The Staff Has Been Raised

Yesterday, at the end of the day, I was having so many negative thoughts:

-I can't get ahead

-I am not meeting the needs of my kids

The mud room was still torn apart from my "cleaning"...without inspiration on how to put it together again. Liesl was screaming after a day of shortened naps so I wasn't able to focus on anything, particularly the phone call with Tova that I was trying to have with a sore ear. I just felt dark and negative.

Then I realized that I had been here emotionally before! For years when I was a young mom, I would say to Quinn, when he came home from work, "I have had a long day." I was back!

Last night, in the middle of the night, as I struggled with these demons of depression, the message from last conference struck home: read the Book of Mormom; say your prayers; so the basics. I have been mulling over this in my mind. Tova's devotional covered the same message yesterday at college. I feel like the serpent has been raised on the staff and we are all dying around it because of the easiness of the way. So, last night, in the middle of the night, demons raging, I lay on the floor on my kid's floor and by the light of the nightlight, I read 1 Nephi 17.

In that chapter, Laman and Lemuel are complaining again despite the many miracles that have been demonstrated in their lives. I was gently rebuked, reminded that God can work miracles in my life and in fact has worked them around me currently if I open my eyes to see them...and here I was murmuring like Laman and Lemuel! "What I have is not enough!"

In that chapter there is a series of verses where Nephi challenges the disbelief of his brethren and the words rang true for me:"And now after the many miracles that have been wrought in your life, how can you murmur against the marvelous visions that God has promised for us in this life? If God said that I could make this valley a mountain and dry up the sea, I could do that...so why can't He not bring peace and joy into your life?" (Greatly paraphrasing and personally adapting...)

So how to find this joy?

I am going to test this. Every time I feel discouraged, sad, overwhelmed or depressed, I am going to turn first to God and "look at His staff," the word of God. The seed is planted.