Another Storm

I've endured many storms in my life. Some are big and some are small. Some are ingrained in my memory and others are forgotten.

I can remember quite well the summer I was 10. That was probably the summer I spent the most time having sleepovers with my cousins. There were 3 girl cousins my age growing up. One who lived in California and two that lived here---including a step-cousin I had met when I was 8. We spent a ton of time together that summer. My California cousin came for a visit and I can remember one night in particular during monsoon season, a storm had come into town and our power had gone out.
My cousins and I all huddled around a battery-operated night light that was my baby brother's at the time. My dad had gone outside to check the power and I was so scared. I was scared he would never come back or that our house would catch on fire or flood.

But I had my band. I had my team. My cousins kept me brave that night. I watched the shadows dance off the walls as the thunder cracked louder and louder but I knew I would be ok because I wasn't alone.

Another storm I will never forget was during my days at ANASAZI. Because I was there from June to July, I ended up enduring monsoons in the middle of nowhere---with a 8x8 tarp for protection. The first time I experienced a monsoon on the trail, I started to cry. I begged and pleaded for them to let me go home. I told them I was afraid of storms when I was in my own bed and that I couldn't possibly endure it out in the desert.
We hiked through most of it but when the sun started to go down, we built personal shelters out of our tarps and were sent to bed. This was the very first time I remember feeling completely alone during a monsoon. I sobbed under my tarp and pulled my journal out, aware that the lack of light would prove difficult. But I didn't care. I knew I needed to write. I knew writing would help.
I scribbled out most of my fears almost illegibly but the rain was still pouring and I didn't feel much better.

So I started to pray. I prayed out loud. I pleaded with God to stop the storm because I was scared. I was afraid of dying or getting hurt. I was afraid of the loneliness.

I ended my prayer and laid there for a minute, wishing that God was actually real so that He could answer my prayer.

And just like that, the rain stopped.
I could hardly believe it. I had never received an answer to prayer so bluntly before.
I pulled my journal back out and began to scribble the events of the night. I wrote, "Tonight while it was raining, I said a prayer and asked God to stop the rain because I couldn't take it anymore. And you'll never believe it! THE RAIN STOPPED! There is a God. I know He is there. I know He heard me. I felt Him tonight."

It was during ANASAZI that my testimony of prayer began to grow. I was so afraid of death and I felt like we faced so many dangerous obstacles but each time, we were lead to safety.

The storms I have faced have taught me so much about who I am and who I want to be. Some of them have knocked me off of my feet for a period of time but I've gotten up eventually.

I can see that happening with my current storm. I've been knocked down and I'm not up yet. I'm still figuring this all out and trying to repair the damage. But today something clicked. Today, on another Sunday that we were late for church because I dread sacrament meeting alone with my littles, I was listening in Relief Society about patterns becoming habits and how quickly we can become comfortable and set in our ways and I realized, I don't want to be this. I don't want to struggle to go to church. I don't want my children to get used to this example and think that it's normal that we miss the sacrament 50% of the time, sometimes more.

I may not be where I want to be. I may be struggling with this picture of my life and how it's turned out. I may still question why this has all happened in the particular timing that it has.
I will still struggle to feel like I fit in on Sundays. Some of the lessons will still cause a lot of pain in my heart. I will still feel alone and stressed out most of the time in sacrament meeting.
But it won't be this way forever. 
Because eventually, I'll figure this all out. Eventually I'll be standing taller than I've ever stood. I will face this storm and beat it.

Because I know I am capable of greatness. I know I am strong enough to endure the hard days and enjoy the good days.

Although I don't understand it all, someday I will. Someday I will be able to look back and think, "Wow. I made it through another storm."

ANASAZI Lessons

 Raising children is hard.
Going to school is hard.
Working is hard.
Keeping my house clean is hard.

Trying to do all four of them as a single mom is hard.

And lately, I feel like I've been failing in at least 3 of these categories at a time. I've been so overwhelmed. My eyes start to droop around 7pm because I'm just so exhausted. I don't know if I've ever felt this exhausted, not even as a mom of a newborn. But maybe I just forgot what that felt like.

I've had so many nights where I lay in bed and wonder how I'm going to get everything done the next day. How am I going to have time to sweep the floor and fold some laundry and do two homework assignments and give my kids quality time with their mom?

And the thing is, I don't have time for it all. That would explain the sticky floors, the sink full of dishes, and the laundry that's been sitting in the washer for a few days. It would also explain the amount of tv my kids have watched in the past week.

I've felt like a failure so many times in the past week and most nights, I'm so close to tears when I think about the times I told Petey she had to pack her own school lunch or get her and her brother breakfast because I just couldn't do it.

But we've pushed through. When I feel like I can't keep doing this, I keep doing it anyway. I just focus on one small step at a time.

Today as I was thinking about one of my favorite motto's, "I can do hard things", my mind went back to 17 year old me.

 This is her. Her name is Kissing Sun Firefly and she spent six weeks of her summer learning how to make fire out of wood and a piece of rope, cooking with a tin can and dried foods, hiking 20+ miles a week with everything she had on her back, and sleeping under the stars every night.

Out there, I learned what it means to do hard things. There were so many nights I would cry myself to sleep because I was so lonely out there. I often felt misunderstood by my parents and even by my group of youngwalkers and trailwalkers. That first week was physically exhausting and I got so dehydrated that I was vomiting uncontrollably during one of my first big hikes.

I remember feeling like I would die out there. I remember being so embarrassed that I had gotten dehydrated and I wondered how I would ever make it. But I kept focusing on one more step and then one more and one more until finally, I had made it to our week's destination. I remember the tall grass, the ants all over the dirt, and the girl with the curliest blonde hair I'd ever seen reading her Book of Mormon to me to calm me down. I layed there under the sun, wondering how I had gotten from point A to point B without dying.

I felt like I had accomplished something so incredible that day.

A few weeks later, we were hiking through a dried up river bed and I had my hands through my sleeping bag/backpack and all of a sudden, I tripped and my hands weren't able to catch my fall. But my face did. I could feel my lip swelling as the blood ran down my chin. I couldn't do this anymore! Hiking was too hard. I couldn't handle being out in the middle of nowhere and getting hurt. But I kept going that day. I cried a lot because my battle wound really hurt but I kept hiking and we made it to our destination. That afternoon, I walked down to the dried creek bed and sang, "For Good" from Wicked over and over again. I cried. I sang. I listened to the wind. I felt peace. I knew I could finish this hard thing. I knew I could work things out with my parents and believe in myself.

I knew I could do hard things.

ANASAZI taught me lessons I still apply in my life. It was a turning point in my life. I was strong before ANASAZI but when I came back from those six weeks, smelling worse than death but feeling happier than I had in a long time, I was a warrior.

And I'm still a warrior.

I have felt so much failure recently that I have to take a step back and look at the big picture. Sometimes the small picture doesn't show me what I've accomplished because it emphasizes all of the things I'm doing wrong.

But the big picture---the big picture shows me how far I've come and how much I am capable of enduring.

So tonight, I'm not going to focus on my messy house or my children that went to bed in their school clothes. I'm going to focus on the fact that I worked five hours and came home and did homework with my daughter while babysitting two extras, and then I took 3 online quizzes and got all A's and wrote an essay.

And now I'm here and it's ok that I'm still not choosing to clean. I've done enough for today.

I can't do it all but I can do enough.