When it's time, its time, and it's time.

When its time, it's time, and it's time. 

This is how it goes at the Robinson's when food prep is starts. Someone pulls something out of the pantry. The jar of spaghetti sauce has a exp. date of, oh...lets say 2013. That person looks at the Mom and says "Is this ok? It's a hundred years old?." This is what the Mom say's, "Cindy'd use it." And we use it, and we have never had a horrifying result (lets face it, food poisoning is ALWAYS horrifying.)

My dear friends wanted a quick, but decent read for book club this month. They chose a book I gave away last year without giving a second glance. (I'm such a snob.) The title of this book  is The Christmas Jars. So wanting to move it along quickly I take it to Slab Pizza (not worth it) and gave it a good start. Within, oh, maybe five pages we discover that the main character, a single mom has cancer, which always makes this girls heart rate increase, but to make matters worse, or maybe better in the long run we learn she has Ovarian Cancer.

The words Ovarian Cancer strike more fear in me than just about any other of the bizillion cancers there are out there.

Let me tell you about my friend Cindy (referenced above). Cindy has been a friend of mine for, as far as I can figure, about twenty-five years. At least. Cindy was one of the friends you have that you live very close to, but don't always see a lot because we were both so busy raising lots of kids, and if you are Cindy McDonald, you don't sleep. Cindy and I would catch up standing on the corner on the way home from church, once a month or so, or later not even that frequently.

Cindy didn't sleep much. I'll tell you why. Cindy was busy. She was busy serving in every possible way that she could. She raised seven kids to adulthood, and taught them by example. She bottled a million or so bottles of everything. She made killer salsa, she made PEAR JAM! What a colossal pain in the tushy, (I was her greatest fan and miss my jam!) She attended a million activities, always supporting her children, grandchildren and neighborhood kids. She and her husband ran the concessions at MVHS football forever, she went to every single wedding reception she was invited to, and that was a lot because everyone knows the McDonalds. Really. She sang in the choir, she taught when asked. She did this without a single complaint that I heard anyway. She chatted on the phone with her daughters living far and near every single day (I thought that was excessive till my own daughters weren't just downstairs.) Cindy was a stellar advocate for scouting, she even earned her Silver Beaver! All while I just played 500 with my cubs. Cindy was the BEST dutch oven cook ever! I'll tell you what...that woman went to girls camp year after year after year and spoiled my girls rotten with her cooking. One year I was asked to go to camp and be her cooking assistant. Well, friends, let me tell you, I have never in  my life worked so hard and another thing...Cindy did not clean one single dutch oven the whole week. She broke me in but good! A little story here. One particularly dry year at Camp Shalom, Cindy and I decided to both go to amphitheater. Usually someone stayed back. Well, we put a big 'ol pot of water on to boil and forgot about it and it was under a lovely dry pine. I referred to Cindy's heating source as Cindy's Butane Pillar of Fire! We came back early (Thank the Lord above) and saw it flaming away under an entirely empty pot! WE TOLD NO ONE. It was a miracle we did not set the whole forest on fire. Mortified, that's what we were.

So you know what kind of person my friend was. She quietly went about doing good. Always.

If you haven't guessed, my friend Cindy got the gosh-awful worst diagnosis of advanced stage Ovarian Cancer. She cruised over to the beautiful side two years ago. I had the enormous honor of helping her a little as I am a whiz with a needle  and vomit and all sorts of semi-useful nursing skills.Thankfully I had lots of back-up. I spent hours and hours watching Kelly and Michael during the long mornings, and her game shows during the longer afternoons. Cindy's family had her covered. They, as my own family were all over this nasty illness. I say nasty because my friend endured a huge hell of a lot! I could not for the life of me understand her. I would try to get her to complain! I would try to drag feelings out of her and guess what...that is not how she was going to play it. She would just humor me as I plopped down right next to her on her bed as she would sleep, sometimes smile a little, maybe once in a great while a big smile if I said something entirely inappropriate. She was beautiful without hair, I would tell her her lovely olive/tan skin was NO FAIR! She trooped into that damn bathroom long after I could imagine she had the courage and the strength. She put up with my clumsy first attempts at hooking her up to her feedings. If I ever complained for her what a sucky card she had been dealt, she always said the same two things. 1-It is what it is, and 2-What can ya do. One time, during her last week or so on this tough old earth she was getting a little um...loopy and she was all about her Dr. Pepper that she would suck down and we would suck right back out (she didn't  really eat for all those months) She had all these hospital mugs and insisted she had two more upstairs and she wanted them really bad. There were no mugs upstairs but she was pretty insistent so I said OK..I'll go get them. I zipped home so fast,  grabbed two mugs from my many inpatient visits and zipped back. I set them down, and she looked at them, looked at me and accused me of getting them from my house. Sheesh, she was not as under the influence as I had thought. I did not confess.

My friend Cindy was grace under pressure to the end.
She never missed my birthday, or Christmas. Ever.
She always, always went down the list and asked about every single child of mine.
She never complained.
She had a rock solid knowledge of her truth.
She worked harder than anyone I have ever known.
She loved her family and put them first always. They adore her.
She was loyal to a fault.
She would would be mad if she knew I was putting this out there for you to read.
She would be happy to know it was something waiting, just waiting for me to do.

So, my friend, I raise that freaking dutch oven rubber scraper to you, and miss you, alot. With so much love.

 Always.

I don't know? Do you?

Its a good thing that there is the principal of free agency in this life.  I am a conflicted person.  What can ya do? If you don't want bombardment of the eyes, ears, all your senses then you must not, watch the news, spend anytime on Social Media. You must turn your head, your mind from the covers of magazines in the doctors office. Just when I think that I have heard the worst a person can do to another, particularly heinous in the case of children, some completely demented human does something worse.  What generated this small  rant of  mine, although you know if i am speaking it aloud, I am LOUD, it was something that popped up as I was perusing the pictures and good times of all my homies.  It put me over the edge, I was beyond horrified at this abuse against a helpless infant. The world, the individuals who feel there could not possibly be a loving God, as he would not let these things occur. The World, does not know this....God will not take away our agency. He won't, nope, not gonna do it. I feel ok with this, I believe the plan, I believe that God is far more horrified and that his heart hurts more that ours are at "Man's inhumanity to man". I believe that God loves our guts and everything else about us, even my weirdness. I believe that Jesus Christ is equally as horrified, but, and this is my take on it people, I don't believe they dwell on it, drown in if. I think they help, uplift, remove pain, send their healing spirit and  love, love, love the victims, which is pretty much all of us, then, knowing they have done what was necessary then, they throw a ball in the air, catch it and think "Well here's hoping".  They move on.

 Everyone has a story. Everyone has pain, and for some of us, the pain we have in our lives is the pain of others. The parents, the grandparents, aunts and uncles watching the spiraling downward of a person they adore. The lady in the parking lot watching a struggling elder with their shopping cart, when they watch the valiant efforts of aged, bent over, still on the bike at the gym. Some of these souls cannot even stand witnessing anything they perceive as a person adult or child in distress, big or small. These people feel bad if there stuffed animals are on the floor, they over-empathize with inanimate objects  They must rescue, they must help if they can or look the other way if they cant. These people have an actual name. They are called Over-empathizers.

I am an Over-empathizer. It is a love/hate thing with me. Over-empathizers have a lot of stomach aches.Well actually I don't know if all of us do, but I sure do. Nobody told me that when I when the next door neighbors in my single days, had no food in their cupboards that it was not my job alone to buy the groceries and figure out why the Mom did not put shoes on the kids (they had shoes). It was an agonizing time for me. I about got an ulcer over stuff like this. I went on to repeat this pattern of rescuing over and over. Us Over-empathizers, We like to get in there and fix it.

When my Dad had a devastating stroke back in the Nineties, I had four children, and by golly it was my job to take care of my sweet Dad as much as I could. I would go to the nursing home, try anything to get him to eat, tuck, smooth wash, everything I could do to make it better. I remember going home in the evening to my husband, late, and he would just hold me tight and and wait for me to cry until I couldn't cry anymore. I grieved the loss of my father far before he actually died three years later. I thought I had to bring him to my house and care for him, he was total care and I had nurses aides twice a day that saved my stubborn butt, and incredibly supportive siblings, it just so happened I was the one close by. I was told over and over not to take this on, mostly by my family, but I was just sure I could do it and that my kids would learn empathy for him and they did do pretty well during the whole three months he was there at our home. I say 'whole' three months because that's not very long considering the work it takes to set it all up. Anyway, again, please don't confuse me with Mother Teresa, I honestly just thought it was what you do, "ya do for family" as Frankie Heck says. Well so happens that just a few months into this life experience my dear In-laws were in a terrible accident. That's when I threw in the towel. Greg needed to be in Salt Lake where his Mother was in the Shock/Trauma unit. (side note: rounded the corner one day and there was President Monson in all his humongous glory! The man is tall!). So I gave up. I recognized that I could not keep caring for my father. I found the best nursing home I could find and moved him in. For the next two years, I continued to haul my kids to Springville two or three times a week to visit, I schmoozed the staff with all kinds of treats, I did this and damned if I didn't do it well! So fast forward a few years after my poor father finally passed away.

 I repeated this same scenario with my Mother although with much less grace and empathy. I took care of the details, I paid the bills, I dealt with Medicaid...Holy Moses. I have regrets that I didn't do this part of my mothers life as gracefully, we had a strained relationship, which by the grace of All-mighty God was put to rest, but good hells people all I am trying to say, a million words later is that this is the lesson that I, Joanna Robinson learned oh so painfully, oh so slowly, oh so stubbornly, and to all you OE's out there, I learned that not only did I not have to fix everything, but for crying outloud... I WAS NOT SUPPOSED TO! That's it. I was not supposed to rescue. They had things they had to learn when things were crappy. If there was any rescuing to be done, that task belongs to the Master, the Savior Jesus Christ, whom I am certain was with all these down trodden and hard done by people in my life far more often than I could dream of. I had to understand that we all have to go through hard things, sometimes as in the above examples VERY hard things and that this is how we are refined. Steel is tempered by blistering heats. That is how it is shaped and created for good.

This is what I wish and hope for myself and all OE's, that we know when to step in, and we know when to step back out. That we know, that we live by that spirit that teaches us to do good. I hope that we always help for the right reasons, that we remember that we are instruments in the hands of the Master of all. I hope that when you are going through your own "refiners fire" that you will let others help you, that you will be able to rely on that enabling power that Jesus Christ provides for us, and, of course for others! He will help them. He will help you. The work and tears it takes to learn this is one day, to help you 'figure yourself out', will be worth it. This I know, even in my huge imperfections.

I Love Jesus
I Love You.
Peace out my friends.