Living Happily Ever After
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Life

Date: January 4, 2011  Author: Andrea Merriman

“One day, out of irritation, I said, you know all of those years with the Royal Shakespeare Company, all those years of playing kings and princes and speaking black verse, and bestriding the landscape of England was nothing but a preparation for sitting in the captain’s chair of the Enterprise.” (Patrick Stewart)

Jean Luc Pickard had it right.

Life doesn’t always turn out how you planned. And you’re not necessarily preparing for the future you envision. I’m not sure why we go through all we do…only to end up in some very unexpected places having experienced some unimaginable things.

But this I do know.

Our experiences teach us valuable lessons—IF we allow ourselves to learn. ”Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God, do you learn.” (C.S. Lewis)

Isn’t that the truth?

I also know this.

“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’” (Eleanor Roosevelt)

We’re stronger because of what we’ve overcome. And if we got through something that difficult, we can get through anything—especially the next unexpected new opportunities we’re blessed with!

Late last summer I took my kids swimming at a friend’s pool one Saturday. Afterward, we enjoyed a barbecue. Then we innocently returned to our home after several hours of fun. We walked into the house and noticed a strange humming sound. I thought, “Darn! Someone left the television on when we left. I’ve asked my kids not to do that a thousand times!” and in a bit of frustration, went to the turn the t.v. off. Only it wasn’t on.

My oldest headed down to his bedroom right about that time, got to the basement and cried out. In a panic I raced down the stairs to see what was wrong, got to the bottom of the stairs, and unexpectedly stepped into a puddle of water at least 6 inches deep! The entire basement of our home was flooded! The “humming” sound I’d heard was the dying echo of ruined electronic equipment.

As I stood there, water sloshing against my calves looking at the utter ruin of the lowest level of my home’s interior and its contents, I belatedly thought, “Is it possible to get shocked standing in water with electronics humming and crackling as they float by?” And then thoughts of death-by-electricity fled my mind as I realized I needed to get the water to my home shut off. A pipe must have burst.

But wouldn’t you know, inept single woman that I am, I couldn’t find it? I looked high and low, everywhere I could think of, but I couldn’t locate it. I had my children down there hunting with me and it never turned up. I assigned my son to find a male neighbor who could tell us where the water shut-off valve might be located. He returned with an actual neighbor who helped us find it and shut it off. Then he suggested we look for the pipe that had burst–the source of the water.

Would you believe there wasn’t one? The entire basement was like a giant kiddie pool but there wasn’t a source of water! The ceilings were dry, the walls were dry, but strangely, in one room, there was water spray on everything below four feet in height. It was the craziest thing.

And I learned something about myself: unsolved mysteries (aka. house floods) make me think the darndest things! After hunting high and low with my neighbor for the source of the water, and never finding one, I’m ashamed to say one of my next thoughts was, “Oh my gosh! It has FINALLY happened! A Ponzi scheme victim must have located us, broke into our home, and unleashed their anger at the situation with a hose—by flooding our home!”

That was ridiculous. I put that thought out of my mind and unexpectedly it was replaced it with, “How in the world have we made an enemy like this already? Just one year living in Utah and we’ve offended someone so badly that they’d want to flood our home?”

That’s when I noticed it.

My son’s bedroom window was cracked and broken, pieces were missing. And then I noticed grass floating in the flood, mud and grass splattered everywhere inside my home, and mud and water floating in the window well.

My neighbor and I headed outside to find the source of the water. As luck would have it, the patio and everything outside near the broken window was completely dry. NO trace of water! Where were Fred, Daphne, Thelma, Shaggy, Scooby and The Mystery Machine when I needed them? There was a mystery to be solved.

Another neighbor saw us outside and came over to see if we had noticed the water outside my home. Due to the heat of the day, the outside water had dried up, so we hadn’t seen ANY water. (That was why the situation was so puzzling!) I told him, unfortunately,the water wasn’t just outside my home, the entire interior of the basement was flooded. But at least he solved the mystery for us.

It was entirely unexpected.

There are irrigation wheels in the corner of my backyard. While I was out, a farmer came to take his watering turn and failed to check that the appropriate gates were open when he diverted his irrigation water. He drove away…and my home flooded. I wasn’t home, the farmer wasn’t there, so I didn’t know anything untoward was taking place or needed to be stopped. The water ran and ran. Unchecked. Out of control.

A different neighbor happened to look outside and saw water flooding our cul-de-sac and the connecting streets so filled with water he assumed a water main had broken. Until he tried to locate the source of the “break” and saw a literal river of water running through my backyard, into my home, and into the streets all around it. Just a little house flooding, courtesy of a farmer who failed to check (as they are always supposed to) that the appropriate diversion gates are open. Just one little gate. I NEVER expected that!

I don’t think the farmer did either. As he told me later that night, “I’ve been doing this 30 years and I’ve never had a problem. I never thought to check that the south gate was open. It’s not your fault, it’s not my fault; these things happen. That’s what your homeowner’s insurance is for.” The farmer advised me to get my belongings out of my basement as fast as I could. I never expected that, either.

I stood there, alone, with my four children and thought, “How in the world am I supposed to clear my basement all by myself?” (I was tending a baby at the time, as well.) I was overwhelmed. But that is a great thing about Utah. (Get ready for another one of those, “Only in Utah” moments.) My son went to one neighbor and asked if he could help us move some furniture out of our basement as it had flooded, he came right over, took one look, made a phone call and within minutes, literally, there were 30-40 people from our neighborhood and church congregation hauling our belongings out of the flood and into our front yard. An impossible task was completed in a matter of an hour or so.

I helped, I hauled, and then I confess, I had a moment of meltdown. I escaped to the privacy of my bathroom, called a friend in Denver, CO, and lost it. For a moment there, I was afraid a house flood was going to be my undoing. Silly, I know, but after a year of shock, trauma, and attempted recovery, I was temporarily at my limit.

Thankfully, my friend “talked me down,” we laughed and I put the situation in perspective. Really, after EVERYTHING I had lived through, a house flood wasn’t that big of a deal.

Really.

Truly.

And I knew it.

Sadly, compared to decades of lies, betrayal, crime, drama, divorce, vilification and everything else played out in the media and on a public stage, a flood really wasn’t that big of a deal. I had lived through worse. Much worse. So that’s what I said when people expressed their sympathy regarding the flood. “We’ve lived through worse. Not a big deal. It’s just stuff. It will be ok.”

I never expected the collapse of my family and the public downfall we endured would  be preparation for a flood; would help me keep it all in perspective. But it was. And it did. We’ve certainly survived worse.

In the unexpected life.

Yet still, “I doubt whether the world holds for any one a more soul-stirring surprise than the first adventure with ice-cream.” (Heywood Braun)

Or your first house flood.

New Friends…Prison-Style

Date: October 24, 2010  Author: Andrea Merriman

“I have friends in overalls whose friendship I would not swap for the favor of the kings of the world.” (Thomas A. Edison)

The incarceration experience for my ex-husband included meeting new people and making new friends. Yes, they were dressed in the only fashion acceptable for inmates–aka. orange jumpsuits–but learning about some of them completely changed my perspective of prison and many of those who reside there. They don’t fit Hollywood stereotypes; they shattered my expectations. (Prepare yourself. I’m about to expose my ignorance.)

When he first was taken into custody, one of the deputies talked to him about the “average” inmate. He said the jail had all types of men, who had committed all types of crimes, but that “most are just average ‘Joes’ that messed up.” I confess I’d never thought of criminals in that way before–as average people who had made mistakes.

He met an inmate with three college degrees. I had probably assumed, too often, that people commit crimes because they lack education and training for legal employment–that crime is all they’ve witnessed and known so that is what they do. Not true in all cases.

Sometimes I could even relate to their bad luck. Several of the stories I heard took my thoughts back to my teens and the dumb things teenagers sometimes do without thinking beyond the moment. I pictured kids I knew as a teenager, maybe even my brothers, doing similar things–only to a lesser degree. Here’s one friend’s story: He stole an unmarked police vehicle by mistake. In the process of messing with the wires he turned on the flashing lights, unbeknownst to the driver. The man’s friend, driving the other car, tried to catch up to the stolen car and let him know what had happened but the man thought his friend wanted to race–so he sped up. A state patrolman coming the other direction flashed his lights at him, thinking it was a cop who just forgot to turn his flashers off! The man got caught and went to jail.

The most eye opening thing I learned about his new friends, however, wasn’t really anything new it was simply something I’d forgotten as I lived a law abiding life on “the outside.” That is, even gangsters have hearts.

Despite the white collar nature of my ex-husband’s crimes, he was incarcerated with infamous criminals, well-known in all circles, including the media. For that reason, he never shared their names with us. But what stunned me, was how these notorious gangsters were so kind to an older man. After all, he was the age of their fathers. They introduced themselves to him, shook his hand, introduced him to others and told him, “If anyone gives you trouble, just let us know and we’ll take care of it.” (But no one ever bothered him.) They invited him to exercise with them. They showed him the ropes of life on “the inside.” They talked, played games and got to know one another. Yet despite their kindness, they were tough men. He never saw anyone cry or show emotion.

And then one day, my ex-husband lost it. The consequences of his choices hit him and said he felt them deeper than they ever had before. He cried. He had never seen any show of emotion in the jail and was mortified that he couldn’t help himself or stop himself from the flood of tears. In such confined space, there is nowhere to go and nowhere to hide, so everyone witnessed his grief. As he shared the experience, I don’t know what I expected the reaction might have been; my imagination conjured up many different scenarios, none of them sympathetic, all of them included my ex-husband getting beat up for being a sissy. But here is what really happened.

Everyone left him alone. They didn’t hassle him. They gave him his space. And not one inmate made fun of him, shunned him or beat him up for his weakness. In fact, during the most express moment of anguish and grief, the “biggest, baddest gangster of them all” came quietly to my ex-husband’s bunk, put a hand on his shoulder, told him everything would be o.k., and that he had a friend and was there for him if he ever wanted to talk about it.

That touched me.

I don’t know who the man really was, but I named him Mr. C. (“C” for compassion. I envision him looking like the infamous Mr. T of the old “A-Team” show, so basically I just changed the consonant in his name!) We need more Mr. Cs in the world, don’t we? More friends, more people with compassion and more people who choose to be there for for each of us, “outside” or in the slammer, when our unexpected life or its ramifications overwhelms us.

I know I’ve needed that and have been blessed by those who have shown compassion toward me and my children.

I don’t think I’ll ever look at criminals in the same way again. And it’s my unexpected life that gave me a different view.

“Deep down even the most hardened criminal is starving for the same thing that motivates the innocent baby: Love and acceptance.”(Lily Fairchilde)

A Miracle

Date: October 13, 2010  Author: Andrea Merriman

“Miracles happen to those who believe in them.” (Bernard Berenson)

One year ago, my oldest was having a rough time–and who could blame him?

He has always been an easygoing, level headed, great kid so some moments of grumpiness and impatience on his part, as he adjusted to his unexpected life, stood out like a sore thumb. I had a chat with him.

He cried and cried about how bad things were. He had no friends, no passion for sports, no life, no anything. I’ll never forget how he sobbed and sobbed; his heart broken. I could relate to everything he said because deep in the recesses of my soul I felt like I was living a life like that, too, I just wouldn’t let myself acknowledge it out loud. But I was old. He was only 16.

I cried with him and for him. I had wanted SO MUCH MORE for him. I couldn’t understand how my innocent children had ended up with such a mess. (Actually, yes I could. I knew I had chosen their father–which gave me a huge burden of guilt to bear for the part I played in bringing such horror to their childhood.) I didn’t know why they had to go through what they did, what I could do for them or how I could help them through it.

I needed a miracle. A serious miracle.

One year later, I have to acknowledge, again, that I got one. In fact, my family and I have received countless miracles and blessings. And nothing is as priceless as the miracle of light after incredible darkness and despair (aka. the unexpected life.)

“We can only appreciate the miracle of a sunrise if we have waited in the darkness”

Here’s just one example.

Today, this same child, is a senior in high school. He has great friends. He has created an amazing life for himself and keeps busy with school, work and social and sports activities. He went to homecoming this year with the homecoming queen. After only one season of play with his high school team hockey team, he has been selected team captain. Additionally, he has the privilege of practicing with his dream team–the BYU Cougar’s ice hockey team on their development squad. (He’d NEVER have had that opportunity if it weren’t for his unexpected life and what he chose to do with it.) And, it looks like he’s going to meet the admission criteria for the college of his choice, BYU, the college he has dreamed of attending since wearing his first BYU apparel (at six months old. Ok. So maybe it began as his parents’ dream, but it has since become his as well!) In fact, he is closer than ever to achieving all of his childhood dreams, despite his unexpected life, or perhaps, because of it. His only regret, now, is not getting to attend all four years of high school in Utah!

“Even miracles take a little time.”

Sometimes…just one year.

“Now the weight of gold that came to Solomon in one year was six hundred threescore and six talents of gold, Beside that he had of the merchantmen, and of the traffick of the spice merchants, and of all the kings of Arabia, and of the governors of the country.” (The Bible)