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Date: March 28, 2012  Author: Andrea Merriman

“There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.” (Alfred Hitchcock)

Finally the day came when we expected the anticipated letter in our mailbox. (Our bishop (pastor) had announced the mission call would be arriving that week, and we’d heard from everyone around us that mission calls generally arrive in the Provo/Orem area of Utah on Wednesdays.)

It was Wednesday.

Everyone was full of anticipation. Especially my oldest son for whom the call would be issued. I occasionally joke at his absentmindedness, but even HE was calling ME to check the status of the mailbox. I was stuck at work, so I couldn’t check myself. So I called home and had my youngest son checking every few minutes. That day, it was so odd,  but the mail NEVER came! I was becoming increasingly stressed by the unknown, and then to not have the mail delivered was indescribably frustrating. I drove home, somewhat frustrated, when I thought to call my son.

I found out the call had come, and that my son and a group of his friends would be at my home that evening for its opening. (I guess he’d had his sister checking the mail, too, and she’d gotten it and taken care of everything related to it. They just forgot to tell their mother or their younger brother. So there I am, calling occasionally from work, hounding my son about making another trip to the mailbox and thinking the mail hadn’t been delivered when it had been, only to be scooped up by another pair of excited hands!) My  son excitedly told me everyone who was coming that night for the opening of the envelope and when he mentioned even some of MY friends, I finally had to say it: “You mean even MY friends knew you got your call…but you forgot to tell your own mother?” My son defended his actions; to him, he’d done the most logical thing in the world.  ”What do you mean I didn’t tell you? I put it on Facebook!”

It’s times like that I see I’m a dinosaur in a new generation. Facebook—now why didn’t I think of that?

“We all have a dinosaur deep within us just trying to get out.” (Colin Mochrie)

Stressed Out

Date: March 27, 2012  Author: Andrea Merriman

In the midst of all the adventures—moves, work and everything else life brings—we had a very special one. My oldest son began the process of belong called to serve as a full-time missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

It was something I’d anticipated his entire life. You see, the majority of young men in the L.D.S. faith serve missions from the age of 19-21 years old. (You’ve probably seen them—clean cut young men, wearing white shirts and black name tags, walking or riding their bikes to meet with investigators, volunteering in the community and talking to people about faith, Jesus Christ and the gospel He taught.) When young men are of that age (or shortly before they turn 19) they submit their paperwork to serve a mission and then are called to serve where they are needed.

They don’t get to choose where they serve. Missionaries leave behind family, friends, work, sports, schooling and any other interests and dedicate their lives to their missionary service for two years. You don’t get to see them other than in the pictures they might send home. (They send letters and emails, they can call home twice each year, but other than that, they are focused on their mission and you don’t see them in person until they return home when their mission is completed.) And they pay all expenses associated with their missionary service.

I’d always hoped this son would choose to serve a mission. I’d planned he would serve a mission. I’d raised him to serve a mission. (I’m anticipating it for all of my sons.) But somehow, all too soon, the time is almost here.

He filled out his paperwork, met with the appropriate church leaders, and his papers were submitted to Salt Lake City for assignment. All that was left to do was wait for his mission call to arrive in the mail. (I think our official wait was actually less than 2 weeks by the time everything was submitted. But somehow it seemed longer than that. A lot was unknown, so it made the time seem to pass slowly.) In the meantime, I had no idea how stressed out I would become!

Lets just say this motherhood thing is a whole LOT more than I anticipated when I first became a mother. Those days, I remember sitting on the couch much of the day, holding and enjoying my newborn baby boy all day long, sometimes watching a video while he slept in my arms (I never wanted to put him down I was so thrilled to be a mom!) thinking, “I don’t know what all these mothers have been thinking and saying, insisting motherhood is such hard work! I don’t know what they think they are talking about!” I seriously thought they had to have exaggerated a little bit! (Ah…youth. And inexperience, huh?)

Waiting.

Waiting.

Waiting for that envelope to arrive.

And I, who rarely remembers that mail is delivered daily much less to pick up said mail from my mailbox, suddenly started checking the mail every day.

“I believe in opening mail once a month, whether it needs it or not.” (Bob Considine)

Waiting.

“Open, Sesame!”

Date: March 29, 2011  Author: Andrea Merriman

“I turn on my computer. I wait patiently as it connects. I go online. My breath catches in my chest until I hear 3 little words, ‘You’ve got mail.’ I hear nothing, not a sound on the streets of New York. Just the beat of my own heart. I have mail…from you.” (“You’ve Got Mail”)

I had mail? I didn’t quite believe it, so, true to form, I denied it. (The Queen of Denial was back!)

“I DO NOT have mail.”

“Yes, you do,” said #5. “I am holding a letter from The First Presidency of The Church, addressed to you, in my hand.”

“Did you open it? What does it say?” I asked.

“No, I didn’t open it, it’s addressed to you!” he replied.

“Open it,” I requested.

“No,” he responded. “Because I haven’t been to my house, yet, to see if I have letter too.”

“Open it,” I requested. (Again.)

“No,” he answered. “What if it’s a letter telling you NOT to marry me?”

“OPEN IT,” I commanded.

So he did. There was a brief pause while he opened the envelope, removed the letter and silently read it. ”It’s the letter we’ve been waiting for,” he reported.

I didn’t know what to say. I still couldn’t believe it, so I denied it again and then asked him if he was teasing me. He finally put my oldest on the phone. ”Mom, it’s the letter. It’s to you from The First Presidency,” he said, and he began to read it to me over the phone.

I was at work. My children and #5 were gathered together at my home, reading my letter. They all sounded happy and excited. It was noisy in the background.

As for me? I’d waited so long, by the time I finally got my letter of authorization to marry in a temple, I’m not sure what I thought or felt in that moment. Relief. Excitement. Yet a sense of “this can’t be real” mingled with the other thoughts and emotions. I hung up the phone, my mind racing with thoughts of people I needed to call about my letter finally coming.

But instead, I hung up the phone and…unexpectedly…cried.

I wasn’t planning to do that.

“A woman can laugh and cry in three seconds and it’s not weird…” (Rob Schneider)

Wasn’t That A Movie?

Date: March 28, 2011  Author: Andrea Merriman

“Life is the movie you see through your own eyes. It makes little difference what’s happening out there. It’s how you take it that counts.” (Denis Waitley)

And then, just a few hours later (after government officials called) I got another phone call. It, too, was unexpected.

It had begun as a typical Friday, except that morning #5 stopped by before I went to work and announced the papers we’d been waiting for were coming that day.

I laughed and replied, “No, they’re not.”

He smiled and said, “You just keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better. But they ARE coming today. I know it.”

He said it was just a feeling he had, but I had to give him credit: he’d said all along that our papers were arriving a specific week. It was that week. I also had to give him credit for being firm in his belief. He had checked with me every day, “Did you pick up your mail? Did you get any mail today?” (Mail collection is a challenge for me. By the time I work all day and commute home, I’m so excited to see my children most of the time I forget mail is even delivered during the day! I typically remember to pick up my mail only a few days each week.)

Like a watched pot that never seems to boil, my mailbox had been unusually empty every single day that week. I know, because very uncharacteristically for me, I had checked it every single day: Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. Thursday.

Later that day, that Friday, #5 called me at work. “What are you doing? Are you driving home?” he asked.

“No, I haven’t left yet. I’m still working,” I answered. I had a big project I was trying to finish before the weekend. I had stayed at the office later than usual. ”Why? What are you doing?” I asked.

“Oh, I’m just at the house,” he said. “I came by to check your mail.”

“And?” I asked.

“You’ve got mail!” he rejoiced.

Wasn’t that a movie?

“It sometimes feels like a strange movie, you know, it’s all so weird that sometimes I wonder if it is really happening.” (Eminem)

I know what he means.

So Much For Anonymity

Date: May 20, 2010  Author: Andrea Merriman

We moved to Utah for a variety of reasons, the biggest being employment and that Utah is where things worked out for us to live. However, we had a few other motives too. Like the fact that it would be a clean break, a fresh start, and a chance to live where no one knew who we were, who we had once been related to or what we had just been through. Having had our brush with “celebrity,” not one of us was sad to leave the paparazzi behind!

But we had a few things NOT in our favor if we wanted to be completely anonymous. (And believe me, we were all so shell-shocked, that probably would have been our preference had we had a choice!)

Our first Sunday at church, our pastor asked for some personal information so he could request our church records from our previous congregation. I hesitated to give it to him so soon, wanting to make sure the divorce was final on church records so that my former spouse’s information was not transferred with ours. Although I hadn’t planned on it, I told the pastor a little of our situation to explain why I wasn’t ready to have him transfer our records yet. Poor man. He made an innocent phone call to get my birth date, and ended up knowing a LOT more than he was probably prepared to learn!

But that impulse to tell him our story when my plan had been to keep it quiet turned out to be a blessing. Less than a week after my conversation with my new pastor, he called to tell me it was good I’d told him my story; that a member of the congregation had come to him and told him he should google the new woman from Colorado who had moved in–that she had quite a story. He said, “Thank goodness you had told me. I was able to tell them I imagined you had moved here to start over and didn’t want everyone to know your past. I asked them to not share that information with others.”

So much for anonymity in the day of internet and search engines! lol.

On the bright side, I don’t know who the person was who googled me and shared it with the pastor, I never asked, but I never heard a word about my former life from anyone. To my knowledge, they honored the pastor’s request.

And then a few weeks later, after my former spouse had been taken into custody and placed in Colorado’s Jefferson County Jail, I opened the mailbox to find three letters from him. Mailed from jail. On the outside of each envelope, stamped in large letters, were the words “Uncensored Inmate Mail!” I looked down at what I was holding in my hand and all I could do was laugh! So much for anonymity. So much for a “fresh start!”

“This has been a learning experience for me. I also thought that privacy was something we were granted in the Constitution. I have learned from this when in fact the word privacy does not appear in the Constitution.” (Bill Maher)

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Miracle Mail

Date: April 20, 2010  Author: Andrea Merriman

I am terrible at remembering to collect my mail each day.  I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because my former spouse always got our mail, so it has been over 20 years since I’ve had to collect my mail.

But one year ago that changed. Due to my spouse’s crimes, the revelation that He had been running a ponzi scheme for 15 years, His prison sentence looming, our pending divorce, and other traumas…I took over everything–including the mail collection.

Each day, it seemed, hate mail arrived. I was shocked that we received it, and even more surprised at where it came from: total strangers, all across the U.S. It became so frequent for awhile there that one day I realized it had been one week since we had received a piece of hate mail!

An occasion to remember.

However, not all of the mail was hateful.  For the first two-three months of the nightmare, other anonymous mail arrived, the complete opposite of hate mail. I would open an envelope to find a gift card to a grocery store, Target, Costco or WalMart.  Other weeks, I would open an envelope to find some cash.  Other times it would be words of encouragement or an uplifting thought I really needed at that moment and that helped me continue on when the day had been particularly disastrous.

I called it Miracle Mail. It was such a blessing to me and to my children. It helped us survive, not just emotionally, but physically.

Thank heaven for those who “never suppress a generous thought.”

We were getting by on very little money as all of our accounts had been frozen. The cash I had I withdrawn on March 18, I had put in my wallet and then kept my wallet with me at all times. I didn’t let my spouse know where the money was because I was afraid he’d steal it! Trust was non-existent. (I guess it shows you may choose to allow a stranger to remain in your home for your children’s sake and because you feel it is the kind thing to do, but that doesn’t mean you trust Him.  At all.)

Any time my children needed lunch money, etc…I pulled a small amount of cash out of my wallet and used it.  I didn’t dare look at it, because to see the minimal amount, and to see that minimal amount dwindling, would have added even more stress to a life that was already bursting at the seams with it!

I remember getting down to the last $20, and then finally to the last $1, and wondering what we were going to do…and then an anonymous piece of mail, miracle mail, containing a gift card or cash would arrive at the very moment I needed it. There are some amazing, generous, kind, and charitable people. They literally saved us.  And of course, most of it was anonymous so I had no idea who to thank.

We also lived off food we had stored for emergencies, so although we weren’t eating our favorite things, we were able to purchase less at the store and still had food to eat. And, as with everything else, we got by with a little help from our friends.

A friend stopped by one day and unloaded a car load of food items from Costco–”fun” food, as she called it, that my children hadn’t seen in awhile like fruit snacks, crackers, Mickey Mouse-shaped chicken nuggets, cookies, etc…THAT was a highlight of the nightmare experience for my children! It was like Christmas in our kitchen!  They were thrilled to enjoy, once again, some treats they remembered from their former life.

Other friends called when they were heading to the store and asked if I needed anything.  If I didn’t need anything, they usually dropped food off anyway. Other times, they picked up what I needed and more.

And many women from my church delivered meals to us as well.  I think we had one entire month of dinners brought to our home by good women who were concerned about us and wanted us to not only have food to eat, but to feel loved. They delivered dinner every night until I finally asked them to stop–I couldn’t move my food storage and felt like we needed to use it up and provide for ourselves as much as we were able to.

Another friend brought us huge, delicious Sunday dinners EVERY SINGLE SUNDAY until we moved out of state.

True, we may have been hated by some, but we were also SO LOVED by so many.  That compassion, and Miracle Mail, got us through.