My mom taught me everything I know... about insanity

My bed was heaped high with fabric — fabric that had been piled in tiny, orderly stacks earlier in the day — but, like a monster engorging on its favorite num-nums, was now as high as I was tall and threatened to overwhelm my entire room.

It was at that moment I realized it — I'm becoming my mom.

I think under normal circumstances, this type of realization is supposed to scare the bajeebers out of a person. "I'm becoming my MOM?! OH NO!" But for me, I can't help but hope that this truly is the case. My dad likes to say that my mom "moves from one crisis to another," and he's absolutely right. For my mom, her year can be divided into periods of intense activity in preparation for giant service projects. My mom is truly the queen of service.

Let me give you a few examples.

Many of our service projects are rooted in the Miss Utah Organization, which is part of the Miss America program. (And if I've never mentioned it before, the Miss America Organization is ENTIRELY DIFFERENT than the Miss USA program, and it is NOT okay to compare the two. Just so we're clear...heh.) I competed at Miss Utah multiple times, but in my first year, I was incredibly grumpy by the end of the week-long competition. I couldn't figure out why, since I'm normally not that grumpy (stop laughing — I'm not) but eventually I realized that the Miss Utah competition week was incredibly selfish. Everything became about ME, which is counterintuitive to what pageants should be about. When you win a pageant title — if you're a good titleholder — you focus on your platform A LOT. My platform was service, so I spent the 11 months leading up to the pageant doing service projects. But during the Miss Utah week, I mostly just sat around and thought about myself: "It's my turn on stage," "get your dress out of my way," "I'm bored," "I'm tired," "Press my gown," "Do my hair"... You get the idea.

So after winning a second title that would send me back to Miss Utah, my mom suggested I bring along a service project to work on throughout the week. Before long, though, she decided it would be even better if I brought a service project for ALL the girls. In the end, Mom and I brought more than 50 medical dolls for the girls to stuff and sew shut. The dolls would then be given to Primary Children's Medical Center. Mom, my ward members, and I spent the months leading up to the pageant sewing the dolls. Then Mom said the dolls couldn't be naked, so we sewed 50 tiny hospital gowns too. Sewing dolls wasn't enough, though, as Mom also insisted we bring along a quilt for the girls to decorate with fabric markers, and quilts to tie. All told, we commandeered an entire room at the Capitol Theatre and filled it full of service projects.

For three out of my four years competing at Miss Utah, I brought along more service projects for the girls to work on. Hospital dolls, quilts, scrunchies, and more hospital dolls — there was always something. What started as an individual project to keep me from being grumpy grew into a massive project involving 50 girls and 50 Little Miss girls. This theme — evolving service projects — endures. If Mom doesn't have a crisis, she invents one.

When I "aged out" of the Miss Utah program, the Miss Utah board asked Mom to be in charge of the new service committee, and asked if she would develop a Miss Utah Day of Service. It was supposed to be a chance for the 50+ queens to get together and work on service projects. What was perhaps supposed to be a small activity morphed into a giant one, because that's how Mom works. We've made beaded necklaces, colored pages for file folder games, tied quilts, fringed blankets, decorated pillowcases, created coloring folders, made "I Spy" bottles, cut out puppets, made memory game kits, and colored quilt squares. Currently, in my bedroom, I have a number of items waiting to be taken to Primary Children's. When I say "a number," I mean 45 pillowcases, 367 scrunchies, 200 "I Spy" bottles, and about 50 puppet kits. It's madness. Luckily someone else took all the blankets home, or else I wouldn't have room to move.

The Festival of Trees is another big, crazy service project. During my first pageant year, Mom and I decided we should decorate and donate a tree. It doesn't sound like a big deal, does it? Buy a Christmas tree, decorate it, and then have it auctioned off for charity. We were originally going to decorate the tree with donated hats and gloves, etc., which turned into a project where people from all over the world sent us handmade items for our tree. After the first year, we were flabbergasted by how much work it involved, and we swore never to do it again. The next year, of course, we did it again. This time it involved a whole lot of Sculpey, some very tired fingers (mine), and a very, very busy Thanksgiving break where I barely slept. And then we did it again — buying and painting boxes to look like dogs in honor of my aunt. And then we did it again — this time with double the trees. What started out as a fun, simple plan in 2005 turned into this:

And this:

And this: 

When it comes to other things, like Scouting, I think Mom's theory is "Why go small when you can go HUGE?" Under her direction, we've turned our local church buildings into circus tents (complete with animals), the Academy Awards, Hawaiian luaus, and construction zones. This January it will happen again - and it involves angels.

Service is engrained in me because of my mom. My roommates have accepted the fact that I'm always going to be doing something weird when they come into my room. They've seen me sculpt things, sew things, spray things, burn things, and cut things, all for various service projects. My roommate just told me she walked downstairs and saw that somebody was quilting. She figured it was me because "that's the type of stuff you're always doing."

The most recent insanity my mom spearheaded came when she was called to be in charge of the ward Christmas party. Now, sometimes ward Christmas parties (I'm speaking "Mormon" here, but hang with me) are controversial. There's a lot of debate over them — keep them fun, sing carols, have dinner, invite Santa, or walk through a dark room and look at pictures of Christ, or (to quote my brother) "dress up like homeless people and eat on the floor." To translate, he means reenacting the Savior's birth in Bethlehem by dressing up like First World shepherds and eating bread, cheese, and grapes while sitting on blankets and feeling uplifted.

In case you couldn't guess, my family falls in the "have dinner, invite Santa" camp. I understand the desire to make the ward Christmas party hyper Christ-centric, but they quickly devolve into weird, uncomfortable, boring gatherings instead. (Sacrilege!) So my mom decided t0 skip the controversy and focus on service instead. (Of course she did.) On December 10, my ward members did a couple of massive service projects involving providing Christmas gifts for two families, and making 90 stockings and mini Christmas trees for our local nursing home. Most of the stockings were delivered Christmas morning, and we delivered the last 18 Christmas stockings (stuffed full of items my mom asked people to donate — candy, combs, stuffed animals, Chapstick, hats, tissues, scarves, etc.) on Christmas night.

This ward party service project, in case you were curious, was the project that caused my bed to be eaten by a wave of marauding fabric. You see, during my Thanksgiving visit home, my mom mentioned that one of the nurses at the nursing home said the women love to get new headbands. What began as a simple question: "Do you think it's hard to make fabric flowers for headbands?" turned into this:

Exactly 91 headbands with flowers, hanging from the bottom of my loft bed in order to let the fabric stiffener dry... I would blame my mom for talking me into making 91 headbands, but I volunteered to do it. As I was cutting out flowers, though, it hit me. As much as I can make fun of my mom for adopting and inventing crises, I'm turning out just like her.

Oh, sure, I didn't sleep for the entire month of December because I was too busy cutting out flowers and headbands, sewing flowers onto the headbands, and then spraying the headbands with fabric stiffener. Sure, I bought a $350 sewing machine (despite my utter hatred of sewing) mostly so I could sew the headbands together. (It's OK — it was a Cyber Monday buy, so I got it for $139. Sweet.) Sure, my bed is covered in a pile of fabric and there's even more fabric on my floor. Sure, the project cost me money. But the hope that I might be turning into my mom makes it all worth it.

I once had a high school friend ask me why I spent so much time working on a Cub Scout project. "It seems like a waste of time to me," she said. That's not how I see it at all. This world runs on service, whether people realize it or not. PTA, AYSO, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, etc. — those people are volunteers, donating their time. As a society, my main fear is that we've come to a place where we think "There's a need. Oh well, somebody will take care of it."

Folks, I've never met anyone named "Somebody."

In my opinion, we need to become the "somebody" who will improve the world  through service and volunteerism. Maybe it's my mom's influence, or maybe it's my prideful conviction that I can do a job better than anyone else. Either way, in terms of volunteer work, my personal theme is this:

"Somebody" won't do it — I will do it. 

(If nothing else, at least I'm putting my pride to good use.) As stupid as I feel when my roommates come into my room to find it half covered in boxes of things for Primary Children's, and half covered in fabric piles and flower headbands, I wouldn't want to change the insanity I've been taught. If I'm not spending my time helping others, that means I'm spending my time on myself, and that's not where I want my life's focus to be.

To quote Lord of the Rings, "Such is oft the course of deeds that move the wheel of the world: Small hands do them because they must, while the eyes of the great are elsewhere."

To throw out another quote that's even more poignant and true, "A very large ship is benefited very much by a very small helm in the time of a storm, by being kept workways with the wind and the waves. Therefore ... let us cheerfully do all things that lie in our power, and then may we stand still, with the utmost assurance, to see the salvation of God, and for his arm to be revealed."

As long as there is need in this world, and I have the means and ability to help address the needs of even one person, I'll embrace all the insanity it takes.

Cheers to moving from one crisis to another.

And thanks Mom.