What I Have Been Given: What I Have to Give

What I Have Been Given:  What I Have to Give

Carolyn Hendry

My daughter Lauren made this for me as a gift.  The initials in the book are B&G for Boy and Girl.  The initials on  this tree are C&B--for Carolyn and Brent.

At the Ward Christmas party last night, I got to tell Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree.  At the end, I returned to our table, where Nathan is crying in deep, heartfelt sobs.  Asked  later, he told me that he felt deeply how much the tree had given—and still the boy wanted more.  Nathan’s Asperger’s usually keeps him insulated from strong feelings by walling him safely inside a shell.  He knows that God loves him, that the Lord knows him and his desires, but he is wired differently from most of us.  What he is feeling doesn’t reach his conscious mind.  I am glad that the story was able to work its way into his heart that night.

After I told the story, Mike came to me and thanked me for the story—he had never heard it before.  Two other members also thanked me for telling it.  For the first time in my life, I feel gratitude for the way that they reached out to me.  Like Nathan, I’m also wired strangely because of my manic depression.  I hold  far away from me what others think or feel about what I do.  It started with reactions to my manic depression—“water off a duck’s back” Brent would remind me when I had to be with those who thought I should just “snap out of it” and quit looking for attention.  For years I didn’t even bother to read Thank You notes that people would send me.  I figured that I had done what I’d done because I wanted to or felt inspired to do.  That someone would notice my actions or feel any kind of response to it was meaningless to me.  

The fact that I have always been able to open my heart to Brent without reserve—and that he has never violated that trust—is beginning to work its way from my inside to my outside.  As love and gratitude come from others, my spirit is enriched and I feel thankful for their good wishes.

When I was sixteen, I made a list of things that I wanted to accomplish by the time I was thirty.  One of those was to influence people so that they were better after having heard me tell a story, give a talk, sing, or read something I’d written. During high school, I wrote incessantly—pounds and pounds of paper filled with my hurried script.  I couldn’t write fast enough to record everything I was feeling, everything I wanted to share. I wrote essays and recorded events in my life from the perspective of someone floating at ceiling height . . . as if I were watching the drama of my life happen on a stage.

Sociologists and those who study world literature say that there  are no new stories—only the retelling of seven basic, formulaic plots.  The record of an individual would contain years when he overcame some incredible difficulty, how he became a success some aspect of his life, what he sought to obtain through his labors, when he left home to face the world on his own, happy times, tragic occasions, and—as when we are baptized—the rebirth of his soul as he embraces truth.

Elder Eyring, in October 2015, declared that “No matter where we go, our Priesthood goes with us.”  I personalize that for me:  “No matter where I go, my face, my soul, my heart, my reputation—all go with me.”  I carry the baggage of my personal history with me every day.  I will bring this lifetime of baggage with me when I die and face Christ—how I faced trials, what I spent my time on, how I acted when I was far from home and no one around me knew me, the joys I treasure, the sorrows that weigh down my heart, if I sought out and then embraced the truths of the Gospel.  

I see myself after this life recognizing Christ, dropping everything and running to Him to put my arms around him and feel His around me.  I want to thank Him for Brent, for my children, for my parents and brother and sisters—for all the incredible things I learned during my lifetime.  I want to thank Him for horses and for books to read; for dark chocolate and my body; for college and for limiting high school to just four agonizing years.  I want to press my face into his chest—for I imagine that I will still be 5’ 2” when my body is resurrected—and smell the light of his Being.  

Chris Young sings a song, “The Shoebox.”  In the song, he finds an old shoebox as he is cleaning out a closet.  He finds a card made for him by his mother.  In it she counsels him: “Don't forget to fill an old shoebox full of things to look back on.” 

The first time I heard it I wanted to rush back home and pull out a container that I keep underneath my bed.  In it is the first (and only) doll that my dad bought for my first daughter.  There is an ice scraper from my Grandpa Burton’s gas station—the first in Star Valley, Wyoming.  There is a rabbit made for me by my daughter: yellow flannel, pink paper, tape and thin white string.  There is a heavy, flat Christmas tree ornament made by my son with his pre-school picture in the center.  There is a plaster handprint, painted red, that my second daughter gave me for a Mother’s Day long ago and a Christmas angel my mother made out of a lace handkerchief.  These are all part of my story.  I may share a common storyline with all of humanity, yet my story is like my finger print, or my DNA.  It is impossible to mistake it for any other person’s. 

The items in my box, and hundreds more, fill the baggage I’m amassing right now.  Some things are heavier and harder to carry than others.   There are things marked by despair, others saturated with joy, some marred by shame.  I cling even to the difficult objects—they are part of my story, irrevocably melded to my soul.  I want all of these elements there when I open my bags to Christ’s view.  The miles and years that have made me who I am; carved a heart that I hope will be an acceptable offering.

At the end of The Giving Tree, the boy returns to the tree, that loved and gave all she had, that the boy could be happy.  The tree is stripped of her fruit, branches and her trunk chopped down.  Even though the story line follows one of the seven universal plots, the events themselves happened to a singular tree and a specific boy—grown to an old man.  We are left at the end of the story with an unforgettable image of an old, tired man resting as he sits on a stump.  This stump who discovers that, even though she thought she had nothing to offer, she is just exactly what her boy needs.  And she is happy.