greaterthansparrows

Hubby was the last person laid off at the trucking company where he worked in administration, just as we had our fingers crossed that we were pregnant.  (I know, I not we , don't quibble.  It's how it was to us.)  We had to figure out how to take care of this, and we had the funds set aside for a normal hospital cost, and managed to almost not touch them even though there was still no employment for another year.  I had to give up my doctor in favor of the lower costs of becoming a patient of the University Hospital's residents' clinic.  Not really an 'in favor' type choice, but at least it was a viable choice. (We will pause for a moment to offer to posterity the you-won't-believe-this information on what those relative costs were:  the normal delivery fee for the OB was $350, and the cost per visit with the hospital residents was $4, with no delivery fee. [The OB fee was $4,000 for Carole.] You got whoever you got on duty, and I did luck o...

Happy Birthday to my oldest daughter! I became a real, actual mother the day Emily was born.  She was the first.  Not the first try, but the first arrival.  She beat our second wedding anniversary by three or four weeks.  Her daddy had to go take the bar exam and missed her debut--that story for tomorrow.  My mother had to take me to the hospital, and my mother had to take me home when they decided to discharge me a day early, because he had left for Idaho Falls to go through the temple with a cousin who would be leaving for a mission.  One of the doctors, a woman, asked me if I really had a husband who could be counted on; I said yes.  Definitely. She weighed 8 lbs. 9 oz. and was 22 inches long--they had done an X-ray a couple of weeks earlier, and that upside-down baby spine seemed to go on forever, it was a trifle unsettling.  She grew up to be 5'9", so the tall bit continued.  I had had severe anemia, borderline toxemia which had p...

It was the last Sunday of the year, between Christmas and New Year's Day, and we opened our bulletin to see who was speaking.  The program listed an opening song and prayer, the hymn and passing of the sacrament, and then, where it should have listed the speakers, it said "Testimonies from the congregation."  I whispered, "Look, they've got the wrong week, somebody goofed.  This isn't Fast Sunday!"  (The first Sunday of the month is given as a day of fasting and testimonies given by the members as they feel moved to come forward.) After the meeting began, the explanation was given by the bishop's counselor who was conducting.  The members were invited to offer their testimonies through the hymns--we would sing together one verse of a hymn requested by any member of the congregation after his or her brief remarks about what that hymn meant to them. The Lord told Emma Smith through her husband Joseph,  Doctrine & Covenants 25: 11 And it s...

It's the 24th of July, which matters in Mormonland because it's the day when the vanguard company arrived at a point overlooking the Salt Lake Valley, and Brigham Young famously looked out of the wagon and said, "This is the right place."  The Saints had finally come to a resting spot, and unlike Nauvoo, where they had seven years--longer than any other location--they were in a place they could stay, one no one else particularly wanted.  They were too far away to trouble with. Some of the people looked out and weren't sure they wanted it either.  There was one tree visible.  It still stood when I was a child, with a marker and a small fence around it; my grandmother took me and my sister to see it that first summer when we got our grandparent-trip.  Some dumb-stage adolescent boys killed it a few years later, pulling a prank, and were in big trouble.  But the sight of this valley was initially pretty barren. It wasn't about the valley, and it isn't ab...

Yesterday in our temple class, we began the lesson which talks about ordinances and covenants.  We drill a lot in lessons and classes on, "What is a covenant?"  A covenant is an agreement or a contract between two parties which involves promised performance on both sides, and in gospel terms, it means that we promise God certain points of obedience, and He answers us with promises of blessings.  He never breaks those covenants--if they fall apart it's because we break our end. We don't routinely delve into the meanings of ordinances as fully, we tend to glide by them.  We emphasize that ordinances must be performed, that they are required of God and are obtained only through his priesthood, which is the authority of man to act in His name.  We list the standard ordinances, but we stop short I think at times.  It's easy to go on automatic and not recognize how deep the meaning goes.We have had the opportunity to stop and think more deeply as we prepare to ...

There is a quirky new word/poetry game going, which might just be habit-forming.  It is called book spine poetry, and the idea is to stack up books and read their titles together--sequencing as free verse.  The library is doing a come-on for the summer, and I registered that it was a contest; you know, whose is the best; so I have been finding, thinking, and arranging for two weeks in my odd moments only to finally check into the rules and find it's one submission per week, and a random drawing.  They will put them up, but my effort to make my best and send them together only wasted some of my time for having my participating-name pulled out of a hat.  Ah well, I'm still having fun.  Add this to the beginning drawing class which I signed up for with a friend, and I'm having some gentle adventures this summer. Here is my first one--  That's The Eyre Affair / The Last Waltz / Cold Fire / Sleeping Murder  (by Jasper Fforde/GGVandagriff/Kate Elliott/ A...

old First Ward building, now Stadium Ward The Church has been established in Tacoma for a long time, and we meet in the first permanent building there, near downtown.  An independent hamburger joint sits across the street behind the building, and is the bane of Young Men's leaders whose boys abscond to it--except when some of the leaders have tended to gravitate there themselves....but I digress. My father was stationed at Camp Lewis (as it was called then) for basic training near the end of World War II, and used to hitchhike up to Tacoma for Sunday meetings; Sunday School was held in a member's living room, and they were raising money to build this building.  It was quite fun to move here and have him walk in that building the first time he came to visit.  It is also a New England-type brick building somewhat similar to the ward where I grew up, though it's a little smaller. Obviously, a building dedicated in 1950 eventually needs work.  It had had a full s...

We had a good bishop in Seattle who used to give young marrieds' firesides.  On one occasion, the topic was church callings. He said to us, "Don't ever come to me and ask to be released.  You may in fact need to be released, but if you trust me to receive the inspiration that you should be called, then please trust me to have the inspiration to know when you should be released." He explained that he did not mean that we shouldn't come to him when we were having problems.  On the contrary, that was exactly what he wanted us to do.  But there's a difference, he explained, between coming to meet with him about our difficulties, and walking into his office with an already-formed assumption. If your circumstances have changed, come and talk to him.  If your challenges are getting the better of you, come and talk to him.  Then when he has a chance to listen, question, and get a good picture of what is going on, then trust the keys of his calling to know ho...

Circle of Sisters on meridianmagazine.com (sorry it isn't listing a link to the original date) addressed a question about church callings, and their circumstances.  When is it all right to decline a calling?  Letters came for four solid weeks.  ( here ,  here , and  here if you want)  All of us have been through the uncertainty, maybe the panic, the blessings, and the frustrations.  The upshot was that we all have the right to ask for our own spiritual confirmation and to line out our challenges and concerns, and that when a call truly comes from the Lord He will open a way.  Writers acknowledged that sometimes human beings extend those callings out of logic or need instead of prayer, and then we are not at fault to step back and take another look. We have a very unique process in the Church, and it works because it actually comes by direction from the Lord.  Any other way, it wouldn't stand a chance.  Human beings on their own can't...

Well, the pie didn't quite burn (we didn't hear the timer through the vacuum cleaner) and we didn't see them Saturday, but my sister and brother-in-law did get here Friday and come back this morning for church. Their plane was delayed, so they were very ready to be fed by the time they arrived through a GPS-directed  back way, because the traffic snarl was horrendous on the interstate.  So much for my directions. (And they thought pho was delicious.)  Glad for cell phones, because they were able to keep us apprised.  It meant that we lost daylight time for showing them around, but we directed them around the high points, got to get out and walk through the downtown museum district where some of the displays are outdoors, and go drive around Point Defiance, which is the second largest municipal park in any city of the U.S., Central Park being the only one bigger in area.  We got out and saw the beach where we have spent many a ward picnic or family outing....

I have been too tired and busy to Think Big Thoughts, or at least to write about them.  My youngest sister and her husband are celebrating their 30th anniversary (a little early) by taking a cruise to Alaska, which sails out of Seattle.  Which is almost where we live.  So they are coming in tomorrow afternoon, Friday, while their ship leaves Sunday, and they are coming to Tacoma tomorrow evening and then tramping around Seattle to play tourist on Saturday.  Sadly, we are not in the tramping all day capacity right now, so we may have a chance to meet them somewhere for one thing--or dinner and chatting tomorrow night may be it-- except for them coming down again to join us for church Sunday morning before they have to sail that afternoon. Carole came down for two days to help, and we may be almost presentable.  We own too many books (I know, isn't that concept an oxymoron?) for our space, despite my extensive use of the public library.  There are worse fat...

 Our library has had a summer reading program for years.  The first time I was aware of it, I think the first year they did it, Christina (child # 2) was between kindergarten and first grade, and jumped from beginning reading to third-grade level to walk in the door of her first grade classroom in the fall.  Having the chance to go pick out books and bring them back to tell a real live person about them was key.  Because they had trouble with staffing and finding enough volunteers in the more populous branches--we went to the main library downtown--they eventually downscaled the process to just take a written log, and so Carole did not have the same immediacy and it didn't zoom her along on her reading progress; but still it was pretty great.  The final prize if you read enough books over the summer was a free day at the zoo with a mayor's award ceremony. The kids are all grown and the kids' summer reading program is long since history around our house, but l...

Last night at 12:30 (a.m.) I was in bed but not yet asleep, and heard noise that sounded like someone banging on the door next door, and then going down the shared driveway.  A lot of rattling, moving back and forth, and then it sounded like something was hitting our own windows downstairs.  I got up to see what the heck was going on. It was hail.  Keep in mind that the day had been clear and kind of hot--83 degrees breaking the high-60's we had been stuck in--and there had been no hint of rain.  I remembered that the news had shown a couple of intense, small storm cells southeast of Tacoma, and there had been one or two flashes in the window, no thunder, while the news was on.  It was supposed to be another day today like yesterday was, clear and low 80's, so I was not expecting anything else. This wasn't just hail, it was hail the size of marbles, and it got going hard and intense for just over 5 minutes while I watched through my open front door.  Wh...

One of the stories told by his son at Dennis Martin's funeral   was this: Dennis had joined two other engineers in setting up a consulting company, and work was sometimes sporadic; so they took a look at what else they could pursue, and decided on forensic engineering.  They learned how to analyze and reconstruct the scenes and circumstances of accidents, both highway and industrial accidents.  Dennis in particular was busy with several companies in Alaska.  He was prized for his analytical acuity and effectiveness. His son told us that Dennis made it clear from the outset every time a new person or company contacted him that he would investigate thoroughly and carefully, and that he would not shade, slant, or compromise his findings in any way.  It did not matter who was footing the bill, they would get his work and his testimony on that basis and on no other.  On one occasion, Dennis was contacted by a company who had used him before, to investigate a...

While I was in Utah a few weeks ago, I looked for something to read after I had finished the book I had brought with me.  I picked up Faith Rewarded: A Personal Account of Prophetic Promises to the East German Saints , by Thomas S. Monson.  As a fairly new apostle (about five years) he was assigned to supervise the European missions of the Church, which included visiting East Germany, a daunting process. The book consists of his journal entries which cover this subject matter and his experiences, and they begin in 1968 with his first visit and end in 1995.  (The Berlin Wall came down in 1989.) The Wall went up in 1961, marking a literal, visual separation between West and East Germany.  Berlin was a divided city, but was located squarely inside East German territory.  Stories are legion of how the American airlift kept people alive by dropping food supplies, how pressure did not waver and give up this piece of the city to the Communists and simply retreat to...