Thankful

You know, it's funny. Life can get going so fast that you forget just how much the Lord takes care of you. The above picture is of my flower bed that I put in the front of our house. Each year I plant some flowers in it and some from previous years show up unexpectedly. Every year, I am amazed how beautiful flowers are. I am sure many of you who know someone in the Gila Valley have seen pictures of all the poppies and natural flowers that are in bloom right now. It is truly beautiful all around our valley. But I am always drawn to my flower bed because I like to plant red flowers. The rose bush is a mini rose bush that my mom gave to Shannon several years ago. When it started, it was about 1/6 the size but has grown each year and in a few weeks will be covered in roses. The other little flowers that are everywhere else, I just think they are awesome. I bought some three years ago and they flourished and so I bought more. To my amazement, they survived the winters and come back bigger and better than ever so I bought more and included different colors. Now I hardly have anything else in the flower bed. None of this has anything to do with anything. I just am mesmerized by these blossoms. However, this year because they have all bloomed and cover the whole area, for some reason it has made me reflect on a few things regarding how blessed my life is. And so now I will share them with you.

When I was a teenager growing up in Duncan, I hated Thatcher. They were so good at everything and they knew it. Confidence (smugness, massive ego, whatever) just oozed from them. I remember getting the feeling from visiting Thatcher sports teams that it was almost an inconvenience to have to lower themselves to come to such a podunk place as Duncan. How I despised them. But let me be fair, I also very much wanted to date some of the female thems. I am not going to lie, Duncan boys actively day dreamed about Thatcher girls. A lot. But of course, we knew they were too stuck up and wouldn't date us anyway so we hated them too. Then, I graduated and headed to EAC and met many of these people who I had so actively despised and discovered something about them and about me. There were a lot of good people from Thatcher. I became pretty good friends with several of them. Yeah, they could be a little cocky. But I also discovered that they viewed Duncan as really pretty hostile. Looking back, I can see that. Anyway, I discovered I couldn't have been more wrong about Thatcher. But even more, I realized that my dislike of Thatcher really stemmed from a desire to be a part of a community like Thatcher. In my mind, they had it all and I resented it. When I was at EAC, I started to realize this and changed my position to wanting to be a part of Thatcher. I was 17 at the time. Of course, I hotly defended Duncan at every opportunity (having a mascot called the punkin rollers in your history implies that you will have to defend yourself a great deal. Duncan also did themselves no favors by then changing to a mascot with a misspelled version of Wildcats. Yes the K in kats differentiated us from Morenci, but it did set us up for ridicule at the same time.) and I still do. When Shannon and I attend a Duncan/Thatcher basketball game at the EA tournament, I will root for Duncan. I have to. And I will until I have a child involved. In college before my mission, I made a stupid bet that Duncan's football team would beat Thatcher and the loser would have to stand and sing the opposing fight song in front of the whole EAC choir. Of course Duncan got 42'd. Did I learn anything from this? Not really because I made the same bet after my mission and...Duncan got 42'd again. Not my finest hour. But I really grew to love my association with people from Thatcher.

Where am I going with this? Despite me forgetting much of this and completely giving up on ever living anywhere in Arizona besides Mesa or Tucson, the Lord never forgot. I have been so blessed to marry one of the most wonderful women ever who just happens to be a beautiful blonde Thatcher girl. I live and serve in the bishopric of THE Thatcher 1st ward. As previously documented I have even had the pleasure of dipping my toes into local Thatcher politics. The Lord has blessed me to have everything I ever wanted when I was a 17 year old kid. And now as I get ready to turn 37, it is still everything I ever wanted.

I hope my Duncan family and friends don't think I have forgotten where I came from. There is a beauty and stillness in Duncan you can't find in many places. It will always be my home. But my daughters will be the blonde Thatcher girls I always admired. My sons can be those cocky jerks...wait never mind. Bottom line, none of what I have described will ever mean anything to anyone like it means to me. It may not even make sense to anyone reading it. But when I looked at my flowers the other day and had this realization, it was a testimony to me that the Lord wants to bless us with our desires. Especially if they are good desires that will better us as people. I feel I am a better person because of the friendships and bonds that I have formed here in Thatcher, Arizona and today, I am grateful for his blessings.

The other thing my flowers made me think of is how beautiful life can be when you adhere to what is right. Non-sports enthusiasts are going to roll their eyes at my next analogy but hang with me here. This last weekend was the Master's Golf Tournament. All eyes heading into this tournament were on Tiger Woods and how would he perform after all of his life issues off the course. As it turned out, he spun out of control starting on Saturday and could never pull it together to do well on Sunday. But the truly amazing story was that of the eventual champion Phil Mickelson.

Up front, I am sure Phil is not perfect. But I have enjoyed being a fan of his for a while now especially due to a few similarities that have occured in our lives. Now please don't think I am going all stalker on him or anything. I know our lives are very different. His ad revenue is currently doing fine and my ad revenue is limited to anything I could make off Trades and Sales with William Perry. It is just that his first daughter was born right after ours was. I remember the 1999 US Open when he wore a beeper on the course so that he could walk off at any time to be there for the birth of his first child. I was holding a two month old Abby watching this tournament unfold. As it turned out, he lost the tournament on the final putt by Payne Stewart. Pretty devastating loss, but definitely made up for with his new baby. For some reason, I just felt a bit of a bond with him at that point. Five years later, he was constantly dogged for being the guy who couldn't win a major tournament (The Masters, The US Open, The British Open or the PGA Championship). At that point, I was feeling very down about myself as well because despite being a pretty smart guy, I couldn't get a job that required much of me and that I could support my family on very well. In 2004, he won The Masters. As silly as it may sound, it inspired me to know that sometimes, you have to be patient (Great talk by President Uchtdorf by the way) and trust in the Lord to take care of you. That same year, a way was provided to have Logan come to us with insurance in place to pay for him and then within a few months we were on our way to Thatcher.

This last year, Phil had his wife and his mother diagnosed with Breast Cancer within a month of each other. My mother also was diagnosed with cancer. Fortunately for him, both have been given good outlooks for the future. Unfortunately, my mother did not. However, I can't imagine going through what we went through with my mom while at the same time worrying about Shannon for the same reason. Anyway, this tournament was going to be the first time Phil's wife would be able to travel with him to a tournament since she started undergoing treatment. I was rooting for him big time. As it played out, the big story regarding Tiger was what it was, but the symbolism of Phil Mickelson standing by the 18th green hugging his wife with tears running down their faces couldn't have provided a bigger contrast. Had Tiger won, his wife was not there to greet him. His children were no where to be found. Because of choices he made, Tiger could have won and it still would have been an empty victory. Phil could have lost and still walked off victorious. It made me so very thankful for my family. And I am back to the same point, the Lord has given me so very much that I probably don't deserve. Each day, whether I win or lose, I go home to a group of people who consider me a winner (and believe me I have come home feeling like a pretty big loser sometimes). I know the Lord loves us. I know he loves me. And I believe sometimes, he likes to provide symbolism for what is important in this life and what isn't. I even think he would use a golf tournament if the opportunity presented itself.



I don't know if any of this made sense to anyone. I don't really care. It made sense to me. But for those who just want a few good pictures on a blog and not so much non stop yakking, I present some recent photos taken at the Rapier Reunion held in Mesa on March 27th.