"We seldom get into trouble when we speak softly. It is only when we raise our voices that the sparks fly and tiny molehills become great mountains of contention."
I
stepped out to look at the tulip bed we created last year in the back
corner of the yard. Though it is still January, they are poking up
out of the ground, from one to three inches high at this point. They
were wonderful last spring, and I am happily anticipating a repeat
glory of color.
I
thought of my visit the year before to one of my daughters, who had
planted bulbs. She and her husband had bought a house that had been
vacant for a while, and the yard had become neglected. There were a
number of other urgent items, inside, to take care of when they moved
in, and those had required their attention first. Then came the
fenced back yard where the kids could go play. Finally, that year in
the fall, it was time to look at what the front yard needed.
There
was a section on each side of the front doorstep where a short brick
retaining wall had been raised and filled to create a natural
planting bed. The border wasn’t a rectangle, but a ripple
edge. She chose tulip bulbs and planted them as a single line along
the front, following the contours of those scallops, and she looked
forward to spring, hoping that all of them would come up. There were
also clusters of daffodils and crocus behind them.
She was
quite pleased that everything came up. Not only did she have flowers
to brighten what had been a slightly barren area, they were blooming
right in time for a baby shower she was hosting in a few days. The
purple line of tulips formed the visual boundary just as planned.
Her
next door neighbor had chickens. There was a tall fence, and a
separately fenced chicken run within it; the chickens were supposed
to be kept strictly within their inside section where they couldn’t
get out, because there was a hole in the front corner of the outer
fence. However, the chickens sometimes got out, and she had already
talked to her neighbor about it, because one of the birds had damaged
some of her flower bed.
Well, I
went out the side door just in time to see an escaped chicken bobbing
the last couple of feet to the front edge of the flower bed. I was
not close enough to do or stop anything, and I watched (as I lunged
in that direction) while the bird jerked its head forward and back,
its beak neatly hitting the base of the tulip and thus decapitating
it. Then it stepped, with its bobbing gait, to the next tulip in
line to do it again. Which it did. And headed for a third.
By that
time I had reached it, and shooed it loudly away. I looked and saw
that I had not witnessed the first of its assaults. There was a line
of upright, empty stems on the other side of the front steps, while
tulip heads lay on the ground beside them. Only a couple of forlorn
purple tulips still remained to stand sentry.
I have
no idea what instinct was operating in the chicken. The flowers were
at face height to it, shaped perhaps like a head on top of a spindly
neck. Did it think that they were rivals? Whatever its purpose or
instinct, the chicken had no interest in the tulips once they were no
longer intact. It didn’t want to peck at them on the ground,
play with them, or eat them. There was no apparent reason for its
attack, at least none that you could understand if you were not a
chicken.
But if
you were a human being who had delighted in watching these flowers
bloom after a long winter, and moreover the flowers were arriving
just at the right time to show them off a little to company coming,
you saw a reward for all your digging and watering. It was a pretty
upsetting blow to lose them like this.
The
baby shower went fine, even without the tulips, and life didn’t
come to an end—but it was disappointing none the less. We all
have those times when we’ve invested thought, energy, effort,
and hope into a project which then doesn’t go as planned.
Trouble
happens. Sometimes the trouble is a marauding chicken, and sometimes
it’s something else. Statistically, I’m sure it’s
most often not a chicken. Sometimes we work, pray, and hope for a
desired result, and all our effort is undone at the end.
Much of
the time, it’s just stuff that happens, that isn’t in
anyone’s control. As human beings we want to place blame, but
there is no blame. Weather cancels your flight and leaves you
stranded, or your kids get sick, or you do. It’s just part and
parcel of mortal life. You want something, you long for it, and life
doesn’t cooperate.
Sometimes
your troubles do come as a result of other people’s choices;
the conflicts may be inadvertent and the person messing up the works
may be unaware. It could be that that they are aware, but don’t
care. It’s hard when harm comes deliberately, from selfishness
or ill will. I hope that those situations are few and far between,
and I hope I’m not the cause of such trouble for anyone else,
that I’m mindful.
I will
remember the tulips. Though the flowers were lost for the occasion,
with no good reason, still the bulbs were undamaged, and the soil was
still good. There were much worse things that could have happened.
There was no blight, and the plants were still healthy. The
following year they came up again and bloomed unmolested, providing
the beauty that was intended. They should continue to bloom, and
even multiply in the ground —such being the nature of bulbs—
for many springs to come. The chicken brought only a passing loss.
Our
setbacks need not be catastrophic or permanent. If we are stayed
upon the arm of our loving Father in Heaven, and of our Redeemer, we
can find the serenity and patience to get through our disappointments
and our troubles, whatever they may be.
I know
that sometimes they are huge, and involve a great deal of pain; I
have experienced trouble and grief that has only resolved and healed
over long periods of time. We can do as Alma taught his people, to
mourn with those that mourn and comfort those that stand in need of
comfort. That is our calling as members of Christ’s kingdom.
Trouble is softened when it is shared.
I hope
that we can learn to say, truly, with Paul in 2 Corinthians 4:8-9,
that “we are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are
perplexed, but not in despair: persecuted, but not forsaken; cast
down, but not destroyed.” I testify that he carries the
burdens with us, and we need not be troubled, even as the world
around us is increasingly racked with trouble. If we know the love
of heaven, we know we are never alone. Jesus knows our troubles, for
he has already felt them all.
I began
my first column with the musical prayer, “Tune my heart to sing
thy grace.” I will end with the last line of that hymn:
“Praise the mount, I’m fixed upon it, mount of thy
redeeming love.”* That love will never fail, no matter what may
arise.
Marian J. Stoddard was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in its Maryland suburbs. Her
father grew up in Carson City, Nevada, and her mother in Salt Lake City, so she was always
partly a Westerner at heart, and she ended up raising her family in Washington State. Her family
took road trips all over the United States and Canada, so there were lots of adventures.
The adventures of music, literature, and art were also valued and pursued. Playing tourist always
included the local museums as well as historical sites and places of natural beauty. Discussions
at home, around the dinner table or working in the kitchen, could cover politics, philosophy, or
poetry, with the perspective of the gospel underlying all. Words and ideas, and testimony and
service, were the family currency.
Marian graduated from Winston Churchill High School in Potomac, Maryland, and attended the
University of Utah as the recipient of the Ralph Hardy Memorial Scholarship, where she was
graduated with honors, receiving a B.A. in English. She also met the love of her life, a law
student, three weeks after her arrival; she jokes that she had to marry him because her mother
always wanted a tenor in the family. (She sings second soprano.) They were married two years
later and have six children and six grandchildren (so far). She treasures her family, her friends,
and her opportunities to serve.
Visit Marian at her blog, greaterthansparrows. You can contact her at
bloggermarian@gmail.com.
Marian and her husband live in Tacoma, Washington. Together they teach those who are
preparing to go to the temple for the first time, and she also teaches a Stake Relief Society
Institute class.