Miracle

When Jared and I completed writing the final chapter, I was almost afraid to voice the question.

“Is it done?” I asked.

Three and a half years ago, I moved up to Utah and began co-authoring a business fable with my brother. It was supposed to be done in 6-9 months. Being a person who finds great delight in checking things off my “to do” list, the constant evolution and re-writing of this book has been pretty rough on me. I’ve thought it was done a dozen of times, only to have my hopes dashed over and over agin.

Now the ball was in my court. My task was to make all the final adjustments and prepare a print-ready version that he could take with him on his January retreat.

“No problem,” I thought. “A few little tweaks here and there and we’re good to go.”

Two weeks later I’d only gotten through 4 of the 18 chapters. Those “little tweaks” were tying me in writing knots. I only had one more week left and knew that finishing was impossible—and that put me in a very bad mood.

That Sunday I was bombarded with messages about how God is a god of miracles who can help us do impossible things—Nephi and the ship, Joseph and the church and on and on. I was listening to a BYU Hawaii devotional that night (random) and the speaker suddenly begins telling this story about how he had an impossible amount of work to get done in a limited time-frame but when he’d exercised his faith and the Lord opened a way to make the impossible possible.

Obviously someone was trying to tell me something.

I wrote up my plan of attack, told everyone I'd be working from home, cancelled everything I had going on for the week and began to pray. Starting Monday, after exercising in the morning, I settled into my big chair with my computer on my lap and wrote. I wrote all day and into the night (generally finishing at around 10 pm)for six days straight.

This really was an exercise of faith because even at my very best, I’ve only been able to write for about 5 hours at a time (after that the quality of work decreases rapidly). But somehow my brain was suddenly able to do marathon sessions without shutting down. I went through each page over and over again and smoothed and fixed and adjusted and kept going. On Saturday at 4 pm, I arrived back at my office to print out a hard copy and go through it one last time. At 11 pm, I arrived at Kinkos to bind the manuscript. At midnight exactly, I drove out of the Kinkos parking lot went and dropped off the books in Jared’s mailbox.

I’m not announcing that it’s completely done (I’ve learned my lesson) but I am awed and grateful that the Lord loved me enough to perform this miracle. I’m not a Nephi or a Joseph Smith, but he did this for me anyway and that is an amazing thing.

The Favorite

Visiting my sister over Thanksgiving, my little niece Rebekah became very attached to me and kept asking for me for a week. Martha called me up and demanded “What did you DO?” I’d only visited for a couple of days and even then, I’d only spent a couple of hours exclusively with her kids, so she just didn’t get it.

The secret, my friend, is very simple. Give a child your full attention for more than a half an hour, and you’ve made a friend for life.

There are two caveats to this general rule, however.

1. There can’t be any other adults with you when you do this because in almost all situations you will end up talking to the other adult. Full attention is essential.

2. You need to do something that you both genuinely enjoy. Children are surprisingly intuitive and can usually sense if you are watching the clock or just humoring them.

When I was given a $70 gift certificate for a bowling alley at a work event, my eyes began to gleam. The bowling alley is kid-friendly, complete with bumpers and ramp to roll the bowling ball down, and seemed an ideal place to reaffirm favorite aunt status with my younger nieces and nephews in one fell swoop.

Their mothers were incredulous, but willing, and after helping me tackle a few things (like lending me a car with enough seats) and commanding their little ones to stick to me like glue, we were on our way. I blithely trooped into Fat Cats hand in hand with my six little charges--who were all six and under--and handed the boy at the counter their shoe sizes and my gift certificate. He proceeded to tell me they weren’t taking the certificates because it was New Year’s, but when he saw my crestfallen expression, he let it slide.

The kids were adorable! They’d watch the ball so anxiously as it barreled down the lane and if they got even one pin down, they’d wriggle in excitement while their cousin cheering section went wild. Stewart (4) told me with big eyes, “I wonder who is going to win. Maybe all of us will win!” They were all pretty good—spares and strikes happening multiple times— and even more incredibly, they stayed in their seats far more than I had any right to expect.

The nearest catastrophe we had came as a consequence of the two free pitchers of soda they gave us. Near the end, Maddi motioned me over and said, “I need to go to the bathroom.” I hadn’t forecasted this possibility, and taking all six of them to the bathroom was not something I wanted to do. When I asked if she could she could hold it, she replied with a pained expression, “But I already have been for a long time!” So, we wrapped things up pretty quickly and hurried to Anna’s to use the facilities. And not a minute too soon because by the end of the short drive, every single one of them needed to use the bathroom!