A little Motherhood prose

Lately things have been a little crazy...in my life...and in my mind. I will just leave it at that.

I just wanted to jot down a few thoughts while the girls eat some veggie sticks. And it may be weird, but this is the way I write sometimes. If you want a much better written blog post, see the previous one. I just re-read it, that was a good one!

Also, I am going to get some "professional help," in addition to this writing therapy.


Maybe I need to re-write my internal dialogue
Instead of focusing on my struggles and all the things I can't do, inside and outside motherhood, focus on
What am I doing?
I am sustaining life, nurturing creativity, blah blah blah. 
All the things that motherhood is.
I just now realized there is throw up from last week on the cupboard...

This is a huge sacrifice.
But if I embrace the sacrifice it will be less scary.


People talk about wishing they enjoyed these moments more.
People also talk about wishing people wouldn't tell them to enjoy it more.
Maybe it's supposed to be hard to enjoy, let alone survive.
Maybe it's also supposed to be looked back on with the fondness that can only come from going through it and struggling.



Some pictures from recently

Sick Elena last Monday. Honestly, the best day of my week. She took two naps. Jeff stayed home from work because it was the first business day after his week long trip to Sweden. It was fun to be with him! We did laundry (see next picture) and got organized and watched Fixer Upper.

First time successfully French-braiding. Now THAT is exciting. I watched some YouTube videos and realized something I had been doing (or, thinking, since I've hardly devoted any time to this) wrong

Awesome Dad. Helping me with aforementioned craziness as well as taking care of me when I got sick Saturday and Monday. Awesome PhD candidate. Just passed his comprehensive exam! Yay! One more year...we will survive!

Elena had this idea to make the crib into a fort today. :) Thus began the poetry in my head. 

Mostly I played with Abigail outside of it so she wouldn't mess it up. But this was a cute moment.

Life is hard and it's OK

I recently read an article from Time about how to deal with anger based on neuroscience. Basically it said that according to science,  neither suppressing anger or venting it helps. The only thing that can help you feel differently is if you distract yourself, or in essence, change your perspective. For instance, if someone is blowing up at you and you tell yourself "it's not about me, they must be having a bad day," you can feel totally calm despite the confrontation. 

This has really stuck with me and I think it can apply to other things as well. I know my husband has learned the only thing to help with anxiety is to accept it and experience it. I know when I have negative thoughts I can't address them, I have to shift to a different thought pattern. It's about re-writing your mental dialogue. That supports what we learn in the gospel, that in our trials our eternal perspective allows us to have peace.

Last night I had a chance to apply this in another way. It hit me that having a child disobey you is a very unpleasant feeling. But as I was praying about it I realized maybe it's not bad to experience unpleasant feelings. I cannot control my child. The scripture came to mind, "Thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment; And then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high." [D&C 121:7-8] If you endure it well! It's not about avoiding discomfort, it's about doing the right thing. So applied to parenting (my life right now) that means learning how to be a good parent, rather than trying to control my child.

So without getting into specifics of how to parent, I think as in all things, this is a balance of finding God's will - what He wants us to change (and we can only change ourselves, even if that means how we influence our child) and what he wants us to accept.

Lately I have been surprised at how delicate my faith is. Things can be going well and I can feel great one day, and the next feel completely discouraged. Maybe it's part of the package of being a young parent with little sleep, constant change and unpredictability, and not much time for personal devotions or exercise. But I think it is probably just life! The covenant path is not an easy one!

This article in the January Ensign, Revealed Realities of Mortality was also very insightful. Hard work is our common lot, and the way to become more like God. Marriage and parenting are also the vehicle to our refinement and exaltation. This sentence definitely resonated with me right now:

"Bearing children is neither easy nor convenient, but it is a commandment that helps us realize the real blessings of mortality.

So I am trying to embrace that life is hard and turn to the Savior for help. This world is so evil, and life has so much opposition. But I am choosing faith. And I believe that will help me find joy in the journey.

my Joy

To Arizona

I feel like I owe Arizona an apology. Anyone who knows me will know I have whined a lot about living here. I'm sure it's been obnoxious even.

While this Is still not where I want to settle and raise our family, I just want to acknowledge that Arizona is not all bad and explain that my strong negative emotions came I believe as a result of a combination of many circumstances. Yes the summer heat is horrible, but it is also the ghetto complex we live in, the loneliness I felt for a long time, being pregnant during the summer, my husband being in grad school etc.

On the contrary, today I feel there are many beautiful things that are special to me about my time here.

Sunsets, those desert bushes that smell amazingly like water, the mountains and stars.

Mostly the friends. I know once we finally leave this place and settle into our new home who knows where, my heart will ache for the many wonderful and deep friendships I have formed here.

God's Help this week

Can I just share how much Heavenly Father helped me this week? I’ll try to share just enough specifics to illustrate my point, but not so many as to bore (hopefully!).

Last week…was a rough week.

Being sleep deprived from being up with a baby, and parenting a 2 ½ year old can be quite difficult for anyone. Lately I had personally been struggling with mood swings, anxiety and honestly a lot of anger. Not a fun place to be. I felt overwhelmed with all the challenges and discouraged about my parenting. I wasn’t finding relief. I knew something was wrong but didn’t know how to fix it.  

Sunday night I vented to my parents about how discouraged I was and how many things were going wrong with parenting Elena. They were sympathetic as always and gave ideas of how to do things differently. They also sent up some prayers for me which I know helped. 

Monday I finally at least got relief. Since Jeff was home for the holiday, and since he’s awesome, he gave me multiple lengthy breaks from Elena. That at least helped restore my sanity. 

I had prayed many times over the past weeks to help me resist being angry and feel more love. This weekend I added prayers to help me figure out my parenting style, because what I was doing was not working, and it was making me frustrated, thus causing the anger I think.  

I don’t remember the specific moment or prayer that turned things around, but I know that Tuesday I felt changed. I felt the patience I had tried so many times to achieve. I felt relief from my anxiety. I had inspiration about subtle changes I could make in my parenting that were very effective. I came to peace with things that were holding me up. I felt hope for better sleep because the baby is doing better at night. And I have finally started to iron out our weekly schedule that will involve more social time for Elena and more breaks for me. That’s a formula for a happier mom and happier family! 

Maybe the details don’t matter, though if you want to talk parenting, I’d be happy to share what I learned. I just want to share how amazing it is that we can receive personal help to our specific challenges from Heavenly Father. He is so merciful, and Christ’s atonement is so real and accessible to us on a daily basis.

I appreciate that God didn’t just expect me to muster the will power to resist the strong anger I was feeling every day. I feel that God helps me get at the root of my problems, and for me it was digging up the underlying frustration I was feeling and seeing what I could do about it. I wasn’t frustrated at Elena, I was frustrated with myself, and the place we had come to because of my choices. 

The fact that I feel better now doesn’t mean I feel back to who I was before. That’s the cool thing about trials. When our circumstances are making us uncomfortable, it forces us to look inside ourselves to see if there is something we can change. It’s painful. And sometimes when I pray for help I have barely enough faith to believe that I can change. But God is a God of miracles, and when we seek Him, He changes us! I am not back to my old self, I am a new person, with new ideas about parenting and life!

The Bible Dictionary says repentance is “a change of mind, a fresh view about God, about oneself, and about the world.” That’s how I feel! And I’m grateful.