It has been a challenging week – both personally and globally, I guess – and I needed to get out and exchange smiles and meet new friends and see the good in the world.
As I was on my way to Fred Meyer’s yesterday I realized that it was “senior” day there and I’d get to buy things with a discount. So that was cool. I love “senior” day at Fred Meyer’s – not just because of the discount, but because it’s kind of fun to be with a store-full of other people who were alive when the Beatles first appeared on Ed Sullivan, and when man took his first steps on the moon. There’s a kinship there.
As I was checking out, I had to keep asking the cashier to repeat herself, and we both started laughing. I commended her for her patience with me, and with the other seniors there. I told her my dad lived to be 101 and I was his POA at the end and, maybe because of this, I can recognize in other people the ones who care for, and know HOW to care for, our society’s oldest members. The cashier laughed and said that she’s told her older relations that they don’t need to worry, she’s got their backs.
I also met some way cool “youngsters” at Fred’s yesterday – and by youngsters I mean young people around my sons’ ages – late twenties and early thirties.
I’d stopped in the photo department to buy photo paper and ink and there was a young man in the aisle, looking for computer stuff, I think – and he had this amazing hair – curly and long and red and tied up in a pony tail. I turned to him and said, “It has to be said: You have amazing hair.” He started laughing and thanked me, and told me that he’s the only one in his family who ended up with curly hair – and he didn’t get his until he was twelve or so. I told him the same was true for my eldest son.
Later, as I was waiting in line at the in-store Starbucks, I got into conversation with two young families with babies in carts ahead of me in the line. The mother of one of the babies said that the babies were cousins and were only a few months apart in age – and I learned the youngest was only two weeks older than my granddaughter. So that was pretty cool. I got into conversation with the father of one of the babies and learned he was my oldest son’s age. And, as we stood in line at the Starbucks in Fred’s, he talked to me about his recent spiritual journey, and the importance of the sun, and the connection he feels with nature and he asked me if I saw the face in his picture of the sun and I know this is all one sentence, but that’s the only way I can convey the energy coming from him as he talked to me. It’s amazing the conversations one can have waiting in line at Fred Meyer’s.
I went out to my car, and there was another young man feeding his jeep some kind of fuel enhancer (?) in a bottle that I at first took for a soda can. He’d noticed my sticker for the Wake ‘n Bakery in Glacier – and said he liked all my other stickers, too – and soon he was telling me about his youtube snow reports and his horses and farm, and how he’d grown up in Michigan, but had lived in Marblemount for twenty years, and the difference between x-country skiing in the topography of Michigan and x-country skiing in the topography of the North Cascades and, again, I know that’s a lot to put into one sentence, but that’s the only way I can convey the energy I felt coming from this young man, too. It’s amazing the conversations one can have in a parking lot at Fred Meyer’s.
By the time I’d left Fred’s I’d exchanged smiles, and made new friends, seen the good in the world, and seen the face of the sun.
My dear Humoristian hooligans – Look! We’re still here! We have another day to do good things!
May your irrepressible joy bring hope to the weary and worn. May your kindness reach the forgotten and lonely. May the bossy, bigoted, and bullying be transformed by your good will to all. May the ascared and discouraged be bolstered by your courage. May you bring laughter to those in desperate need of a good laugh.
Go out there and work your magic, my friends!
It’s not over until Love wins. – Karen Molenaar Terrell
This morning Baby Linh raced up to me on all fours, pulled herself up on a basket next to my chair and looked at me with a big grin on her face. Then she started laughing. She laughed and laughed a big rolling belly laugh mixed with happy squeals for a good three minutes. And I laughed with her. We laughed just for the sheer joy of laughing. It was the most therapeutic three minutes I had all day. – Karen Molenaar Terrell
“A merry heart doeth good like a medicine…” – Proverbs 17:22
Dad (Dee Molenaar) would be 106 today. He lived an amazing life here. He was born at the end of WWI – born before “talking” pictures, televisions, interstate highways, cassette tapes, CDs, DVDs, computers, “streaming” and cellphones. Born before commercial airlines and born 51 years before man landed on the moon. HIs first car was a Model-T Ford. He served as a “Coastie” in the Pacific in WWII, climbed on some of the highest mountains in the world, published three books (including the award-winning Challenge of Rainier), created maps, painted the highest painting ever painted (at 25,000′ on K2), and traveled to six of the seven continents.
I don’t know how many times he appeared in National Geographic, but I remember randomly opening a National Geographic at a thrift store and seeing Dad dressed in a national park ranger uniform, checking a climber’s gear on Mount Rainier. I know he was also in National Geographic for the 1953 K2 climb and the Mount Saint Elias climb and the Mount Kennedy climb.
He led me up Pinnacle Peak when I was four, and got me to the summits of Hood, Baker, Rainier, and Adams. He taught me how to ride a bike and hit a baseball. He built a high jump for me in our backyard, and showed me how to scissor-leg over it, and, when I broke my arm high-jumping in our back yard, he passed out in the hospital when the doctor cracked my arm back together – this brave man who’d rescued climbers, retrieved bodies from the mountains, served in WWII, and faced death on K2, passed out when he saw his child in pain.
He was one of my favorite hiking buddies, one of my biggest advocates, and I miss him.
This is an old blog post (September 14, 2013), but it came to my thought just now and I thought maybe Pride Month was a good time to repost it:
Okay, I just watched a youtube clip that still has me wiping the tears from my face. I was so moved by this clip – so completely inspired by it. It went waaaay beyond your typical proposal of young man on bended knee proposing to young woman – no, this proposal included a choreographed dance to Betty Who’s upbeat song, Somebody Loves You, and an ensemble cast of parents, friends, youngsters, oldsters – all there to support the handsome couple. This marriage proposal was testament to the power of community and the power of love. And part of what made the proposal so extraordinary, for me, was that the couple wasn’t a man and a woman at all – the couple was a man and a man… in Salt Lake City… Utah. And… did I mention that their mums and dads were there? Friends? Little girls in pinks tutus doing cartwheels? Babies? If you haven’t seen this clip, you gotta watch it – you just gotta!: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4HpWQmEXrM
This is the way it’s supposed to be. Acceptance. Support. Celebration. Love.
I look forward to that day when every citizen can share in the exact same rights as every other citizen of our land. -Karen Molenaar Terrell
We had our last military draft in the United States in 1973 – the year before I graduated from high school. The young men in the classes ahead of me in high school all had to think about the draft when they were looking at their futures. It might be hard for young people today to imagine what that must have been like.
Memorial Day is a somber day. I think about all the young lives lost in wars. As a mother, I think about all the other mothers whose children didn’t return from wars, and my heart breaks.
Memorial Day is a day to remember the lives lost in war. And, for me, it’s a day to reaffirm my commitment to peace.
“Bloodshed, war, and oppression belong to the darker ages, and shall be relegated to oblivion.” – Mary Baker Eddy(The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 285)
I hope for a world where no one dies in war – where wars are a distant memory of a primitive long-ago time when humans thought they had to kill each other to “win”
A few months after my fifty-first birthday, I no longer knew who I was. I don’t mean I had amnesia or anything, but the person I’d always thought I was didn’t seem to exist any longer. As my sons had become self-sufficient and independent young men, my role as their mother was different, and, as the only female in my family, I sometimes struggled with trying to figure out how I “fit in”; my profession had changed so much I no longer felt I belonged in it; and two close 20-year friendships, that had once defined who I was as a friend, had ended abruptly, leaving me feeling unworthy of friendship and unlovable. There were all at once a lot of holes in my life, and I felt like a loser.
Who the heck WAS I?
During the Year of Insanity I put a lot of thought into that question. Just when I’d start feeling like I was hopelessly lost in the wilderness, and would never find my way back to my real self, one of my fellow classmates in “Earth’s preparatory school” (as Mary Baker Eddy described our time here) would drop a crumb on the forest floor that would help lead me the right direction. I don’t think many of these classmates had any idea how important those crumbs were to me. So, to those of you who dropped the crumbs, I want to take a moment and tell you that you saved my life, and I whole-heartedly thank you for that.
Henry Drummond writes (in The Greatest Thing in the World): “The people who influence you are people who believe in you… To be trusted is to be saved. And if we try to influence or elevate others, we shall soon see that success is in proportion to their belief of our belief in them…The withholding of love is the negation of the Spirit of Christ.”
I have discovered, as I’ve lived my Middle Book, that I am over-the-top wealthy with friends. There have been times when I’ve felt my friends’ expressions of Love towards me lifting me up and supporting me – giving me the buoyancy I need to stay afloat – and when I write “lifting me up” I mean that in a literal sense – I have felt myself – not my body, but my thoughts – literally rising.
I’d like to share a couple of instances with you of times when this happened for me – and I’d like to ask that as you read through these examples, you insert yourself into them – insert yourself as the person who is being shown love, and then insert yourself as the person who is showing love. Because, dear reader, the love that was expressed towards me is yours, too. You are the loved, and you are the loving.
***
On New Year’s Eve, 2007, I was hit particularly hard by the belief of depression – caught up in weird and intense feelings of hopelessness and worthlessness. I don’t know what led me to check out my book on Amazon that night, but when I clicked on Blessings: Adventures of a Madcap Christian Scientist I found that just that day someone had added a new review for my book. The review read, in part: “Karen becomes your friend, someone you know and love and you know if she knew you, she would love you the way you want to be loved.” I read those words and was so touched by them I began to cry. This was exactly the message I needed at that moment. If I could love others, I had worth. If others could love me, there was hope. I’ve always felt that the man who wrote that review had been listening to the voice of Love that day. He’d been guided by Love’s direction to take the time to write a review for my book – and, because he did that for me, he helped to bring me out of a place of deep despair.
We all have access to an incredible power to bring good to other peoples’ lives. That day my book’s reviewer had tapped into that power.
***
I emailed my wise friend, David Allen, to get his thoughts on “identity” – he always has good stuff to share with me. I told him that I’d reached a point where I didn’t know who I was, anymore – it felt like all my anchors were gone – my job wasn’t the same job, my role as a mom wasn’t the same role, I wasn’t really a mountain-climber, anymore – who was I?! His response was one of the most profound pieces of writing I have ever read, and I’d like to share it with you:
“Karen, I know this feeling. A few years back, before I met you, I went through a similar experience. Up until that time I had identified as a completely self-reliant runner and professional designer who could succeed at anything I wanted to. That was me, or at least, that was who I thought was me. Suddenly, all that was gone…I felt like I had lost my entire identity…Then, one day it hit me. I am not any of those things. Those are things I do, not things that I am. Here is what I am: I am creative, curious, and kind. I like children and I like teaching. I enjoy physical activity. I am a storyteller and I like to make people laugh. I like to do things. I like to make things. I love to learn new things. And I love my family. Whether I am working or running, I am still all of those things. No matter what others may say or think, I am still all of those things. These are the things that never change. These are the things that make me, me. Sometimes I make mistakes and screw up, but that doesn’t change any of those things, either. I am not always happy, but I am always grateful for the things that I am. And I don’t worry anymore about the things I am not.”
***
I’d met David on a religion discussion forum – he was a self-avowed atheist – but other than our difference in belief about God, we’d found we had a huge amount in common with each other. There were several other people I’d met on the forum – most of them atheists, like David – who had become valued friends to me. One of these valued friends was a brilliant wit named Jamie Longmire, who lived in Nova Scotia with his talented artist-wife, Kathi Petersen. Not long after I met Jamie, he “brought me home” via email to introduce me to Kathi.
Before too long Kathi and I were email buddies – emailing each other regularly twice a day. Kathi had been through some pretty major challenges in her life, and could relate to a lot of what I was going through. She understood my thoughts about not wanting to use medication to get relief from the depression – understood that I felt there was something I needed to learn from my experience. She understood, too, when I told her that I’d found I could be happy even when I was depressed. Kathi wrote:
“…something… that occurs to me … is that we all have to live our own lives, and grow from our own hardships.
“I was in a Jungian dream group once and one of the women was saying something about how she could be just as conscious and psychologically grown without having had a dark night of the soul, and you could tell people were thinking ‘yeah right’ … I hear peoples’ stories sometimes, maybe some television interview, and they end up talking about their really pivotal growth ‘dark night moment,’ and it is something that seems so insignificant …but you have to have the whole context of peoples’ lives. I think it is hugely important for people to grow from their own experiences…
“I actually think in a way that it is very important not to tell someone, when they are upset about the bad time they are going through, ‘Well look at that guy, he has no arms or legs and he is a professional motivational speaker and has written two bestseller books’ … I’m saying this because I think in a way, the hardships (while all different) have a BIG sameness about them, and that the answers have a HUGE sameness about them. It is… about people who are suffering, and people finding out that the suffering isn’t a necessary part of life. The hardships may be … but the suffering not necessarily. I have thought that having bigger challenges can sometimes allow people to learn this more easily (trial by fire?) – to learn that life can be full of joy regardless …”
***
I remember clearly the moment when I began to wake up from the depression: I was talking with my husband, Scott, about how the people around me were telling me these wonderful things about myself, but I just felt detached from their words – like the words had nothing to do with who I really am. I told him I felt like a fraud. He looked at me and started laughing. “Karen,” he said, “everyone else knows who you are, you’re the only one who can’t see it!”
The way he said it – with such conviction and so kind of matter-of-factly – I felt something lifting from me, some burden that had been weighing me down. I went out for a walk, and everything around me looked lighter and brighter. I felt stirrings of joy. For some reason I’d been feeling like I had to “steal” happiness – as if I didn’t deserve it. But I think that it was at this moment when I began to accept that I had every right to be happy.
***
“Be happy at all times and in all places; for remember it is right and a duty you owe to yourself and to your God to retain the right, no matter how loudly the senses scream.” – Edward A. Kimball
Honestly, I was feeling pretty down today – dismayed at the direction the world seems to be headed; and disappointed in myself, too – feeling like I could have been a better mother, wife, daughter, teacher, friend, in my life.
The thought came to me to get out of the house and find a quiet corner somewhere where I could do some self-reflection and have an internal conversation with the Cosmos.
When I started out I wasn’t sure where I was going to end up, exactly – but as I followed the nudgings of the Cosmos I found myself at Pacioni’s in Mount Vernon. I sat in a booth in the back and ordered a half a veggie panini, listened to the soft background music and the sounds of friends talking and laughing. Watched the rain drizzling outside the front window.
I realized I missed Mom. I thought about how I could always tell her what was in my heart – and she never judged me or my words. She always saw the best in me. I missed that.
When I was done with my panini and had paid, I tidied up my table, put on my coat, and started for the door.
And this is when I saw that two of my favorite people – a couple in my local community – had been sitting in there, eating their lunch, too! We all gave each other hugs and talked about children and granchildren and the state of the world, and how we maybe can’t change the big things in the world, but we can be kind to the people in our community, the people we come in contact with – and I told them they are two of the people that do this really well – and then they said *I* did this! They said I was the perfect example of this! They said they’d been talking to one of my former students a while ago and my name had come up in the conversation and my former student had said that EVERYone should have a Karen Terrell for a teacher.
I teared up. I stood there, in front of my friends, and I teared up. They had no idea the gift they’d just given me – it was the exactly right thing I needed to hear just then. To know that someone thought I’d made a difference – to know that someone thought I’d done something right in my life – this was huge for me.
And I realized that the mother-love I’d been missing was right there with me – being expressed to me by my beautiful friends.
The Cosmos led me exactly where I needed to be today.
Yesterday I found myself ruminating on a difficult situation I’d found myself in a dozen years ago. I thought I’d moved on and left it all behind me – the difficulties of that time had impelled me to launch myself out into the Great Unknown and given me the opportunity to find a wonderful new place for myself, and I was grateful for that.
But yesterday I found myself thinking about the unfairness of what had happened to me a dozen years ago, and the mean-spiritedness of the people involved. Yesterday I found myself having a hard time letting go of the resentment I discovered I still felt towards the people who’d made my life so challenging all those years ago.
I prayed about this.
And as I was reading this week’s Bible Lesson in the Christian Science Quarterly, this passage jumped out at me: “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.” (Galatians 5:1.) Whoah. A dozen years ago I escaped from a difficult situation and found myself in a wonderful new place. A dozen years ago I found my freedom. I don’t need to ever be “entangled again” with that “yoke of bondage” – not even through my memories. I’m free! Why would I want to go back – even in my memories – to a time when I wasn’t?
And this passage in the lesson this week made me think about how I see others – am I seeing EVERYone as the beautiful child of God? “…give up imperfect models and illlusive ideals; and so let us have one God, one Mind, and that one perfect, producing His own models of excellence.” Can any of God’s children ever do harm to Her other children? No, of course not! I need to let go of any illusion I might have that any of God’s children can be less than the perfection of Love.
I realize that I need to forgive others their human-ness as they work their way through life, just as I hope others will forgive MY human-ness. NO one is where they were twelve years ago. We’ve all progressed and grown.
And NONE of us needs to be entangled again in old yokes of bondage.
Baker Lake Trail in the North Cascades. Photo by Karen Molenaar Terrell.
Adventures of the Madcap Christian Scientist 