Remember, Remember

 The last five years of my life feel like a garbled blur of pain, confusion, lost time, and opportunities. I found a journal (that I ended up replacing) and the last time I had written in it was 2018. I decided to start using this journal again, and as I sat down to catch up on the last several years, I realized my life has changed in ways I couldn't imagine.

I began writing about all of the world events that have taken place. The past two years have been a whirlwind of change, uncertainty, fear, confusion, and anger for most of the people in my life, and most of the world. We have had a pandemic. A quarantine. Homeschool. A fight for teachers. A fight for vaccines. 

We've had a sitting President attempt an insurrection. Our White House was attacked. Our children talk about politics and understand more than elementary school children should have to understand.

Personally, I had fallen deep into a depression due to chronic pain caused by my sciatic nerve being impinged by my piriformis muscle. "If you can't make your own serotonin, store-bought is ok!" So I went with Effexor. The pain stayed, but the depression left. 

As a family, we welcomed another family into our home to live with us. We experienced blessings and miracles. Brett was laid off in November before the pandemic hit.  The pandemic brought with it greater amounts of unemployment benefits. His unemployment was almost equal to the amount we had lost from his layoff. We also received food benefits that have lasted through this year. All of this helped support our family and a second family living with us. Plus, Brett was home to help when I couldn't. Having him home and available was perhaps the greatest blessing.

This is the most succinct way I could summarize the last few years. It lacks all the nuances and blessings and miracles that happened. And those are the things I want to remember. The rest is for the history books. But for my posterity, I hope to give more light to Lord's hand in our lives through my next few posts. 

One of my favorite Book of Mormon prophets, Alma, said, "then do I remember what the Lord has done for me, yea, even that he hath heard my prayer; yea, then do I remember His merciful arm which He extended towards me."

I want to remember, and I want my children to remember, that even though these have been the hardest years of our lives (so far), they have also been the most blessed years as well.