When I was in high school one of my heroes was Alexander Pope. I chose him as a hero for the same reason I chose Cyrano de Bergerac: they were witty and intelligent men that women would never be attracted to. I had fairly low self esteem in high school, but that's not the point I'm trying to make. Alexander Pope was one of the great writers of this or any other age. His heroic couplets tend to say more about humanity than most people can say in entire volumes. You may not know him by name but you probably know him by famous lines like these: "To err is human, to forgive divine" "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread" "Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, As to be hated needs but to be seen; Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, We first endure, then pity, then embrace." "A little Learning is a dang'rous Thing" "Love the offender, yet detest the offense" "Hope springs eternal in the human breast." As you can see, Alexander Pope has given us a murderer's row of quotable quotes.
In his "Essay on Man," Alexander Pope explains, among other things, the existence of evil in the world, the workings of God, and the answer to the age old question, "Why do bad things happen to good people?" Consider the following lines:
All Nature is but Art unknown to thee;
All chance direction, which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony not understood;
All partial evil, universal good
As you know, Megan and I are passing through some trials and tribulations and tests of our faith. It wasn't that long ago that Megan had 4 job interviews in a single week and I had an interview for a good job that I stood a decent chance of getting. That was over a month ago. We've seen several peaks and valleys in our hope since then. Currently, we're waiting to hear back from a job for which she has interviewed twice and has been told that she is the top candidate. But they're at the end of their fiscal year so they need to make sure they can afford to hire her. We were supposed to hear the news as to whether or not she'll get the job last Friday. Then we were told that they'd be having a meeting on Monday and we'd know by the end of the day. Now it's after 5:00 on Thursday and we're facing the possibility of going into another weekend without getting an answer.
We have another mortgage payment due soon. The Arizona Department of Revenue has, in it's infinite wisdom, decided to bill me twice for the same tax. The second time they billed me, they added a $100 bank fee, just to make things interesting. We're trying to get them to give us a refund as soon as possible, but there is no apparent haste on their end despite the fact that they didn't waste any time in billing me twice. Megan is finding it harder to bring in extra money. She isn't getting as much freelance work, we haven't been asked to house sit in dog's years (Dog's years! Get it?), and balloon tying hasn't brought in as much money as it used to. She doesn't get called up too often to substitute teach. She's trying to apply to as many jobs as she can, but design jobs are hard to come by these days. Add to that the fact that she's been pretty sick lately and might not feel good enough to tie balloons this weekend and you've got yourself a world class conundrum. There are probably other depressing factors in our financial situation, but I don't want to recount every little detail.
We're obviously in a situation that we are powerless to deliver ourselves from. We're not in this situation due to bad financial planning or extravagant spending. We have been putting money into our savings account every month since the beginning. We bought a house that was well under the amount of money banks were willing to loan to us. We've been shopping at thrift stores, second-hand stores, and yard sales even before Megan lost her job. We're frugal people, but these are tough economic times where people like Megan and I are struggling to get by. I could get political and blame things like deregulation of banks and the proliferation of predatory and subprime lending, but I'm not going to. From the beginning Megan and I have seen this as a test of our faith. I would be lying to you if I told you that my faith has not wavered at times during the past few months. Yet we soldier on. We continue to do all that we can do and put our trust in the only power that can deliver us.
Now let's get back to Alexander Pope. In those 4 lines he is telling us that there may be things in this world that we may judge to be evil, discordant, or the product of chance. I think back to a talk given in our last Stake Priesthood meeting. We were told that there are three types of storms in this life: 1) Those we are to avoid 2) Those we are to endure, and 3) Those we are to enjoy. I can't say that Megan and I have been jumping on the bed shouting, "Yeah! You lost your job! Isn't this fun?!" But we have drawn closer together in this time of trial. I can see actual tangible blessings that have come from merely enduring this trial and trying not to whine so much (That's a problem for me. I can be a big whiner). From the outset Megan and I have not judged the fact that she lost her job as evil, discordant, or the product of chance. We know that were are supposed to be learning and growing. Maybe we haven't learned all we need to learn yet. Maybe we haven't grown in all the ways we're supposed to, but I do know that we will be fine. We will make it through to the other side and be better for it. In the end these things will be good, harmonious, and they will point us in the direction we were intended to go.
When Megan is feeling particularly down I always ask her two questions: "What do we always land on?" and "How are things going to turn out." The correct answers are "our feet" and "just fine," respectively. This trial is turning into one of the most difficult things I have ever been called to endure, but the blessings are already showing. We know that everything will work for our good and we will be thankful in the end. I remind Megan that someday we'll be able to laugh about this. Every married couple has stories about, "We we so poor back when..." or "We were literally just living on love back when..." and Megan and I are carving out some of our own. There will probably be other lean times in our lives as well (especially when we start having kids) but we're learning how to get through it in the here and now.
When I was single I got used to being able to buy what I wanted when I wanted it. Now every purchase is carefully planned. One of the most important aspects of this trial is learning to be less selfish, which is hard. When you're single it literally is all about you. You're working on self improvement, you spend all your money on yourself, you do things that make you happy. When it comes don to it, young singlehood is probably the most selfish time of your life. Now I'm part of a partnership and I can't do what I want when I want to do it. There are compromises and sacrifices that need to be made and we're making them together.
I don't know if I should be throwing this up here because it's kind of a personal intimate moment, but here goes: Megan was feeling pretty down last night. It's understandable. Another day had come and gone without hearing about this job. She was sick as a dog and things looked particularly hopeless. She had laid down to sleep, but was having a hard time breathing with her nose stuffed up. She was losing her voice and couldn't say more than a couple words at a time, so she couldn't tell me everything she was thinking. She was feeling particularly helpless. So I got the chance to hold my crying wife in my arms and tell her that everything was going to be okay. The memory that came to my mind was of the women's pull on the trek. The women in our family had to pull the handcart up one side of a hill and down the other. The men were not allowed to help pull, but we helped by taking whatever heavy items we could get our hands on and carrying them to make the cart lighter. But the women had to struggle under the weight of the cart. In any decent trek, the women's pull tends to be one of the most memorable parts of the experience. The reason I bring up this memory of the women's pull is that as I held my sobbing wife, I couldn't help but sense how much harder this is for her than it is for me.
My life is ostensibly the same now as it was before Megan lost her job. I raise my hopes with her as opportunities have come and I have mourned with her as those opportunities have passed us by. I share the emotional baggage of this situation as well, but I can tell that she feels it more than I do. Any time you lose a job and have trouble finding a new one, the psychological pressure can be unbearable. The fact that she has borne it as well as she has is a testament to her strength. As I held her last night I couldn't help thinking, "She's the one who lost a job, not me. She's the one who is so sick she can barely speak, not me. She's the one who has to find ways to fill her days with productive things despite all temptation to wallow in despair, not me." It has been hard to have things stay relatively the same for me and change so drastically for her. I feel selfish. I feel like it should be harder for me (Then I reconsider, because it's plenty hard as is). Anyway, I can't make the point in writing that I can see in my head. Know this: Megan is a woman of strength and integrity. I lucked out when I married her and I hope I always remember that.
Anyway, I've wandered all round the point of this entry so much that you should be able to read it and get some sense of what I'm talking about. We're still hopeful and we still believe that things will work out and we'll be fine. As always, we are grateful for your love and prayers.