13. HOW A LOBSTER GROWS

I know lobster by its flavor as much as I know it by its appearance. I only know it by its appearance because I have seen them in tanks at the restaurants where I go to taste them, and I have had them delivered to my front porch after a cross-country airline journey from the east coast. We don’t eat lobster a lot these days, not just because we live in the desert of Utah, but also because my sister is allergic to it.  She loves lobster!  But it obviously does not love her because it will kill her at first taste.  Libby says that if she was on death row and had to choose her last meal it would be lobster with strawberry pie for dessert.  The lobster and strawberries would likely kill her before the authorities had to, but she would die happy.

Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski is a world renowned Psychiatrist who is an expert on many things, the most notable of which is his understanding of humans with addictions. He’s published over 60 books, has all sorts of accolades, and besides he looks and sounds “sage”. He is a good storyteller, among other gifts, and if you have a few minutes you should take a look at some of his YouTube snippets. They are short and inspiring. 

I was watching his short talk on “stress” and that’s where I learned how the lobster grows.  He gets uncomfortable in his shell, hunkers under a rock for protection from predators, sheds his unyielding shell and grows a new one.  He does this multiple times in his life span.  It would be a curious thing for me to scuba dive and find all those empty lobster shells at the bottom of the sea.

Dr. Twerski said this:

"The stimulus for the lobster to be able to grow is that it feels uncomfortable....Times of stress are also times that are signals for growth, and if we use adversity properly, we can grow through adversity."

The generation before me was mighty familiar with discomfort.  World wars, prohibitions, Great Depressions…these were common threads for all Americans.  If you lost your husband in the war, well, so did the woman next to you on the bus.  If your father was gone looking for work in some other city, so were all the other fathers of your classmates.  A sandwich with plain old butter, and only butter, was cause for saying Grace at lunchtime. Discomfort was the order of the day.  And that discomfort taught our grandparents to be dutiful hard workers who did not have excessive expectations. Their sacrifices were great, and their accomplishments were greater. 

A while ago, when I was teaching a song to the young children in our church,  one of the young boys was particularly wiggly.  I asked what was bothering him.  I can’t even remember his actual response, but I asked him if he were in real pain or just uncomfortable. He looked at me, puzzled.  I paused from my music teaching to ask the kids if they understood the difference between pain and discomfort.  A few of the older ones knew, and responded.  But most of them had not yet learned the difference. It was an interesting conversation, and got me to thinking about Rabbi Twerski’s lobster story.

Our magnificent daughter, Kate, is in the process of molting right now.  She is hunkered under a figurative rock, exposed and a little nervous, while she grows a new shell.  She awaits news regarding applications to doctoral programs.  The odds are remarkably against her, according to statistics.  But we who know her well think the odds are stunningly in her favor.  But we will see.  I have been peeking in on her, there under her figurative rock waiting to grow her new expanded shell, and I am amazed at her patience, trust, and good humor.  Sometimes I think the one thing that keeps her sane are the regular visits from the tiny lobster nieces and nephews who jump into her arms when they come visit.  (I thank the Lord of all lobsters for those little ones!)
The thing that brought her to this place was... you got it... discomfort! Kate represents all of us who, in the capacity of our humanness, would rather just float along in cool ocean waters in the same old shell.  But her personal growth, inside that shell, had brought her to the place of discomfort…with her current employment, with her life situation, with things only she can tell you.  I imagine her thin little lobster antennae searching, searching for solutions that might not require that shell molting.  But she is destined for deeper, colder, more magnificent waters, and as much as I’d like to live in the past, I know the future is our destiny…is her destiny…and so I step back and watch her in her discomfort as she waits.  She has her plan B in place, and perhaps that is supposed to be her plan A but we don’t know it yet.  Either way, I have great confidence in her and in the Lord in whom she places her trust.

I HOPE that I will allow myself to differentiate between my own discomforts and real pain.  I am aging, and my awareness of the condition of my aging body, without the luxury of shedding my shell, has caused me to be more hesitant when taking medications to relieve my aches and pains.  Lately I find myself trying to reserve that Tylenol for when I can’t get to sleep because my hips hurt. I think it would be a worthy prayer to ask the maker of my body and my soul to help me determine what is discomfort and what is pain.  If it is discomfort, help me, Lord, to know what to shed.

Click HERE to see Rabbi Dr. Twerski's short message on stress.

 ________________________________________

12. PROBLEMS and MONEY

Money.  The word, all by itself, evokes automatic emotions for nearly every adult human I know. Only the very lucky ones have a benign response to money, and by lucky I mean those who have the luxury of having enough, and those who don’t require much to be happy.

I will not attempt to address the complexity of the topic.  It is a given fact that many good, hard working people do not have enough.  My thoughts today are based on an assumption that there is bread on our tables and our lights turn on when we flip the switch. If this is actually your situation, pause this very moment and give thanks!

My mom had a relatively healthy relationship with money, once she became empowered to earn her own and had enough to cover her bills. The problem, when you’re in commission-based sales, it that you anticipate excessively.  You’re exhausted because you have too many clients and more work than you have time, or you’re in a panic because there is a brief lull  in business and you worry that you will never have another client.

Mom absolutely loved being able to buy simple comforts for others.  “I’ll sell another house,” she’d say; and usually she would. She liked nice things, and if she had the money, she bought nice things.  She didn’t mind paying full price for quality.

I, on the other hand, am a natural born bargain shopper. Much of the beauty and pleasure is the bargain I can find in it.

I used to think I was being a good steward over my funds.  But I’m rethinking.

Mom used to say , when I would question her purchases, “What’s money for?” And, come to think of it, she was right.  Money is simply a facilitator for our earthly experience. It should not be an end in itself.

My friend Deb gave me this little nugget of thought a couple years ago, and it often pops into my head. She said:

“If you have a problem, and money can solve it, and you have the money, then you don’t have a problem.”

My HOPE…for myself as much as those I love, is that we respect our stewardship to ourselves and our families…work hard, with diligence and dignity regardless of the value society may put on our work. (Note – society does not pay musicians/writers fairly, as evidenced in the 11 cent royalty check  that came in the mail today.)  But let money remain in its proper place.  If you don’t have it, don’t spend it.  If you have enough, use it to facilitate the things you value most.  And if by chance you have an abundance, be wise, be generous, and be grateful.

________________________________________

11. RESERVE GUILT FOR SIN

Poor guilt; it’s gotten a bad rap these days.  I’m not talking about the kind of guilt my husband has to deal with on the judicial bench; the legal term.  I’m talking about the emotional use of the term. It’s been misunderstood for so long now that it’s generally lost its effectiveness.

We who have a more feminine bend, and this includes both males and females, because we all have feminine and masculine in our personal recipes…we “sensitive souls” tend to misuse guilt with great gusto.  We stack it upon ourselves like seven-layer dip at a church party.  We feel guilty because our houses are not perfect, because our bodies are not perfect, because our children are not perfect.  Add a layer of “I have no college degree” or “I leave my children to go to work every day”, then maybe “I am a terrible friend/daughter/parent/fill-in-the-blank”. Goodness, we can be hard on ourselves!

What happens when we use guilt for the kind of stuff that is subjective, is that we weaken the tool, and then when we need it to really fix something in us that is broken, it’s ineffective. 

Guilt, in its divine state, is a God given gift, designed to move us toward change, to refine us and lead us to obedience. Misuse of guilt, which is often overuse, is kind of like when you start salting everything you eat.  Pretty soon you can’t even taste the salt.  And the unique flavor of individual foods is lost.  Eventually salt has lost its effectiveness and its savor, not because the salt has changed, but your response to it has changed.

I remember sitting in the office of my bishop at church.  The bishop is the leader of our congregation.  I remember weeping as we spoke, overwhelmed by my responsibilities, underwhelmed by my ability to handle everything. ‘I just feel so guilty”, I said. He asked what I felt guilty about, and I followed with some long list of miscellany.

He listened, then paused, and asked me if I felt like these things were sins.  I thought a minute, then responded that all weaknesses had the potential to become sins eventually, but they were probably not real sins. Then he said this to me:

“Reserve guilt for sin.”

I have pondered this for many years, and have tried to incorporate it in my daily life. I have realized that the Adversary, the Devil himself, has learned to use guilt to make us turn on ourselves.  Misuse of guilt weakens our souls, saps us of energy, and intrinsically makes us feel removed from God.

When the spirit of the Holy Ghost, the friend of God and of each of us, uses guilt, it is almost always coupled with Godly love and sincere sorrow rather than paralyzing self-loathing. Sincere Godly sorrow – the divine ingredient of real guilt, is a motivator for change and likely the only one that really works and lasts.  So feeling guilt for something that does not require the Holy Ghost to bestow divine Godly sorrow upon us is guaranteed to be ineffective and non-lasting.

I am not a scriptural scholar.  I am not a philosopher.  I’m  generally a spiritual hack, just like I’m a hack musician: untrained and uneducated.  But I have a sense that my bishop was spot on.  Save guilt for the Lord to use.  Don’t waste this effective tool on silly, benign, less-important stuff, especially the kind of stuff that involves comparing ourselves to other people.  That, for sure, is the devil turning something godly into something evil.

Children of mine – hear me: You are good, kind, intelligent, divinely guided spirits in human bodies.  Do not weaken yourselves by allowing guilt of your own imaginings to weigh you down.  Ask the Lord to give you guilt for the serious stuff, through the loving guidance of his Holy Spirit. Put your confidence in the Lord, and reserve GUILT for SIN.

_________________________________________________________

10. KNOW YOUR WEAKNESSES (and try to work with them)

I've been lucky to have, generally, a positive outlook on life. I know this is a blessing, because it makes living so much easier and certainly more tasty. I do see very clearly , however, some profound flaws in my personality. I think I know many of my weaknesses, and I do not like them!

Early on, in my adult life, I tried to completely change my personality so that I could get rid of those weaknesses. Those attempts usually lasted something like 3.5 hours, then I was back to my old self. Now I know that I am a complex person and my weaknesses are part of the tart that counter-balances the sweet in the recipe of me. So I'm OK with it in general. I've come to accept my weaknesses and try to work with them, or at least around them.

One of my most annoying weaknesses is my inability to maintain order in my space.  I don’t know why it is I tend to create chaos everywhere I go.  Physical chaos, I mean.  I hope I don’t create chaotic relationships… but maybe I do.  Eeek!

With regards to the untidiness, I generally try to be clean.  I mopped my floor today, and I know how to scrub a bathroom, etc.  It’s clutter that has a hold on me.

So here, in response to my deep weaknesses, are 3 little tricks I pull on myself to make myself functional and at least  somewhat acceptable. You may not need them.  But someone you love might.

1.) Rule Of Three

Let's say there is a random sock lying in the middle of my bedroom floor. Let's say, on my way to the bathroom, I look down at the sock and say to myself, “I should pick that up.” But I'm on my way to the bathroom and that can sometimes be urgent. Later I'm walking through my room again and I notice the sock. Again, I think I should pick it up, but frankly I don't feel like it. The next time I pass the sock on my bedroom floor -- the third time -- I am required to pick it up and put it where it belongs. My reasoning is, if that item has taken up so much brain space that I've thought of it three times, then I need to deal with it and get it out of my head. I recognize that not every thought that comes into my head needs to be acted upon right away. But if it's come to my attention three times, then it needs to be dealt with. That's the Rule of 3.

2.) Rule of 10 

Let's say my bedroom, with the sock on the floor, has more than just a sock on the floor. Let's say the bedroom is a disaster! It's so bad that I'm overwhelmed with trying to deal with all of the things that are in there. I might explain that our bedroom is right off of the family room in our house. We entertain quite a bit, and we don't seem to have a lot of downtime, so everything in the family room, kitchen, dining and living rooms, that need to be quickly cleaned up for company, ends up in our bedroom. When I don't have a full day of emotional or actual time to devote to cleaning up that space I invoke the rule of 10. I simply have to touch 10 items and put them in the place where they belong. That's all. It's quite doable. 

3.) "Everything you do is something done."

When things get really bad and my brain space is even worse, I repeat this little mantra: “Everything you do is something done.” Quite literally I speak it out loud. Then I just let my hand touch one thing and deal with it. When that's done I let it touch something else and deal with that. There's no order or logic to it, but it keeps a scatterbrain moving forward.

There you have it, my tricks of the trade. I wish I was a more organized person, I really do. I wish I could be spontaneous and creative as I naturally seem to be, but still have a good sense of order in my space  and in my time. But alas, it is not to be. So I'm grateful for my simple little tricks to try and keep me and my space at least semi-sane.

If you have the same sort of personality flaw, add this to your personal HOPE CHEST.

__________________________________

9. KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE GAUGE

Most of my memories of my dad are benign, which is better than awful.  There are awful ones, too, and some not awful, but that’s a matter for another time.  The image I conjure up of my father is of him sitting in a chair or on the couch, a cigarette smoldering between his fingers and an open bottle of beer on the floor beside him.  I have recently learned that this is not a fully accurate depiction of the man.  People who have worked with him seem to have had considerable respect for him, and even noted his kindness.  I suppose we did not bring out the best in him.  There was a time when we had little money, much of my childhood, in fact, so when Dad left the chair, I slipped my small hands down the sides of the cushions and often came up with a handful of pocket change.  We used that change to buy gas for the car.  Gas was something like 17 cents a gallon, so a quarter could get us all the way out to Ann Nelson’s house.

Gas money was very much an issue for us.  Sometimes, when the station wagon choked and puttered as we were going up a hill, mom would turn off the motor at the summit, put the gear in neutral, and we would coast down, the string of children in the back seat pumping our upper bodies forward right at the bottom of the hill, hoping to get a little thrust to get us up the next hill.  Pleasant Hills, PA – it was an ironic name for our town.

When Dad left for good, and Mom wrapped her faith around her wounded heart, she became empowered to seek her own fortune.  Except that she had raised babies instead of going to school, even though she had a brilliant mind, and the good jobs were saved for college graduates.  With no education she got jobs wherever she could.  She worked in the bakery at a Giant Eagle grocery store.  She sold subscriptions to the Chamber of Commerce Magazine.  Eventually someone told her she ought to try real estate, because she was good with numbers, sales and contracts, and she was particularly good with people.  So she took the necessary classes and the rest is history.  She ended up being one of the top seven agents in the greater Pittsburgh area, a member of the Million Dollar Club, (when a million dollars was a lot of money in house sales in one year) and she earned her GRE degree and became a broker.  There are people whom I love, and will always love, who came into our lives because my mother represented them in home transactions.

She was an extremely hard worker, often working from early morning until the wee hours of the night, working multiple clients a day.  The dining table in Libby’s house has signatures and numbers embedded in the pine tabletop, evidence of years of contracts signed in Mom’s home. 

Liberated by her ability to control her own finances, my mother made it a personal policy to always have a full tank of gas.  To her, HALF A TANK might as well have been EMPTY.  I suppose it was a response to those lean years when we scrounged for quarters in Dad’s easy chair. Add to that the fact that her childhood was spent surviving the Great Depression. 

Besides keeping her eye on her gas gauge, Mom had an internal gauge that kept an eye on her supply all sorts of other things.  Toilet paper and laundry soap; she had quite the stash of that. And plenty of comfortable shoes lined the floor of her closet.

Besides checking the gauge on her temporal needs, mom was pretty good at keeping an eye on the deeper matters in her life.  She was an avid reader, and a curious soul.  She gravitated to intellectuals and philosophers, at least people in our church and local community who had that kind of personality.  Her friend Barbara was very bright, and was a thinker, a gifted musician, and a reader as well.  They went through a period when they studied astrology, the sun signs, and other para-normal sorts of things.  I remember mom telling us that the Spirit whispered to her that she needed to gauge herself in this matter.  “Equal time”, she told herself.  She required herself to spend equal time studying scripture as she did the other stuff.  She said that eventually she lost interest in astrological signs and predictions, and the questions about the gospel of Christ, that seemed to arise in her para-normal studies, dissipated.  Looking back, I am grateful that our mom shared this kind of experience with us. Perhaps this is one of the benefits of her not having a spouse with whom to share such things.

Anyway, I got to thinking about my mother’s gauge a couple months ago, when matters regarding our church and gay issues stirred up my heart and confused my brain.  I join many who struggle with these matters but still have a basic trust in the restored gospel of Christ.  I could sense my mother whispering to me from her heaven place: “Fill the tank, Cori.”  I felt her nudging me to strengthen my faith, to build my spiritual muscles, because what troubles me now will be small compared to what may trouble us in the future.  I sense this is a time of pruning, a time when the wheat and tares are being tossed so they can be sifted out. Through my life it’s been relatively easy for me to hold my religion to my heart.  But it’s getting harder, because the ways of mankind are confusing, and logic can be a real bugger.  I sense my mother telling me to keep my spiritual tank full, and when I am running around and using up my faith, be sure to refill when it gets to half full. This will give me reserves to use when we are traveling the big hilly landscape of life.

This, my children and my friends, is a skill I hope you add to your HOPE CHESTS as well: Keep your eye on the gauge.

____________________________________________________

8. HUMBLE CONFIDENCE

My friends Mark Oborn and Steve Dillree are horsemen.  Not cowboys -- horsemen.  They are gentlemen, with white-collar professions, and they also know their horses. When I was president of the Young Women organization in our local church, I asked Mark if he would be willing to teach us a little bit about horse whispering.  He and Steve have a reputation for knowing how to communicate with their horses without yelling at them or pounding on them. They graciously agreed. 

On a beautiful Wednesday evening, in the warmth of early summer, we drove twenty-five teenage girls and a handful of leaders up to Steve’s place, where the corral and yard are pristine and idyllic.  Mark asked us to sit on the grass.  His horse stood calmly beside him. Mark spoke to us about how this magnificent creature communicates. 

I’m not an animal person, I am sorry to say. I’m not sure why. Maybe it stems from having been bit in the eye by an Afghan hound when I was little.  I try to fake it.  I smile and make those little cooing sounds people make when they see a puppy, but it’s more often than not a façade. It kind of baffles me, because I consider myself a loving and caring person. So when Mark asked us all to come talk to his horse and gently stroke her head, I pulled out the faker in me.  When my turn came Mark said “You aren’t comfortable with horses, are you?”  I was surprised, because I thought I did a pretty good job stroking that muzzle and whispering sweet nothings. But Mark saw right through me, and so did his horse, I guess. I lacked confidence.

In his short discussion with us Mark talked about a thing he calls humble confidence.  I loved that pairing of words.  He spoke about the responsibility he had of being a steward over his horse. And since the beast was bigger than Mark, he needed to show the horse that his job was to follow the command of his master. And yet, the master needed to understand the nature of his servant, and know her personality.  He taught us to approach the horse the same way we approach the Lord…with humble confidence.  Confirmed in our own minds that we are capable, are called, and are empowered to act, yet respectful and teachable about it. 

I quite like the juxtaposition of the traits humility and confidence. There is a natural response to someone approaching you with humble confidence; a trust that carries mutual respect.  When I think of the people who surround me in my circle of love, I am in awe of their humble confidence, which has led them to success in their professions.  Every one of my children is a trained professional: a teacher, a speech language pathologist, a doctor, and national director of a worldwide events organization.  They are all amazing at their work; well respected, successful, accomplished.  And they are all humble.  Humble, in the most noble aspects of the word, which sort of boils down to their ability to recognize that we are all children of a divine being, which gives us divine potential…every one of us… and there is much we can learn from each other. My husband’s success as an attorney, a city councilman and mayor, and a judge was based on this natural instinct.  He is not a schmoozer, and the politics of public service were, and still are, uncomfortable for him.  My mother, and subsequently my sister, are accomplished and beloved real estate agents because they sincerely care about the people they serve, and try to incorporate their intelligence and expertise into the work, while still being down-to-earth and making their clients feel at home, so to speak. They all understand that confidence is necessary.  But confidence without humility is merely cockiness. And who wants to work with someone like that?

I heard somewhere that confidence is remembered success.  When one of my daughters left home I made her a pillowcase with that saying on it, so she would remember that she has many successes behind her, and there would be more to come.

My HOPE is that we recognize that our confidence is best used in the company of humility; that in humility we do not think less of ourselves, but that we think of ourselves less, and others more.

____________________________________________________

7. THE BEAUTY IN FORGETFULNESS

I’ve spent a fair amount of time with forgetful people. Between aging relatives, and relative aging, I am learning about if first-hand.  Add to that the time I spend singing in nursing homes, Alzheimer’s units and assisted living facilities.  It all clusters in a pile of charming and not-too-terribly-charming stories that are told and retold… and retold again. 

I have fond memories of visiting my aging aunts.  My Aunt Ruth, in her mid-nineties, decided to sing her conversations.  You’d ask a question, and she would respond with melody attached to her words.  She had a little ditty that my sisters and I still use one a regular basis.  She’d sing

“I used to could, I used to could re-mem-ber.  But now I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.”  The tune was similar to the melody of Come Back to Sorrento.

My Aunt Mae is a great storyteller, so the lilt in her voice, and her animated delivery make more pleasant the repetition of the story about how she gave her car to her granddaughter Krishna, because it wasn’t wise for her to drive anymore.  I started thinking about it as a song, her story about not driving anymore.  We all listen to pleasant songs over and over.

All of our aunts, and our beloved mother, remembered word for word each stanza of great poetry.  Poems memorized, and ones written by the women themselves.  Poems, and songs must deal themselves to our brains, because I have found this to be standard fare among residents at nursing homes.  They can recite poetry and they sing along with me one the old standards. 

Some people I love have deep seeded fears of losing their minds to forgetfulness.  I wish I could reassure them that this is nothing to fear, but our fears are our fears, and it takes a boatload of logic to try to talk us out of them.  Truth is, we don’t really get to control much of that.

There are real benefits to forgetfulness. The poor sisters who straddle me on our family tree have painful, ugly memories of our dad and the way he treated our mom, and the way he treated us.  I was blessed to have forgotten much of it. To my sisters’ credit they don’t dredge it all up to live over and over again.  Forgetfulness is bliss.

I have a flawed memory mechanism in my brain.  It can recall vivid details about some things; random and meaningless details, and then I outright forget major things -- like the fact that one of my closest friends had a heart attack our senior year of high school, or that so-and-so had died … and I actually sang at their funeral. I forget stuff like that. It’s really embarrassing.

One of the interesting things about that flawed memory; i.e. forgetfulness, is that the things I forget or remember are not determined by their weight of importance or the measure of my love.  I can love someone very sincerely and deeply, and forget their birthday, or that they have diabetes, or whatever.

I think part of my memory issues stem from my ability to dream in vivid detail, and to recall all those details after I awaken.  I carry dreams around with me all day sometimes, and continue them when I go to sleep the next night.  For instance, this morning I awoke with a very clear memory of having been to the library with some children I don’t know, where we worked on a craft project together.  I remember I wore a green shirt and my brown Dansko sandals.  There was a fellow there in the library who was rather quiet, with a pleasant demeanor, and he was reading a book over in a buttery leather chair by the bookshelves. He kept looking over at us. At some point when we were done crafting I grabbed my gig bag and walked out, looking at a large poster in the lobby that advertised a concert where I was headlining, singing the songs of Leonard Cohen.  The man in the library, who by the way looked rather like David Bowie, stood beside me and we struck up a friendly conversation. Turns out he was Leonard Cohen himself. I asked if he’d like to join me on stage…you know, Leonard Cohen singing Leonard Cohen, with Cori Connors? Anyway, that dream has been following me all day today.  So I wonder if the fine line between dreams and reality is extra thin for me, and I can’t recall things because I don’t know if I dreamed them or if they’re real, and they all sort of go to the same place in my memory bank.  Ah, me.

I don’t believe there is a soul alive, who had been blursed with a healthy body and brain, who does not carry evenly weighted bundles of good and bad in their lives.  It seems to me it would be just as good to forget as it is to remember.

I hope…I mean really HOPE, my kids will forget some of their history with me.  I hope I forget some of my own weaknesses that weigh me down in the category of self-worth.  There is so much about forgetting that is wonderful, I don’t know why we fear it.

____________________________________________________