Minor Triumphs

By Sarah Albrecht

It’s three days before Christmas, but this isn’t a Christmas post. Amidst the holiday confusion of reverence and stress, the muse hasn’t struck. So this isn’t a Christmas post. It’s a bird post.

A parakeet post, actually. That’s because several days ago I trimmed my parakeet’s beak. I’ve had parakeets most of my life, but this was the first time one of my birds’ beaks ever grew too long. The beak became monstrous, actually, curving and scaly like a rusted scimitar poking into poor Gordy’s green chest. Ew.

I had no idea how it happened, being a faithful hanger of cuttlebones and sprinkler of gravel on the cage floor. One day the beak was just too long. Was this vet-worthy? I wondered and vacillated, not being a subscriber to parakeet insurance. Somehow Gordy managed to eat and clamber, but I knew something had to be done.

Finally the other day I walked into the bathroom—yes, due to cat issues we keep two parakeets in the master bathroom—and snapped. Grabbing a pair of fingernail clippers and a washcloth, I took a deep breath and approached the cage. “This won’t hurt a bit,” I cooed, sliding open the door and inserting a washcloth-draped hand. Gordy didn’t believe me and exploded into squawking green fireworks.

Persistence paid and I caught her, gently, and proceeded with the trim. When I finished, both of us felt a bit shaken. However, not being a farm girl accustomed to animal husbandry and the like, I felt a bit heady also. I clipped the beak!

It was a Minor Triumph.

I like Minor Triumphs, little surprises that pop into days often filled with perplexing problems that require long-term efforts to solve, or at least manage. Small or quirky as they may be, they are still triumphs, worth a little smile and a lingering savor.

Pain and Balance

by Sarah Albrecht

Several months ago I noticed some hip pain that felt like I’d “strained, not trained” when exercising. The pain worsened a bit over time, enough to require some aspirin every afternoon. After a couple of months, I decided this wasn’t going away on its own and went to the doctor. He also figured something was up but didn’t know what, so he sent me to my first visit with a physical therapist. After an evaluation, she concluded that my piriformis muscle, which runs from inside the pelvis and wraps around the hip, had somehow become inflamed. Inflamed piriformis muscles typically squeeze the sciatic nerve, causing more pain.

The therapist assigned a series of stretches and exercises to relax and strengthen the muscle. They felt good and the pain began incrementally decreasing. After several visits with several therapists, I saw the original therapist again. She assigned a new exercise regimen, then added in a side note: “Oh, and you should be sitting and standing with your weight even. No standing with your weight shifted to one side.”

It seemed intuitive and I felt silly that I hadn’t thought to do that myself. I went home, and over the course of the day I noticed how many times I stood with my weight unevenly distributed and faithfully corrected my posture. By the end of the same day the minute shift in my posture had helped my hip feel dramatically better. I couldn’t believe it.

I thought how, in life, targeting areas where I am “hurting” with specific “exercises” may help, but the exercises become much more effective if I am balanced as a whole and standing tall. And even tiny changes in balance can make a big difference.

Consider the Lilies

by Sarah Albrecht

I'm feeling a bit abashed to be posting again, but here it goes anyway.

Recently I heard a radio interview of two esteemed American poets (yes, esteemed, but I can’t remember their names). At one point the discussion turned to the preoccupation with death in poetry and in literature in general. One of the poets joked that to major in literature means to major in death. Another explained that as beauty in poetry frequently stems from contemplation of death, so we find real flowers more beautiful than silk ones because the real flowers’ beauty is fleeting; in other words, they are beautiful because they are dying.

As is my wont, I disagreed with that assessment but took several days to formulate my thoughts coherently—way too late to call in to the show and comment!

Now, this may seem a tangent, but I’ll get back to the point. Sometimes when I go to bed and need to put my brain in neutral, I make up top ten lists. Top ten favorite movies, top ten favorite places I’ve visited, top ten times I’ve been awed by nature. One of my top, top ten lists is to think up my favorite memories of flowers. I imagine the warmth of a North Carolina afternoon in the Biltmore gardens as bees hum around small purple puffs; I think of the breeze on a Northern California boardwalk entangled by delicate vines with scoop-shaped pink blooms; I smell violets lurking in the shade of my otherwise disreputable newlywed apartment building.

Invariably, as I close my eyes and extract memories for the list, I find myself on a bracing day several years ago, walking with my husband and young children down a wet, hard-packed path just out of sight of the south end of the Golden Gate Bridge. Sea air curls around us and heightens every sense. Redwoods shade the path and the deep, russet soil on its sides into perpetual moisture. We come around a bend into a field of white calla lilies, stark and smooth against the deep greens and browns of the forest. For the first time I can picture the lilies of the field, how they toil not, neither do they spin, yet surely Solomon in all his glory could not have been dressed as one of these.

Now I return to the original idea and dispute with the esteemed poet: real flowers are not more beautiful than the artificial because they are dying, but because they denote there is a God. True, in them may lay the poignancy of death and the shortness of life, but in their intricate simplicity lies the mark of the loving Creator and therefore the hope of life renewed.

Expect the Unexpected

I’ve been thinking lately about answers in unexpected places. One of the first unexpected places that comes to mind is the garbage, where (I’ve heard) Alexander Fleming, a British bacteriologist, found a discarded Petri dish with the mold penicillin holding staphylococcus bacteria at bay. So began the answer to treating infectious bacteria.

I think often of another unexpected answer that came two years ago, the year my older son missed eighteen days of fifth grade. Germs seemed to flock to him, and, by extension, the rest of our family. The school office started dropping hints about his truancy.

I looked for answers in the expected place: his pediatrician. Could we do anything to boost his immunity, I asked. No, she said, some kids just come like that.

A few months later I took the kids in for their routine dental checkup during a rare break when no one was sick. The dentist called me in to look at my son’s teeth. “They’re eroding too fast,” she said, and suggested either pop or stomach acid as the culprit. To my children’s chagrin, about the only time we have pop in the house is after they’ve gone to Safeway with their dad for a frozen pizza run and detoured through the soda aisle. Therefore I knew stomach acid must be the guilty party in my son’s mouth.

The dentist sent us to a gastroenterologist to check for acid reflux. What the GI found was eosinophilic esophagitis, a food allergy disease in which white blood cells attack the esophagus when allergens are present. Acid reflux is a side effect.

So my son spent all of the fifth grade sick because his immune system was busy somewhere else.

And the answer to the problem, or at least the beginning of the answer, came from the dentist.

Of course answers in unexpected places aren't always so dramatic; they may simply come as quiet direction, like a soft breeze on a still day. Whatever the case, I find the thought of unexpected answers both inspiring and comforting. Maybe, if I’m living well, I can be someone’s unexpected answer. And hopefully, if I’m living well, I can recognize the unexpected answers in my life.

Alone in the Water

By Sarah Albrecht

Two simultaneous classes ran during a recent session at my preschool daughter’s swim school: hers, and a mom and tots class. The last day of the session, only my daughter and one little boy that looked about two came to their respective classes. The little boy had cried through every class.

Today was no different; in fact, it was worse. For this final class, and according to normal procedure, his mother didn’t come into the water with him so that he could experience working through the various activities with someone else. He hated it. He hated it so much she had to leave in order to not be a distraction.

Near the end of class, as the little boy wailed, I stepped into the small adjacent office to fetch a tissue for my daughter. The boy’s mother sat on a white resin chair just inside the door, a lovely woman with long dark hair and sculpted cheekbones, her hands clasped tightly between her legs. She was carefully monitoring her son while just as carefully staying out of sight because his progress in the essential skill of swimming depended on her absence.

Most parents have experienced similar situations. Since I witnessed rather than participated in this one, though, I could see the big picture more objectively. In fact, it reminded me sharply of our loving Father, sitting just out of sight to monitor our progress in essential growth while we, not understanding the trial in the larger scheme of life, feel alone in the water.

I like to picture Him there.

Overcoming The Weeds Of Life

Valerie J. Steimle

I had the chance to get outside and do some yard-work today. After some weeding in the front flower bed and edging with the weed eater on the side of the house, I had to tackle the weeding of a rose bush I had planted a few years ago.

I hadn’t realized the time had gotten away from me and those weeds had grown so fast over my low growing bush that I could barely see the bush itself. During the blossom season, there were beautiful pink blooms popping everywhere. Now the weeds had over taken it and I had to save it from the invasion.

After pulling the weeds away, it was amazing to find how well my rose bush did. I was very pleasantly surprised how my struggling rose bush was growing so well even with those fast growing weeds all around and over it. It was just growing like crazy. I thought this would hinder the growth. The bush looked as if it wouldn’t have grown at all. It looked as if it would have been smothered. But it flourished and grew anyway. New shoots had grown all over and I actually had to cut it back.

I had to reflect on this idea because humans are so very vulnerable to trials and challenges. We meet bumps in the road or very fast growing weeds and it discourages us from going any farther. How many times have we had the weeds of life come upon us and try to smother us and we just keep growing? How many times do we let those challenges in our life overtake our attitude of “we can get through this” and do it with a smile? Many times we let unimportant setbacks ruin our day of other wonderful accomplishments. I’m guilty as well and need to take a lesson from my own rose bush. Don’t let the weeds of life pull you down so much you don’t follow through on your goals in life. Don’t let the weeds of life over come your worthwhile life of family, friends and the gospel.

Loaves and Fishes

by Sarah Albrecht

I love to read the story of the loaves and fishes from the New Testament and to imagine the multitude being taught and then fed by the Savior. I love the often-heard interpretation for our own time, that the Savior is merciful, and if we come, He will feed us bountifully.

At a time when I felt utterly inadequate in almost every aspect of my life, as if whatever I had to offer was not enough, another application flashed into my mind.

It came as I sat bent over a children’s version of the story with my little daughter. When I saw the picture of a plate with a loaf of bread and a few small fishes, I suddenly thought of who had supplied the Savior with the food with which he fed the masses: not a merchant or a fisherman; not a baker or an innkeeper accustomed to feeding groups, but a boy. He probably brought the Savior his own lunch, or maybe he’d been out getting dinner for his family. In any case, it wasn’t much, and certainly not enough to feed everyone.

But here’s the key: he offered what he had, and with the Lord’s help, it was enough. The realization swept through me like a sudden breeze, cleansing the stagnant despair and leaving a brightness of hope and a confidence rooted on the surest foundation.

If I offer all I have, with the Lord’s help, it will be enough.