Keeping the penny a penny

God knows a mother
needs fortitude and courage
and tolerance and flexibility
and patience and firmness
and nearly every other
brave aspect of the human soul.
But...I praise casualness.
It seems to me the rarest
of virtues.
It's useful enough when
children are small.
It is important to the point
of necessity when they
are adolescents.
--Phyllis McGinley

I have been thinking today about casualness. What is casualness exactly? The Mary Engelbreit illustration in the book that goes along with that quote is of a mother leaning back in her chair on the porch, glancing over the top of the newspaper she is reading, as her obviously distraught, pre-adolescent daughter speaks to her with what appears to be great emotion. I think it is staying calm, being the eye of the storm, when emotions or chaos are raging around you. It is being the one to have a clear head. It is smiling in the face of frustration and difficulty. It is keeping things in perspective.

One of the reasons that I have a hard time with casualness is that theory and reality can be so vastly different. For instance, I may think through my day in the morning, deciding that we will get these chores done, and do these fun activities. It all seems so manageable in the quiet peace of the morning hours before the family is up and stirring. Then theory meets reality. I didn't picture the baby being sick or fussy or the feet-dragging and fighting that inevitably occur as we try to get things done. I didn't plan for the elaborate and very important game they are in the middle of playing just as I am ready to do something with them that is important to me. These things all tend to make me frustrated and impatient that my grand plans for the day are not happening like I imagined. Even worse are the days when I don't get up before the children, and I spend the whole day in reaction mode. On these days, I never even get a grand plan for what was supposed to happened and instead am carried from one crisis to the next without feeling in control of anything. On those days, the reality of life is so very, very...well, real. It is so hard to smile and be calm when life feels like it is whirling out of control.

I think another obstacle to casualness is lack of perspective. In Gloria Child's memoirs, she describes a close friend as always doing everything "as if her life depended on it." Sometimes I forget that my life does not depend on being to church or to a child's basketball practice or to an appointment on time. It doesn't depend on whether the chores get done tonight, or tomorrow for that matter. Can I learn to be more consistently casual and not get upset when we are running late and Jeffrey can't, for the hundreth time, find his shoes? Or when the big kids are fighting with a little kid about who gets to sit where in the van? Or when one child says just the right thing to make another child cry and I have to stop, again, and help solve the conflict?

So how do I learn to be more casual in these emotionally charged situations? I know that going to the temple always helps. The temple helps me forget the daily worries and remember the big picture. It helps me shift from focusing on the small picture of daily life to the grand scheme of where I came from and why I am here and what this is all really about anyway. I always leave with a greater ability to be more calm, more patient, more casual. Maybe that is why we are encouraged to go as often as possible--to keep perspective.

Maybe keeping perspective is the key. This reminds me of an analogy I heard in a talk on BYU-TV . The speaker said that if you tape a penny to the wall and put your eye right up to it, it will take up almost your whole range of vision. But it you step back a foot or two, it comes into proper focus. If you step across the room, it becomes even smaller. If, theoretically, you could still see it from the other side of the house, think how small it would become. Or the end of the street. Or the other side of town. The speaker used the penny to represent our weaknesses, saying how we can keep them in perspective. I think it also works to think of it as other people's weaknesses, or the day-to-day problems that can seem so frustrating at the time, or even the crushing life worries that weigh us down. These things can all seem so immense at the time but are often less so when viewed from the proper perspective. How about viewing them from the perspective of our Father in Heaven, or from the perspective of the Savior? Everything changes when we look at things through Their heavenly, eternal eyes.

Writing this reminded me of an example that happened a few weeks ago. I was feeling really down. I had started my period (which could be enough said right there). I was feeling like our current trials, far beyond not having another baby, things like on-going health problems and employment worries, were never going to end. I was feeling hopeless. I had driven the middle school carpool and had pulled into our driveway. I sat in the car, lost in those deep feelings of discouragement and self-pity. Then I looked up. Here is a close-up of what I saw.These are the blossoms on the trees just outside our bedroom window, which I can also see from the driveway where I park our van. I took this picture yesterday, so the blossoms are turning to green leaves now. On that day, the tree was just overflowing with white, cheery flowers. The sky was full of clouds, so those bright, happy blossoms really stood out in the gloom. In that moment, as I sat in the van, I regained perspective. I almost felt like Heavenly Father had made those trees fully blossoms that very day, a little early for the year, just for me. That helped me see things as He seems them. Somehow, all the worries and fears and discouragement receded as I remembered that Heavenly Father is there, that He will answer our prayers, that He is in charge. I was able to remember why I am grateful for these trials and why I have faith that they are happening for a purpose. I remembered how much my Heavenly Father loves me and how He has answered my prayers so many times in the past.

I guess that is why, in addition to going to the temple regularly, we are encouraged to read the scriptures and pray every day. It's why we go to three hours of church on Sunday. It is also why I love BYU Women's Conference, and General Conference, and EFY music. And it's why Heavenly Father gave us the gift of the Holy Ghost, so that He can speak gentle, encouraging thoughts to our hearts and to our minds. All these things help keep the penny a penny.