Fear before the Great

And so it begins! Andy had a training this week for his upcoming deployment. He finished a few honey do’s so I could get my bathroom back in order and stop getting letters from the HOA about some items we’d sat to the side of our house that needed to be taken to the dump. We also spent some fun quality time together too. Harvey cried when Andy told him he had to go, but he savored the hug from his dad. This will only be a little over a week (Thursday to Friday), so it doesn’t feel too hard, but it is also a little sad because we know it is right before he’ll be gone for a much longer time. Andy has gotten to meet his team and ER counterpart. He’ll be doing 24 hours on and 24 hours off. It sounds like he’s allowed to sleep on his days on if it isn’t too busy. To put salt in the wound all of the kids got sick this weekend while daddy was out of town. Their tummies are bothering them, but so far no puking *fingers crossed* it stays that way. Aside from yucky tummies, they have fevers, Mav’s lost his voice and they’ve got headaches and sore throats. Not a fun one, but the one at Christmas seemed a lot worse. And a silver lining is that it seems like they’ve all gotten it, so at least it won’t slowly cycle through our house. We can just get through it and be on with our lives. I’ve gotten a lot done this weekend, despite being solo and dealing with sick kids, which makes me feel happy, so we’re doing ok. I got to touch up a bunch of spots in the kids’ bathroom with paint, finish our bathroom’s paint and finishing touches, do some organizing and rearranging, and more. Emotionally, I’m doing a bit better. Things are still up in the air with the PCS and everything, but Andy says he prayed about whether he should fight it or not and he didn’t get the answer that he should let it happen, so we’re fighting it and he says he feels at peace about it and doesn’t think it’ll happen. I guess I need to work on my faith a bit, because though I’m doing ok now, I was a pretty big wreck at the beginning of the week.

Aside from normal life and preparing for Andy’s deployment, I don’t really have much to write about this week. But despite having our lives be in limbo and Andy’s eminent departure, life is good. I am blessed with amazing friends, a comfortable home, time to work on my talents, and darling kids who sometimes annoy me, but mostly I’m in awe of who they’re becoming. I’m super grateful for the life I have even though it can be hard at times. Though I’ve had to deal with a lot of hard things: death of a brother, heart surgery and other health problems as a young child, moving many, many times, going through life as a spouse of a military emergency medicine doctor, being single at BYU (I can laugh about this trial now, but it was hard, believe me), and more, I see how each of these things has molded me, made me stronger, and even blessed me. Going on a mission was hard, but I can directly link finding Andy to that choice. I was terrified to go on a mission, but I knew God wanted me to. I’ve never had such a strong impression. So I moved forward in faith (after a little bit of kicking against the pricks) and the moment I was set apart, I felt an intense peace and purpose to what I was doing. My mission wasn’t easy. I had difficult companions and challenging areas, but I saw God’s hand in my life and the life of those around me. It increased my love for God’s children and deepened my understanding of His love for us. I came back a new person. One who felt loved and knew I was lovable.

I got a job as a teacher at the Missionary Training Center. The combination of that teaching experience, along with my mission’s, and a very generous letter of recommendation from my mission president, I found myself in the running for a competitive position at Teach for America. Had I known it was competitive, admittedly, I wouldn’t have applied. Well, I got accepted and found myself with another big choice: move across the country to teach, where I knew no one, OR continue to struggle to find a job in Utah where pay it low and cost of living is high. I prayed about it and felt led to move forward with the move. Again, I was terrified. I remember looking up the “Houston single’s ward” on FB and feeling even more terrified afterwards… I realized later, I’d forgotten to type in “Young single’s adults.” The page I looked at was for 30+, so you can imagine the images I saw and was thinking I was going to feel very out of place. Then I made the leap and moved. I quickly found myself in a short relationship that didn’t work out, but was a good learning experience, and then less than a month later I met Andy. We obviously hit it off. We’ve had a roller coaster of a journey together, but coming up on March 15, we will be celebrating 14 years. I think our marriage is better than ever and I am so proud of the life and family we have created.

I’ve noticed a trend, that right before something great, I’ve felt even greater fear. It reminds me of the First vision when Joseph Smith went to a grove of trees to pray and ask God if he could be forgiven and which church he should join. Right before the momentous moment when Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ appeared to him, this happened:

JSH 1:15… I was seized upon by some power which entirely overcame me, and had such an astonishing influence over me as to bind my tongue so that I could not speak. Thick darkness gathered around me, and it seemed to me for a time as if I were doomed to sudden destruction.

16 But, exerting all my powers to call upon God to deliver me out of the power of this enemy which had seized upon me, and at the very moment when I was ready to sink into despair and abandon myself to destruction—not to an imaginary ruin, but to the power of some actual being from the unseen world, who had such marvelous power as I had never before felt in any being—just at this moment of great alarm, I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me.

Many times on my mission, I would tell my friends who were investigating the church that when they have the experience that confirms that they need to be baptized, that after that, it’ll seem like the world will be against them. Things would fall apart, even fear may consume them, but if they moved forward in faith, when they entered the waters of baptism, those feelings would leave, and they would be assured that what they were doing was right.

The best things in my life have taken great faith. Satan doesn’t want us to be happy or to do things that will bring to pass God’s will. I hope that I can move forward in faith, even when fear seems consuming and that I can rely on God’s source of power and peace to carry me through as I have many times before.