The Ridiculous Game of Life

It’s blog time.  It’s blog time.  My children tease me that I take pictures of everything.  It used to be that I was some crazy tourist, now however, it is because I must be putting it on my blog.  How can they complain?  They will have a complete journal of their lives because their mother found it fun to blog.  Blogging has got me thinking every week of what I might write here next which has kept my mind open to the simple things that bring me joy and the simple things that remind me of my Savior’s love for me.

For mother’s day my absolutely awesome husband got me a smoker/grill combo.  I watch this show, it has become a wicked addiction, called Dinners Drive Ins and Dives.  How can you not watch something that shows week in and week out all the glorious creations made in a smoker and not want to have one yourself?  And for someone like me who adores cooking, it was a definite must have.  Last weekend as I was struggling to get the coals started and the wood caught in my impatience I poured lighter fluid on coals that I did not realize had started a small blaze brewing in one corner.  What happened?  That’s right…cabloosh!  Let’s just say that I will be growing the hair back on my arm for the next month or so and that I couldn’t get enough cold water on my hand for several hours after without feeling like I was going to go up in flames.  My fingers never blistered and my skin only looked sunburned for a few days but it got me thinking of all of my clumsiness.  In fact my family teases me that I should never handle a cheese grater because perhaps I would grate more skin than cheese.

 

There...have I made you hungry with all my pictures? 

                    Now you want a smoker too!

                         You know that you do!

 

 All my life I have been clumsy and when I was a kid I used to think of that as one more major defect about me, but now I kinda find it enduring.  Strange I know, but it has taught me how to laugh and never take life too seriously and I really like that about myself.  Clumsiness seems to run in my family.  I won’t point out which siblings of mine are clumsy like me, but they know who they are and let’s just say that there is more of us than not.  My mother…the ultimate klutz and I laugh about it a lot.  Her father, my grandpa Hoklas was the king of them all and something about that makes me love him more, because you see, that makes me like him and I loved him so very much and he loved all of us so very much too.

All of us have things about us that perhaps are impossible to change.  Does that make us defective?  Should we be returned for an upgrade?  Absolutely not!  That’s what makes you unique and that’s what helps you see others with kinder eyes.  If earth life was perfection than those that were not would have absolutely no hope and the greatest gift that Christ has given us is hope.

Luke broke his collar bone this week and got a concussion in an accident with his motorcycle.  It kept him asking the same questions over and over only seconds apart for a good five plus hours and the next day it was every ten minutes or so. I worried that maybe his brain would never be right and I tried to laugh at the repetition instead of cry like I wanted to do.  His brain is back to the brilliance that is him but his happiness not so much.  Sometimes I feel like the choices that he makes seems to lead from one negative to another and part of me worries that he’ll have a hard time remembering that we love him and that God does too.  It’s never fun to be the parent when a child is hurting and you have to remind him the consequences that come.  Summer spent without a dirt bike or his skateboard as he gives his head time to heal and his mind time to grow up and become the awesome man that I know someday he will become.  I wish there was a way to let him in my head for one little moment so that he could see just exactly how much I love him and how much I worry about him.  I wish he could feel the love that I feel.  I guess maybe that is what God is thinking when we forget him, or trials come, or he has to remind us to take the better course.  Maybe he wishes that we could see inside his heart and understand how much he loves us.  Maybe he wishes that we could feel what he feels towards us.

My niece Molly had her first birthday party yesterday.  She was all smiles and cheers as she opened her presents and ate her cake and all I could help think was that I was so lucky to have her in my life.  I want my family home…all of them and Cullen, Annalee, Connor, Dallin, and sweet little Molly are finally home.  Oh how I have missed them when they were living in Texas.  The other day Cullen was talking with me on the phone and mentioned that he was having a guy’s night with my brother Brad and I teasingly said, “That’s not fair.  I have no sisters here for a girl’s night.  I should get to come too!”  Of course I was teasing and of course I was so happy that he was spending some quality time with one of my brothers but part of me was really sad too.  I never really got the chance to know my sisters very well.  Kari is much older than me and Jill so much younger and they live so very far away and part of me knows that Heavenly Father doesn’t want us to lose those relationships that maybe we never really had in the first place. 

Well, Jill is at this very second on her way here for a visit.  It has been two years since I have seen her and I haven’t even met my nephew Liam except in pictures and I guess I should just thank Heavenly Father that he is giving us this chance to connect, one of his many tender mercies, but part of me is sad too because I know that it will come to an end.  Time to find a way to get my Jilly Bean home for good.  I miss the chances that she and I have yet to have.

Saturday the girls and I and Sam finished weeding the lawn and mowing it and planting the garden.  Jason spent the night in Price playing a gig and didn’t come home until late morning.  Then we ran up north and got Suzy a new swimsuit for her pool party at school tomorrow and Nan a new dress for promotional from eighth grade on Thursday and ran some other errands.  When we came home I went in the house to get dinner ready and the kids played outside.  When I came out they were all laughing and giggling in the front yard, Jason included, as they took the bat and a plastic ball and played a completely crazy game of baseball with the ball going all lopsided in the air.  Safe from killing a car window, a house window, or a flower bed, and making the game utterly ridiculous and I couldn’t help but think that that was what life is all about.  Old and new, klutzy and happy, hurting and learning, new relationships and cementing old ones, and family all tied up into one crazy lopsided game of life with home base leading back to our Heavenly Father.  It’s a ridiculous game at times, and sometimes very painful too, but it’s worth every strike if in the end we hit a home run.