Full of hands

In our family, we always quote poor little Junie's sad and helpless cry from when she was about three years old: "I can't open the gate! I'm full of hands!" You'd be surprised how often one of us is trying to do something and can't because his or her hands are full, necessitating this pathetic distress cry. In fact, I've had to become rather proficient with my feet, my arms, my elbows, and my nose, in doing various tasks that really ought to be done by hands!

———

When people learn that we have ten kids, the usual response is some variation of "I don't know how you do it." There's no real answer to it, because truthfully, I don't know how we "do it" either, especially if "do it" means "raise your family without neglecting anything." (I am always neglecting something! Always!)

The other thing people say is, of course, the age-old "You've got your hands full!" This is manifestly true, and also rather un-answerable. I wish there were a way to affirm these well-meaning phrases while rejecting the implication that sometimes lurks behind them ("Why on earth would you do this to yourself?!). I suppose having a big family is both harder than, but also not as hard as, it seems! And it's not something you can easily sum up in passing in the grocery store.

The management side of things gets easier as you go (so far?). It happens bit by bit and year by year. You learn how to order routines, delegate tasks, incentivize, cut out what's unnecessary—at least until ages and stages change and you have to re-order everything again. The older kids help even as they, sometimes, hinder—there is no one more unyielding and draconian about the younger children's bedtime than a child who just barely graduated from that bedtime himself. The day-to-day logistics of big families can be hard. But they're not impossible. And figuring it out is often strangely satisfying! 

The thing for me, way beyond the logistics, that's the most utterly daunting part of being responsible for so many little souls—is just the sheer fulness of emotion it brings. That's the part that washes over me so deep these days that I feel like I'm drowning in it—

…Lying awake in the darkness, sick with worry over a teenager's heartbreak, then rolling out of bed before morning light to rock a crying feverish toddler. 

…Finding the words to delicately correct the ten-year-old without offending her growing sense of independence, while trying to shush the seven-year-old who is in the middle of describing to you every panel of the Calvin and Hobbes book he's just read. 

…Rejoicing over one child's public success in the very hour you are blinking back tears from another's secret little sorrow. 

…Realizing with horror how many basic lessons have gone untaught to the younger ones while you've been frantically reacting to the moods and impatiences of the older ones.

…Fighting not to fall asleep while on the phone with the missionary, because you stayed up till two a.m. editing the high-schooler's college application essays.

…Being interrupted the moment you finally sit down to read the book the three-year-old has been clamoring for, by the fourteen-year-old urgently needing a ride somewhere. 

…Trying to hide the tremor in your voice from your hurt feelings about what the sixteen-year-old just yelled at you, as you answer the five-year-old's question about how lawnmowers work and if one could cut off your foot.

More often than not I'm overwhelmed, not just with tasks but with the vast range of feelings required of me, and I find myself casting desperate and semi-accusing prayers up to the heavens: It's too much! I'm not up to it! I'm full of hands!

———

Every few months I ask Sam for a priesthood blessing. If you're curious about that, know that a priesthood blessing is given by the laying on of hands through the power of the priesthood that Sam holds, and is guided by the Holy Ghost. As with any revelation, there's an interaction between giver and receiver—God speaks to us in our language and according to our understanding. So of course there's room for error, but God honors those who honor Him, and I think he blesses even our imperfect efforts to hear His voice. I've watched Sam's ability to give these blessings grow and deepen over the years as he's blessed our family, and when he gives me a blessing now, I really do feel I'm hearing the literal words of God. It's interesting how often I'll mention some counsel from a blessing after it's given, and Sam won't even remember saying it! And there have been countless times when a blessing speaks to a concern Sam didn't know I had, or when he uses words only God knew would be most meaningful to me.

Not having ever spoken these feelings of "fullness" to anyone else, you can imagine how I felt several months ago when Sam blessed me in these words:

Marilyn, your life is so full. Full of concerns, full of difficulties, full of things that take up your time, full of things to think about, full of moments that may be hard to pay attention to before they slip by. Sometimes that fulness can be frustrating and leave you with a sense that you wish you could just freeze time for a moment, or take a break from it all. But your Father in Heaven knows what you need, and He wishes you to understand what a fulness means.

And so, thus encouraged, I have been trying to "understand what a fulness means."

———

I don't think I've found out yet. I catch glimpses of it in the scriptures—"Offer your whole souls as an offering." "In due time receive of His fulness." "The fulness of the earth is yours." 

Or this quote by Truman Madsen: "The fulness of truth, and the fulness of the Holy Ghost, and the fulness of the priesthood, and the fulness of the glory of the Father are all phrases that are ocurrent in connection with the temple, and cannot be received anywhere else, nowhere else on the planet. You cannot receive the fulness that the Lord has for you without coming through the temple and having the temple come through you."

But I've also been thinking about how just by living this life—by struggling through and sometimes drowning in this fulness—I am somehow starting to absorb "what a fulness means." I can't put it into words very well. Reading that list above, it would be natural to wonder why on earth anyone would voluntarily choose this kind of fulness. And without the personal experience to go with it, a balancing list of the "good parts" doesn't do justice to the joy and wonder and privilege of being caught up in all those stories. But those things are there, crammed in with the rest, bursting out of the cracks and seams—

…The ten- and twelve-year-old learning to play a piano duet together, giggling together over their mistakes. 

…The seventeen-year-old bending over the baby's bassinet after sneaking in from a date just past curfew, whispering "goodnight, little baby" and half-hoping she'll wake up to smile at him. 

…Being part of the hours of work behind the speech one child gives at his debate tournament, and the hours of effort another puts into Christmas presents for her siblings. 

…The satisfaction and the frustration of making a really good meal for twelve—or fourteen—or twenty—out of odds and ends from the fridge and fifteen minutes of notice, with only a stack of empty plates and a few thank-yous for reward at the end of it. 

…Being the one—the only one—a child wants when he is hurt or sick, the only one who understands what a particular combination of gibberish means, the only one who notices when tiny fingers heading towards the mouth say "I'm scared." 

…Even better, knowing what it's like to exchange glances and a half-smile with someone who does  understand, across a torrent of tired two-year-old tears, a surly teenage retort, an unintentionally hilarious assertion from an older child correcting a younger child.

I could tell you a thousand of those moments and not get close to capturing what they've meant or how they've changed me. And it's just as true of the first list as the second list. Every experience, every brimful emotion that grew so big inside me it threatened to break me in two—the ones that feel like they did break me in two. The worries I laugh at ten years later. The worries I feel I will never laugh at. The tears I cried, and the ones too deep to cry, and the ones I swallowed because someone else needed me when I wanted to cry them. Many of these things, no doubt, would have been part of a life with one or three or five children just the same. But the weight and bulk of them, the way they cram together to fill every possible space, the way they come at you like tennis balls from a ball machine that's set way higher than your skill level…that's what feels like too much fulness. And also…maybe…what God is trying to bless me with?

———

I wrote about playing the organ once, how for me (NOT an organist by training) there's a sort of mystical alchemy to it. Playing hands and pedals together is like seeing something out of the corner of your eye, or trying to remember a dream you've just awakened from. As long as you let it happen in the sides of your vision, things go along pretty well. But the moment you focus in and look at the thing head-on, the balance crumbles and it's gone.

With organ playing, such sideways focus is definitely not the same as a lack of concentration, though. If anything, it's hyper-concentration, super-concentration. You can't let your mind wander, but you can't zero in on one thing, either, or the rest of it comes crashing down. Now that I think about it, it's the same thing with sightreading on the piano. The music keeps rolling on no matter how much you flounder, and the only way to avoid the wave is to ride on top of it, eyes moving, hands moving, mind moving, never taking time to even think about the mess you've made of the previous page. And in the midst of the chaos, there are moments of what feels like magic, where your vision widens like a camera lens and suddenly you're seeing all of it, everything at once, the notes and the breath and every muscle in your arms and your back, everything moving together, and you're outside of yourself and deep inside of yourself all at once, unable to stop or even explain it, but strangely certain that you alone couldn't possibly have done what you've just done.

———

We know Jesus Christ has a "fulness." Of joy—of course. Of sorrow? I don't know. Maybe not for himself. But through us, through our sorrows and our losses? I have asked Him how He stands it when so many choose to turn away from Him, ignore Him, reject Him. How can he live with hope and joy, knowing some of his beloved children will deliberately not choose Him?

I don't know. The only answer I can hear, whispered, is "…all that the Father hath."

Doctrine and Covenants 88 says there are different types of fulnesses. Celestial, telestial, terrestrial. 

Some receive of his glory, but not of his fulness.

The Lord's rest is the fulness of His glory.

He who receiveth all things with thankfulness shall be made glorious.

I don't want a fulness of sorrow. All this, everything I'm doing right now, is with the desperate hope of joy ahead—joy and rest and eternal goodness. All this time I've been hoping the hard parts will cease. The weight will lift. The darkness will dispel. And we will live in fulness of joy.

I still hope for that. I think it's a true vision. 

The Lord hath redeemed his people;

And Satan is bound and time is no longer.

The Lord hath gathered all things in one.

The Lord hath brought down Zion from above.

The Lord hath brought up Zion from beneath.

The earth hath travailed and brought forth her strength;

And truth is established in her bowels;

And the heavens have smiled upon her;

And she is clothed with the glory of her God;

For he stands in the midst of his people.

What I don't know is if it's a full vision. Maybe a chosen sorrow differs from an imposed sorrow? Maybe sorrow by another name, sorrow through the lens of love and eternity—is joy?

Maybe God's fulness is something that cuts facets in us until every single surface reflects God?

———

It's too much, this life of mine. Of course it's too much! Too much good and too much failure and too much everything crammed into too little space. I need to be magnified—deepened—enlarged.

I don't know what they mean in aggregate. All these moments with my children—good ones, hard ones, impossible ones—are like flashes of light. Each one is a luminous stone, a piece of cut glass, surrounded by shadow, and what they're forming, I can't see. A mosaic? A mirror? A window through which I will at last see the face of God?

But in all their glorious fulness, these moments surround me because I have these specific children, all of them, here together in this family, and the idea of saying no to them before I even understand them, because I think I might be "too full" already—it makes my blood run cold.

I'm still pretty inept. Overloaded, you might say. Unable to hold onto much of anything without dropping something else. But please open the gate, Heavenly Father. I'm full of hands.