The Case Against Social Media

Each of us changes the language we speak throughout every day. We use one type of language in speaking to our spouses and a slightly different language to speak to our children. Each of those languages evolves over time along with those relationships, but there are subtle differences in the way we speak to different people in our lives.

Another perfect example is the difference between how I would speak to my boss, a judge, versus how I speak to his clerk, my co-worker. And then there is a difference between how I speak to her and how I speak to close friends I’ve known for over ten years. I have a language for how I speak to the clerk at the store; with a subtle difference between said clerk and her co-worker, with whom I’ve exchanged pleasantries and light conversation for several years.

My bishop hears a different language than what I use when speaking with my husband. Intimacy has a lot to do with how we choose to speak. I trust my husband with the gnarly parts of my personality and my actual being, and I can be far less formal and far more personal with him than with anyone in my life. Still, because I value our relationship, I try to choose a language of love and humor rather than a language of bitterness and accusation, even when I’m feeling out of sorts with him. On the other hand, if I’ve just about had it up to here with the “customer service” person on the phone, I’m less likely to be concerned about his/her feelings (though, knowing myself as well as I do, I still try to temper those conversations).

None of this is to suggest that I feel that we lie to everyone, just picking and choosing which lies we’ll tell, depending on the person. Instead, I believe that we choose with each person and under which circumstances what parts of ourselves we will share. For instance, if you had a conversation with the grocery clerk, would you feel comfortable discussing what you like in the bedroom? Probably not. When speaking with your spouse, do you hold back on the details? Hopefully not.

I have known some of my friends for over 16 years. I met them on line but have had the opportunity since to also meet some of them in person. AOL was a strange new creature when we met in 1996. I was in the process of a messy divorce, and hardly anyone knew anything about the Internet. We all tended to be leery of sharing personal information and instead chose silly screen names to be our on-line personas. AOL limited us to, I believe, ten characters, so that led to some interesting abbreviations. But through chat rooms and message boards, I met people with whom I had things in common. Mostly LDS folks and court reporters. Many of those friends are still on-line friends. I married one :D

We didn’t share many personal details outside of what we held in common, so we knew each other, like in real life, based on the reason for our acquaintance. To be honest, I had no idea of the political or ideological thinking of any of these friends because we were discussing things in a more narrow focus, and that was fine. I grew close to some of them and still maintain a mostly on-line friendship which I value.

Enter social media. It seemed to be an easy and fun way to reconnect with friends and family. Sharing pictures and the events of one’s life was never so simple. But life as we knew it will never be the same.

As a court reporter, I have seen more than one case where social media had an effect on a marriage or a business relationship. It’s become sort of like the road rage phenomenon: It’s frighteningly easy to say things to people we would never say in person. And we end up using the same language when speaking to everyone who sees our posts. My former bishop is my Facebook friend, so he sees the things I post, as do my husband and some of my children. Others are colleagues I will likely never meet in person. Some are LDS, most are not. And I try to be careful about what I post, knowing that not everyone who reads what I post knows me as intimately as others.

But now I’m learning things about people that I don’t need to know as part of our relationship, but about which they obviously feel very strongly. Politics is one of the biggest offenders. We don’t all feel the exact same way, politically, even in our real-life relationships, and we know that. We just don’t talk about it because it usually doesn’t matter in the context of how we interact. That is, except through social media. If I want to express my love for my family in a status update, everyone who is my friend and who has not hidden me on his/her news feed will get the opportunity to see how I feel. If I want to express frustration about ANYthing, same thing.

Now I know things about people I don’t want to know. People who feel so strongly about whatever their political persuasion or thoughts on religion that they are not inclined to mince words. And I find myself feeling bad. A lot. Hurt. Unhappy because people are trampling all over things that mean a lot to me. Not just ANY people, but my friends. Some of them are friends I’ve known for years and with whom I’ve shared enough personal experience to feel like I really care for them deeply. And now these feelings of hurt and anger and bitterness are creating a wedge (in my mind, anyway) between me and those people.

I don’t like it. I want very much to maintain a relationship with some of these people, but I don’t want to be a reluctant host when they pontificate (haha, you see what I did there?) on things with which I absolutely disagree. I am holding in a lot of feelings that I didn’t ask to have in the first place, but it’s not my nature to call everyone out when I don’t agree with something they’ve said. It’s easy to be polite and privately roll my eyes when someone says something like that in conversation, but to have the place where I like to go for ENTERTAINMENT purposes be taken over by opinions that don’t build me or any of these relationships seems like such a violation of my personal space.

One time I commented that I was pleased that my son had expressed a preference for young women who choose to dress modestly. Innocent enough. But then I was shredded by a “friend” who felt I needed to teach my son to be less judgmental. Wait, what?

I briefly, oh, so briefly, deactivated my Facebook account to mull this. I am going to put it up for a very short time so I can post this blog, but I expect that I’ll deactivate it again soon. I don’t like how negatively I view our world right now, not because of current events but because of everyone’s current pastime.

On Resurrection....

Brothers, and sisters, I am very happy today to have this opportunity to share some thoughts with you about the Atonement of Jesus Christ.  My portion of this subject is the resurrection. 

I want everyone to look at my face as best you can from where you are sitting.  Look at my smile.  I can assure you that it is very hard for me to have the nerve to do this because I am very conscious of my lopsided face.  In 1986, just two weeks after my 25^th birthday, I underwent a 10-hour long surgery on my brain to remove a benign tumor.  I had absolutely no symptoms of this tumor before it was discovered.  I have had headaches since I was about 11 years old, and when I got medical insurance, I arranged a full physical to determine whether there were any other problems and to get a prescription for some of the new medications that had recently been in the news.  At the end of the physical, my doctor said, “Well, it looks like it’s just tension headaches, but just to make sure, let’s order an EEG and a CT scan.” I know we have several medical professionals in our ward, so I’ve either just said something to you that you remember with fondness from the early days of your career, or you probably think I’m making this up.

A few days after the tests, my doctor called me personally (no, really, I’m still not making this up), and said, “We received your test results back, and you need to make an appointment to come in with your husband to discuss them.”  Remember, I was 25 and fully expected to live forever.  In his office he said, “You have a tumor.  First, we know it’s not cancer, and second, it has nothing to do with your headaches,” to which I can attest because I STILL have those headaches four to five times every week.  In fact, today I had a really bad one.

The tumor was about the size of a golf ball, and who knew how long it had been growing, jutting up against my facial nerve. I was referred to a neurosurgeon who told me that, while I had no symptom other than the actual tumor itself, after the surgery I would likely experience a bit of hearing loss in my right ear and paralysis on the right side of my face.  

I was not yet a court reporter, but I was working as a transcriptionist for other reporters and lawyers.  One reporter had given me several tapes to transcribe, which would have netted me the huge sum of $400 when I was done.  I decided that I needed to get that job done because I had committed to the reporter and because my family really needed the money.  That led my grandmother, who is now 92 years old, to start calling me and threatening me if I didn’t get to the hospital to get this tumor removed.  Let me just say that I was always a little scared of my grandma.  I’m still scared of her, but since she now uses a walker, I know I can just keep out of her way, so it’s all good.

I finally had the surgery which was much more invasive then than it is today.  In the recovery room, the first people I remember were my parents.  My father asked me how I felt.  I felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to my head, so I said, “I’d give you a piece of my mind, but the doctor already took it.”  My father later told me that this little divot under my nose was pulled all the way to the side and that the entire right side of my face seemed to be pulled all the way to the side, so hearing me crack a joke was all they needed to be assured that I was still me and that I would be okay.  So the next time my kids or husband complain about my fantastic sense of humor, I will remind them that I once used it to bring peace to the souls of my parents.

The past 26 years have been interesting. I later pursued my plans to study to become a court reporter and have, indeed, enjoyed 20 years doing various things, including in my job now in the district court here in Twin. While I did, indeed, experience some diminished hearing, my poor husband can attest to the fact that I can hear amazingly well most of the time, even when he doesn’t WANT me to hear, but I will remind him that the reason we just celebrated our 16^th wedding anniversary is because he sleeps on my right side, and at night I just roll over to the left and enjoy a blissfully quiet night’s sleep for me.  And because I know people in this room know my judge, my new boss, I can assure you that I have NEVER had any issue with being able to hear what is being said and reporting it accurately, including several very strong accents that I have even had to “translate” for the uninitiated.

All of that pales in comparison, though, to how hard my facial paralysis hit me personally.  I was very self-conscious about my looks then, and I didn’t even know how much my own smile meant to me until one day it was totally gone on the right side.  People thought I looked angry because if I didn’t smile, my whole face frowned. I had to tape my right eye shut for four months because I couldn’t get it to close on its own.  Believe me, I’ve had seven children, and I would gladly have one more rather than experience even one day without being able to close my eye.  I had to use a little electric stimulator on the right side of my face to stimulate the facial nerve.  What you see today is the result of my hard work in physical therapy, the fact that I was very young at the time, and my excellent medical care.

So with all of this, you probably think that I am going to tell you that I can’t wait until I am resurrected, because my hearing will be fully restored, and I can once again smile with both sides of my face and be able to raise both of my eyebrows instead of just one.

No, I would gladly give up those blessings simply for the opportunity to live this life fully, pass away, and then have my body and my spirit restored.  My father-in-law spoke about this last week, as he and my mother-in-law are going on their fourth mission next month.  He said that many of us don’t realize that we have the blessing of resurrection not simply to return to be WITH our Heavenly Father but so that we can return to His presence and be ready to become LIKE Him.

I would give up the blessings of having my hearing and facial movement restored so that I can be reunited with my father, who died in 1999, and my brother, who died as an infant in 1963.  I would give up those blessings in exchange for being able to sit at the feet of the prophets of the Book of Mormon to hear their voices as they tell their stories.  I will have to apologize to Abinadi for telling more than one of my youth Sunday School classes that he was one hot guy.

But I don’t have to give up any of those blessings.  As part of our Heavenly Father’s great Plan of Salvation, we are ALL entitled to the blessing of resurrection through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The prophet Amulek taught:

“The death of Christ shall loose the bands of this temporal death, that all shall be raised from this temporal death.

“The spirit and the body shall be reunited again in its perfect form; both limb and joint shall be restored to its proper frame, even as we now are at this time; …

“Now, this restoration shall come to all, both old and young, both bond and free, both male and female, both the wicked and the righteous; and even there shall not so much as a hair of their heads be lost; but every thing shall be restored to its perfect frame” (Alma 11:42–44).

As we were driving back home last week, Darryl and I were discussing our thoughts on the Gospel.  I told him that when my father died unexpectedly, I went from hoping that we will all be together again to knowing it.  It suddenly made no sense to me that we would live through this life with all its struggles only to fade off into memory when we die. And I can no more think that my father’s huge personality would simply cease to exist than I can imagine my consciousness just ending.  As Elder Oaks said, “The ‘lively hope’ we are given by the resurrection is our conviction that death is not the conclusion of our identity but merely a necessary step in the destined transition from mortality to immortality. This hope changes the whole perspective of mortal life. The assurance of resurrection and immortality affects how we look on the physical challenges of mortality, how we live our mortal lives, and how we relate to those around us.”

Knowing that through Jesus Christ we are all entitled to be resurrected should be a great motivator to us.  First, the sorrows we experience in our lives are placed into proper perspective as we realize that we are merely traveling through a necessary part of the Plan of Salvation and that all things “will be for [our] good.”  But another way for the promise of resurrection to motivate us is the knowledge that we will be restored in the same condition spiritually that we have attained at our deaths, thus this life truly is the time for us to exercise the gift and blessing of repentance every single day, to renew our covenants joyfully each week, improving our efforts at obedience, expressing our love for our Father in Heaven by submitting to His will and putting one foot after the other in this journey.

Last Saturday we were honored to sit in a sealing room at the Timpanogos temple with my husband’s parents, four of his seven living siblings, and two of their spouses.  We were there to perform the sealing work for four generations of Darryl’s maternal ancestors.  There was joy in that room on many levels.  Many of the people in our group reflected on the feeling that those ancestors were attending with us in that sacred ceremony.  I personally have a great-great-great-grandmother who had six children before dying at the age of 28 who has nagged my spirit ever since I was “introduced” to her, so I have been diligently entering her information and preparing to ensure that she receives all of her temple blessings.  Because one of the gifts for us to look forward to is the embrace of our passed loved ones who could not do the work for themselves and were blessed by our attending the temple for them.

I know that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is true and that this Church is His.  I know that we are children of Heavenly Father and that we will have the opportunity to be like Him.  I know that Jesus Christ came to the Earth at the time designated by our Father in Heaven to serve in the capacity for which he volunteered, knowing that all of us would be blessed by his incredible sacrifice.  And I know that he died in our behalf and was resurrected so that we would also one day be resurrected. 

I will end with this quote from The Living Christ, adding my testimony to those of the apostles of Jesus Christ:

“We solemnly testify that His life, which is central to all human history, neither began in Bethlehem nor concluded on Calvary. …

“We bear testimony, as His duly ordained Apostles—that Jesus is the Living Christ, the immortal Son of God. He is the great King Immanuel, who stands today on the right hand of His Father. He is the light, the life, and the hope of the world. His way is the path that leads to happiness in this life and eternal life in the world to come.”

May we all strive to do in this life all of the growing we possibly can so that when we have passed to the next stage of our existence, we will be able to continue our upward momentum, I pray in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Body Image by Tracy

Body image.  Yes, if you have a body and you can see, you have an image in your head that is likely not kind in its recollection of your body.  I am now 51 years of age, and for the first time since 1982, when I first gave birth, I am once again the shortest person in my family.  I used to be 5’2 ¼“, though I’m sure I’m closer to 5’2” (flat) nowadays.

As a child, since I was so tiny, people treated me as though I were younger than my actual age.  I was the oldest child in my family, in fact, I was the oldest grandchild on both sides of my family.  Still, I was a tiny thing.

In the sixth grade I was obsessed with breasts.  No, not in some sort of sexual way but with, well, any of my peers who actually HAD them.  You see, I was completely breast free.  In fact, my nickname was Flatsy.  Flatsy was a popular doll back then, and well, it was a fitting nickname. In the 8^th grade a friend coined the nickname Half Pint, which still makes me chuckle when I look back.  I wasn’t anywhere near a half pint then, and I’m certainly not now!

I can remember sitting in an assembly during sixth grade, surrounded by girls who were all wearing training bras.  Let me just say that I was perfectly comfortable back then lying on my tummy watching TV.  Think about that for a sec.  I’ll wait. Someone gave me a training bra, and I wore it and was sitting in that assembly fiddling with my bra strap so someone would notice.  One girl did, and I remember her now as being awfully compassionate and grown up for a sixth grader, bless her heart.  She noticed for me, just like I’d hoped someone would.

I finally started wearing a for-real bra in the 8^th grade.  And once I start growing, well, have you MET me?  I immediately seemed to transform from the flattest girl at Oak Grove Intermediate to someone whom others noticed because of my breasts.  

By my sophomore year, while all the other girls were settling in at the A to B range, I just kept growing.  When I was a junior, still growing, I spent about 15 minutes with the perfect figure.  Before I realized that wearing a bikini wasn’t so modest, I had one, and I looked amazing when I wore it.  I went to the Valentine’s dance with my first boyfriend, and his friends told him (and he told me) when they say our picture together, “Man, she’s stacked!” And stacked I was.

But young women who have the propensity to develop busty busts also have other girly fat scattered about their bodies.  Before too long, not only was I terribly self-conscious about my enormous breasts but I thought I was fat. I wasn’t fat, but I wasn’t a stick figure anymore.

Do you have any idea how cruel girls are to other girls?  I had lots of comments when I was going through high school and even college.  People have commented and stared and treated me as though I am doing something wrong simply because of how I look.  I had a complaint once after I reported a deposition in Washington, DC.  I was working with an attorney who was not familiar with taking depositions, and I made the process as easy for him as I could.  I did a fantastic job not only that day but in the coming days as I transcribed the deposition.  Throughout the deposition a young attorney on the other side of the room started at my breasts the entire time.  It was very awkward for me.  And what did I receive a week later?  A complaint from that attorney's law firm because I wasn't wearing a blazer! I’m a smart, funny, friendly person.  I wonder, though, how many of those people who just had to comment even know that?

I’ve had seven children.  You want to know why I loved being pregnant?  Mostly because my breasts no longer seemed out of proportion with the rest of my body.  I could sort of relax and just be “normal.” Of course, then they would be born, and I would have the struggle for the next year or so with breastfeeding and the enormous breasts often betraying me by becoming “enormouser” and leaking all over my clothes.

A couple of years ago we went on a trip with family.  Someone told my husband that she was so surprised when she saw me in a bathing suit, because they just assumed I was “heavy” because that’s how they see me when I’m wearing regular clothes.  Yes, I look (to others and myself too) like a much-overweight woman because there just aren’t clothes in the stores where I can afford to shop that actually fit the kind of curves this body has.  So I tend to wear tent-like things some of the time.  When I'm wearing something I like that isn't tent-like, I am embarrassed by how my breasts simply won't be the shrinking violets I wish they would be. Still with the bad body image. And then there’s the times I see a picture of myself and reel in shock over just how large these things are.  

And the worst part?  This is crazy.  But when my mom told me she had breast cancer (she’s been cancer free for over five years now), I was actually jealous for about half a second and even fantasized about what it would be like to finally be able to remove these enormous fatty deposits.

Bless him, my husband loves them.  My babies all received nourishment from them.  They are a huge (pun intended) part of who I am.  But why, oh, why, are we unable to stop looking at the imperfections (as we see them) of others, judging them, thus knowing that others are doing the same to us?  

I came by them honestly.   Many of the women in my ancestry were also blessed.

My life has been restricted by them.  I HATE to run.  For all the normal reasons but mainly for the reason that it hurts my breasts to run.  I loved gymnastics when I was a child.  I’ll bet I would have liked ballet.  I was involved in ballroom dancing for a short while my senior year in high school.  I absolutely loved that.  But by then I was already lopsided, and athleticism just doesn’t develop as easily in the well-endowed body.

But really, who am I? I am a loved wife, mother, daughter.  I am a successful court reporter still perfecting my craft after 20 years in the field.  I am smart enough to belong to Mensa....if I wanted to hang out with boring smart people.  I have been blessed with the ability to recognize truth.  And that includes Truth.  I have a effervescent personality that seems to bubble out of me almost all of the time. I know I am a Daughter of my Heavenly Father.  And, that my friends, is the number one reason I am grateful to have been blessed with a body.  ANY body.  Because I want to continue to learn and grow and to one day be with Him again. He knows ME and loves ME.  Any questions?

The Power of Positive Thinking

I love to be around people who exude positive attributes.  I joke that I have a “Polyanna” attitude.  It seems to be battery operated and recharged by a night of sleeping, because I am truly a morning person.  I remember people I knew in high school and wonder how we would have gotten along had we gotten married; they had “bad attitudes” (angry all the time or pessimistic).

As for me, I can remember from a young age being generally cheerful but also feeling all the bad stuff way too much.  I recall going through periods where I was very morose and wore that feeling on my face.  Weird to think about now that I’m over 50, and, seriously, what problems did I actually have when I was a young teen?

Ah, but there’s the real issue! There was what was most likely the normal amount of strife in my home growing up, but I really felt the bad emotions far too deeply to just ignore them.  My positive self fought constantly with the darkness that lay just around the corner.  As I became an adult and saw all my expectations crumble in my realities, I fought more and more of that darkness.  I assumed I was just mad and sad but not depressed per se.   

While in the middle of a divorce, I went to the general practitioner who had treated me for a few years, but who was also my ex-husband’s doctor.  I was having trouble just getting out of bed in the mornings.  Sometimes I would take my youngest daughter, who still wasn’t in school, to the sitter and then go back to bed. I went to the doctor for treatment for what I was realizing was depression.  He tried me on a few prescriptions, and one helped me get out of bed and be ME again.  But after reciting all the strife in my life at that moment, I expressed surprise that there could be a connection between bad circumstances and depression.  He taught me that living under bad circumstances long enough can cause the depression to take root.

I see a lot of self-affirmations on Facebook, so I know I am not alone in my struggles to find happiness.  It seems a lot of people struggle with letting go of the sorrows that replace the wishes we once had.  I also see a lot of people posting things like “Happiness is a decision,” and while that might be a great sentiment for “healthy” people, it sure isn’t for people like me.  As I said, I can trace what I know now is depression all the way to my childhood.  I absolutely prefer to be happy and cheerful.  It comes naturally to me.  But so does the darkness.  I don’t like it. I don’t crave it.  I don’t create a comfy place for it to stay.  It just comes uninvited and stays as long as it dang well pleases. 

Yes, indeed, we are still living a strife-filled life, but that isn’t my problem.  My problem is how often I feel incapacitated and unable to deal with the blows that life offers. The whole debacle of the job offer in Montana set me back for weeks.  I keep remembering that right now I expected to be in the middle of a four-day journey to move our family.  I’m glad I’m not, but I’m not glad.  You know? But, really, the fact that it is taking me so long to move past the bad way it makes me feel is so frustrating. 

How could I choose this?  Why do these things feel like somebody stabbing me while others tell me I need to buck up and ignore the gaping wounds? 

I absolutely agree that for some, happiness is simply a decision.  Some people really do look at the world from a pessimistic place.  If you know me, you know that I like people until, well, they’ve just convinced me beyond a reasonable doubt that I shouldn’t like them. And when I’m just feeling negative, I can mentally shake myself, put on a smile, and go at it from a more positive place.

I’m all caught up with my work.  I just finished proofing the last transcript.  I have a fairly short depo tomorrow and then nothing till next Wednesday and Thursday.  And then nothing.  ::gulp::

Now that I’m caught up and have even written this blog entry, I am going to get right back to work at getting job applications submitted and even looking at houses.  We have possibly two weeks before we have to be gone from this place.  ::gulp:: again.