The Worth of a Cupcake

I have been so blessed in my life to be surrounded by such amazing women. These women teach me things that I need to learn in my life and do so in the most caring and loving ways that touch my heart and my soul.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day saints has an inspired program called visiting teaching. Women of the church are assigned companions (another sister) and they then go out and visit with assigned sisters of the church. This is a way for each sister to be apart both in the serving and the receiving aspect of visiting teaching.

Visiting teaching is something that I am still trying to have that strong testimony of. I think that through my past year of hardships I have taken on the selfish thought of “I am tired of giving, its time for me to receive.” I don’t want to be like that anymore. I want to be a Janet.

Currently I am in Seattle visiting my mom. Last weekend as we were in the temple we saw one of her visiting teachers working in the temple. On our drive home we talked about how the wonderful women have been a great strength to her during this difficult time.

These visiting teachers had set an appointment to come to our house to see my mom the following Monday at 10am. Monday morning came and 10:30am rolled by with no sign of the visiting teachers. By 10:45 Sister Sainsbury came to the door alone with a plate of cupcakes. My mom and her spoke at the door as I listened in from the other room. Sister Sainsbury told my mom that Janet States had a heart attack the night before and was currently in the hospital. Right before she had called for the ambulance she was busy in her kitchen making these cupcakes for the women she would visit teach the next morning. As she was making them she kept feeling a heavy pressure on her chest that intensified until she said it felt like an elephant was sitting on her chest. In the chaos of heading to the hospital and checking in that night, she called her companion and apologized that she would not be able to go visiting teaching the next morning, but she had made some cupcakes for the women and wanted sister Sainsbury to bring them to the women for her.

When Sister Sainsbury left, my mom and I hugged and cried. This beautiful woman wanted nothing more than to serve others, even amidst her own trial and her own pains. Those cupcakes became the most precious things we had ever seen. They were a symbol of a woman’s love for her fellow sisters and her devotion to her Savior. They were a symbol of sacrifice and of service. All day long we talked about her and how meaningful these cupcakes were to us.

My mom and I cried again the next morning as we heard the sad news that Janet had not made it through the night. Although we will miss her so dearly, especially her constant smile and kind words, I know that she is so happy to be reunited with her husband in heaven. And for all of us who are left behind, I hope that we can learn from her. I know that this is one little experience of how Janet has lived and lead such an amazing life full of service, but this experience is her last one in this life of service and I feel blessed that I was able to experience a piece of it.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to her family, especially to her mom and her daughter Julie.

And as for the rest of us, I hope we can look at our small and simple callings in the church for what they really are, and for how they really bless. Yesterday I got a cupcake and that cupcake has blessed my life and has touched my heart in ways that I can hardly describe. It has given me a new outlook on life when I needed it the most. That cupcake and the beautiful woman who made it have made me want to live a life full of service and to magnify my visiting teaching responsibilities and I am so grateful to Janet for the life she has lived and the example of service that she will forever be to me.

Grieving Our Losses

As most of you are well aware… this past year (2012) has been a trying one, to say the least. It has been 6 months since my Dad (one of my closest friends and dearest confidants) has passed away. His loss has been so difficult to bear and try to navigate through. I had been left absolutely heartbroken, depressed, anxious, at times inconsolable. I know and have a testimony of the Plan of Salvation and knew that I would one day see my dad again, but what I knew and what I felt didn’t always coincide with one another. It was like my head and my heart didn’t agree. All I felt was emptiness, loss, and grief. My grief had taken my once love-of-life attitude and made it very difficult for me to find things to get out of bed for. Life seemed daunting… thinking that I had all these years ahead of me without my daddy to share them with. For some people, this may seem a bit intense, but if you were to know and understand the deep relationship, love, and respect that I shared with my dad then it would come to no shock at how hard this loss has been on me.

Through this all, I feel that I have become and expert on grief. I had NO IDEA before… I had never lost anyone remotely close to me before. Grief is debilitating. It affects your life in a total, absolute, and all-consuming way. Physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually… everything was affected. I just felt drained.

I knew my dad would want me to be happy and I knew that I needed to find a way to get back to being me again, but it took more than just a week of crying. Navigating through my grief has been and will always be a journey… and it is one that I am still going though. Some days are easier than others. Many things remind me of my Dad. So much of who I am is because of him. I will be doing something and I will think, oh hey, if my dad were here right now he would say this! Many times this brings great joy and big smiles at the realization that I am able to still feel I have a part of him with me. But many times this brings tears of sadness at the realization that I only have a part of him and I feel other parts of him slipping away. It is hard to describe… but as time goes on I think that your memory starts to lessen as a way to allow your pain to slowly lessen as well.

(My Dad holding me, the day of my Baby Blessing)

I am so grateful for so many friends and family who have supported me through this difficult time. I am especially and eternally grateful for an amazing and wonderful husband who has been patient with me, who has loved me unconditionally, and who has helped me to find joy in life, especially in those moments when I was devoid of all joy. I always knew that I was the luckiest girl when he picked me, but this past year has shown just how lucky I really am. Despite all these difficulties and trials that we have faced, I feel so close to him and I know that our marriage has only become stronger.

I can honestly say that God knew what I needed in order to survive a life without my Dad. There was a reason that Daniel and I met and fell in love so quickly after our missions. I needed him to help hold me up for the hard times ahead. Also, I needed my Daddy to be at my wedding day, so that I could share those special moments with him and have my Daddy/Daughter dance. Most young girls plan out there wedding day, I didn’t do that. To me it was less about the things and more about the people and the memories to be made. I dreamt of the day when I would wear a beautiful white wedding dress and would get to dance with my daddy. As a little side note story, when I was a freshman in college I was in my dorm late one night and was listening to the song My Little Girl by Tim McGraw. I was bawling and thinking that this was the perfect song for my Dad and I, and I couldn’t wait for the day to come to be able to share this special moment with him. I never told my dad about that song. 5 years later, when I was engaged and planning out the details of the wedding, my wonderful father told me that he had a song picked out for our dance, and he wanted to surprise me. This was so hard for me… I had already had one picked out and I wanted more than anything to dance to this one song. It was the one thing that I had envisioned for my wedding day. But my Dad seemed so sure and so excited, and I didn’t have the heart to tell him that he couldn’t pick. 

My wedding day came and it was time for the Daddy/Daughter dance… An already emotional moment in life was heightened due to the fact that he was battling cancer at this time. A song began to play and I knew instantly that it was My Little Girl, the same song that I had dreamed of dancing with my Dad to. As we danced I bawled and said, “Dad, this is the song I had always wanted to dance to with you on my wedding day.” He smiled and looked at me as pleased and proud as a father could be, “it is?! I have had this song in mind for a long time now too.” We danced, we laughed, we cried. I needed that special moment with my Dad before he passed. I will always hold that so dearly to my heart. But more importantly, I think my Dad needed that special moment with me too. He needed to know that his little girl was taken care of. That she was happily married to an amazing man that would continue to take such great care of her, even long after he was gone.

 I am so grateful for my amazing mom. If I look at all my pain and emotions I have experienced and magnify them X50 to help understand what she is going through, I still don’t think I can understand; and yet she still has found ways to help lift me up in my darker days. Whenever I am having a hard day, I can call her and we cry together on the phone but most of the time we somehow find a way to end up laughing a reminiscing by the time we hang-up. My Dad left us with a lifetime of amazing, fun, and happy memories.

I am so grateful for my amazing sister Kari-Lynn. It has been such an answer to prayer that Daniel and I felt like we needed to move here. I call her my party planner and she laughs, but I am so serious. Her constant invitation to do something fun and get out of the house has been such a needed distraction. For the first time in our adult lives we have lived in the same area (something that we have not done for the past 12 years due to our 7 year age difference). This has allowed us to work on our relationship and she has become one of my best friends and such an important part of my life. I can expect a phone call or text almost every morning so that we can plan out our day’s events. Sometimes she just pops on by in the morning as she juggles her busy life of 3 kids, a hubby, and being awesome. Everyone experiences grief in different ways, and although she hasn’t always been able to completely understand my grief, she has been patient with me and that support has helped me to navigate through the rough patches.

About a month after my Dad’s passing I found out that I was pregnant… although I was still mourning the loss of my Dad, I was so excited for this great news. At times it was bitter sweet: sweet because we were beginning our own family, but bitter because I wanted more than anything to be able to share this great news with my Daddy. He was such a great grandpa and would have been so happy and excited for us. I was one of the few lucky women who didn’t have to deal with morning sickness or food aversions. But at 8 weeks I started spotting. At first it was barely anything and then by the next day I had a miscarriage. I was devastated to have to add more bad news to my already dreary summer. My pregnancy had seemed to be a light at the end of a long and dark tunnel, but my miscarriage took that light away and made my journey feel even darker and longer. On top of all these emotions, I felt waves of new emotions that a miscarriage added to. I was embarrassed and felt like there was something wrong with me. Miscarriages are personal, they are heart-wrenching and often not talked about. Truth be told, I didn’t realize how common they were and had a hard time understanding why my life seemed to be so burdened and trial-laden.  In my moment of weakness, I compared my life to others and couldn’t understand why I had to have these trials (especially so close together) when it seemed that others were just coasting through life.

Daniel and I are so excited to be parents. He will be the best Dad, he is so patient, kind, loving, hardworking. He literally can fix any and everything. We were so ecstatic when we found out in November that we were expecting again and this time felt so different from the last. Perhaps it is because I was in a better state of mind than I was a few months ago. I had had time to heal a bit, and although my pain will never completely go away, I felt like I was becoming me again and regaining my joy for life.

It is so interesting getting pregnant again after a miscarriage. You are thrilled but at the same time almost apprehensive… wondering if the same thing will happen again. My goal was to get past my 8-week mark and then I would feel a bit more at ease with the pregnancy.

The week leading up to Christmas was my 8-week mark. I saw spotting. I was devastated. It was different than it was the first time, so a part of me still hoped that maybe some miracle would happen and I would be able to keep this baby. I received a beautiful blessing. Daniel and I had plane tickets to go and visit his family for Christmas; we would leave Christmas Eve. The night before our flight I was unsure what to do (it was a Sunday) and so we decided to go to the emergency room to get everything checked out and from there decide if I should go with Daniel to Las Vegas. In the ER, we had an ultrasound… it was the sweetest thing to be able to see our baby and to see the heartbeat. It felt so real and the baby felt like it was mine. The doctors did exams and said that everything looked all right, the baby was measuring normal, I was fine, but that I was diagnosed as having a threatened miscarriage meaning that I have a 50% chance of keeping the baby. Due to this diagnosis, Daniel and I thought it would be best if he would go to Las Vegas and I would stay behind. In order for people to understand why we felt he should leave me behind, it is because his Dad was also diagnosed with brain cancer and had just undergone a second brain surgery. We felt that his family needed him to be there more, and after everything that I had gone through in the past year, I would never have forgiven myself if I had made Daniel miss this Christmas with his Dad.

Christmas Eve came, I took Daniel to the hospital and then drove myself back home where Millie and I snuggled in bed for most of the day. At around 7pm I started cramping really bad. I knew what this meant: I was going to miscarry. I bawled my eyes out, here I was on Christmas Eve, alone, and feeling like my dreams of being a mom were slipping through my fingers. I find it no coincidence that at that time I felt prompted to check my mailbox and I found two Christmas cards from my mission moms: Cici Jackson and Mama Ott. Thank you so much to these two amazing women… those cards made me realize I wasn’t alone and brought comfort to me when I needed it most. 

Thankfully the day after Christmas I was able to change my flight and was able to join my husband in Las Vegas to be with our family. It has been such a great blessing for me to be here with them and to feel of their deep love and support for us. 

I know that so many of you have had us in your prayers, and we really appreciate it and have felt of it. The reason I share this now is not to get pity, but I feel a great sense of peace in just letting it all out there. It doesn’t need to be a secret anymore. And hopefully if anyone is struggling with these same things they can feel comfort in coming to me… I hope to be there for others just like so many have been there for me.

I don’t have life’s answers. I don’t know or even understand the Lord’s timing in our lives. I am still learning to deal with my grief and everyday seems as an uphill battle. But I do know that he knows us perfectly and that he truly does have a plan for us. I know that even his plan is perfect. That even though life is hard and even though I have faced some of the hardest trials and have felt some of the saddest emotions in life, I know that there is a plan. Hopefully what I share can be useful to someone else.

I know that blogs are typically uplifting and adventurous. Sorry if this one is somewhat depressing, but it is truth and it is honest. I don’t know what God has in store for Daniel and me. I have learned more this past year than ever. I am completely and utterly out of control of my life, but I am comforted at the thought that the Master is the one in charge. I am reminded of this almost everyday as I see tender mercies and little miracles in my life… and he truly has poured out these tender mercies in such simple and surprising ways that it has left me with a sure testimony that he loves me and is aware of me.