Whirling and Twirling in my Head

Do you ever have a day when you head is full of so many different thoughts that it's hard to find a cohesive piece to blog?

I find that I'm beginning to feel excitement for moving, dreading the reality of trying to sell our home and tearing up (even crying) at the thought of leaving my community here and my dear, dear friends. I've told my Lizzie that I'm happy she's moving to Cali as it would be much harder for me to leave knowing that she was still just across the street. We have put down some deep roots living here for almost 9 years. Quinn and Lulu have only ever lived in this home and have only ever known this place. I feel heartsick at uprooting my children from the future I had planned. I cry thinking of all the beautiful friends, the women whom I greet daily and weekly, whose lives have become so entwined with mine. No doubt we will continue in some semblance of contact (that's what Christmas cards are for) but time will intervene, life is so busy and the intimacy of living in community together will be lost.

I have been thinking about my extended family and how removed I feel from it all. I feel no attachment to my father's side and, with my mother's passing, I feel I have lost connection with her side. I was reading John's posts about meeting his partner's family and all the love and acceptance. I feel the opposite about my own extended family. I feel so hesitant in connecting with them on Facebook. We were connected by our mothers but now they are both gone, so what is left? Just a few tenuous memories and lines on a pedigree chart. Somehow, I don't believe that they miss me, think of me, wonder how I am (we have barely ever even met) even though I do all of those for each of them. I want to embrace them and know them and love them more fully. I'm just so uncertain of my place in their lives and what level of acceptance or family they would offer.

My head has been circling around and around with the idea of Mother God. This really hit me in my last visit to the temple and beginning to appreciate that women are so much more important and powerful in the grand scheme of things. I cannot even convey how much those rites meant to me and the glimpse they gave me. But at the same time, I cannot help but wish that I knew more about my Heavenly Mother, who she is and what she does. I feel as though I can see and know my Father and that men have an idea of what they are reaching toward but there is no such vision for women. Of course I also think that if they are married and therefore one, and they are one with Jesus, that in some ways it all becomes one and the same. And yet it is so different. I wonder how much of this life is "Eve's curse" and how life will be on the other side of the veil. I also have the thought of Jesus - He who was greatest became He who was least. I think of that in terms of women; we have so many grand gifts, inborn, that perhaps we are given a lesser lot to learn the lessons of submission, of greater faith - to move toward something that we have no vision of but simply to trust the word of God that, indeed, she is. This is all very mixed up with my earlier blogs about what I am striving to become and the idea of a warrior woman in the eternities. These questions swirl about with no answers forthcoming and I wonder at the silence.

This leads in turn into my ponderings about homosexuality, marriage rights and the eternities. One of my greatest struggles with accepting homosexuality as not an abomination is the plan of salvation and the revealed knowledge of the eternities; I like the fact that man and woman are exalted only as a unit and not seperately. I like the fact that one cannot be with out the other and that neither sex is complete unto itself. In this one doctrine I begin to feel a sense of equality and a need for me as a woman, a one unto myself instead of just the other. Homosexuality defies this. I know John has blogged a bit about this and my heart weeps/smiles/is humbled by his humility and willingness to accept whatever he receives from his Father. I feel compassion in my heart and a call for greater love towards every one and I struggle to know how to accept and to love and yet draw this line. I want to not worry about it at all, to simply focus on the necessity for kindness and love yet the church seems to require more as it asks that I give my time, talents and financial resources to supporting efforts to bar gay marriage. I am left in a quandry and so unsure of which way to turn.

There is so much I don't understand. I try not to think so much but then I resort to thinking about not thinking, the unexamined life and all that rot.

Then there are the far more prosaic thoughts: should the children and I fly or ferry north? How many household goods can fit into a 20'x8.5'x8' container. Should we rent or buy a container? What should I put in my garage sale? And what is important enough to pay $24/100lbs to ship north? (My books, my piano but not my weights or exercise step.) Should I risk washing the newly tie-dyed clothing with my dark denims? (No.) Should I do dishes now or wait for morning? (Now. My husband will be happier.) Should I accept a friend invite on Facebook for someone whose name is greatly familiar but whose face I cannot place? (Yes, but only on the recommendation of a trusted friend.) When will my back stop itching? (No time soon but Robert is having a lot of fun peeling off skin.) Are we going to take the cat with us? (Only if she stops being mean.)

I take solace in the prosaic. The answers are more quickly forthcoming and easier to solve. And there is a time limit; a point in which, for better or worse, some answer must be reached. The other stuff, not so easily solved. In fact, I think a great deal of the solution lies in the waiting, the patience and faith. But that is far easier written than lived.