"Who Knoweth But . . .": Change and Attitude

When I was nine years old my dad received a big promotion. It was a great opportunity and as far as I know, my parents never considered turning it down. But this great promotion meant that our family would have to leave the beautiful San Francisco Bay Area of California, where my parents had lived for practically their entire married life. Worse yet, our destination was Minnesota. We were leaving the land of perfect weather and west coast sophistication for the land of a million lakes, humid mosquito-filled summers, and 20-below- zero blizzards.

I’ll never forget my mother’s description of the place after her trip there to look for a house. She went in March, when the chest-high drifts were melting and slushy. To tour homes, she had slogged through freezing mud and snow and sleet. I don’t remember her even trying to put a happy face on our new home in the north. For a gift she brought me something I had never owned before, footed flannel pajamas. “You’ll need them now,” she said darkly.

Still, we moved. For the first year or so my mom and I struggled. I missed my California friends and pretended I could communicate with them through telepathy. In school they made me do multiplication, which I hadn’t learned before, and they made me go outside in the snow at recess, even when it was super cold. Tears would leak out my eyes at the slightest problem.

But in a year or so, I made friends and learned to love the green summers and white winters. Minnesota became home, and I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.

Ten years later, my dad retired and we made plans to return to California. After the house was sold and the moving van loaded, my mom, dad, and I (now in college) sat in the car and looked at our lovely home and the tree-filled neighborhood. Silently we drove off. That night, we stopped in a motel in South Dakota, where I lay in the other bed and listened to my mother sob in my father’s arms.

But here is the lesson. In another year, my parents were happily settled in beautiful California.

It is always hard to leave what we know and go to what we don’t know. But we have to do it all the time.  My mom hated to leave California, and in ten years, she hated to leave Minnesota. But in both cases, we found happiness where we went.  I wish that my mom and I could have expected to find happiness sooner, I wish that instead of mourning my old friends and complaining about the cold, I could have seen the adventure and the joy of making new friends and trying new things.

I wish I had been more like the brother of Jared, in the Book of Mormon. His family had lived at the time of the Tower of Babel, had seen the confusion of languages, the loss of community. A refugee, cut off from all he had known, he had every right to complain. But instead of despairing, he and his family prayed for guidance, trusting that good things could be before them. They looked forward to better times in a better place, saying “Who knoweth but the Lord will carry us forth into a land which is choice above all the earth?”

I’m thinking about this now, because my son has a great new job which means he will have to leave a beautiful home in a wooded neighborhood, by a lovely creek, walking distance from the library. They will leave dear friends and a great nanny. I feel for them, knowing how hard it is. I’m hoping they can realize that what is before can be as good—or even better than--what they have now. It might be a land choice above all the earth. I hope they can look for happiness in the change ahead.

Of course, that’s easy for me to say. I’m not the one moving.

“And it came to pass that Jared spake again unto his brother, saying: Go and inquire of the Lord whether he will drive us out of the land, and if he will drive us out of the land, cry unto him whither we shall go. And who knoweth but the Lord will carry us forth into a land which is choice above all the earth? And if it so be, let us be faithful unto the Lord, that we may receive it for our inheritance.” (The Book of Mormon, Ether 1:38)