The past 3 weekends have been spiritual weekends. Uplifting yes, but not quite in the way that I anticipated. That probably merits a little explaining.
Every year our stake Relief Society presidency holds a dinner prior to the General RS broadcast. I love the RS broadcast because there are no children and I can focus. So that night I had a great dinner with sisters from my ward and then stuffed my purse full of tissues. I was positive that the messages at the broadcast would leave me a weeping mess because it would be about enduring to the end, etc. etc. Not so.
Background -- one of the things I've been struggling with the past few weeks since we've discovered all of this info. about Aaron is my calling. I actually love my calling -- or I should say aspects of it. But being the Relief Society President for my ward is a big job and I feel a lot of guilt (A LOT OF GUILT) when I don't do what I feel like I should be doing for that calling. It has been a trial of faith I think to not ask for a release and I've struggled with it already. So I'm sitting there in the broadcast and the intermediate hymn is "I'll go where you want me to go, dear Lord, I'll be what you want me to be". And I lost it because I knew that I shouldn't ask for a release. I should prepare my counselors to do as much as they can without me. It's not what I want honestly. I'm still really worried about doing it all -- being there for Aaron every second in case we lose him, not neglecting my other 3 children who need me because I'm their mom, maintaining my sanity, and then thinking about the 180 sisters in our ward? But perhaps it's what I need. I don't actually really know that, but I guess the Lord does!!
General Conference the next weekend was very good although keeping the kids going through 8 hours of "church" presents it's own challenges. But I did manage to actually hear some things that were strengthening. I particularly enjoyed the talks about the importance of women and morality and Elder Bednar's talk about tithing. These last few weeks as Chopper has been furloughed it's been stressful to know what to do -- even though our families will help us financially if we need it -- I have been struck very hard by the things that we need to be doing in order to be more secure than we are. But we have been blessed. We haven't won the lottery magically or come into money but we've had several people bring us meals and what we have is enough to make ends meet. That is a miracle in and of itself and I think it's come because of paying our tithing. I don't want Chopper to be out of work but perhaps we needed a strong wake up call about organizing our household better than we ever have before.
Finally, last weekend I was able to attend a Time Out For Women conference. Friday was the best because John Bytheway and Sherri Dew were speakers and Jenny Oaks Baker was the musical artist -- she is amazing on her violin!! I took lots of notes! Saturday was a little harder because I was so tired from being up late, missing naps (I swear I've regressed to toddler-hood) and the speakers in the morning (Chris Williams and Sandra Turley) were both wonderful but emotional. I had to hold back because you still are in public and I hate crying in public. When I got home that night I had to release all of that excess emotion. Chopper was pretty worried, said I hadn't cried like that in a long time. But I woke up Sunday morning feeling actually refreshed and ready to face things again. Of course, you know me, that doesn't mean I've stopped leaking!
None of the worry and stress have been erased of course. In fact, it seems that we continue to be heaped upon. I suppose there's something we still need that we haven't yet gotten or learned. And in the meantime, we go day by day looking for the miracles that are out there and doing what we can to gain blessings to help us through. I'm glad our children are little through all of this though honestly. They are a blessing to be worry free and their happy, goofy, frustrating little selves. We told the girls that Aaron's heart is broken and he'll be sick for a while -- I'm pretty sure it went over their heads. And that's probably a good thing for now.
Oh this is COMPLETELY off subject. William had his 15 month well-child visit yesterday. 22 lbs (16%), 30 inches long (30%). Cute factor 95%. Ok that was really cheesy.
No comments:
Post a Comment