A Choice

Long time… 

Our camera fell victim to a watery death so I’m afraid this will be a rather boring post, but since it’s been nearly 6 weeks since I last posted and also only 2-3 weeks away from the baby’s due date I thought I’d better write something. Fortunately, we were able to get a new camera (kind of a necessity when you’re about to have a baby), but I don’t have any pics to share yet. 

I can’t believe we’re only a few short weeks away from having a baby boy in our home again after 8 years! It’s really a strange phenomenon. We’re really excited but also nervous about how we’re going to juggle it all. Perhaps for those who are used to the chaos train of multiple-kid life adding another is no big deal, but for us it’s going to be a bit of an adjustment. But we’re thrilled we get the chance of being parents to another wee one. And we’re also excited to see how it influences and develops Ella in new ways. 

Another thing we’ve been thinking about and discussing a lot lately is perceptions and choices. Last week as I read through some old journals I found that most of my writings veered on the negative side. And what astonished me most of all was that the things that have been stressing me out right now are almost identical to the things that were bugging me 8-10 years ago. That kinda hurt. As I prayed and pondered over what I discovered, I realized that I was being much like Laman and Lemuel who complained in the Book of Mormon about how they could’ve been happy if situations had been more ideal (1^st Nephi 17:21). They felt they were victims to their circumstances, or rather that because things had been hard, they couldn’t be happy.

Ultimately, don’t we all just want to be happy? I know I do. But I think I’ve been placing a lot of conditions on how happy I’m allowed to feel. I’ve thought a lot about what it means to “act and not be acted upon” as the prophets so often counsel us to do, and I think for me anyway this is a huge part of using my agency rather than be a victim to the circumstances of my life. So for now, even though there are some pretty stressful things in my life that aren’t going at all well, I choose to be happy. I choose to be happy because I have done all I can do, and there’s nothing left but to trust in the Lord and find happiness in the many blessings I have been given. 

I hope that by choosing to be happy that I’ll be able to handle this upcoming birth and recovery no matter what happens. And knowing my luck, there will be tons of parts of it that will be massively unideal and potentially traumatic—that seems to be the pattern of my life—but that doesn’t have to follow that I am unhappy. I can find joy and happiness despite the unfairness and hardships of life. So here’s to hoping! Wish me luck.