A Little Moment of Total Honesty

A blog is a tricky thing...especially a public one.   What should I reveal or conceal?  How personal should I be? How much information is too much?  I don't know, and I'm not pretending to know.  But, I'm about to get A) personal and B) religious.  If that's not for you, I guess you can choose to stop reading now.

I've had the pictures that accompany this post saved in a draft for two months.  It would have been a simple matter to title it "Blessing Day!" and post them all and leave it at that, but my heart has felt that I had something more to say about this particular day.  I've let those feelings stir around until I decided I was ready to say what I really wanted to say.  And the story starts ten whole years ago.

Even as I type it, I can't believe it's been ten years since my parents divorced.  But I'm certain I have it right because I wasn't even pregnant with Kate yet and she is 9 now.  I can't speak for anyone but myself, but I think I can safely say that time was indescribably painful to both my mom and dad and to my siblings.  I grieved past, present, and future- feeling bad that my parents had struggled in the marriage, feeling bad that we are all so sad right then, and feeling terrible that the future seemed so uncertain.  What would happen at the holidays?  What would happen when the babies were born (three of us were pregnant at the very time)?   It was an awful spring and I thank the Lord for sending us four babies that year because I think it was the beginning of healing our family.

When I was immersed in that loss, it seemed almost impossible to imagine that things would ever be right again.  In fact, I couldn't imagine what "right" could be. 

And then in a blink, a decade passed.  Children were born and blessed and baptized.  Christmases, Thanksgivings, and Halloweens were celebrated.  We did things with only my mom and only my dad, and eventually we celebrated certain things with all together.  My mom remarried and we had George's children and their spouses join our crazy crew.  Ever so gradually, I felt what had been torn apart start to knit together again...not like it was, but in a new and wonderful way anyway.

Which brings me to Evie's blessing day.  A amazing girl gave my bonus brother and sister-in-law the chance to be parents, and we were lucky to be with them the day they were sealed as a family and the day she was blessed.  On Evie's blessing day, Emilee bore a beautiful testimony about waiting to have her prayer to be a mother answered, which really got me thinking about my own prayers and wishes.  As I read the Bible last year, I decided that one of my favorite scriptures comes from Job, chapter 5:

18 For he maketh sore, and bindeth up: he ^awoundeth, and his hands make whole.

 

 

I absolutely believe it.  What I felt on that blessing day was the fulfillment of the promise in that scripture: that the pain that I had felt during my parents divorce had not been forgotten or unnoticed by my Heavenly Father.  He knew my wounds and sores, and although it took a long time for things to feel whole again, they do now.  And with hindsight, I can look back at the pain of that time and couple it with the happiness and gratitude for my family I have now and I can say with perfect honesty that I wouldn't have things any other way.