Journal Entry

This blog is my journal ... just so ya know. And not only does it contain cute stories and funny things and good memories ... it is also going to contain some thoughts. I know you're in shock. I promise you they won't be too deep so don't get all weird on me. I'm not a terribly deep person anyways so don't worry. There are just some things that I need to write down - 1. for me to remember, 2. so someday my children will know, 3. probably lots of other good reasons too.

There was a Relief Society activity tonight. And I didn't want to go. I don't really know why I didn't want to go. In fact I complained to several people about not wanting to go but never really coming up with a valid reason why, just lots of whining and saying bratty things. But I had a small part to do and felt obligated so I made myself just do it. I was talking to my good friend Amy, complaining, and we discussed the possibility that it was Satan trying to convince me to stay home. I'm glad I didn't.

It was about gratitude. I've been feeling a lot lately like I don't have very much to be grateful for right now. In fact staying positive is downright exhausting. I fake being happy, not very well, and usually only to everyone else but my family. And I come away feeling exhausted and that I have nothing left for them. I feel like I'm totally failing as a mom (and wife) right now.

I'm not mad at Heavenly Father. I'm just tired. Too tired to feel spiritual.

Tonight I realized that I need to give more praise to my Father in Heaven, to thank him for small daily miracles. I know that if I grew to think more positively about life then life itself will truly be more positive. And I need to stop complaining. I have so many blessings that I SHOULD FEEL HAPPY. My basic point is this ... Heavenly Father WANTS us to be happy. He is trying to teach me to look beyond the right now - because it's so temporary, so small to Him and what I really need to do is to have enough faith to know how little this means in the big picture.

So - tonight Sis. Lee told us about a study that said (I think I remember correctly) that the more you acknowledge the good things in your life, your happiness level will increase by 25%. So whatever it is right now then next week it will be 25% better until by some future date (hopefully not too distant) I will again be at my own personal happiness level.

I have always known that my children are just a mirror of me, that mom is the sole person responsible for the mood in the home. So why shouldn't I be having problems with my kids and their behavior? They are picking up on my own anxiety and stress and sadness. Of course they are misbehaving, they are probably having anxiety too! I just hope I haven't done any irreparable damage to them in the last several months. They are resilient, right?

I'm really going to try to be more grateful for my day to day life. Find the happiness in the little things, ie. my little children. Be so grateful for a husband that certainly takes better care of me than I deserve. My normal days. SMILE MORE, LAUGH more, BE SILLY more.

These are the words that Sis. Greer gave to me tonight to read to everyone even though I think it might have just been for me.

Let Me Hold You While I May

By Mary Jean Irion

The day is over; now I will sleep. It has been a normal sort of day, common like a rock along the path. Nothing about it would make one exclaim over it, as one might do with a shell or a glistening piece of quartz. It was just a rock, lying there along my way. But now, knowing that it is about to go from me forever, I hold it in my hand curiously, turning it this way and that, marking its shape and texture, weighing it on my palm. What was it really, this normal day?

It was routine, mostly....washing, ironing, a trip to the store, meals, dishes--the common denominators of women's days.

It was pleasant here and there...a letter from an old friend, my husband's telephone call for no reason, a back fence chat with my neighbor, half an hour with a good book, some loud laughs with the children at dinner time.

It was irritating now and then....a sticky ocean of spilled maple syrup, mealtime with one greedy child and one finicky one, the arrival of a bill unexpectedly high, a persistent salesman's theft of fifteen beautiful minutes.

It was deeply joyous at times... the whole house glorified with the strains of the new "Greensleeves" record; our unliterary twelve-year-old's first book (begun today, to be finished tomorrow) with its dedication--to wonder of wonders--his parents; our eight-year-old and her friend playing dress-up, painted and perfumed, scarved and veiled, clattering through the kitchen in spike heels and courtesaned innocence.

It was sobering and frightening in some ways...Mom's waning health and increasing discouragement; the big blow up after dinner about homework and learning to accept responsibility, and the guilt that followed my hasty words; The vague, huge uncertainties that draped themselves over us, cobweb-like, with the ten o'clock news from a tense and shadowed world.

It was blessed with love throughout...in a pig-shaped breadboard made and presented to me by my son; in the wave of feeling as I watched our little daughter sleeping in soft moonlight, her long lashes shadowing her cheek; in an hour alone with my husband at the end of day.

Just a normal day. A normal day! It is a jewel! In time of war, in peril of death, people have dug their hands and faces into the earth and remembered this. In time of sickness and pain, people have buried their faces in pillows and wept for this. In time of loneliness and separation, people have stretched themselves taut and waited for this. In time of hunger, homelessness, want, people have raised bony hands to the skies and stayed alive for this....

Normal Day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. Let me hold you while I may, for it will not always be so. One day I shall dig my nails into the earth, or bury my face in the pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky and want more than all the world, your return.