After my husband kissed me good-bye this morning (I made him come back and kiss me again, properly, which ended all thoughts of going back to sleep), I realized that this busy week has helped me learn some things about myself and about life.
Monday morning was a pretty typical Monday morning--drag myself out of bed, say a little prayer, take some medicine, putter around until it is either time for breakfast or Kevin wakes up. In my puttering, I ran across a worrying post from a friend. This wasn't a particularly good friend, or a particularly close friend, but still someone I came to care about while I was a missionary in Texas. He'd been going through what sounded like an awful divorce on facebook (since I'm friends with both him and his wife, I'd seen both sides of their posting, and my heart is sad for both of them, regardless of those words like "fault" and "blame"). His posts were getting so depressing, and they were starting to slander the church I know he once loved, and just the day before I'd gone to hide his posts from my wall, but for some reason I didn't. On Monday morning he wrote something that was very clearly a suicide note. I read it, said a little prayer, and got sad.
And then I ignored it.
But I kept thinking about it. I felt like I should do something, but I didn't know what to do. Was there someone in Texas I could call to check on him? I had no idea who. Was it any of my business anyway? No, not really. If he hates the church then he probably doesn't value me very much, since when he met me I was an official representative.
And then Kevin woke up.
And I wondered how many other people, like me, had seen it and not said anything. What if it was a ploy to get attention? To paint his wife as so awful that she would drive him to kill himself? Both are valid questions. But what if, he posted that, and waited to see if anybody cared, and nobody did, and he took drastic measures?
I picked up Kevin and sat her on the floor next to me while I wrote him a short message.
And I learned that you never know who needs your voice. And even if your voice isn't needed, you never know what it can do to soothe your conscious to know that you've at least tried to do something.
Tuesday found me at a stoplight waiting to get on I-15. I'd avoided the freeway for two months now, but I decided it was finally time to get on that on ramp. Plus, there was a lunch date with my husband to an appetizing Chinese place waiting for me at the end of the off-ramp, and if that wasn't motivation, I didn't know what was.
As I was sitting there, waiting for the light to turn green, I reflected on my life--where I'd been, where I was going. I realized that throughout my whole college career, I'd been working toward Plan B, possibly because I didn't believe that my Plan A of becoming a wife and a mother could ever really happen for me. And now that I have Plan A, sometimes I think about what Plan B could have been like. And I realized that God has been taking care of me all along. While I was never one of those girls that went to college just to find a husband, that was part of the plan while was there, but it was part I never really thought would happen for me. And I am grateful that I trusted the Lord's timing enough to set Plan B aside while I fully enjoy what Plan A has to offer.
Like a baby babbling in the backseat.
Green light.
On Wednesday, it became officially spring. At least in my mind. I went to the mailbox without a jacket on. I held my sleeping daughter in my arms, her head cradled against my shoulder with one hand, and I realized that suddenly I felt lighter somehow. I felt every ounce of the twenty-one snoozing pounds in my arms, but I felt like a butterfly leaving her cocoon.
The sunshine warmed my arms, my face, my soul.
Spring was here.
I was free.
And I realized that I had been harboring winter in my mind for the past few months. Do you ever feel that way? That you grow so used to the cold and the slush and the snow that it sometimes gets inside you and doesn't allow you to really breathe in and breathe out and just let go of things that don't matter, to get over it, to give up and just be happy without having to have a reason to be happy?
And thus the unburdening of Spring began for me.
Thursday taught me that there are experiences that I once understood and enjoyed as a child that I now view with a parent's eyes. Sometimes it is a movie I watched over and over again during my childhood, that I now understand as an adult. Sometimes it is the way I take in a book or news story or an opportunity to serve.
Last night my husband and I sat in one of the sealing rooms of the Jordan River LDS Temple. In our church, we believe that families can be forever if you are sealed by the proper authority and we make time to serve in the Temple so that these ordinances can be performed for those that have passed away. We held hands as a sweet and tender couple, probably in their sixties, explained to us the significance of the family names they had brought, and an overwhelming feeling of joy entered the room. And when they started to tell us about one pink card that had no name except "Miss Brough" because she had only lived for a day, I remembered a similar experience I'd had with my parents before my mission when we had sealed a little girl who had died before the age of accountability (in our faith we believe that to be eight years old) to her parents and the sealer told us that this simple ordinance was all she needed. Then, I appreciated the work as a child would, thinking how happy she would be to be with her family again. Last night, I was simply overwhelmed thinking about how grateful that mother must be to have her baby officially belong to her for all eternity.
And when we got home, I opened the door and Kevin, who moments before had been happily playing with her babysitter, started to wail uncontrollably, as if to say, "you left me! How dare you leave me! I am not happy with you!"
I picked her up and held her close and imagined another mother, somewhere on the other side, holding another baby girl close and whispering words of comfort in her ear.
And now it is Friday morning. And there is only one bite of my leftover Pi Day pie-breakfast left on my plate. And I've realized that every week's post doesn't have to be a winning entry. That is not what this blog is here for. The point is to keep on writing, keep on sharing, keep on living. I can stop worrying about whether what I write is good or not. It is what it is. I am taking off that burden. I am just going to use my voice and know that even if it doesn't reach a friend, it will reach me.
Because for me, writing is the little bit of Plan B that helps me make sense of Plan A.
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