Blessing #1: "Our wives did cease to murmur"

Since becoming a mother, I think the passage in Nephi where their family is going through the wilderness has had increased significance.  Not only were the women able to "give suck" while eating raw meat--the necessity of their primitive conditions during travel--but the blessing Nephi celebrates most is that "our wives did cease to murmur."

Wow.

That was the section I felt prompted to read the other day, for some reason :).  Eight years they traveled.  And sometime during those eight years of transition and bearing children on the way, they found a way to cease to murmur.

Nephi attributes it to the keeping of the commandments.  I agree.  Especially the number one commandment, "Love God with all thy heart." (See Holland's talk, "The Greatest Commandment" October 2012) As the Savior said, the second is truly like unto it: Love thy neighbor as thyself.

I was speaking with Quinn a couple days ago about the possibility of hiring someone to help speed up the progress of the drywall upstairs.  We are so close to finishing the upstairs--carpet, paint, etc--I can almost taste it.  And when I can "taste it," it seems my drive to finish kicks in.  My "I can do anything if I just push myself hard enough" Mary-ness goes into action...and in this case over-drive.   After a couple days of burning myself out and not being done, I decided to have this conversation with my patient, dedicated husband who knows that it is important to do the job right, not just get it done.

After we considered our options, Quinn paused.  In his gentle, loving way, he said, "You know, in this situation (our speed of progress), you are the only one that I see is unhappy. The kids seem happy.  I am happy.  And I completely understand why you would feel that way and am not upset with you at all!  I just want to make you happy and if we need to hire out, that will just limit our options in what we can finish with our budget in the long run.  But we can do it, if you want to...if it would make you happier.  I am sorry you are not happy."

I thought on that for a long time.  The Lord had inspired me to read that section in Nephi just that morning.  What Quinn said was completely true.  I did have a choice.  Sure, we had an epic rainstorm on Monday for hours and hours that soaked through a lot of our tent...and then I discovered as we went to bed that Papaya had wet the bed as well the night before.  Sure, we had mud tracked everywhere and the house was a mess because I had been focusing on dry-wall-ing all day instead of maintaining our household...and we had friends come over.  Sure we have struggles and concerns with children and life that we have to deal with at the same time--challenging, on-going ones.

But there is so much of good in that situation,... looking back.  Those same friends brought enough dinner for three nights.  We had enough dry things in the tent to be able to sleep comfortably and then have had blessed sunshine the following days to dry everything up.  Our upstairs is completely sheet-rocked and even most of the stairs are, with a lot of it already taped and about half of it mudded and sanded...spackled...however you want to put it :).

And I have a bathtub and shower and a laundry room...and a beautiful working gas stove...and a gi-normous fridge.

And amazing kids who do have great attitudes.

And a husband who is good at somehow keeping sane and steady with an emotionally imbalanced wife, job, and desire to do a job well so we can look at walls without blemishes :)...and he takes time to laugh with the kids and do his callings.

I just remembered one of the commandments that could really help me stop murmuring: "Be grateful."