Living in the Pause

There's a story behind the name of this website. I love it so much because it's been an important private lesson - so I thought I'd let you in on it.

For many years, I wrote a weekly email to my two children in an optimistic attempt for our family to feel connected and to and remind them of their roots. What it actually did was serve as a weekly journal entry of sorts, recounting life events when I didn't sit and write with a pen in my journal. Which I still love, but rarely do. In my mind, writing with pen and paper looks a lot like this picture.

Late in the summer of 2020, as I got ready to click "send" one week, I realized I'd left the subject line blank. I considered the prior weeks filled with more breathless and whirlwind living than usual, and realized this past week had been uncharacteristically calm, with nothing in particular meriting a headline. Imagining that would last all of fifteen minutes, I somewhat wryly typed the subject, nearly as a quip: "Living in the pause", and sent the email.

Fast forward a few months to the very end of the year. My darling friend Gale Sears, a prolific writer of historical fiction, called to see if I was interested in contributing to an anthology project she was involved in. If so, she'd have the project's editor contact me, as Gale had recommended me to her.

The project was to be a collection of 24 essays - two on each of twelve qualities possessed by the Savior. The book was to be titled Like Him, and was slated to come out the following year in time for Christmas. The one quality she had yet to assign - which would be mine if I wanted to submit something - was temperance.

The editor hesitantly told me all the other contributors were turning in their final drafts on Monday. This was the Friday after Christmas. The deadline was in three days.

No. Pressure.

She hastily assured me I could have more time - THANK YOU - and asked me how much I thought I needed. Funny thing, the minute she said the word temperance, my funny little brain - which lives in a constant state of free association - plucked that random email subject line out of the millions of locked file drawers: living in the pause. I told the editor, "I think I have an idea - can you give me a week?" She agreed.

I awoke early two days later on Sunday morning, earlier than usual. I didn't need to get up yet, because it was only 5:30 a.m. I worked on nestling for a little while longer, but my brain wouldn't have it; off it went in different directions about a potential essay on temperance. As I lay there with my body and brain arguing over nestling or writing, the Holy Ghost broke the tie with a whisper: "Why don't we get cracking on that article?"

It stuns me as I type this to recount: what ended up being published in that beautiful anthology is very nearly the first draft that spilled out on the sleepy winter morning. I instantly knew it wasn't mine; I was just God's little helper on this one. Mother Teresa wrote:

"I am a little pencil in God's hands. He does the thinking. He does the writing. He does everything and sometimes it is really hard because it is a broken pencil and He has to sharpen it a little more." (Mother Teresa, The Joy in Loving: A Guide to Daily Living)

It was like that.

I made a few minor edits over the next two days and submitted the essay on Monday with the other writers who'd had their assignments for months.

There's a technical word for what happened: miracle.

The book came out in late 2021 when I was in a coma on a ventilator. It was months before I could get the rush of going into a bookstore, finding the book, and looking on p. 49 to see my name looking back at me with the title: Living in the Pause.

Fast forward again to early 2024. My dear friend who became my web designer, Abe Sloan, asked me what I wanted to call the blog we were about to launch. Again, those four words got plucked from the mess of locked file drawers in my brain, and this website, Living in the Pause, was born.

That original phrase - "living in the pause" - was so instinctive and random when it glibly became the subject for an email to my children in 2020. Little did I know God was beginning an incredible private lesson which would take more than three years to get to the punchline.

First, God took that original random thought and helped me develop it into an essay on temperance. Viktor Frankl epitomized this kind of pause when he wrote:

"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom." (Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning)

Later, God taught me more when President Russell M. Nelson spoke to the young adults of the church in May 2022. He said:

"Mortal lifetime is hardly a nanosecond compared with eternity. But my dear brothers and sisters, what a crucial nanosecond it is! During this life we get to choose which laws we are willing to obey - those of the celestial kingdom, or the terrestrial, or the telestial - and, therefore, in which kingdom of glory we will live forever." (https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/broadcasts/worldwide-devotional-for-young-adults/2022/05/12nelson?lang=eng)

Calling mortality a "nanosecond" in this context put profound import on those four glib little words; President Nelson was describing THE pause! The eternal pause where decisions are going to matter SO. MUCH. It was this further learning of the lesson that led to the website having a subtitle:

"Living in the Pause: Navigating the Temporary of Now While Living for the Eternal"

Learning to live in the pause makes living more intentional. Recognizing mortality as an eternal pause helps me prize the chance to practice and try again every day. We're here to practice preferences, and if I don't prefer the eternal yet, I can educate my desires until, over time, I do.

I hope that's what you'll find here - perspective to sift through the temporary, temporal, stuff that in the end, doesn't really matter - and cleave to the stuff that will always matter - the eternal stuff.