Tender Mercies

I don't know why, but I've found the move here to be very difficult spiritually. We ended up with everything we wanted after school, amazing job, amazing house only 3 hrs. from the beach and 6 from home. Throughout our trials, responsibilities and daily life, I've found it difficult to feel my Savior's love. My miscarriage was thankfully an exception. I don't like to share spiritual experiences via my blog, but since this is my journal too, I feel the need to record it.

The week after we went to Asheville, I had an appointment to meet with my visiting teacher. She's a gal who's assigned to meet with me, look out for me, assess my needs, serve me. And I do the same for other ladies in the ward... not well granted. But anyway, we met and instead of presenting the spiritual thought that's given to us to present, she felt she needed to share some thoughts from Sunday's lesson, which I'd missed. It was so perfectly what I needed. I only vaguely remember the high points, but I felt my Savior's love so strongly through her love. I am so grateful that He inspired her to speak whatever it was that I needed to hear. She came a little late, yucky, straight from the gym, and feeling self conscious of not "having it all together." But of course that doesn't matter; I love her for listening to that inspiration. Through that meeting, I found ideas and motivation to make necessary changes to grow closer to the spirit. Among those changes, I started trying to read my scriptures earlier in the evening so I wouldn't be falling asleep during it. And I put more thought into my prayers. I started paying more attention to the times that I felt the spirit or saw evidence of my Father's hand in things.

A while ago I was given a calling or responsibility that played to my weaknesses. That happens all the time right? I committed a long time ago to never turn down a calling. So I thought, "well, it'll be good. It'll help me grow." I tried everything I knew to do to fulfill that calling, but just couldn't find it within myself to follow through. Everyone around me did everything they could to help. But I just kept letting everyone down. I didn't want to ask my leaders to release me, because I'd feel like I'd let down my Heavenly Father. So finally, with my new found spiritual strength, I felt like it was OK to asked Heavenly Father to release me if He saw fit to do so. I didn't really expect Him to see fit, but shortly thereafter, I was released. In fact, it was already in the works at least weeks before that prayer. I am amazed and touched by the love He showed me through that gesture of mercy. Since then, I feel like I've come back to life spiritually. I am so grateful for His love and mercy.

Also recently I prayed for help to curb my appetite for things. You all know how I am about my projects... shall we say obsessive? Once I see something in my head, I can't rest until I see it come to fruition. And I saw this house completely revamped over a year ago when we were house hunting. I love to decorate and be surrounded by beauty, sometimes to the detriment of our long term financial goals. Certainly to the detriment of our budget. So I asked for help readjusting my financial priorities. The other night I had a freaky dream. I heard 4 insanely loud explosions from the base. (They rattle our windows all the time, but this was scary loud.) Then we see soldiers in the streets saying an enemy had attacked and blown up 4 missiles we had stored at the base. We then see a dark cloud of soldiers dropping from helicopters; we were at war. Of course the prophet and apostles have been stressing for years to get out of debt and work on emergency preparedness. But recently at church, our bishop (our congregation's leader) sent a message to the women saying, "Re-read this article. I don't know what's coming, but we need to prepare now." (The article was about spiritual preparedness if I remember right.) In the dream I thought, "This is what he warned us about!" It was a little scary. I'm not saying I've had a prophetic dream. I'm saying Heavenly Father answered my prayer by giving me the motivation to start really working on emergency preparedness and food storage. We've got plans now to build more storage space into the garage and work extra canned goods into the weekly budget. And I'm excited. It will feel good to be able to look up in the garage and see that we'll be fine if the worst was to happen. No eating roaches for us should a natural disaster occur!

I'm so grateful for the many blessings my Father has given me! I'm grateful for His love and mercy and patience with me. I'm grateful for this Christmas season and the fact that I'm way more into the spirit of it than I've been in the past. And I'm grateful for beauty around me: my children, my home and all of the Christmas decor. I'm grateful for the amazing people and leaders around me that listen to the promptings of the spirit. I'm grateful for my family and the current peace and joy in our home.