Crying

Last night I was finally able to cry. A good, heart wrenching, sobbing it all out kind of cry.

It was a little thing that set me off, but once the leak started the floodgates opened up.

I am learning that I am a person who doesn't really cry or emote during the crisis. I am able to stay calm, deal with the facts, and do what needs to be done.

It isn't until days later, when things have calmed down that I start to lose it.

All of my fears, sadness, and torment usually come to a head and spill over.

I am also a person who needs to verbalize the thoughts and fears that come to my mind. If I don't, they are like a poison that threaten to consume me.

So last night I just sobbed and let it all out to Jacob, and today I am going to write some of it out here.

Of course, there was nothing he could say or do other than hold me and tell me that he loves me. This is our reality. We cannot change it. We must deal with it and live each day.

One of the hardest parts for me is that this disease is so incongruent with being young and raising small children.

That is already hard. Anyone with four kids under the age of 10, a mortgage, church responsibilities, and yard work knows what I'm talking about. Life at this stage is already busy and consuming and lots and lots of work.

Then thrown in a horrible brain cancer and it just tips the scales.

Sometimes I feel like we have more in common with elderly people than people our own age. You know, people who've reached the high point in their lives and don't know what the future holds for them, but feel that it definitely isn't great.

I see people our own age advancing in their jobs, buying that bigger home, serving in responsible church callings, making plans for raising their teenagers together.

It feels like their life trajectories are like this

while our life trajectory feels more like this

Whew, it feels good to get that out. Those images have been in my mind for months.

I know that isn't completely true either. None of us know what is going to happen in our lives. That is a reality. We have such little control over anything. We own nothing, we deserve nothing, we are entitled to nothing.

But oh how wonderful it is to live in blissful ignorance of that fact. To think that you can control events in your life and that if you do this or that things will work out according to your plan.

We are the debtors. We owe Him everything for any good that comes into our lives.

I guess that is something to take from this experience while we are young. Knowing that we (especially me, who tends to like to have some sense of control) are not in control of anything.

I read today in Alma chapter 14 about Alma and Amulek watching men, women, and children put to death by fire for believing in God. Then they were stripped, scorned, starved and abandoned in prison for MANY days. Finally, after being smitten by every enemy in the prison the power of God was upon them.

And Alma cried, saying: How long shall we suffer these great afflictions, O Lord? O Lord, give us strength according to our faith which is in Christ, even unto deliverance.

I was grateful to read that Alma cried. That he felt afflicted. And that he prayed for strength and deliverance through his faith in Christ.

It seems to validate my feelings. If a great prophet of God can feel afflicted at times, then its definitely ok for a 34 year old wife and mother in the desert to feel the same way.