“Anyone who imagines that bliss is normal is going to waste a lot of time running around shouting that he has been robbed. The fact is that most putts don’t drop, most beef is tough, most children grow up to be just average people, most successful marriages require a high degree of mutual toleration, and most jobs are more often dull than otherwise. Life is just like an old time rail journey … delays, sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders, and jolts, interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling bursts of speed. The trick is to thank the Lord for letting you have the ride.”
~Gordon B. Hinckley
A.Rogers July 2008
A.Rogers July 2008
A couple of summers ago, when my sister, my mother, and I went to Yellowstone National Park, we decided to stop in and visit the home we lived in when my parents got divorced. This home, known to us as the "Yellow House," holds a lot of memories for all of us. Some good, but many bad. My younger sister and her husband had stopped in to see it when they were passing through the area and come home to report that it had appeared abandoned and that they had walked through it. So when my mom heard this she said she wanted to stop in and see if just maybe, a box of high school memorabilia she had left in the basement might still be there. Well, it wasn't but the memories were. I couldn't believe how many emotions came flooding over me as I walked through the skeleton of the house it was when we lived there. The garage was full of boxes and boxes of junk, old stereos that the owner had apparently been fixing up, and the basketball hoop that had hung above the garage 25 years earlier was still there. I walked into my old bedroom, and for some reason decided to tear a piece of the wallpaper off the wall that my mom had lovingly chosen and hung for my little sister and me. I walked to my older sister's bedroom, where I had snuck out of bed to be with her on nights that I was awoken with nightmares. I walked into my brother's room where we had played with his He-Man figures and Transformers, and sometimes when he was feeling nice, my Barbies. I walked into my parents' room where I remembered playing Chutes and Ladders with my family on their bed, and where I remember my mom reading me a book she had gotten from the library about divorce. I walked to the back porch where I didn't remember my dad telling us he was leaving, but my sister did. I walked through the overgrown weeds to the shed that used to be attached to corrals and remembered the time I spent out there with Dad and my horse. I walked to the railroad tracks on the side of the house, where my brother and I used to play that we were railroad workers laying the tracks with hammers. (The house had once been a depot station for the railroad). I couldn't believe that this pit had once been the well groomed house we had lived in. It kind of summed up my feelings of how things had gone and how they had ended up. Empty. Broken. Abandoned. Hopeless. Tracks that began nowhere and led nowhere.
But, the good news is that, I know the Lord knows our struggles and our pain. I know that some of us seem to get more than what we think we deserve. Some people seem to have a perfect sort of life, while some of us have to deal with overgrown weeds, cluttered garages and basements full of memories and garbage, and abandoned hopes and dreams. But the Lord has suffered all of this and more for us and knows what we are going through. He can help us. He is the only one who can help us. I know this. Even though sometimes I tell myself I don't.
