Hold My Hand

 As time went by Nolan grew stronger and decided it was time to pick another career path so we headed to Utah State University so that he could get his Masters Degree. We spent two years in Logan, and had our first daughter while we were there. Once he finished school we moved, bought a house, and had our second daughter a few years later. I was excited to finally settle down into regular everyday life and I was also excited to go to church in a ward that we would be staying in for awhile. Although Nolan still felt the same way about the church, we were at least going as a family and things felt pretty normal. They, of course, put me right into the Primary where I stayed for (almost) my entire 12 years in that ward. I did have a few other callings here and there, my favorite and most fitting...haha, was when I was called as a Scout Leader for a summer... if you knew me you would be laughing too! I literally started laughing out loud when they told me this is what they wanted me to do... now I know that one didn't come from God... I was about as far from a scout as you could get. I also had two girls, and even the one brother I had didn't go to scouts growing up. Nonetheless I accepted the calling like a good kid and did the best I could. Nolan was Mr Scout so he spent almost all of our time in that ward in Scouts/Young Mens and loved it. I, however, can't say the same thing. As I was saying before, almost all of the 12 years we were in the ward I spent most of it as a Primary Teacher. I didn't mind being in there with my girls, but I had a really hard time making friends because I didn't have a chance to get to know anyone. To make matters worse, we lived in the smaller neighborhood across from the bigger neighborhood and my close neighbors weren't members. Because of this, I often found myself looking over at the neighborhood where most of the members were and wondering what was going on over there... also, I had bad luck with visiting teachers. I'm not sure what the problem was but nobody came to visit me. Ok, not nobody, but very few ever did. I would say in 12 years I had maybe 5 visits... 5!... In 12 years! In all fairness, I also have to bring up the fact that I am an introvert, as mentioned in my first post, so I will take partial blame for not having many friends, but still! I did my visiting teaching... not perfectly, but I at least tried. So, for whatever reason, I couldn't for the life of me fit in there. The girls did fine and Nolan, the extravert that he is, did great. I, however, was a loser and halfway through our 12 years being there I had another melt down. I remember coming home from church and sobbing like a 4th grader... that's how I felt... like a 4th grader who didn't have any friends at school and wasn't accepted into the club. It was super sad and pathetic. What was wrong with me? Why didn't anyone want to get to know me? Why wouldn't they take me out of the Primary and put me in a position were I could make friends and have a voice? That was another thing... they asked Nolan (the Athiest in disguise) to talk in Sacrament at least a half a dozen times and I only talked once with him. All the other times they had him talking with some other lady... weird, right? And again, what the heck is wrong with me and why didn't they want to hear what I had to say? 

So that sad, sad day that I had my meltdown I realized I had really no control over my life. I was trying so hard to fit into a church that I clearly didn't fit into. I just didn't understand why. If God was in it why was I having such a hard time? I blamed it on the people, the neighborhood, and my introverted self, and then figured there must be a reason I was still there and I just had to quit trying to make it into what I wanted it to be and accept it for what it was. I looked back on my life and saw that almost nothing had gone the way I expected and I couldn't control any of it. I couldn't control the parents I grew up with who were great, but weren't part of an eternal family.  I couldn't control my situation now and the fact that I still did not have the Mormon family I wanted. I couldn't control my church experience, callings, or situations. I couldn't control what ward I was apart of or if I had a voice or not. So maybe the idea was that I needed to let go of trying to control how I thought my life should go and let God take the wheel. This thought was like a burden being lifted from my shoulders. My prayer became, Lord, I'm letting go, YOU take me where you want me to go. I think this prayer was preparing me for the year to come... I couldn't control where my life was going and now I couldn't control what was about to happen next... 

       "You have plans to redeem and restore me, your behind and before me, oh help me believe..."

Mother's Day 2012










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