Relapse

Well, I went to St. George for a few days in there and really enjoyed getting some sun. (Right now as I type it is SNOWING. SNOWING, I tell you! YECK, YECK, YECK! I am SICK OF THIS STUFF.) We squeezed ourselves into a little dinky slot canyon and hiked some red cliffs and swam and played with cousins.

Also, some of us got sick. Oldest is very, very sick, which is deeply satisfying to me in a weird way because suddenly he his cuddly again (all 12 years of him) and I really like feeling so deeply needed and appreciated. It continues to be miraculous to me that my body—my touch and my smell and my voice—are so deeply comforting to my children. It is one of the sweetest joys of my life, a gift that comes with all the trials of motherhood as a tender mercy (or—and I always wince when I hear or say this phrase, and maybe I’ll have to blog about why sometime—as “compensatory blessing”). But while I am enjoying loving this little guy back to health I am also getting sick myself. Some or most of it is, hopefully, a little taste of what he has. But some, at least, is a relapse of my same old nemesis that I have been battling for—oh, going on two years now? I won’t go into the details except to say that the weather outside mirrors my sadness about this.

And yet—

And yet spring really is just around the corner. And I was definitely seeing lots of improvement before this little relapse (and it really will be little, right, God?). My hope is not gone. And I have to say that God has been abundantly blessing me in lots of other ways (not going to say that compensatory phrase again), particularly by making things significantly better for three or four people near me that I have been praying intently about. I’m very grateful for that. Also, all of the things that Roger said in his beginning-of-the-year blessings to me and my children have come to pass—even the ones I had a hard time believing at first—EXCEPT for my complete healing. So I know that my healing will come, too, in time.

I’m learning so slowly that prayer is for asking for help to endure the trial, not just for asking that the trial end. I see my life being like the Israelites in the wilderness: I am entitled to ask for manna, nothing more. And I have been getting manna daily, I admit. I am very grateful for that, too.

And now let’s all join hands and sway back and forth and sing together the chorus of Michael McLean’s (wince) famous EFY anthem!

Hold on!
Hold on!
The light
Will come!

(Never been a fan of his, but how that chorus has stuck with me since my youth conference days . . . along with scenes of the very mean bully-girls in my ward with fake-ish tears streaming down their faces and oh-so-sincere-sounding testimonies during the mass testimony meeting . . . Yeah, I’m ornery today. Sorry. I think I was trying to improve my relationship with God just now and got off on a snarky and uncharitable track with that song . . .)