Would someone who actually knows all the answers please tell
me where to find them? I’m rushing
headlong to my 52nd birthday (September 17th), and I’m so
disappointed. I mean, when I was a kid,
I assumed that all adults knew what they were doing and at least had a handle
on this “life” thing. And if someone
lived to the ripe old age of 52, I was SURE they knew. In fact, I assumed by then they were just
skating their way through their golden years.
First, I’m not ripe or old yet. I figure I’m just over halfway through my life,
so that would put me smack in the middle of my, well, middle-age years.
I’m sitting in our kitchen at 11:41 p.m. The kids and Darryl are all in their beds…well,
Darryl is. He’s sound asleep and snoring
with a nice, warm kitty curled up near his legs <3 The kids, I don’t know. Lindsay and Jake are out somewhere and will
likely be home soon. Scott is a night
owl and drives me crazy. Kristi, who knows? But, heck, they start school in a week, so I’ll
cut them some slack. As for me, yeah, I’ve
been having trouble settling down for the night and actually falling
asleep. My mind doesn’t want to shut
down. I feel fine. I’m not particularly depressed or unhappy,
nor am I jumping up and down elated.
Just at that special age where I’m suddenly experiencing things I’ve
never experienced before.
Darryl and I went out to the lawn under a tree in front of the
church today. It was Sunday School time,
and as we saw the very dry teacher start to pass out slips of paper for people
to read…these were portions of the lesson to divvy up among us….Darryl said to
me, “Oh, I can’t do this,” and we took our leave. He loves the Gospel so much and knows so very
much about it. He appreciates the
richness of it and is excited to be able to learn and to teach. Sadly, he only teaches once a month now, and
I don’t ever teach anymore. Very sad
face for both of us.
We had a great talk out on the lawn. It was a beautiful day. In fact, I am loving Idaho more and more for
its climate. I don’t know how many years
we will live in Twin Falls, but it doesn’t seem that we will suffer. We talked about feelings we’ve had about our
new home and how we expect to get along in the next little while. We have to move because of the debacle with
our landlady who is losing her home, despite her assurances to the contrary
when we agreed to rent it. We’ve known
for a few months that our move was imminent, but we haven’t yet found a
suitable home for our family.
Both of us are feeling a bit detached from our ward, and I
think Darryl put his finger on the issue.
People in our ward are friendly and always greet us and seem to like us
well enough, but we just don’t really feel a part of the family, so to
speak. Mind you, after almost seven
years in one ward, we had grown to a place where we knew and cared about the
people who belonged to the same ward. It
wasn’t perfect, or at least our time there wasn’t perfect, but we miss these
people more than we had thought. There
are some people I do not miss, and there are some (maybe the same people?) who
do not miss us. And if you are reading
this, you are not one of those people.
I don’t want to whine.
I mean, there are worse things.
Believe me. And chances are good
that we won’t have a choice but to move out of the ward when we find a new
home. And we’re okay with that. So we’ll see how that all works out. I guess we should do what we know: Just trust the Lord. He seems to know what He’s doing :D
At any rate, I’m sitting in the kitchen (Jake and Lindsay just
got home, so all the chickadees are safely home). The dishwasher is humming along,
the kitchen is clean (shock!), the house is in pretty good shape (shock
again!) I only have one hearing this
week, 3:00 tomorrow, but I am going to go into work earlier tomorrow because I
have a lot of work to get done. Friday
will be my first vacation day since I came here seven months ago. We are leaving Thursday to go to Utah for my
stepdaughter’s wedding.
I have worked really hard to get some names together from my
genealogy and have reserved the right to do the temple work for those
ancestors. I hope to start doing that
very soon. I’m eager to see how that
feels, getting the work done after piecing all this together.
I know that I have talked over and over and over again about
the sorrow I’ve experienced and the growth I’ve gained through my travails with
my extended family rejecting me and my family and finding little reason to
reconcile or even care about us and our reputations. I know it gets boring to read the same things
many times. I’m getting better, but this
has created such a huge hole in my very being, and it has troubled me so much
that sometimes I feel I can’t deal with any of it. And then other times I go back and read and
realize how very much I have learned, indeed.
As in all things, I am not thrilled with the mechanism of growth, but I
am happier with who I am becoming as I continue this journey.
I have hope that my little family here in Twin Falls will be
okay. I see success in unexpected areas,
and I am understanding that things that we lost through our move have been
replaced with things far more valuable.
I truly want to “be still and know that [He is] God.” It seems the wisest course.
Let me list some things that I hold dear:
I have good health.
I have a healthy and awesome husband and children.
I have a great job that I just love.
I really like it here.
Just as my patriarchal blessing promised, though I
have been through difficult times, my testimony, rooted in my young days, has
been there to carry me through those difficult times. And those difficult times have fed that
testimony until it has grown more than I expected. And that gives me peace.
And I’m not done yet.
Today in Sacrament meeting we closed with “I
Believe in Christ.” Every single time I
sing that hymn, I remember Elder McConkie bearing testimony of Jesus Christ in
his very last talk in General Conference before he died. He bore powerful, eloquent testimony, and I
will never forget his saying that he would soon wash the Savior’s feet with his
own tears; and I believed he would. So I
love that hymn for the memories and the feelings it evokes.
In Relief Society we also closed with the same
hymn. There is a new sister in our ward
who sat by me, and we chatted a bit, which was nice. And when we sang the opening song, I quickly
realized that she has a lovely voice.
And when we closed, she switched to the alto part. I am a soprano. Okay, a soprano because I don’t read music,
and it’s far easier for me to follow the melody, and I’m fortunate to be able
to reach most of those high notes. But
when my neighbor starting singing alto, we really sounded lovely together, and
the hymn I love suddenly became really FUN to sing. After church she stopped me and told me I
have a beautiful voice. I will never
believe that, I’m afraid, but I do love to sing :D
And, yes, I too believe in Christ.
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