Let it go...

Gives a new meaning to being seasick...

If you know me, even just a little bit, you know my tendency for hanging on to things: old woes, new grievances, mostly-empty bottles of salad dressing...

I don't know why I'm this way. Maybe my life is too boring and so I live and relive things just to keep my normally unexceptional existence exciting. I don't know.

Mom told me once I would get tired of it. I wanted to believe her.

Sure enough, over time, I let go of some things, usually replacing them with new things, and life became exciting again for that brief moment.

There is a problem with this, though. Well, many problems, but I will try and focus on the major one.

When you constantly trudge down that dusty road, drowning it in your tears of real or imagined woe, you end up getting really dirty.

Reminds me of something Leslie would say in jest all the time: "Get your mind out of the gutter so mine can float by."

Anyway, by constantly dwelling in the ditch, I'm not fixing anything, or solving my problems. I'm making them worse, forever walking up and down creating deeper rivets as I do, and eventually confining myself to a prison of my own making.

Enter pregnancy #5.

God once told me that I wouldn't suffer anything in child bearing that wouldn't bless me.

That's a little daunting, but I went with it.

Each pregnancy has indeed taught me something, and is usually along the lines of  "Crash Course in becoming a better human being."

My OB-GYN told me when I was pregnant with Eden that I should expect things to happen sooner and worse than previous pregnancies. I thought that was a mean thing to say to a half-naked hospital-gowned pregnant lady. But, he was just being real. I really hate real sometimes.

Anyway, that was true for that pregnancy, and has been the case this pregnancy. I think I have been surviving on Priesthood blessings and saltines alone.

Let the lessons pour down from Heaven, Hallelujah, and Amen. (no sacrilege intended...it was one of those, "Yay, I'm grateful that God cares so much to make me a better person, but I wish that it didn't hurt so much.")

I was expressing these sentiments to Jeremy one night, after having a day of constant weariness, nausea, and other -nesses and -seas. (Again, no sacrilege intended. I have become a rather raw version of myself in recent weeks.)

In the spirit of a struggling soul, I exclaimed in damp, mortal frustration (I was in the shower), "Jesus suffered and he was HAPPY to do-"

"No," Jeremy and I said at the same time. "He wasn't happy about it..."

"BUT at least he had some dignity and grace!" I finished.

Emily made the point that Jesus was, in his mortal sojourn, half deity, so he could handle things slightly better than us mere frail humans. (She told me that later. She wasn't in the bathroom with us.)

As these feeling have followed me around, they have chipped away at me, slowly, painfully.

I have had to let things go. A lot of things. I am learning to be content with what little strength I have, what little flashes of joy I can manage to muster, and to forever be in a state of prayer. Anything that doesn't make me happy has to be eliminated.

Now, I'm not talking about chocolate happiness. Not the fleeting happiness of mortal satisfaction or contentment. I'm talking about true happiness, that only comes from our complete reliance on Heavenly Father. I'm talking about finding true happiness in what is most important.

I can't hold on to things anymore. I cannot. I cannot carry around any more than I am already carrying and so I have to dump it by the side of the road. The burden I carry is hard enough as it is, I don't need to carry these other things.

And I don't want to carry them. It is without a moment of regret or looking back that I let these things go. I have discovered that I am even terrified of them, for all the damage the cause to my soul, and their power to drag me back into that old place of filth and rot that I have too long wallowed in.

It is like I am pulling myself out of that pit, and while it is still dark as night around me, I know that as I walk I will eventually feel the light of morning on my face. "The night is dark, and I am far from home...Lead thou me on..."

So, God throws me back into the sea, again and again (be it pregnancy or whatever else He wills), to make me smooth, and while I don't like being pulled and rolled by the undertow, I know I will eventually make it back to shore, and maybe I'll be put to use as part of a wall in the Kingdom of God.

I think I'd like that.