Another weekly window

Guess what!!?? Friday night Jeff and I went on our first real date out alone together in nearly two years! We are home bodies and there are few babysitters available nearby, so we usually have at-home "dates." Friday night we went to the movies, using a set of coupons that Jeff got two years ago for teacher appreciation week. Free movie! I skipped through the parking lot holding my husband's hand. We saw Mockingjay Part 2 and I was so excited to be going OUT on a real DATE to the actual MOVIES and that it was going to be FREE that I neglected to remember the tragic, haunting ending to the Hunger Games series. I read the books. I knew how the story ended. So I should have been prepared to be thoroughly depressed. But alas, in my date-night euphoria I forgot and was taken off guard at the hollow victory at the end, after the successful war and coup. So, our date wasn't all jumping and joy, but it was a date and we even held hands during the movie. That definitely counts for something!

We did the thing right--date night selfie in the theater and all. Ha.

Switching gears...
When I write to my missionary sister Mel each week, I try to include one spiritual thought that I had in the past week. I like it because it helps me think a little more deeply and develop thoughts and inspirations that come my way. I figure that the two or three people (hi, Mom and Grama!) who actually read my long-winded ramblings on this blog might not mind reading my inspiration of the week too.

So this week was sort of stressful for me for two reasons:

1. I had visiting teaching appointments: one on Tuesday with a lady who is not active in the church and then the other one on Wednesday with a lady who is in our ward's Spanish speaking unit. These sisters are SO DIFFERENT! I swear I probably have some legitimate case of anxiety or something because I literally dread visiting teaching for days beforehand--it's not the people, it's just the visiting part. Of course I survived both appointments and they were fine like the rational side of my brain knew they'd be. But that dread was real!

2. It was one of those weeks where I have such a hard time navigating the flood of unexpected emotional intensity that comes along with being female. It's just so easy to get cranky at a routine mess or at demanding kids or at NOT being able to have any quiet time to myself. When I'm all wacky and--ahem--hormonal, it's even harder than normal to get something out of my brief scripture time each day. Wow, I struggled this week! This morning I was thinking about emailing Mel and I was laughing to myself because I had zero worthwhile thoughts/inspirations from my feeble attempts at studying this week. It made me kind of sad.

I have gotten into the habit of praying a few times before church for help with being patient and riding the storm of kids/baby through sacrament meeting with my heart still soft enough to listen and learn from the spirit during the rest of church. Well, those prayers HELP SO MUCH! Relief Society was such a RELIEF today! Seriously, what a perfect name for it. I felt the spirit and learned and it was the most in tune I've felt all week. I felt so at peace during Relief Society today--a welcome relief from my week. My mother in law taught the lesson and she is such a good teacher (it is her profession, after all--she's a high school biology teacher). I found my weekly inspiration at long last, during the very end of the lesson. Talk about last minute!

My weekly thought wasn't exactly related to the lesson, but that's the beauty of the gospel and the spirit--it's all related and certain words can spark thoughts and lead to inspiration. We always say that our weaknesses will become strong with the Lord's help, like it says in Ether 12:27. I know that he can and will help us with our weaknesses. But there are two other aspects of this topic that I hadn't considered before:

1. What feels like a weakness to me may appear to be a strength to someone else. Does that make sense? We are our own worst critics after all. 
2. Weaknesses don't always become strengths directly--struggling with our weaknesses GIVES us strength. As we work to overcome our weaknesses, we become strong in new ways. I love that thought so much. 

Examples: There are certain weaknesses I have that I don't ever expect to overcome, like my quietness/fear of speaking out. I feel like this can be seen as a strength as much as a weakness, and as I figure out ways to work WITH this weakness and to do my duties and church callings WITH this weakness, I become stronger in other ways. When I am asked to speak in church, my terror leads me to research hard and pray hard and prepare the thing half to death. In the process, I learn a ton, I receive personal revelation, my faith grows, and I learn to rely on Heavenly Father a little bit more.

A more physical/literal example of this concept is my weakness in childbearing. My body was NOT GOOD at being pregnant. It was totally debilitated and weak the whole time. That is a weakness that will never become a strength for me, at least not in this life. But I learned so many beautiful, powerful lessons about service and sacrifice from my 9 (x3.2) months of physical weakness, and I would not trade that experience for anything. People always say to be thankful for your trials, but who's honestly thankful for something so miserable? It's masochistic to be thankful for pain and agony and suffering, even after the fact! I think what people mean to say is we need to be thankful for what we gain and learn from our trials. It's the same thing with weaknesses bringing strength. We don't have to be thankful for our weaknesses; instead we can be thankful for how the Lord helps us handle them and what we learn along the way!

There's my weekly epiphany. It was very meaningful to me today because I was really struggling with my introverted social agony before I went visiting teaching this week. Everything is always bearable while I'm actually there--it's more the anxiety leading up to the visit and the post-visit should-haves that kill me. Well, I thought I may as well keep going along and bearing it. I didn't feel particularly prompted either way, just that I felt...less bad? about sticking with my route. Then this inspiration came at church today and it cleared the matter up nicely for me. I feel like visiting teaching is something that I can figure out how to do better, wimpy social anxiety and all.

This is kind of personal journal-ish stuff, but it felt like a good, relevant thought to post. When I think about what to post, I always examine that line between too personal and too remote. And that other pesky line between meaningful and cheesy/overly sentimental. Of course there's also the line between interesting and boring, ha ha. Sometimes it's hard to tell if my words are too close to those lines because they're so fresh when I first write them, you know?

The girls were ready for church before the boys today--victory! Alas, we still ended up being late due to unforseen last minute messes. But let the record show, we were ready.