between:
"For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the Atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father" (Mosiah 3:19).
". . . he will beautify the meek with salvation" (Psalm 149:4).
"Seek ye the Lord, all ye meek of the earth, which have wrought his judgment; seek righteousness, seek meekness" (Zephaniah 2:3).
"The meek will he guide in judgment: and the meek will he teach his way" Psalm 25:9.
". . . the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit . . . is in the sight of God of great price" (1 Peter 3:4).
" And the office of thy calling shall be for a comfort unto my servant . . . thy husband, in his afflictions, with consoling words, in the spirit of meekness" (D&C 25:5).
". . . if they will do this in all lowliness of heart, in meekness and humility, and long-suffering, I, the Lord, give unto them a promise that I will provide for their families" (D&C 118:3).
"And the remission of sins bringeth meekness, and lowliness of heart; and because of meekness and lowliness of heart cometh the visitation of the Holy Ghost, which Comforter filleth with hope and perfect love" (Moroni 8:26).
" . . . walk in the meekness of my Spirit, and you shall have peace in me" (D&C 19:23).
" . . . learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls" (Matt. 11:29).
". . . blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth" (3 Nephi 12:5, Matt. 5:5)
"For none is acceptable before God, save the meek and lowly in heart" (Moroni 7:44).
Someday, I'll sew those unfinished jean quilts, join a book club, and run a marathon. Someday I may run a corporation. Someday, with revenue raised by my assets, I'll purchase a farm house and plant enough trees for my whole family to climb and sail to Hawaii. Today, I dig a foundation---acceptable to God, if not man. A month late? Perhaps, or maybe twenty years. But the second best time to be meek is now. Twenty years from now when I face myself, may the return on today's investment inspire gratitude rather than anguish.
