Sabbath Devotional :: Living Life in the Middle of Things

I was talking with a friend who observed that it is coded into the generic structuring of LDS talks to speak after the resolution. It goes like this: there’s some sort of tension/conflict/struggle/adversity which leads our questing speaker to a journey for answers/insight/victory, then the epiphany and a resolution. It’s a nice arc, a complete emotional experience, so it makes sense as a structure for a talk or story.

But it isn’t actually very reflective of reality. Because in reality, most of us are sitting in the middle of things most of the time. We don’t know how the game will end, which ball will drop, what shape this journey will take or where it will leave us. And that’s uncomfortable, and maybe even a little frightening. And so it’s actually quite tricky to write or speak from the middle of things because it’s vulnerable and clunky and doesn’t necessarily make for as good of a story. There’s no punch line when you’re in the middle, only a flailing attempt to crawl out of it.

Recently, I found myself in the middle of things again. I’m still here. Maybe some of you are as well. I am not writing to offer you any glorious path forward or 28 point plan for digging our way through this. But I have been looking to the wisdom of the women whose faith I have inherited. I wanted to share some of their words.

Phyllis Kay Luckenbach Luch is the illustrator of the Children’s Songbook and the author of the greatest Mother’s Day song of all time (“I Often Go Walking,” obviously). Decades ago, she was asked to speak to a stake young women’s group about her experience composing the song and offer some advice about how to stay close to your mother.

This was a taller order than the women organizing the meeting could have realized. Phyllis’ mother had severe and occasionally violent paranoid schizophrenia. “I love my mother,” Phyllis reflected, “But no one could be close to her. . . . In truth my Mother was a shattered and unknowable non-personality; lost in a world of demons and tormentors.” The only time her mother was vaguely lucid was when she walked among the wildflowers; she knew the names of even the smallest and most insignificant flower. Phyllis recalled thinking that was astonishing. Ultimately, the song was an attempt to draw out the few shining moments of the mother she had, and to create the world she had wished for, to paint flowers upon a childhood that was often dank and miserable.

Turning back to the young women, Phyllis concludes:

“Many times creative works both great and very small like this song come from struggles with opposing forces and feelings. They are efforts at unifying the world, at making sense of seeming chaos, of determining what we wish to be. . . . We can use our failures, hurts, bad circumstances, etc. as dirt to cover ourselves with or as mulch to grow a violet or a sunflower or a giant redwood for many birds to nest in.”

If you, like me, feel at times plunked down in the middle of chaotic forces stirring around you and feelings stirring within, I think there’s still good hope for us. Because the world, our church, this organization is brimming with women who are intelligent and caring and brave and creative. These are women I’d follow straight into the middle things, women who have proven to be very capable at growing flowers from dirt and making room for more birds.

It’s messy, being in the middle. But there’s also a lot of potential here. I’m grateful for the women around me already throwing in their shovels. I believe this world, and life, and country are good. And I believe we are called to make them better. That’s a work that requires imagination, and patience, and courage to dream and hope and work unabashedly. And sometimes, it’s all exhausting.

But this I believe, this week more than most, the Savior is always, unfailingly, right smack in the middle of things. I have found him here so many times (or, more accurately, he has found me). I trust in his grace and in the courage of the many good men and women around me quietly growing good in their gardens.

May we learn to take dirt and plant seeds. May we see hope in chaos, potential in disappointment, purpose even in the middle of things.