I Was Called To The Black Hole

 “In all of us there is a hunger, marrow deep, to know our heritage – to know who we are and where we came from. Without this enriching knowledge, there is a hollow yearning. No matter what our attainments in life, there is still a vacuum, an emptiness, and the most disquieting loneliness” – Alex Haley, American writer

As the century turned from 1999 to 2000 I found myself spending Tuesday nights at my church building in the black hole called the microfilm room in front of a large machine, in the dark. I received a calling to be a Family History Consultant. For the first time in my life I was doing research in villages of Silesia, now southern Poland, to find my ancestors. As I scrolled through microfilmed birth and death records I found the Kindler and Lindner families and many other surnames my Aunt Hanni drilled into my head as a child. I wrote about her influence in my life on Day 2 here. 

These are the Lindner sisters, my maternal grandmother second from the left, at the turn of the century from 1899-1900.

The woman on the right is Anna Hoppe, my paternal grandmother, in the year 1900.

So, here I was one hundred years later fascinated by their clothing. their countenances, and their history. What stirred this relatively new hobby? Flashes of light were coming from the other side of the veil in the form of memories from my aunt. I felt her presence while I took my daily walk. When the call came to be in our Family History Department it wasn't coincidence. 

My aunt was so concerned about genealogy because in the 1930's, before World War II swept through Silesia, she joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a single woman and walked from village to village gathering our genealogy documents.

She safe guarded these papers all her life and showed them to me year after year when I stayed with her during my summer visits.

You may not be interested right now but sometime during your life a longing with surface to know more about those who came before you were born. Please let that flash of light guide you.

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Your Son Is In The Principal's Office

When I heard those words I was completely bewildered. My son was six years old, shy and fairly quiet. When I went to get him the principal told me that he lacked refusal skills. 

"What exactly does he need to refuse in first grade?"

"He was overheard by his teacher using a very foul word. It may be a word he heard from a classmate." I took him home and we had a discussion wherein I realized he had no ides what the word meant. I barely knew what the word meant. True, I was concerned about the socialization process and the effects his peers had on him, but I was also concerned that he needed more quality hours with me. We barely had time together after his six hours of school. He was loving the piano lessons I was giving him but the piano was always busy.

A light I had seen very dimly, resurfaced.

I took a short walk alone. When I started out I was confused as to what to do but when I arrived back home I had a strong conviction that I should homeschool that son. I wasn't sure how to go about it but I started asking questions and reading about the homeschool law in Washington State. It was much more liberal than in Utah. To be deemed eligible to teach my child I had to have two or more years of higher education and agree to yearly testing. 

 After weeks of discussion with my husband and the rest of the children my son and I went to check out of school. We met with the principal first. I explained with some defensiveness, that I knew I was sorely responsible for my son's education and that at this point the state was not able to offer him what he needed. Surprisingly he did not ask what the school was not abel to provide. Next, we went to talk to his teacher. He was decidedly uncomfortable with my decision. His argument was that he was sad to lose my son in his class. We were a stable and positive family and he felt losing us would be a loss to the school. 

On the way home, my son looked at me with concern.

"Are we doing something illegal?"

"No, I understand the law. We are doing something that is not very popular. Are you still okay with learning at home?"

I had no idea then that homeschooling would become a viable option in education.

I was following a prompting, the outcome still very blurry. It turned into a major life decision. I was teaching my own children, two to start out, and then in the afternoon teaching several hours of piano lessons. In the evening I was preparing lessons for the next day. I felt like I had a whole second education.

Teaching homeschool filled in gaps in my own learning. I taught in thematic units, covering all the core subjects under that theme.

One memorable unit was rivers and streams. We went to a local beach and dammed up water coming from the hillside to make a river bed. I was as fascinated as my children in understanding the power of water.  Although we did some seat work around our kitchen table we spent time outside and in our neighborhood learning from other adults how things worked.

Some people ask me if homeschooling worked for the kids I taught at home. They usually want to know if they were accepted into college. Yes, they were, but more importantly they grew up to be curious seekers of knowledge. 

The most important work you will ever do will be within the walls of your own home. – Harold B. Lee

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The Audacity To Start A Business

        Can You Teach Me Piano?

In 1983 we moved to Washington state where my husband got a new job. I will be honest and say that I moved with great reluctance. I left my home, my family, and some really good friends. The weird thing about moving to a new place is that there are no memories; no familiar corner of the house, no familiar store, and no familiar neighborhood to walk. It takes time to decide what is favorite. I had a husband with a new job which required traveling, four children, and a new church community. What calling did I receive? Yes, you guessed it, church organist. I shared that calling with another terrific musician.

When the business my husband worked for was sold the employees were laid off and we had to start over. He was now working from a home office and we decided to move one more time to an island in the Puget Sound. Our income was greatly reduced so I found myself thinking about the question of piano lessons. If I refreshed some pedagogy knowledge could I really start a teaching studio? I now had five children, a smaller house, and my husband agreed we needed to upgrade my childhood piano to a baby grand in our small living room.  I felt like I lived inside the joke of the man who was complained about his difficult life. 

A man goes to his Rabbi and complains about his house. “Dear Rabbi”, he says, “my house is way too small. It’s 500 square feet and it hosts my seven children, mother in law, and a nail salon”. The Rabbi listens attentively and says: “I have a solution to your problem. First thing tomorrow morning go to the market and buy a goat. Be sure to keep it inside the house, not outside in the yard. In less than a week things should improve dramatically for you. If they don’t, come back and we will see what else can be done”. The man freaks out inside, but tries to keep his cool. Can’t dispute the Rabbi…. He goes out the next day and gets a goat. A week from hell goes by, and after the goat has eaten all the furniture, books, and drapes, the man goes back to the Rabbi all anxious and sleep-deprived. When he walks in, he falls on his knees and begs “Dear Rabbi, you are a man of wisdom, but I’m not sure that the goat is a great idea, it’s eating everything the house and literally smells like…”. “No worries!” the Rabbi interrupts him, “I was just about to tell you to take the goat out…. come back again in a week, and tell me if things got better “. The man thanks the Rabbi, and goes home relieved and smiling. When he gets home, he gives his wife a big wet kiss and sends the goat out. The following week when he comes back to the Rabbi he’s as happy as a clam: “I don’t know what magic you worked on the house, but it feels at least twice larger!”

I didn't put the baby grand piano outside or the kids outside but, I did start Busy B's Piano Studio and to my astonishment I enrolled enough students help with living expenses and make the payments on the piano.

That's the flash of light I received. "You only need two more students a month to meet the payment on the new piano."

Busy B's is now 35 years old with twenty five students enrolled presently and I still love teaching. My children are grown and I am teaching some grandchildren on that baby grand piano in my living room. 

I am so grateful for the flashes of light that led me to this moment in time and I see the evidence of my learning and leaning on faith in Jesus Christ. I know the flashes of light come from His light.

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Who Knows Your Child Best?

   "Experiences of accumulating knowledge through flashes of intelligence are similes of my own spiritual life—and probably of yours. My testimony—the “reason of the hope that is in me"—is a composite panorama of countless bursts of light through an otherwise impenetrable earthly veil. I speak here of such flashes in hopes that they may bring to your mind similar glimpses that have informed your testimony, so that in those questioning moments you might “remember, remember” them. While these anecdotes do not amount to proof beyond a reasonable doubt, they do combine to remind me of a tangible reality of “that which is” that is not always before my eyes.

                                                                                           Stephen Lund, BYU Speeches September 2022

     I am almost halfway through the month of writing everyday. My intent was to recall the flashes of light I've received throughout my life, especially those that  reverberated into future years. I have written about light given to me as a child, a young adult, and now as a wife and mother. I hope I have written clearly enough that you can see the learning from the incident beyond the details of story.

   When my second child was five I took him to the first day of Kindergarten. He held on to me tenaciously, pleading eyes, begging me to stay. I stayed even when the teacher reassured me that he would be fine. The second, third, fourth and fifth day I had to pick him up when he cried continuously throughout the morning. I received a light filled message, "Not yet, not this boy."

  I was squeezed between what society expected and what I knew to be true.

This tight spot was very uncomfortable and required me to do some research, study and prayer.

My husband and I agreed that Heavenly Father knew our children and he was entrusting us to do what we knew to be right. I kept him home and he started first grade with more confidence a year later. I didn't know then that the tight spot between the expectations of the world and my own convictions would be tested again and again. Because I am more a pleaser by nature and shy away from confrontation, I have often felt an inner vertigo from these experiences. It hasn't become easier, just more familiar.

"The list of blessings flying from that still, small spark of inspiration goes on and on. None of these things are coincidences. They are consequences of a string of unpredictable heavenly interventions that have burst through the veil as flashes of light through what has at times felt like a drab, never-ending gray wall."

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Imposter Syndrome

 Originally called impostor phenomenon, impostor syndrome, as it's now usually called, is commonly understood as a false and sometimes crippling belief that one's successes are the product of luck or fraud rather than skill.

In the Fall of 1979 I came up with a plan to move out of our two bedroom apartment and into a rented house. I needed to earn $100 more a month to make that happen. The ABC Club was formed. It was a neighbor pre-school and I enrolled five kids at $20 a month for two mornings a week.  Our new house had an extra bedroom, a larger kitchen and a backyard. The extra bedroom became the pre-school room.

Everything was working but I was feeling like I was posing as a qualified  teacher without credentials. 

                     

   

This stumbling block of needing outside validation to be confident in my skills was tripping me up. I had two years of early childhood education classes in college but yet I didn't have a teaching certificate. 

Over the next decade I would struggle with imposter syndrome and these feelings would often be in direct opposition to  the flashes of light I received from my Heavenly Father.

The light doesn't come because the world has qualified you, the light comes because it illuminates the path for you to grow and develop the skills necessary to move forward. Sometimes the flash of light leads you to learning by study, which can be received from institutions, and other times the learning comes by faith.

ABC Club was a foundation on which I still build as a teacher of children, my own and many others whose parents have entrusted me with their education.

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The Blessings Of Giving Birth

“Remember this, for it is as true as true gets: Your body is not a lemon. You are not a machine. The Creator is not a careless mechanic. Human female bodies have the same potential to give birth well as aardvarks, lions, rhinoceri, elephants, moose, and water buffalo. Even if it has not been your habit throughout your life so far, I recommend that you learn to think positively about your body.” 
― Ina May Gaskin, Ina May's Guide to Childbirth

I had three children before I learned this truth. In a flash of light I learned that there was a better way to give birth besides lying in a hospital bed, bright lights streaming on the process, a doctor coming in at the last possible moment to catch the baby and be the hero.

 Before I could understand the nuances of how to give birth I had to grow up and take responsibility for my body.

I had to do my own research and think about what I wanted to happen at my births. Did I want a doctor or a midwife? Did I want a hospital birth, a birthing center, or a home birth? Did I want medical intervention or did I want to do it naturally? My flash of understanding was not a list of what I should do. It was an understanding that I had choice. But, choice required that I take responsibility and assert my right to make those choices.

This moment of understanding would serve me well when I faced other health challenges in the future. My fourth and fifth births were with a midwife, in a birthing facility. They were empowering and satisfying. 

In later years I would attend the birth of five of my grandchildren and learn again the magnificent miracle of the entrance into mortality.

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Into The Fire

      "Learning by faith and from experience are two of the central features of the Father's plan of happiness. The Savior preserved moral agency through the Atonement and made it possible for us to act and to learn by faith."

David A.Bednar

Both Mark and I received assurances that our union was approved by God. The assurances were powerful and real. Now we moved ahead but other questions were not so easily answered. Should we finish college? Should we get jobs? Should we start a family? I wished for easy answers and received none. 

     There are three aspects to Learning by Faith. Receiving assurances by God to proceed, moving forward in faith, and looking back and seeing evidence that God was with us. I was afraid to act. My fears were based in a primal need for financial security. My parents lived through two world wars, one as children and one in their middle years.. They knew hunger, destruction and death personally. When my father got to America he saved half his paycheck every week. He never incurred debt. I was taught by example to acquire more than needed in savings.

I received another assurance, which I have continued to receive in the last 50 years, that we would have sufficient for our needs.

It was a flash of light and I cannot deny that it was real. But, I did not trust that light. Many of my worries and anxiety in life were based on learning to trust this knowledge. I wanted more than sufficient for my needs. I wanted excess and that was not part of the promise. 

As I look back at the evidence accumulated over seven decades I know that God was true and faithful. I was the one who needed to show my faith by acting in faith.

Faith as the assurance of things hoped for looks to the future. This assurance is founded upon a correct understanding about and trust in God and enables us to “press forward” (2 Nephi 31:20) into uncertain and often challenging situations in the service of the Savior.

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