Doctor Grandma

I have the coolest grandma in the world. She raises buffalo (ok, ok, Great Danes, but try convincing the five-year-old version of my baby brother they weren't buffalo), she once owned an arcade where patrons were required to kiss a ceramic duck if they cursed, you'll never beat her at air hockey (or bowling, for that matter) unless she lets you, and she's still awesome even when you're stranded in Laramie, Wyoming... which is an impressive feat. I can't see, smell or taste Diet Pepsi, root beer popsicles or peanut M&Ms without being magically transported to her dining room table to play a round of Rook and somewhere in the boxes in the garage (we just finished moving a few days ago- gimme a break!) is carefully packed a grandma-hand-painted ceramic statue of a little girl reading a book to her little sibling that has accompanied me throughout at least the last 20 years of my life. I remember when she would come for Easter and bring us baskets, and how guilty I would feel when she would stay home from church or leave early to make us delicious food... I remember a particular cake batter she mixed up and then accidentally dropped on the floor. "I didn't even swear!" she proudly proclaimed. Years later I was in a car accident and giggled when my first thought in the aftermath was "I didn't even swear!"

I have the coolest grandma in the world.

One of my grandma's secret magic talents is playing Doctor Mario. I remember watching her play, as a child, and being utterly baffled by her. She would deliberately not break the most obvious lines. Sometimes she would just drop a block in the most random place. She would build up these impossible-to-come-back-from piles of bizarre piece placements and I would sit there inwardly puzzling to myself, "Why in the world would you do that? Why didn't you use that block to break that line? Oh, here's a double red, she'll break it now... WHAT THE HECK WHY DIDN'T SHE DO IT???" It made no sense. And the blocks would fall faster and the stage would get more cluttered and things would spiral quickly out of control, and I knew she was about to lose... At least that's how I saw it.

Until.........

Until she would get the perfect sequence of pieces and BAM BAM BAM BAM one by one she would calmly set them into place and the giant mess of seemingly random insanity would simplify, condense, disappear... all in seconds. She always knew. She knew that if she just waited, the necessary colors would fall. If she just set up the situation in a way that made sense to her, though perhaps not to her watching grand-daughter, she could make it right when the time came. Eventually I learned to trust that she would fix it all when she was ready. That she was just setting up the perfect circumstances to win the stage in the coolest possible way. Grandma knew what she was doing, and I knew it, even though I still couldn't always see it.

Welcome to my recent history.

Heavenly Father knows what He's doing with me. I can't see it and I can't always understand why things happen the way they do. Lately it's felt a bit like one of my grandma's Doctor Mario setups: a strange, inexplicable set of difficult circumstances where I've had no choice but to sit and watch the pieces fall, and sometimes wonder, "Why in the world would you do that? Why didn't you use that block to break that line? Oh, here's a double red, it'll break now... WHAT THE HECK WHY DIDN'T YOU DO IT???"

But I've learned -am still learning- to put my trust in One who knows better, and sees the end before the process. He knows the setup. He knows where to place the pieces. He knows just how crazy it can get before it's time to complete the stage and move on to the next. And I'm learning to let Him take the controller, because Heaven knows what a mess I've made when I've tried to play on my own. Every piece of my life, even tree limbs through my roof, has had a strategic placement in its stage, and lucky (blessed) me: when I let Him drop the blocks, I get to win in the coolest possible way.