Thoughts on Dec. 30th

Of course I have procrastinated just a bit and these are a couple of days late. But better late than never.

We took the kids to the temple on Tuesday. What's crazy is that we are only a couple of days past and we can already look back with hindsight and understand life better.

I had a friend who has been in our exact circumstance (okay exact as you can be with a bunch of details and genders mixed up). She told us that things didn't simmer down until they took their kids to the temple. I believed her but well, I didn't totally believe her. It was some of that I can make things different that just keeps surfacing in me. DH and I knew we needed to take our children there. But when you are talking hour long tantrums and lots of discouragement, eternity seems really really long. But once again, we knew. We decided to go with how we were feeling and hope (the real meaning of hope that is... a wish with an expectation that it will happen, not just a plain ol' wish) that the blessings would come.

Of course, we started getting sick. The kids had been eating too much candy. Everyone's schedules were off. Getting everyone ready to eat a meal wasn't too appealing and so the day before I was overwhelmed with just the thought of getting us all out the door. And then there was hosting family members to think about. And what do you do when you are ready to just forget it all? You go on. Okay, first you say you aren't going to worry about impressing your family with a clean house and you leave it. Yes, I didn't do anything. I didn't check the bathroom (which I believe hadn't been cleaned since Christmas day and that was by M, not me so the job wasn't as good). I didn't even wipe off my counters. I just focused on doing what was the most important for getting to the temple that day. I went to bed still feeling unsettled.

And then the morning came. I focused on my tasks. And I finished what had to be done. We made it to the temple on time and everything was lovely. The kids were in the youth center (where they had THE coolest kitchen ever) and Jason and I went and showed our paperwork etc. After we were ready there was a time gap and they let us go wait in the celestial room. It was so quiet in there. In fact, it was so quiet that Jason fell asleep sitting next to me. I got up to get a tissue because of this dang cold and the temple worker gave my hand a squeeze (I really did want to warn her about this virus but didn't. I hope she isn't sick now.) and said that we would always remember today. Then I realized that she thought we were getting married. DUH, that's what happens when neither you nor your husband wear wedding bands. I guess I need to squish his knuckle back to it's former shape and get those two prongs on mine fixed after two years.) As we were sitting there we saw this one man and woman. They were older. They looked so sad. The woman sat in a chair and cried a bit and the man had such sadness in his eyes. It was obvious that something horrible had happened in their lives. It made me think a bit about the differences between how men and women grieve. His face couldn't hide what was troubling them. I hope they found peace that day.

They finally took us to the sealing room and brought the kids in. The kids were all well behaved. I cried seeing all my little ones in white. It was a very quick ceremony. And it changed my life. I haven't felt such discouragement since. And the kids' behavior hasn't changed much, it's me. I am hoping Satan will just stay off my back now because he was working me, that's for sure.

And we left. And family life continued. We took pictures after (and managed to get one with ALL of us looking forward... see other blog). D did rabbit ears on M in another. That's how families are. We came home to our not so perfectly cleaned house and enjoyed family and ate pizza. (I didn't even cook!)