Even When He is Silent...

I just came back from a week long wonderful anniversary/birthday celebration with Quinn. It was relaxing and fun.  We went to DC and toured around many sites and did wonderful things like: horseback riding in Gettysburg, biking to and from Mount Vernon, touring both houses of the Congress, going through the Holocaust exhibit for almost four hours (and could have been there longer), going to a beach and just spending a lot of wonderful time together.

During that time, especially on my birthday, I learned that I don't really like things centering around me.  When they do, I get selfish and get feeling a little grumpy and ancy.

Getting together with my children, gathering them from their different places, has been magical and wonderful as well.  Hyrum just came home from scout camp, Lily spent a week at the Zyborgs along with Elijah and Xai, and the three little girls from visiting with Aaron and Niesha.  It felt so good to be home.  Lily said she missed having our family together for prayer after we said it again. It did feel oh so good.

Family prayer and scripture study have truly been a blessing.  Sometimes when I wonder at the peace that we do have in our home amidst the chaos and contention, the Spirit whispers that it is because we are doing the "simple" things the best we can like those two nightly activities, going to church, going to the temple regularly, doing family history and having weekly FHE.

A couple times on our trip it came up that we are expecting our twelfth child.  Trust me. It is a topic I don't bring up on my own.  When people do ask and I tell them, most of the time there is a blank stare and a kind of "I have no response to that" kind of response :).  One was with a couple that had been married for 44 years that we met.  He was an airline pilot and they had two boys.  The woman said that she loved children a bit wistfully and I assured her that I thought one was a lot of children.  I do.  Each number of children has their own challenges, unique to the number and the personalities of the children.  It is definitely an individual choice and no kind of badge of honor or race to have children. Our choice has simply felt right for us.  And we are super excited for the newest one to join us in a few months :).

Many people say, "God bless you!" when they hear how many children we have to which I normally respond, "Yes, He has."  With a big smile.  Some say, "You must be busy," to which I respond, "We are all busy...we just pick what we are busy doing.  I am busy with kids." Normally I add, "And I love it."  Which I do.

Being with them tonight has been particularly wonderful.  Like Xai's hovering and frequent hugs and me soothing Elijah as he stirs fitfully in his sleep with a song, "Mary's Lullaby":

All mine in your loveliness, baby all mine;
All mine in your holiness, baby all mine;Sing on herald angels in chorus sublime,Sing on and adore...for tonight you are mine.

Away speckled future of sorrow and plight.Away to the years that must follow tonight.The pains of Gethsemane...let them be dim.The red drops of Calvary, not Lord, for him. 

Oh, let me enfold thee, my baby, tonight:While legions re singing in joyous delight.A new star has risen to hail thee divine,For you are a king, but tonight you are mine.

Sure, there has been grumpiness, particularly on the part of baby Eli, but for the most part, it has been an overall feeling of being comfortably together once again.  The children definitely all had a fabulous week and are the better for their time with family and at camp, but there has been a little something special in the air as we do our nightly routine of scripture, song and prayer, read to the little ones and baths, and bedtime.

For the last half hour, though, I have been waging the war once again.  Bed bugs.  I have been pretty tired so I am unsure of the number.  Sigh. We all had a little break this last week after sanitizing and then staying other places, but here we go again!

It felt like here were so many bugs tonight after a few weeks of only a few per night.  Most of them had fed.  Part of me is oh so grateful that I was able to catch and kill so many.  That many less to grow and reproduce.  We have the exterminator coming once again on Wednesday for the second treatment.  While I pray that it may take care of the problem as it is supposed to, I am seeing my prayers answered in different ways.

For instance, tonight I was groggy when I woke up around 3 am. I sent a quick prayer heavenward asking, do I really need to get up?  The response I thought I got was, "Don't worry about it."  Well, I got up anyway and found all those bugs...freshly fed upon my children.  I did a few rounds and kept finding more. (I will go up and do some more searching after this.)

While it is satisfying to find and kill them, I always wonder at the ones I am not finding. I spray excess 91% rubbing alcohol around everywhere and just worry.  Well, I worry less lately and feel more resigned.  At one point tonight the thought floated across my mind as I found three or four at a time in a spot by Hyrum, "Do you still trust in Me?"

Yes, was my calm response, for which I was grateful. I have learned that God definitely doesn't answer our prayers in the way we expect Him to all the time.  He could have kept this bed-bug trial from us.  It just takes one bug.  My faith in the all-powerful ways of God have not diminished though it has been strained at times, for which I am grateful.  I am grateful now that, at least at this moment, I can answer with Job that even if God doesn't seem to be taking care of things the way we want Him to, we can know He is still there.

As I wrote earlier, I just went to the Holocaust museum with Quinn. I was grateful for my testimony that I know that this life is not the beginning nor the end, but the second act of a three act play.  I am grateful to know that God took up those poor souls to Him in glory to enjoy a far greater amount of time and paradise than this world can offer.  While their tests were horrifically cruel, they are over.  

There is a song based upon an inscription found in a hiding place for the Jews during World War II:

“I believe in the sun
even when it is not shining
And I believe in love,
even when there’s no one there.
And I believe in God,
even when he is silent.

I believe through any trial,
there is always a way
But sometimes in this suffering
and hopeless despair
My heart cries for shelter,
to know someone’s there
But a voice rises within me, saying hold on
my child, I’ll give you strength,
I’ll give you hope. Just stay a little while.

I believe in the sun
even when it is not shining
And I believe in love
even when there’s no one there
But I believe in God
even when he is silent
I believe through any trial
there is always a way.

May there someday be sunshine
May there someday be happiness
May there someday be love
May there someday be peace….”

 (My thanks to my beautiful niece, Sarah, for introducing this song to my heart so many years ago.)

My minor, minor trial of bedbugs is nothing compared to the horror and depravity Jews, Russians, Serbs, Africans, Chinese, Cambodians, Muslims, fellow Christians and so many others have had to suffer at the hands of terrorists and dictators.  But I can learn from this message of hope.

I can believe in God, even when he is silent.
I can believe in any trial, there is always a way.

If God Really Loved Me...

I was reading in Matthew 4:1-11 this morning about the temptations of Christ and was struck by something.  Satan tries to convince the Savior that
-- if God really loved him, God would satisfy Christ's physical appetite
--if God really loved him, God would spare Christ adversity: "lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone."
--if God really loved him, God would bless Christ with prosperity, to which Christ replies that he has chosen riches of a different kind, the kind that come with worshiping God and putting him before the goal of wealth and power.


I hear echoes of this around me and in my own heart:
--if God really loved me, he would let me satisfy my physical cravings or instincts to my heart's content.
--if God really loved me, he would take away this trial or, even better!  Not let it happen.  Because, you know that He could if He wanted to, right? (This is an unfortunately murmuring familiar to my heart right now.)
--if God really loved me, I would have my financial goals accomplished because I am a genuinely good person, right? And isn't that the reward I should get?

If I listen within my heart, I hear this reply:
--because I love you, my child, I know that if you seek to satisfy your natural man instincts (food, lust, anger), they will lead you into bondage.
--because I love you, my child, I know you need this trial to be happier.  Trust me...what I have in store for you is only possible after this trial.  Please be patient.  Don't tempt me to remove it through my love for you and leave you where you are.
--do you love me, my child, more than your financial and other "success" goals?  Am I first in your heart and in your life?  Don't you know that what I have to share with you is so much more rewarding?

Once again, I am so grateful for all my Elder Brother has to teach me.  I am grateful that He went through this life with us to show me a better way.  Even if I don't often live up to it.  

As Nephi tells us in 2 Nephi 31:20, our responsibility in this life is to love God, love others, press forward (keep trying!), feast on the words of Christ (scriptures, prayer, temple, church), and then...endure!  Or keep trying some more.  I guess I can keep trying :).

Felt prompted to include this...because God really does love us.  For us.  For who we are and not for what we have done or what we have become.

The Best is Yet to Be

Holland:

As a new year begins and we try to benefit from a proper view of what has gone before, I plead with you not to dwell on days now gone nor to yearn vainly for yesterdays, however good those yesterdays may have been. The past is to be learned from but not lived in. We look back to claim the embers from glowing experiences but not the ashes. And when we have learned what we need to learn and have brought with us the best that we have experienced, then we look ahead and remember that faith is always pointed toward the future. Faith always has to do with blessings and truths and events that will yet be efficacious in our lives.

So a more theological way to talk about Lot’s wife is to say that she did not have faith. She doubted the Lord’s ability to give her something better than she already had. Apparently, she thought that nothing that lay ahead could possibly be as good as what she was leaving behind.

To yearn to go back to a world that cannot be lived in now, to be perennially dissatisfied with present circumstances and have only dismal views of the future, and to miss the here and now and tomorrow because we are so trapped in the there and then and yesterday are some of the sins of Lot’s wife.