I wonder where Ana Kare is . . .
"It's like 'on-a-car-ah'," is what she told people the first time she met them. Ana Kare Edwards probably doesn't remember me, but I'll never forget her. Her name was cool enough to remember all by itself, but she also taught me an important lesson before I ever needed it.
She and I were visiting teaching companions back in 1980. Some of you readers know what that means, but for those of you who don't, visiting teaching is a program in our church where women are paired up as companions and are assigned from two to six other women in the congregation to visit every month. When we go visiting, we take a spiritual message, but mostly we just try to be each others' friends. We take casseroles when someone is sick, we watch each others' children, or meet on our lunch hours to check in and talk about whatever comes up -- work, school, kids, gardens, sales, our health, our dreams, our hopes . . . and on that day a very long time ago, we were talking about hope.
Ana Kare was a little older than me, and her baby was already a year or so old. I was expecting our first. To my 21 year-old sensibilities, Ana Kare was very mature and wise and besides, her husband was nearly done with school while mine was just beginning his masters' degree; so far to go with a PhD still looming on the distant horizon. She was tall and womanly and had an exotic name and I looked up to her even though we didn't really know each other all that well.
Being a visiting teacher was pretty new to me. I went with my mother when I was a pre-schooler and remember sitting and vaguely listening to my mom chat with the women she visited each month. Some of these women I knew well from church on Sunday, and some of them I only saw when we went to their homes. I liked going to the houses where there were cookies or toys to play with while the ladies talked. I wasn't crazy about the house with the wooden swing in the back yard where I got a splinter in my leg, or the place where the bee stung me while I was outside playing. My notion of visiting teaching was that it was mostly boring talk for grown-ups. As a 21 year-old, I hardly saw myself as a grown-up, even if I was expecting my first child. I had attempted visiting teaching when I was in college, but never felt like I was making any genuine connection or making a difference. I felt awkward and ill-prepared to teach anybody anything, but I went because I was asked to go.
I don't really remember who we went to visit that morning, but I suspect it was Sister Crookston - the woman with seventeen children. I had never known anyone with seventeen of their own children! Being the youngest of seven, I always said I was a proponent of "just one more!," but this seemed a little over the top to me. She was a tiny woman, full of energy and a tireless smile. Later, after Johnny was born and I was in a state of what felt like permanent exhaustion, she told me that she had vowed that when her youngest started school she was going to sleep til noon every day, which I thought was a reasonable and brilliant idea. By the time her youngest started school, however, she had discovered that her kids were helping so much around the house and taking care of each other that she didn't actually need to sleep til noon every day. That made me feel a little less overwhelmed with the demands of new motherhood.
On the day we were teaching about hope, it was Ana Kare's turn to provide the spiritual message. I had read over the message for that month in the church's Ensign magazine, and so I was surprised when Ana Kare went off book. She closed the magazine and said simply,
"You know, we hope for a lot of things in this life. We hope," she looked at me, "that our husbands will finish school, and we hope they'll get decent jobs and that someday we'll own our own homes. We hope that our children will be healthy and that we'll have the things that we want. We hope for a lot of things, and in all of those hopes, we can be disappointed." This was an interesting turn -- hope was always supposed to turn out happy, wasn't it?
She went on, "We may never have the chance to finish school. We might lose our jobs. Our children might get sick, or even die. We might lose our husbands, or others that we love. We might never own a home, or the kind of home we always dreamed of. Things happen, and our hopes can be dashed at any moment. . .except for one," she explained.
"When we place our hope in Jesus Christ, we will never be disappointed. Life may not go the way we had hoped, but Christ will always be with us, and the power of His Atonement will always be available to us. Our Heavenly Father will never abandon us, and is never farther away than a prayer. He can bring us peace, even in our deepest despair, if we'll ask Him to; if we'll let Him."
In my simple and innocent 21 year-old life, there had been few opportunities to test Ana Kare's assertion, but the spirit whispered confirmation of her words to me and I felt their truth. Over the years that have followed, those words have rung true over and over again -- while I worried about graduate school, a child with cancer, a desperate job search, financial troubles, a lost job, yet another hard move, more illness and financial difficulties, facing the disappointments that come with the realities of this life, the loss of beloved family members, and on and on . . . and Ana Kare's words stood, sturdy and substantial.
Life is not always what we think it's going to be . . . what we hope it will be. My experience is that it is often far less, AND far more than I ever could have imagined. When my hope has been anchored in the gospel of Jesus Christ, I find I have strength to deal with the unexpected challenges and the consequences of the choices of others around me.
When I'm reveling in the bliss of grandbaby giggles and the joy of my children gathered around me, my hopes are fulfilled in those moments. When a new challenge arrives to upset my carefully laid plans and forces me to rethink my options and readjust my perspective on the universe, that is when I have to let go of worldly hopes and cling to eternal ones. While the answers have not always been the ones I would have chosen for myself, the answers have always come, and over and over again, I have been reminded of the single truth that gives me the greatest hope of all:
I am not alone . . . and neither are you.
She and I were visiting teaching companions back in 1980. Some of you readers know what that means, but for those of you who don't, visiting teaching is a program in our church where women are paired up as companions and are assigned from two to six other women in the congregation to visit every month. When we go visiting, we take a spiritual message, but mostly we just try to be each others' friends. We take casseroles when someone is sick, we watch each others' children, or meet on our lunch hours to check in and talk about whatever comes up -- work, school, kids, gardens, sales, our health, our dreams, our hopes . . . and on that day a very long time ago, we were talking about hope.
Ana Kare was a little older than me, and her baby was already a year or so old. I was expecting our first. To my 21 year-old sensibilities, Ana Kare was very mature and wise and besides, her husband was nearly done with school while mine was just beginning his masters' degree; so far to go with a PhD still looming on the distant horizon. She was tall and womanly and had an exotic name and I looked up to her even though we didn't really know each other all that well.
Being a visiting teacher was pretty new to me. I went with my mother when I was a pre-schooler and remember sitting and vaguely listening to my mom chat with the women she visited each month. Some of these women I knew well from church on Sunday, and some of them I only saw when we went to their homes. I liked going to the houses where there were cookies or toys to play with while the ladies talked. I wasn't crazy about the house with the wooden swing in the back yard where I got a splinter in my leg, or the place where the bee stung me while I was outside playing. My notion of visiting teaching was that it was mostly boring talk for grown-ups. As a 21 year-old, I hardly saw myself as a grown-up, even if I was expecting my first child. I had attempted visiting teaching when I was in college, but never felt like I was making any genuine connection or making a difference. I felt awkward and ill-prepared to teach anybody anything, but I went because I was asked to go.
I don't really remember who we went to visit that morning, but I suspect it was Sister Crookston - the woman with seventeen children. I had never known anyone with seventeen of their own children! Being the youngest of seven, I always said I was a proponent of "just one more!," but this seemed a little over the top to me. She was a tiny woman, full of energy and a tireless smile. Later, after Johnny was born and I was in a state of what felt like permanent exhaustion, she told me that she had vowed that when her youngest started school she was going to sleep til noon every day, which I thought was a reasonable and brilliant idea. By the time her youngest started school, however, she had discovered that her kids were helping so much around the house and taking care of each other that she didn't actually need to sleep til noon every day. That made me feel a little less overwhelmed with the demands of new motherhood.
On the day we were teaching about hope, it was Ana Kare's turn to provide the spiritual message. I had read over the message for that month in the church's Ensign magazine, and so I was surprised when Ana Kare went off book. She closed the magazine and said simply,
"You know, we hope for a lot of things in this life. We hope," she looked at me, "that our husbands will finish school, and we hope they'll get decent jobs and that someday we'll own our own homes. We hope that our children will be healthy and that we'll have the things that we want. We hope for a lot of things, and in all of those hopes, we can be disappointed." This was an interesting turn -- hope was always supposed to turn out happy, wasn't it?
She went on, "We may never have the chance to finish school. We might lose our jobs. Our children might get sick, or even die. We might lose our husbands, or others that we love. We might never own a home, or the kind of home we always dreamed of. Things happen, and our hopes can be dashed at any moment. . .except for one," she explained.
"When we place our hope in Jesus Christ, we will never be disappointed. Life may not go the way we had hoped, but Christ will always be with us, and the power of His Atonement will always be available to us. Our Heavenly Father will never abandon us, and is never farther away than a prayer. He can bring us peace, even in our deepest despair, if we'll ask Him to; if we'll let Him."
In my simple and innocent 21 year-old life, there had been few opportunities to test Ana Kare's assertion, but the spirit whispered confirmation of her words to me and I felt their truth. Over the years that have followed, those words have rung true over and over again -- while I worried about graduate school, a child with cancer, a desperate job search, financial troubles, a lost job, yet another hard move, more illness and financial difficulties, facing the disappointments that come with the realities of this life, the loss of beloved family members, and on and on . . . and Ana Kare's words stood, sturdy and substantial.
Life is not always what we think it's going to be . . . what we hope it will be. My experience is that it is often far less, AND far more than I ever could have imagined. When my hope has been anchored in the gospel of Jesus Christ, I find I have strength to deal with the unexpected challenges and the consequences of the choices of others around me.
When I'm reveling in the bliss of grandbaby giggles and the joy of my children gathered around me, my hopes are fulfilled in those moments. When a new challenge arrives to upset my carefully laid plans and forces me to rethink my options and readjust my perspective on the universe, that is when I have to let go of worldly hopes and cling to eternal ones. While the answers have not always been the ones I would have chosen for myself, the answers have always come, and over and over again, I have been reminded of the single truth that gives me the greatest hope of all:
I am not alone . . . and neither are you.
I'm so glad you are writing. I "hope" all is well. Peace.
ReplyDeleteThis is probably one of my favorite posts of yours. Thank you, because today this is exactly what I needed to here. Here's to a lovely year of putting our hope in Christ, finding the strength to do the hard things, and remembering to find the joy in life where we can.
ReplyDelete