Mom Celebrates HELP!

So our family has seen many seasons! Some more challenging than others!

Baby twins is a challenging part.  The great thing is that I’ve found the very best parts of life are often the most challenging too -it comes with the territory!

So it’s ALL worth CELEBRATING!!

But some days don’t feel so celebratory… like yesterday. UGH.

It was just a bad twin day – or a bad mom day… not sure exactly where  it went wrong. It was just hard.

Perhaps it was too many expectations I had put on myself, and really no way to fulfill them with both arms full, even juggling all day long.

That’s when I try to remind myself again to simplify and remember my MOST IMPORTANT job right now  is taking care of my babies even if the rest the world has to stand still (like the kitchen dishes, the laundry that needs done, the groceries that desperately need bought, the school teacher that needs a return email, the planning and preparation that needs done for my senior’s graduation and, most exciting, his mission call coming up, the sheets and bathroom that need cleaned for a wonderful guest we have coming…) .

I was grappling with remembering to simplify.  I was starting down that slippery slope of downright overwhelmment!  (I know it’s not a word – well, actually it is most definitely a word to me and probably most other moms!)

But HEAVEN HELPS MOMS. (and Dads as well… well, EVERYONE who wants to help family!)

And so it did.

Just when I felt I could be patient and handle it all no longer, I had help.

I hadn’t hoped in the end that I could go to the evening’s R.S. event because all my big kids were going different directions, but in the end my oldest daughter and her friend insisted on shopping, helping with dinner and then taking the babies so I could go to our Relief Society social. I never realized what a perfect name that is for the women’s organization of our church!  It’s offered me RELIEF so often!! 😉

The activity was farther away than usual and just the drive helped me start feeling better.  While I drove  I tuned into a talk by a totally inspirational lady, Elaine S. Dalton, and listened again to how we are daughters of God, our Heavenly Father, who LOVES us.

Suddenly I started feeling that love in the words she spoke, but even more in this very much needed break.

The evening was beautiful.  Driving past grass just turned green and red barns bathing in late afternoon sunlight seemed to restore my soul.  The closer I got to the event the more beautiful the world was around me: fields turned into forests with hovering hemlocks and rolling streams.

I slowed down trying to drink it all in, it was so refreshing.

So I arrived as dusk was falling.  All was quiet among parked cars, I could see all the women there gathered around a fire further down on an open lawn. It was very quiet.

I snuck in, as much as one could so obviously coming in late, to sit down on a camp chair, quietly, not wanting to disturb what was going on.  A new friend from our church leaned over and whispered, “We were asked to share the first time we knew Heavenly Father loved us”.

Wow. I listened to tender, deeply meaningful and personal messages from the hearts of the women present. Every story was another witness from another woman that God is there for us, He hears us and helps us when we look to Him, when we need Him most. I was deeply touched.

One friend shared how she, in her busy days of tending to her little one, forgot she was a little one and needed tending too still, but one night as she rock and sang a familiar child’s song to her baby, “Heavenly Father, are you really there, and do you hear and answer every child’s prayer?” she suddenly felt a warmth of love wrap around her telling her that she was His child and He would care for her.

Another friend shared how at just 14 she was struggling with a very dark, very deep depression.  Her heart seemed untouchable, unreachable, but her mother brought her a cassette tape and told her that if she would listen to it to the end she would get her the bracelet she had much desired. She listened in dread and boredom.  Then, of course, at the very end was the song, “You’re not Alone”, she cried and cried. And she hadn’t cried for so long. Then she felt, as real as the touch of the woman sitting beside her that night, a hug.  From that moment she changed, was lifted, and knew that indeed, she was not alone.

Then I was asked to share.  There have been now so many, many moments when I have felt helped from Heaven’s hand, when I’ve felt God’s love wrap around me and been assured that my tiny, seemingly inconsequential life, mattered to Him. I could hardly think of the first and the most meaningful, so I shared the LAST and most pertinent to me now, indeed that very experience, that evening that I was at the last minute able to come when I needed it most, by those with helping hands, and to be reminded on the drive of His loving rest, support, and strength, and to hear and celebrate with my sisters, that our Heavenly Father cares.

So let’s celebrate help for Mom, just when she needs it most! Or for any family member in need!

When was the last time you felt His love for you and your family, when did you last see the Hand of the Lord in your life?

We would love it if you would be willing to share, but even more important write it down and share it with your family, the most important people on earth.

I’ve found that when you look for it, His love is EVERYWHERE!

With Love, C

–

President Henry B. Eyring has urged us to ask “Have I seen the hand of God reaching out to touch us or our children or our family today?  He continues…”My point is to urge you to find ways to recognize and remember God’s kindness, you and they will be blessed as you remember what the Lord has done.”

“Tonight, and tomorrow night, you might pray and ponder, asking the question: Did God send a message that was just for me? Did I see His hand in my life or the lives of my children? … And then…find a way to preserve that memory for the day that [you] and those that [you] love, will need to remember how much God loves us and how much we need Him.  He loves us and blesses us, more than most of us have yet recognized.”

Here’s a very raw video my brother caught the other night of me, celebrating Mom’s help! Hope you relate! Lv, C