cc: file, Tony Hafen, Sara and Des Penny, Claude and Katherine Warner, Lloyd and Luana Warner, Diane Cluff, Maxine Shirts via mail.
"This week is one of those Thoughtlets I won't send a copy of to my Mom. It is not because I will be writing anything bad, or disparaging her. Rather, sometimes when we write or say things close to our heart, it can unnecessarily upset someone we care deeply about. I find it interesting that I write a couple of this type of Thoughtlets each year, and find no fault in it, because I hope I am passing on an insight or something which will be helpful to you kids. Yet I find myself so totally upset when I find out you kids are lying to me, hiding something from me, or in some other way doing the same thing I am doing this week. Last Sunday in Family Home Evening Heather taught the lesson, and she taught me that one of the main reasons we hide something or lie about something is because we are afraid of an overreaction from someone we care deeply about. And thus we justify our moral compromise, and start down a road in which we eventually, if we are lucky, find ourselves caught in the snare of our own lies. If we are not lucky, we keep telling ourselves and others our lies until we believe them, and eventually we find ourselves bound in Satan's chains, with no hope for the future.
I have thought about overreaction all week. I am going to start this week by requoting one of Stephen Covey's points in the Thoughtlet titled `New Roof' (see ../0120.html for the whole quote):
In regards to overreaction, I could write about Andrea, about Marti,
about their parents, and about you kids, both as an interested
observer and as someone who cares deeply. I won't. Rather I will
talk about my issues with this negative script called overreaction,
as well as my perception of how it has played out in the lives of
my parents, three of my grandparents, and a couple their parents
or step parents. I believe I have written about all of this stuff
before, and yet as I thought about Heather's lesson, it really
struck home with me the importance of talking more about this topic.
I believe Mothers have the largest impact on who we are in our teenage years and through the twenties. I believe our Father's impact becomes more obvious in our thirties and fourties, and hopefully by the time we are fifty we have learned enough we `rise above' any scripting, intended or unintended, and are our own person. Some of us never do make this step, and we unnecessarily struggle with things our ancestors have struggled with for our entire life. For example, we might consistently have an overreaction to a certain stimuli. This might be because the stimuli deeply scare us, and it might even be because we have preprogrammed biological reactions like vertigo (dizziness when in high places), paranoia (psychosis marked by delusions and irrational suspicion), or we have been using hallucinogens (substances like alcohol or marijuana that create the perception of objects with no reality). It breaks my heart to think any of you would choose to use any kind of artificial mood dehancer. There are those who never do get caught up in the negative scripting of their ancesters. However, many do and the scriptures point out these scripts can carry down across three and four generations (`visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation' Exodus 19:5). Our Mother's impact can be for good or for bad, based on following or rejecting their example. In otherwords, the actual basis of our choices becomes very complicated very quickly.
Given those of you who read this buy into the previous paragrah, you can hopefully follow my logic in starting a discussion on overreaction with Grandma Hafen's Mother and Step-Mother. As I understand the family stories, and I don't know what is real and what is just a story, there was an affair, Grandma Hafen's mother was heartbroken and died, and `Grandma Morris' took Grandma Hafen in as her step-daughter when she was still a baby. In my conversations with Grandma Hafen I came to the conclusion that the Grandma Morris was very much afraid Grandma Hafen would follow in her father's footsteps, and thus they kept very tight boundaries around her. There are all kinds of overreactions as a result. Grandma Hafen rebelled against being controlled. Possibly this overreaction was tied to her marrying Paul Hafen, what with his drinking (Grandma described how when they were dating Grandpa pulled out a bottle of alcohol and drank it in front of her and his friends to show off), and wild nature. I think it is reasonable to correlate Grandma's interest in sexy novels and movies, and her deep friendship with Candy (a Las Vegas call girl who had been a rodeo queen from Pecos, Texas and appears to support herself as the concubine for different rich Las Vegas men) with trying to understand her Father. I do not remember Grandma's overreactions, as I think I was being protected. However, I certainly recall Uncle Tony and Uncle Glenn and Mom talking about how angry she could get.
Mom has talked about how Uncle Tony would sluff school, and Grandpa would come in from riding the range and beat him. Then Tony would do it again, and there would be the same overreaction. I personally remember Grandpa's father, Adolph Hafen. I remember how upset Grandma Hafen was when he would come to visit because he would miss the toilet bowl and she would have to clean up the mess. I recall Grandpa calming down Grandma's overreaction, probably because I was sitting there watching it. Adolph's children are the ones who put on the family reunion each Labor Day at Pinto. Grandpa was the oldest of 13 kids, and in many ways he seems to have been the man of the house. He helped some of his sisters get to and through college. He was a self-made cattleman. He worked hard. I have written about how he would take me out to throw rocks off of the road into Calf Springs Ranch (../9830.html), and how I told him I thought I was there for a vacation. He laughed at this many times. I remember hearing how he felt like his little girl was stranded out on the farm, and so he bought her a car so Mom could get into town. In the same way he was mean to Uncle Tony, he treated Mom like the little princess who could do no wrong.
There is certainly not a 1:1 correlation allowing someone like me, who does look back and try to figure out what happened in the past, to understand what went wrong and what went right at which different event. However, I am convinced that Mom's temper tantrums were one of the negative scripts Covey talks about. As I get older, look at my mistakes, and think about the things I like and don't like about my life, it is amazing how big a role some of these negative scripts have played in my life. Overreaction is certainly related.
Dad came from the same type of hard working family Mom did. Grandpa Nelson worked too hard and he worked his kids too hard. As mentioned (../9805.html) Grandpa Nelson was electrocuted in a farm accident prior to my birth. However, I have heard about how demanding he was of his boys. I recall how upset my Dad always was with Uncle Ted, whom he considered lazy (I never did understand how to correlate someone who got a Ph.D. and became a world famous scientist in his field with being lazy). I was with Dad once when we visited Uncle Bill and Aunt Marie Krueger in Brigham City, and Dad had a meltdown overreaction. He couldn't find words to say how angry he was, and I didn't understand what was going on. There were words about `Lamanite cattle,' and other things, which made no sense to me. It was one of the few times I remember seeing my Dad overreact. The other time that comes to mind was when I hit Sara, and he proceeded to cut down a willow and whip my legs until I could not stand up. I deserved it, and I knew it then, and I know it now. My Aunt Clara Jean Bills once shared an example of Grandpa Nelson's tendency for overreaction, where she was late to meet him, and he left her on the corner of Main Street in the snow where she felt she was going to freeze to death (../9640.html).
As I listen to the horror stories of children, particularly about some of the events I have participated in, it is becoming harder for me to judge as real or as negative the events I have described or implied above. One thing I am sure of is that each of my ancestors mentioned above loved their kids, and absolutely wanted nothing but the best for their kids. Maybe because of this love, they got scared, and maybe this fear was the basis for the overreactions which were often taken so much out of context by the childen who witnessed or participated or heard about the events. And almost like Newtonian physics, for every reaction there was an equal and opposite reaction.
I have wondered if this is why I am active in the church, and if this is why some of you are not. Then I recall the spirit answering my prayer, the burning in my bosom, and the love of God sweeping across me, and I know it was not just an overreaction when I found the church. It truly was God, outside of myself, reaching into my life and touching me. And my heart aches because I know that my overreactions in the past have kept some of you from asking, from praying, from listening, and from hearing.
Heather's lesson really touched a chord with me. When she said `I learned to lie really good, in order to keep from having Mom have an overreaction,' it became crystal clear in my mind, that I created an environment where some of you kids felt you had to lie in order to survive. I can blame it on negative scripting, I can blame it on being afraid and looking beyond the mark, I can blame it on co-dependence, and none of these words are anything more than a poor excuse for bad choices. I'm truly sorry, just as I know Andrea is truly sorry for times she has overreacted. I hope none of you ever have to learn how hard it is to have four little children and to be a single Mom providing for your family, and seeing your kids make choices which scare you to death. I expect each of you will see others make choices you don't agree with, and as you do, I hope you will take the time to ponder and to consider whether or not your response is an overreaction.
Even though I am willing to take responsibility for my overreactions, I look forward to the day when each of you who have lied to me, or to Andrea, will have the guts and the integrity to say, `I lied about such and such, maybe it was in response to your overreaction, and I have grown up enough I now know there is no justifiable reason for ever lying. I'm sorry.' Maybe there are times when you don't need to say or recall something which will upset someone else, like my not sending this Thoughtlet to my Mom, and yet there is never a need to lie, sneak, and hide. If we do any of these things, we are the one who is in overreaction mode, and we need to repent. And when we confess our sin, and promise to do better, it opens doors and makes our lives whole. Confessing is the first step to becoming a transition person and to burying the negative scripts of the past.
In terms of my week, it was pretty mild, no overreaction. I obviously didn't go to Scout camp with Matt, and I missed doing this. I spent 6 hours at Chroma on Monday, 8 hours on Tuesday including a peer review of the Texaco project, 5 hours on Thursday, and 8 hours on Friday. It is a hard project, and I'm struggling with bringing it to a close. July 4th included an early morning walk through Windsor Estates and around the block with Andrea, and helping Andrea and Rachel a little bit with Rachel's room. Sara and Melanie, you need to come and see what a wonderful job Andrea and Rachel did of repainting the bathroom and Rachel's room. The rest of July 4th was spent working on getting some files together for Bryan Bentz to convert to the Infinite Grid (SM) for the Offshore Texas project. We negotiated and signed a contract with Fairfield for 4 blocks of seismic data for the Offshore Texas project. Thursday afternoon Sam LeRoy and Laura Kay Ethetton helped me on the classification of the open blocks offshore Texas.
I missed Lloyd and Luana's 50th wedding anniversary and the Nelson Familiy Reunion at the Nelson Cabin. Hopefully Paul and Audrey were able to go and represent me and our family. Andrea and I went to see Legally Blonde, and it was sold out and she talked me into going to see `Cats and Dogs.' I don't recommend it, although Matt and Rob might like it. Saturday was spent in front of the computer. We went out to dinner with Harold and Joyce Burnham at the new Sea Food place at Mason and I-10. This was a nice evening, and there was plenty of overreaction to talk about over dinner and back at their house. Today was Greg Jone's missionary farewell. He is going to the Nova Scotia Hallifax Mission. It was an excellent program and I wish you all could have been here with me. Andrea's walking lady, Rita Hathorne, who was the Jones' neighbor when they lived in back of Taylor High School came. The spirit was so thick you could cut it with a knife.
Again, I hope you each rise above the negative scripting of your youth, and that you do not wait until you are 47 and take PAIRS to overcome any tendency you might have for overreaction."