"To live with gratitude in our hearts is to touch heaven."

It has been a really, really rough week. We've had yet more of life's unexpected things hit us and I've had a pretty hard time keeping a good attitude. I've decided it's not going to do me any good to even complain anymore. I've felt many times this week like just giving up, but really, how do you do that? Life is still life and there are still going to be the things that rock us, but there's often no way to prevent them, so giving up and complaining isn't going to help either. While life certainly doesn't feel fair right now when I look around and see others doing so well, I know that there are still others who have it worse than me.

General Conference couldn't have come at a better time. I really, really, really needed it right now. I hate to admit that I haven't been feeling too much of the spirit when I've been going to church lately. When I go to church my heart just feels like it's breaking and my head pounds the entire time and I just can't wait to be done with the day. It's just really hard to be there, enough said. But I know that if I want to be with my little baby boy, Gabriel, again that I have to do hard things, and so I go and will continue to go until someday, I know, it won't be so hard. A good friend of mine has actually volunteered to take our kids a couple of times in the last few weeks so that I could go to the temple, once with Ben and once by myself. It has been really nice to get to go and to feel the spirit when I haven't been able to do so at church. I feel so blessed to have a temple, even the temple I was sealed to my sweet Ben in, so close that I can go there for peace.

The amazing thing about General Conference is that you can stay at home, without the pressure of the social aspect of church, and yet feel the spirit so strongly while receiving much needed inspiration from the Lord's appointed servants. It always seems to come at the right time every six months when I need it, but for the first time in my life, I feel like it actually came at a time that I was completely dependent on hearing the words of the prophets. There were two talks that I felt like the Lord had singled me out of the billions of others watching, to touch my heart and let me know that He loved me.

The first was President Uchtdorf's talk. He talked about how when we are facing hardships and tragedy that we need to slow down and not try to keep up the pace of our normal lives. This is something I definitely have a hard time with, especially in the last few weeks as I've been physically feeling a little better. I have been trying so hard to get back to some kind of normal and yet there isn't a normal now. I am still grieving immensely over Gabriel's death and so doing things normally just doesn't really work. I just can't keep up with the normal things I used to do. I find myself exhausted at the end of each day, yet I am still not sleeping well and so I can't fall asleep at night, so I never feel rested. I've been trying to make just one goal a day and get that done so I can feel some kind of accomplishment but at the same time I feel guilty when I don't get to all of the other things. President Uchtdorf said, " Diligently doing the things that matter most will lead us to the Savior." It definitely made me evaluate my life right now and realize the things that really need to be done, regardless of the other things that I would want to be done. The words I especially needed to hear were " Let us simplify our lives a little. Let us make the necessary changes necessary to refocus our lives on the sublime beauty on the simple, humble path of simple Christian discipleship. The path that leads us always toward a life of meaning, gladness, and peace."

Then there was the talk from our dear prophet, Thomas S. Monson. Now I know this one was especially for me. It was about gratitude. It's something that I feel that I haven't always struggled with but I am doing so now. My Grandpa Jensen always impressed on me the importance of gratitude and I've tried to remember that throughout my life. As the holidays approach, I'm especially reminded of one of the greatest of all holidays that is so overlooked, Thanksgiving. My family and I always make an effort of each choosing something each day to express gratitude for throughout the month of November. It's a tradition that I hold really dear to my heart. Yet this year, I'm struggling knowing that it's coming. I know I am so blessed. I know it. But things are just so hard right now and just keep hitting that I feel that the bad is outweighing the good. I know the Lord will only give us what we can handle but seriously, I don't think I can handle anything else and so at a time when I feel so oppressed with trials and discouragement, finding gratitude in them has been extremely difficult and I have been struggling to overcome that. So today, when President Monson talked about this, I knew it was for me. He said so many wonderful things about gratitude:

"We can lift ourselves and others when we refuse to remain in the realm of negative thought and cultivate an attitude of gratitude."

"The grateful man sees so much to be grateful for and with him the good far outweighs the evil."

my favorite:

" To live with gratitude in our hearts is to touch heaven."

and the one that hit me with such impact that I was bawling:

" While there is much wrong in the world today, there are many things that are right and good. There are marriages that make it, parents who love their children and sacrifice for them, friends who care about us and help us...our lives are blessed in countless ways."

I have that loving marriage that is making it with a most wonderful, amazing husband and best friend by my side. I have five miraculous children that I love with all of my heart, who as I cried through that talk each showed their love for me with hugs and kisses. I have awesome friends that care about me and help me. I have a friend that the other night allowed me to text and vent my awful day to her even though it was very late and she is having difficult times herself. Just last night my girls made an effort and got babysitters so that we could have a girl's night out that I greatly needed. Afterwards one of them stayed in my car and talked and cried with me until almost 2 am, even though it was her birthday today and I'm sure she'd rather have been sleeping. Then today, after hearing that amazing talk, I walked outside to find newly planted pansies in my garden, that another incredible friend had secretly planted, even though I know who she was. I am blessed. I am so very blessed and I am so grateful for the reminder to recognize the outstanding blessings that Heavenly Father gives me each day. Yes, they are mixed in with plenty of trials, but I hope that I am able to see that the good far outweighs the evil and that somehow my heart will be filled with so much gratitude that it will touch heaven, where one of my greatest treasures is waiting for me.