Living Happily Ever After
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No Sorrow That Cannot Heal

Date: December 12, 2012  Author: Andrea Merriman

Step 4: Refrain from speaking useless words and never give in to what they spawn—anger, your’s or anyone else’s!

Thomas S. Monson once said the two most useless words in the English language are “if only.” He’s right, I’m sure, but I would also add two more: “why me?”

Too many people experience adversity—illness, financial reverse, betrayal, a divorce, an unexpected death, even a natural disaster—from which they never recover, usually the result of focusing on “why me” and “if only,” which leads to anger and a downward spiral that goes on to ruin not only their lives, but the lives of others. I was determined NOT to let that same thing happen to me when my world fell apart!

I’d had a friend whose husband betrayed her and asked for a divorce, and instead of carrying on she indulged in the four most useless words, which fed her anger (which she also indulged) to the point that she never recovered. She has been miserable for 11 years now and counting, still angry over what her former husband did, and she has completely ruined not just her life but the lives of her children. Meanwhile, her husband had remarried, had more children, is very happy and has a good relationship with his older children as well.

On another occasion, I met a 50-year-old woman without a job, a place to live, a winter coat or even shoes (other than sandals) in the snowy climate of Colorado. As I drove her to purchase a coat and some winter shoes, I couldn’t help but ask how she had arrived at such desperate circumstances. She said her dad had died unexpectedly when she was a teenager and that the experience had been very difficult for her because she had really loved her dad! She continued, “Why me? If only that hadn’t happened…” In that moment I realized I had been blessed with the same life experience she had, at close to the same age. I believe the difference was in what we had each allowed ourselves to indulge in.

It is never productive and actually, can be very destructive in my experience, if you let yourself indulge in, and wallow in, feelings of anger, resentment and hatred. Hatred, anger and resentment are like acid—they only destroy the vessel in which they are stored. And it IS possible to do that when instead of indulging in those feelings, you choose to allow yourself to heal.

“Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your anguish; Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal.” (Thomas More)

 

Junk Vs. Joan

Date: January 21, 2011  Author: Andrea Merriman

“Buy, buy, says the sign in the shop window; Why, why, says the junk in the yard.” (Paul McCartney)

My life, my focus, has never been about “things.” In fact, if I’ve ever been consumed by a quest to acquire anything, it’s memories. Making good memories with my loved ones. Because I’ve never believed you can take “it” with you. I believe the only thing I’ll leave this life with is my spirit–some would call it my soul, my memories, my intelligence, the things I have learned and the knowledge I’ve acquired.

However, I was married to a man who looked at “things” differently than I did. He talked all the right talk, of course. He would nod his head and look sorrowful (I thought, in agreement with me) when we’d talk about how sad it was that some people chose to sell their soul for things. He was generous with his means (although now I know he was generous with what was never actually his.) And he acquired a lot of “stuff” in the process, though I never actually knew exactly what, or how much, because he stored it all in the building behind our home, where his “office” was, and I rarely went back there. It was his “manspace;” really cluttered and filled with all manner of junk and disorganized chaos, not the way I lived or operated, so I stayed out of it!

When my unexpected life began, there were things that needed serious purging. Namely, contents of a household that was downsizing. As featured on news reports about the Ponzi scheme my former husband perpetrated, I had ties to some material things. (I don’t know if those broadcasts are still around, but feel free to check them out if you’re curious: watch the motor home driving away towing the boat; see the “mansion” nestled in the trees; hear about the cabin in Idaho and the fine art; learn about the trailer loads of “things” that were hauled away over several days when the asset seizure began.)

In criminal/fraud situations, the government seizes everything of value from the criminal (my former husband) so victims can receive some compensation for their losses, which is all as it should be. The hard part, however, is what to do with everything that has no value. Everything the government doesn’t want.

Like the 9 crockpots–four from my home and four  my cabin (we frequently hosted large group gatherings) and one from the motorhome.

A yard sale wasn’t an option. I had seen my home and property featured on the news enough; my neighbors were stalking us with cameras as my children and I came and went, when we were outside, if we left the garage door open, and through the un-curtained windows of our home. Our neighbors gathered in front of our home to talk and trade notes of what was going on, what they had seen or heard, and they sometimes made it difficult to get to my home if they weren’t in the mood to allow anyone to pass their human barricade.

Case in point. One day a pastor attempted to go to our home to retrieve a set of scriptures from inside. Our neighbors were standing in the cul-de-sac we lived on, our driveway and all around the property and refused to let the pastor through. He explained who he was and the one simple thing he wanted from the house but they wouldn’t let him pass. Their crowd mentality, their hostily and venom, made him apprehensive so he called another neighbor, a mutual friend of his and the neighborhood crowd, and asked that friend to vouch for him so the neighbors would let him pass. The friend refused.

Those were crazy times, but a reason why a yard sale wasn’t an option–I didn’t think neighbors would allow anyone to participate in a yard sale at my home, IF anyone even tried to show up or buy anything!

So the crockpots met me in Utah and now sit on a shelf in my garage awaiting the someday I host a large group gathering again (if that day ever comes) or, alas, finally part with them in a yard sale!

Junk, leftover from my previous life, taking up space in my unexpected new one.

I’m hoping it’s true that, “Junk is the ideal product… the ultimate merchandise. No sales talk necessary. The client will crawl through a sewer and beg to buy.” (William S. Burroughs) Someday.

Or maybe I’ll become an inventor. “To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.” (Thomas A. Edison) If that’s the case, I may qualify for a patent yet.

Regardless, I try not to worry about it too much. (A key to living an unexpected life: don’t worry, be happy.) Because, “You sometimes see a woman who would have made a Joan of Arc in another century and climate, threshing herself to pieces over all the mean worry of housekeeping.” (Rudyard Kipling)

Junk vs. Joan.

I’m going with Joan.

Things You Never Even Knew

Date: August 15, 2010  Author: Andrea Merriman

““A good friend is a connection to life- a tie to the past, a road to the future, the key to sanity in a totally insane world.” (Lois Wyse)

There was a lot we didn’t know about each other, but it wasn’t like being with a total stranger. There is some type of connection there. She said, “It’s just so strange having a daughter I have no mother-daughter history with!” That probably said it all.

At one point I noticed I was sitting on her couch with my feet tucked under me and to the side, like I always do. It dawned on me: I was putting my feet on her couch! How rude! I quickly moved to put my feet on the floor, hoping she hadn’t noticed my bad manners. And then I noticed the way she was sitting. With her feet tucked under her to the side. She had her feet on the furniture too.

Meeting a birth mother is like that. You see why you do things you never even knew you did.

No Parachute

Date: March 18, 2010  Author: Andrea Merriman

Last night, as I picked my 10 year old up from swim team practice, I was stunned to hear sniffling coming from the backseat as I drove down State Street.  I looked in my rear-view mirror and thought I saw him crying.  When I asked if he was ok, he told me yes but life is just hard sometimes.  ”Tomorrow it will be one year, mom.  Last year at this time I was making an art project of a ship.  Do you remember how well it turned out?  And that night  is when I found out about everything.” How can a little boy who was only in third grade remember so much about one particular day?  Probably for the same reason we all seem to.  It was the day our family ended.  And I hope soon and someday he gets what I’ve been trying to teach him, and demonstrate to him, for the past 365 days:  this latest “project” is going to turn out well, too.

When I woke up this morning, my hand brushed something as I shut off my alarm.  It was a note from my two teenagers:  ”Here’s a little something to brighten your day.  We know it has been hard, but we all love you!  We are so proud of you for rising to the challenge and living what you have taught us!” I think March 18 is on everyone’s minds.  (And I promise, I don’t walk around talking about it with my kids.  Hmm…I wonder if they have discovered this blog?:)

Anyway, life didn’t turn out QUITE as I expected it to.  Here’s why.

Last March 18 I dropped my three-year-old off at preschool.  I had a plan for the 2-3 hours he was going to be gone.  And then my spouse called me on my cell phone.  ”What are you doing this morning?” he asked.

I told him my plan and he told me he had hoped to spend time with me.  I invited him to join me doing what I had planned.  He told me he didn’t have that much time.  I asked him how much time he needed, he told me (it was the same amount of time it would have taken to do my activity, and when I pointed that out he told me he wasn’t going to do that activity with me.)  So like the flexible, kind wife that supported all of his dreams that I’d always tried to be, I turned the car around and headed home to spend time with him.  I had no idea I was turning around so he could destroy all of my dreams.

Before I reached home, he called my cell phone again and asked me to meet him in the motor home.  He loved that thing.  (I hated it, had never wanted it, but had supported him in that dream as well.) Looking back, it was probably a bit odd for him to request I meet him there.  But then again, I had no idea what was about to go down.

Everything.

I walked in and he was talking on the phone to someone.  (Not unusual.  He had spent his days and nights calling clients and putting business deals together our entire marriage.) I sat at the table, waited for him to finish his phone call, and happened to glance to the left where I saw a yellow legal pad with names written on it:  Market Street Advisors, C.G.Boerner, Majestic Mountain Construction and Impressions Everlasting.  The only thing I knew about anything on that list was that they were my spouse’s business ventures.  I didn’t have anything to do with them.  I figured he’d been doodling or making one of the endless lists he was famous for writing down on yellow legal pads.  I was wrong.

He hung up the phone, sat across the table from me, folded his hands together on the tabletop and paused.  I looked at the legal pad, slid it across the table to him, and asked, “What’s this?”

He replied, “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”  In a voice as calm and unemotional as I’d ever witnessed.  Nothing about his performance tipped me off as to what was about to happen.

Turns out, that yellow legal pad was a list, but only the beginning, of the lies I didn’t know he had been telling me and everyone else…for over 16 years.

It’s still not quite real.  The fall out is, of course.  But everything else STILL doesn’t seem real. And without warning, I found out everything I thought was real, actually wasn’t.

“My company, Market Street Advisors, is a sham.”

One simple sentence, and the complicated web of choices, actions and decisions of ONE person, the man I’d known since 1988 but apparently hadn’t known at all, shattered my world.

March 18, 2009.

But I didn’t get it.  Yet.

I know it showed in my face.  I didn’t have a clue what he was telling me.  My first thought (always a party or holiday thought at that stage of my life!) was, “Is this an early April Fool’s joke?  Doesn’t he remember yesterday was St. Patrick’s Day? Boy, does he have his dates wrong!  What kind of joke is he trying to play?” All I could do was look at him with a puzzled expression on my face.

Suddenly,  in spite of my education and my knowledge of English and vocabulary, I didn’t understand the word “sham.”

He explained, “My company isn’t real.  It’s a sham, and has been from the very beginning. I’ve been running a ponzi scheme for the past 16 years.”

I didn’t know what a ponzi scheme was.

I’d heard mention of  a ponzi scheme on the news, I’d heard the name Bernie Madoff, I knew he had done something illegal, I knew a lot of people were mad at him and what he had done, but I didn’t understand what it was he, or my spouse, had done.

I got the condensed version.  What I was told left me in complete and utter shock.  But it didn’t stop there.

My spouse told me he had hired an attorney (that was the day he got dressed up and “went to meet a prospective client” downtown, came home, had dinner with the family, had family home evening with the family, and had family scripture study and family prayer with the family.)  He told me he had already turned himself in to the government authorities and to our church leaders (that was the night he missed dinner to meet with a church leader and then came home and watched American Idol with us, as usual.)  He told me  he would be going to prison and getting excommunicated from our church.  He also told me everything had been seized (I didn’t know what that meant but was too shocked to ask–he was still talking.) He told me I would be left alone to raise our children.  And he told me I needed to hire an attorney right away but he’d maxed out all of our credit cards paying for his.

I was shocked.  I was stunned.   I was confused.  I was scared.  I was devastated.  And at the same time, I didn’t know what I thought or felt.

All I knew was that I had been thrown out of an airplane…without a parachute.

What was I going to do?