Push me; pull me!!!!

January 24, 2015

Several years ago I noticed a familiar character on many of Jean’s baptism quilts she gives to each child at they turn eight and are baptized. The push me; pull me looks exactly as you might imagine. It has two heads and a partial body stuck together so one is pulling and the other is pushing.  Someone will know where this mythical creature comes from. I think Jean said it was from some fiction story that the children all like. I began thinking about how my life is organized. How many times I feel like there are two ways to go and I simply do not have the knowledge, the understanding of the future, or the spiritual guidance to lead me in the way that would bless the lives of my family. Granted, many times the decision is one that can go either way and no long-term affect will be felt; however, there are those critical times in which a single decision can make our lives a heaven on earth, or a long spiraling slide down to the dark side.

About a thousand years ago in 1981, we started thinking about moving away from Holbrook, Arizona. We liked it just fine but the opportunities for professional growth and for the future lives of our children were limited. We build our “forever” house there on Spurlock hill overlooking the valley and thought we would teach at Holbrook High School until I retired and play in real estate, buying, remodeling, and building a retirement inventory; however, shortly after we completed our house and moved in, we found that my job had been cut due to “financial constraints”. We fought for and won an alternate job – teaching in special education – which I eagerly accepted. I began taking special education classes at Northern Arizona University and got very serious, once again, about making Holbrook High School my place in the sun. That lasted until about the first of November when it became absolutely apparent to me that the job wasn’t about teaching these beautiful children at all. My role was to keep these children in a closet sized classroom with minimal opportunities for the children to grow and learn. I am sure the district was doing all they could to accommodate them; but, to me the job I had was to deny them the respect and appreciation they should be able to garner from life.

This is when the push me; pull me syndrome began. One day we would determine that moving was our only viable course of action. The next day we would decide that we needed to stick it out, enjoying the blessings of a good home, a very rewarding (albeit, discouraging) job, a wonderful community, an active and delightful LDS church atmosphere, and close proximity to my mother and brother. It was like a fever. Some days it would rage and blister our minds with a desire to make lemonade out of the lemon we had purchased. Other days the fever would cool and we would look ‘objectively” at the life in front of us and of our children and very creatively work ourselves into the decision to make the move now that we were relatively young and could find opportunities elsewhere. Our friends Bob and Jean Lewis would go to dinner with us and when we left we would have the for sale sign up on our house. When we came back, we would take the sign down. If it hadn’t been so complicated and serious, it would have been hilarious. Finally, we reached the point of no return; boxed everything us and trucked it to Orem, Utah where our lives has been centered ever since.

Was it a good decision or a bad decision? Did it make any difference? Would we have had an excellent life with all our children blossoming as they have here? Regardless of the possible alternative outcomes we will never know. We left the pull me; push me behind and have gone on to do the very best we could, calling on God to give us guidance, courage, and conviction as to the things we should and need to do in our temporal sphere.

Take time to reach out to your children, your family, your friends, and your enemies. God loves us all and wants nothing buy the joy of eternal life for us all.

Duane Jacobs, husband, grandfather, father, uncle, brother, cousin, and friend