I've been trying to think of my grateful today and it just wasn't coming. I'm not grateful for the migraine. I'm not thankful for my foot pain...actually my neuroma foot hurts less than my crushed tendon foot (yes, it's been an entire year! Stupid foot!!). I'm not grateful for the ache in my heart, never able to forget the milestones I'm missing....Gabriel being 18 months old this last week and me being 20 weeks with Reese. I'm not thankful that I feel so entirely alone in this journey again because no one can truly understand this. I'm not grateful that my prayers seem so unanswered right now...that I don't feel my Heavenly Father there or His love. But enough of my ungrateful ramblings. That's not what this post is about. This post was about finding my grateful for the day.
I was trying to think and then remembered that I am grateful for inspiring words that I could read from my phone at my 5 am insomnia stint that made me want to get up and out of bed this morning (even when I can't physically!) and plug on in this journey of enduring to the end....hopefully with patience. Those words were from Robert D. Hales Oct. 2011 talk, Waiting Upon the Lord.
I've had many times where I've had to ask "O God, where art thou?" I've wondered where He is because I haven't felt His love or His blessings as of late. I had to give a lesson on prayer in my YW class a week ago. I really struggled with it. I actually went to talk to my bishop right before my lesson and asked him how I could teach this lesson when my faith in Heavenly Father hearing my prayers was wavering. He advised me to tell the girls just that....that sometimes it feels as if your prayers are unanswered....and sometimes that is the most lonely feeling in the world. He told me that one day one of the girls in my class is going to struggle with unanswered prayers and maybe they will think back to how I was still able to go on in faith despite my hurt. That's what I'm trying to do and honestly, I don't know how not to, because I truly do believe that my Heavenly Father is there even if I don't feel Him. So I told the girls about my struggle to accept that my prayers for my sweet little Reese were answered differently than I expected....that they weren't answered on my time or in the way I wanted. I did get to have our much prayed for and desired baby after a long wait and he is okay, but just not the way I ever would've wanted it. I cried. They cried. I told them all I can do is have faith that some day my prayers will be answered...and it might not be here in this life, so I just need to strive to be patient. In the end, I think I did okay and I hope that someday that lesson I taught will bless one of those girls in their struggles.
I still struggle though. As much as I know that Heavenly Father has blessed me in the past and I honestly know that He continues to bless me every day with everything that I am given, I still feel very unloved and forgotten by Him. I feel so lost as to what direction He wants me to go in life right now. I still feel that my prayers have been unheard. I know He has a plan, but I don't understand it and feel so lost without knowing where to go. It's so hypocritical of me, I know. Like Robert D. Hales says, "We will still find it challenging to wait upon the Lord, especially when we cannot fully understand His plan and purposes for us."
Going along with that, Ben shared this quote with me.....
"Of all the hardships a person had to face, none was more punishing than the simple act of waiting."
-Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns
It's true. It's so hard to wait to know what comes next, especially being the way I am, a planner. I don't feel content to just wait right now but don't have any choice. I constantly wonder what the future holds for our family. We thought Gabriel was our last baby until we lost him. Then our hearts ached for more. Now we've lost an early pregnancy and and yet again another baby, our little Reese. Our hearts still ache for more. We still long to have the joy and happiness that a sweet fresh spirit from heaven would bring to our family by being in our home. I actually got a priesthood blessing from my bishop after my early miscarriage and he said that we would have babies to raise in the Millenium but that we'd also have more babies to raise here on earth. I thought our little Reese was that baby to raise on earth, but he's not. I've had so many tell me that doesn't mean that the promise of more on earth from that blessing is not going to come to fruition, but I've had a hard time trusting in it, especially when I've had a few naysayers that have told me it's basically time to take a hint and give up. It is so scary to think of putting us and our kids through the chance of losing another baby, but it's also scary to think of not ever having the joy of another baby either. Skylar told me she just knows we'll have more because I was blessed with that. I told her to have faith for both of us. I know what the tiniest bit of faith can do, so I will try to have it too.
Robert D. Hales went on to say, "We may not know when or how the Lord’s answers will be given, but in His time and His way, I testify, His answers will come. For some answers we may have to wait until the hereafter. This may be true for some promises in our patriarchal blessings and for some blessings for family members. Let us not give up on the Lord. His blessings are eternal, not temporary."
The one thing I do know is that we have been extremely blessed to have 4 children to raise here on earth and 2 to raise later.....these blessings are eternal....so I can wait, even if some days it seems entirely too hard. What a precious gift all of my children are to me....even if some of them are so loud I have to kick them out of my room sometimes.
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