Each morning when we walk, my friend andI stop on the bridge over the river for a few moments meditation. I look forward to those times that revive and refresh me! And this morning those minutes were especially rewarding. There is a rock in the river that the water coming down stream crashes into and that encounter changes the course of the water. As I stood there this morning I noticed what happens to the water after it hits the rock. Instead of flowing uninterrupted on downstream like the water to the left of the rock, that water diverts to one of three places. Some of the water goes right as soon as it hits the rock and washes onto the shore. Some of the water goes right and is then pushed into a quiet little nook almost like a quiet pond in the middle of churning waters. The third group goes to the left of the rock and for about six feet seems to be rejoining the rest of the river but then makes a right turn. It is this current that forms the bottom border of the “pond” area and it continues to the shore where it then turns left again and goes on down the river.
As I watched the three areas many thoughts went swimming through my head. The rock is like the obstacles in our lives that often divert us into different paths but they don’t stop us. We are floating down the river of life, but then some obstacle in our path changes the course of our life and we end up someplace very different than where we thought we were going. But that isn’t necessarily bad. God needs some of us to water the vegetation on the shore. Some of the obstacles in our lives actually take us to a place of peace and calm, like the “pond” area where we rest awhile before traveling on. And some of us have something to learn from an abrupt right turn before we are ready to join the current again and move on.
I think I’m in one of those abrupt right turn areas now, but this morning the river gave me hope. When I’ve learned what I’m supposed to learn, I’ll rejoin the current and move on downstream.
Many years ago when Carl was bishop and I sat through meetings with four children under the age of seven I would come home from Church so disgruntled. I often found myself wondering why I bothered to go to Church because I wasn’t able to listen or ponder or enjoy any of it. All I did was wrestle kids! Some days I even came home mad. I’d think about how sweet the moments of the Sacrament were when I was single and how all I managed to do now was to keep children from pulling each other’s hair or to stop teasing each other.
Then one day it dawned on me that what was ruining Sacrament Meeting wasn’t so much what my children were doing, but how I was reacting to the situation. I had let myself become a victim and I was holding a giant pity party every Sunday. I asked myself what the Savior would do and decided that He would simply love the children during the meeting. That decision to love instead of fret and worry was one of the best things I ever did. I’d hold a child on my lap and instead of resenting the intrusion into my pondering moments, I’d concentrate on how much I loved the child. I’d separate two contending children with feelings of love instead of frustration. No words were spoken, but it wasn’t long before I realized the children were responding to my unspoken thoughts. They had felt the fretting, frustration before and it fueled their own negative actions. Now they felt the love and responded differently—not perfect still, but much more positive.
The strange thing is that as the children grew up and I no longer had anyone sitting on my lap or needing to be “tended to” during meeting, I went back to the sweet moments of meditation during the Sacrament but found myself missing having a child in my arms. The loving, cuddling moments had been as productive of beautiful spiritual moments as the uninterrupted pondering.
Today I got the best Christmas present I received. Some of my children and grandchildren went to Sacrament meeting with me and I got to hold my wiggly eighteen-month-old grandson during the Sacrament. Who would have guessed those many years ago when I was fretting over the situation that I would one day actually cherish having a wiggly child in my arms during meeting? But then I guess that is what life is all about—learning and growing.
It is cold outside. My walk this morning was brisk and nippy. I loved it. But there was more this morning than just the cold to make it wonderful. I always stop on the bridge that crosses the Provo River and do a little meditation to start my day right. I begin by looking downstream and imagining the river running right through me to wash away all the Illusion, negative feelings, and problems within me. Then I turn upstream and imagine the Fountain of Living Waters filling me with all that is good. I learn something new and different every morning and love those few moments and how they start my day.
This morning, as we were about to leave the bridge, one of the friends I walk with pointed out how the tree boughs that bend to almost touch the water had balls of ice on them. It as if Mother Nature had decorated for Christmas. Real ice spheres hanging from the tree branches! It was beautiful—magical—and I am still delighting in the memory of it.
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