Perspective

Perspective - It’s good to get a healthy dose of it from time to time. I got one last night. I had planned to write a fun post about what I was doing last weekend because I know my family and some of my friends wonder what it is that I really do when I go out into the Nevada desert to shoot guns. I have pictures and videos I was going to post to prove that we aren't as crazy as some fear. Deep down inside I think some of my siblings and friends are waiting to see if my shooting buddies and I end up on the 6 o'clock news.


Anyway, I was feeling kind of crappy about myself yesterday. I'm trying to sell the house, find a new job closer to Haley, and get my divorce finalized and none of it is working out the way I would like it to. Dang it, I have stuff I want to do! I found out yesterday afternoon that the judge signed the motion to waive the mandatory 90 day waiting period but didn't sign the divorce decree which would have made me officially divorced. Today, right now, I would have been a free man. What's up with that? Is he part of a judicial union that only let's him sign his name so many times per day? Seriously, man, help a brother out!

It's funny how our problems seem so big to us and can cause us so much unhappiness. Well, I got a nice reminder last night that my problems are really not that serious.

Two weeks ago a friend of mine and his wife went to the hospital for the birth of their second child - a boy - named Weston. Weston was born via C-section like his brother Bridger was. There was a small complication during the delivery. After that first C-section my friend's wife's bladder healed so that it was fused to her abdomen and during Weston’s delivery it tore and the OB couldn't sew it back together because he said the walls of her bladder were so thin it was 'like sewing tissue paper'. He had to call in a specialist to repair her bladder, which he was able to do. That, in and of itself, would not have been that bad. What is bad is that it was just the beginning of their troubles.
Weston was fine for the first couple of days but then he started to have difficulty breathing. His symptoms indicated that he might have just been dehydrated so the nurses gave him a bottle, which he gulped down - and it appeared to help. Unfortunately, it didn’t last and he began to have a difficult time breathing again so he was moved to the NICU for observation wherein his condition worsened to the point where the Neo-natal doc was at a loss as far as an explanation for the cause. Weston’s skin started to turn a purple/grayish hue and his little body started to shut down. He guessed that he might have some sort of metabolic disorder but he, to his credit, admitted he didn't know how to diagnose him so he got on the phone with a doctor at Primary Children's Medical Center at the U, the end result of which was a hasty middle-of-the-night helicopter ride to Salt Lake.
Fortunately, a pair of world-renowned geneticists work at the U and had little Weston diagnosed within only a few hours. It turns out that he has a metabolic disorder (the Dr. in Ogden was right) which I cannot pronounce that affects only one in 80,000 kids and prevents him from metabolizing certain proteins. He is still in the NICU at PMC and has a long road ahead of him. Even when he is well enough to come home, which may not be for another month or two, he will be on a special diet for the foreseeable future and probably for the rest of his life.
Because he had so much trouble breathing and also had seizures, it is believed that he suffered some brain damage, though, at this point, it is not clear to what extent. Needless to say, he and his parents, have a tough row to hoe.
You’re probably wondering why I would burden you with such a depressing story. Yes, it is a hard story, and one that could be depressing but as I sat and listened to my friend tell his story I didn’t get the impression that he was depressed. A little sad and pretty worn out from basically living at the hospital for two weeks – but not depressed or feeling sorry for himself – and don’t you think he would be justified in indulging in a little self-pity? I do. I don’t know how he isn’t a complete basket case. But I think he understands the principle of becoming “as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father (Mosiah 3:19). Instead of being bitter or angry he acknowledged the hand of the Lord in everything that happened in diagnosing and treating his tiny son. Crappy things happen to good people all the time. So much of happiness depends on how we react to it all. I am amazed at the ability of some people to endure trials.
I once heard someone say (wish I could remember who) that if we could pile all of our troubles together into a big heap and then were given the opportunity to go choose which ones we wanted that we would probably just find our own and be glad to take them back. Makes sense to me. Someone always has it worse. We expect things to go a certain way and sometimes they just don’t. It’s life.

My sister-in-law told me that her daughter asked her if she was happy with my brother. The conversation went something like this:
Niece: Mom, are you happy with dad?
Sis-in-law: Yes, why do you ask?
N: You’re always reading books about relationships. I just thought that meant you were unhappy.
SIL: You know the happily-ever-after in fairy tales and Disney movies?
N: Yes.
SIL: That’s not real. Edward Cullen does not and never will exist (OK, so I added the jab at Twilight).
N: (audible sound of bubble bursting) What!
SIL: Relationships take work and reading about them is one way to help figure out how to make them better…

I don’t remember how the conversation ended but my young niece learned a tough lesson – one that I hope will help her in her adult life. We never know what will happen to us. Marriages fail, health deteriorates - bad things happen – even to the best people. Life is a perpetual struggle. Our individual story is made up of such things. The challenge is to keep pressing forward - even when it means crawling or clawing your way up. Everyone has a story and I’d love to meet the person whose story has gone exactly according to plan. Even when we think other people’s stories seem ‘happily ever after’ we don’t really know what they have already been through or are about endure. The good thing is that all of our stories will have a happy ending if we can hang in there until the end and we can ‘sit down with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to go no more out’.
I hope these posts don’t seem self-righteous because they help motivate me to keep going. I would much rather have someone to just tell them to but I can’t yet. I try to take my own advice but I’m not great at that sometimes. So thank you for reading my story. Even though it’s a one way conversation it is good to know there are still people reading it. I think my next one will be a little more on the fun side – and not so serious. Have to keep a good balance…