A twist on gratitude

Tonight was the adult session of our Stake Conference. Call me selfish, but I have a hard time with going to the adult session of Stake Conference, namely because it's on a Saturday night. I mean, really, way to kill any possibility of a date night! But, we managed to get a babysitter, and so B1 and I were both able to go. And let me tell you, it was amazing!! Every talk was incredible, and I could actually hear them because I wasn't constantly shushing B2 or trying to keep D from throwing a car at the head of a kid three rows back. Anyway, I digress. One of the hymns we sang tonight was "Count Your Blessings." I've sung this song countless times, but sometimes it really hits home...like tonight.

For those who don't know, I occasionally go through moments of total craziness (this is slightly exaggerated--it's not like actual diagnosed mental illness, just crazy-for-me craziness). I like to blame it on my birth control, but I've either been on birth control or pregnant for so long that it makes it hard to distinguish my own form of crazy from birth-control-induced crazy (I'm sure there's someone out there thinking that I should change my birth control if it's causing me to be crazy, so let me say two things: first, the craziness is pretty rare, like once every three months and usually lasts a day or two; second, I don't dare switch because I've been on other birth control that was way worse--I can deal with this!). I don't want to over-dramatize my crazy--I'm not super wacko, but I'm just not myself. Usually I can watch some chick flick, cry my eyes out, and then I'm back to my normal, only slightly wacko self. Well, not this week. Monday and Tuesday I just felt off, and then Wednesday something happened and I blew it totally out of proportion, which made me even more crazy on Thursday. Finally by Friday I mellowed out, and now I'm thankfully back to normal. So, I'm not saying this to make people feel sorry for me, but simply to describe maybe why this hymn meant so much to me tonight.

When upon life’s billows you are tempest-tossed,
When you are discouraged, thinking all is lost,
Count your many blessings; name them one by one,
And it will surprise you what the Lord has done.

Count your blessings;
Name them one by one.
Count your blessings;
See what God hath done.

Are you ever burdened with a load of care?
Does the cross seem heavy you are called to bear?
Count your many blessings; ev’ry doubt will fly,
And you will be singing as the days go by.

While singing this, I started thinking about some of the things I usually complain about, and how they are really evidence of blessings I have.


Birth-control-induced craziness - Of course, the first on my list would be due to my past week. I'm grateful that I have birth-control-induced craziness. Why? Because it means that I can have children. If I weren't able to get pregnant, I wouldn't need birth control. And after having two sets of siblings that can't have children, I'm not going to ever, for one second, complain about not having their trial.


Stretch marks and saggy....well, you know - Again, as a by-product of being able to have children, I also have stretch marks. Like, really bad stretch marks. If I were to ever wear a bikini, I'm sure there would be someone who would be convinced that I was attacked by Freddy Krueger. But as much as I hate the stretch marks (or, even worse, all the leftover skin), I would never replace it with the option of not being able to have kids.


A husband who's gone a lot, because I have a husband with a good job that he loves, and a husband that is self-sacrificing enough to spend his nights serving others. Sure beats the alternatives...


The inability to sell our condo to buy a house, because that means we own our home. And we are blessed to own such a nice home--it's in great condition, in a great neighborhood and ward, with awesome neighbors. We love everything about where we live, except the fact that we're in two HOAs and we don't have a backyard where we can send our kids when they start driving us nuts. And I wouldn't mind having a basement either, with a nice big cold storage area for my food storage...But I digress.


Kids that wake me up at 7:00 a.m., because it means I get to be a stay-at-home mom and see their much-too-happy-for-7:00-a.m. faces every day.


A messy house, because I have kids who love to play and plenty of toys for them to play with.


Living in Utah, because now I can (or rather, have to) fully admit that I chose to be here. We had the option of moving to Houston or Minneapolis, and I realized that Utah isn't so bad. I'd like it a lot more if I didn't spend most of my time outdoors freezing or sneezing.


Trials, specifically trials I don't have. This one has been on my mind a lot lately. Several years ago, a family member and his wife had a baby who was born with an extremely rare genetic disease. Sadly, it's a terminal disease, and their little boy died just before his first birthday. I can't even imagine the pain they went through watching their baby slowly deteriorate, but what really saddens me is the pain they continued to go through. (The rest of this is all hear-say, but I'm sure there are others who have felt this way about their particular trial.) My mother-in-law was telling me about how hard it would be for them at church, because someone would give a talk or bear a testimony about how they had faith that God would answer their prayers and remove their trial, and He did. The family members then felt that their faith was not sufficient or God would have answered their prayers. I wish I could have told them then what was said in a recent Ensign article: “When someone has an ailment or an illness and they are healed as the result of a blessing, their faith is being strengthened. But for those who aren’t healed but continue faithful, their faith is being perfected. The first is a faith-promoting experience. The second is faith-perfecting.” (source) I'm grateful that I've only had faith-promoting trials and no faith-perfecting trials, though I'm sure I'll get some of those eventually. I'm also grateful for family members that have allowed me into their lives to share a small part of their trials. That may sound weird, but I feel like I become a better person for it. There are variations of this quote, and attributed to different people, but I try to take it to heart: "A fool learns from his own mistakes, a wise person learns from the mistakes of others." I think it extends to trials as well -- a wise person should learn from the trials of others, as much as he can.


Anyway, this was just on my mind after Conference tonight, and wanted to share. Maybe it will help someone else be wise by learning from my mistake, and instead of complaining (like I do) he/she can be grateful instead.