A week before Christmas I posted a 2017 update for our family, I saw a lot of other people post similar types of updates. Ours went a little something like this (I don’t post names for privacy/ security, so you just get titles here):
We’ve done a lot of traveling this year including-
-Houston and San Antonio with a little jaunt up to Waco
-Husband got to go to Philly for work and took a side trip over to Baltimore to see his brother
-I took the kids and youngest sister in law to Utah to visit cousins
-Utah (again as the whole family) including a family reunion in Lindon/Provo area, Vernal for Dinosaur National Park, petroglyphs at McConkie Ranch, Fantasy Canyon, Arches, and Goblin Valley
-Several trips up to Flagstaff for Lowell Observatory and Sunset Crater
-Sedona
-Grand Canyon
-I went to Utah (so much Utah!) for a girl’s weekend and got to see a life size replica of the Ancient Biblical Tabernacle at the old BYU stomping ground
-Husband took several trips to CA for work, in October we all tagged along and took a day to go to Sea World
-After Thanksgiving we rode out on the Apache Trail to see the ruins at Tonto National Monument”
Based on this it probably sounds like 2017 was really hunky-dory and we are just having so much fun over here. And we are having fun, and we have so much to be grateful for. But 2017 was actually a pretty rough year. I realized after I posted focusing on only the positive that I had actually left out most of the amazing blessings we have received and lessons we have learned this year and in so doing, kinda left God out of our update. So here’s a more accurate portrayal of how 2017 went.
We’ll start at the end and work our way around:
At the beginning of December our ward choir director approached me and asked me to sing a solo as part of our special Christmas Sacrament meeting program on Christmas Eve. I love to sing and am always happy for the opportunity so of course accepted. She gave me the song- Star of Bethelehem– which to be honest, I have never particularly liked. It’s fine, don’t get me wrong, I have just always thought it was a little cheesy. But, again, I was happy to sing it.
The week before Christmas Eve (on my husband’s birthday/our anniversary) I caught the cold from Hades. I mean this thing has morphed more times than a Power Ranger- it’s still lingering 2 weeks later. I never anticipated that I would be sick for a whole week (let alone 2) but with how much other craziness was going on (I’ll fill in those details later), I got to the Saturday night before Christmas Eve and the cold had settled all of it’s mucus in my nose and sinuses. This makes singing a little tricky but it was a little too late to try to find someone else to cover for me. I practiced it a few times, and though I knew I wouldn’t be at my best, I sounded fine.
The next morning I practiced with the accompanist, it sounded fine, not as great as I knew I could do, but fine. When it came time to get up to sing in the program, I don’t know what happened. The snot shifted weird or something, but I could hardly get a note out. I had very little control over what my voice was doing. That’s a very humbling place to be as a singer because your body and your voice are just not doing what you want them to do.
Then I got to these lines:
“A sweeter face I ne’er will see
Than of those loving eyes smiling up at me.
I found a King, I found a Friend,
That night in Bethlehem”
Since becoming a mom, singing about the Christ child has become very emotional for me. My kids have been giving me a run for my money lately, and maybe that added to it. But thinking about Christ as a baby, and then referring to Him as our friend, I just lost it. So on top of being sick now I was emotional which is just really not a great combo for beautiful singing.
I tried to get it together, which I probably could have done better if I weren’t also ill, but then came to these lines:
“And though I stumble and fall I can hear someone call,
“Do not despair, your star is still there.”‘
And I thought about the struggles we’ve been going through which pale in comparison to some of the other struggles going on in our congregation. We have three members dealing with very serious cases of cancer. One of those is a child. And there are many other serious trials that people from our church family are struggling with. So I completely lost it again and barely tripped along through the rest of the song. I’m telling you it was the worst singing I think I have ever done publicly.
But…
Afterwards several people thanked me and told me they had been crying through it right along with me. I think that if I had not been sick and therefore more humble than my typical self, and had not become emotional, it would have just been a simple (and maybe a little cheesy) song. It might have sounded nice, but the message and the impact might have been lost. I think we all needed a good cry together. If I hadn’t been sick and emotional I know I would have missed out on a blessing and a lesson, and might not have been able to deliver the message that Heavenly Father needed delivered in that moment.
And that’s kind of representative of how 2017 went for us. So here’s a summary of the craziness we have faced this year:
January- my husband woke up with his uvula so swollen that he couldn’t talk or swallow, and could only breathe through his nose. Emergency room visit #1
February- husband had surgery to hopefully fix the issues that caused the great uvula debacle of January. I also finally decided I was sick of being in constant pain following my second pregnancy and started physical therapy. Which was very helpful, but finding a babysitter once a week (times 8 weeks) for 2 kids was a little bit stressful.
March- actually I think this month was ok over all
April- my anxiety hit a pretty high point due to some external stressors including my husband’s business trips, I gained back any and all weight I had lost post pregnancy
May- We started solids with baby girl and her stomach did not agree with certain baby foods. She started waking up in the middle of the night with horrible gas pains and would scream for about 3 hours. Every. single. night. Hoping to help clear her out I started giving her pear juice, and more pear juice. Turns out pears were one of the problems. We didn’t sleep for a month.
June- lots of traveling, fun, but taxing.
July- discovered nodules in my thyroid, had several suspicious moles removed two of which were found to be moderately concerning (don’t freak out there’s still severely concerning and pre-melanoma before you get to melanoma)
August- got said moles removed which meant no lifting for a while (that’s really easy when you have 2 small children), got in to a thyroid specialist (pretty sure I just like lived at the doctor this year- this started a round of monthly blood draws and doctor visits)
September- husband experienced some unsettling symptoms and ended up in the emergency room again- turned out to just be a complex migraine
October- car started making some weird noises
November- husband got a nasty cough that turned into chest pains that turned into another visit to the ER. Everything with his heart was fine- they sent him home not knowing what the problem was. With 3 ER trips in a year I decided we needed to start weeding out what could be causing him to get sick so often and decided to start with a mold test. Look no further, we found mold. Which as it turns out could cause ALL of the random symptoms he had experienced. Just after Thanksgiving we started the mold removal process which meant emptying our playroom and having it tarped off. Weird car noises constantly looming.
December- Just keep that construction zone in the back of your mind, lots of noise, lots of workers in and out of the house and coordinating schedules. Then the heater broke, luckily it was an easier fix than we were worried about. Then husband left town again for work. I don’t do very well anxiety wise while he is gone in general, but on top of everything else it was really rough. I had several commitments in the evening which meant finding babysitters which is nice for the break but the act of finding them was contributing to my anxiety. And then to top it off, the afternoon before daddy got home, the 3 year old did this:
Then I started getting that dreadful cold I referred to earlier. Happy birthday/ anniversary honey, I feel like death warmed over! However, we did have tickets to the Nathan Pacheco concert for the day after the Birth-aversary. At this point we were both sick but decided it was worth venturing out. We went to a Thai restaurant right next to the Mesa Arts Center. We got seated right away and our order was taken quickly and then we waited and waited and waited. Eventually when I was already starting to get anxious that we were going to have to rush through our meal, our waitress came over to inform us that she had forgotten to put in our order. She offered to put it in right away but it would be another 25 minutes. No time for that so we got Subway for our romantic anniversary date. The concert was AMAZING. But, a mom and her teenage daughter sat in front of us. For the first 3 songs, the mom, not the daughter, had her phone out constantly taking pictures and recording with her phone screen in my face. PSA- this is technically illegal as it’s copyright infringement and there were signs posted, but it’s also really rude and distracting to the people behind you. After the third song I leaned forward during the applause and tapped her on the shoulder and said, “I’m really sorry, but could you please keep your phone off, the light is really distracting.” She responded, “Oh, my phone’s not on.” “Well, it’s been on during the songs.” Seriously?? Why was your first inclination to LIE? You could have just said, “Oh, I’m sorry.” Again, this was not the teenager, this was the 40 year old woman. I could go on this rant for a while, but I’ll save that for another post.
We got to the car afterwards and headed towards my parents’ house to pick up the kids. Now there’s this place along 202 Red Mountain Freeway where I have broken down several times in several different cars. I’ve run out of oil, had a tire blow out, and run out of gas. This stretch happens to have about 3 miles with no exits. While in this stretch my car made a clunk noise and started losing speed and would not accelerate. Got to the next exit and thought we would just turn into the nearest gas station, oh there aren’t any within 3 miles of the freeway there. Managed to hop the car along the last 8 miles to my parents’ house. They got it in to the dealer for me the next day and we discovered that it would cost more to fix than the worth of the car. Something about spark plugs like exploding, I don’t really know much about cars, but bad things happened.
So needless to say I am kinda ending this year as a hot mess.
But, through all of this there have been amazing blessings and tender mercies.
Through all the ER and doctor’s visits, people have willingly and gladly stepped up and watched our children. It’s hard to have had to ask for help so many times this year, but it’s beautiful to know that we have amazing friends, family, and a church family who will help us on a moment’s notice.
Discovering nodules in my thyroid was scary because I thought it might mean surgery, but it meant that I had to see a specialist instead of my primary care doctor. The specialist immediately looked at me and said, “Let me guess, they keep telling you that you are ‘low side of normal’? Well, if you’re developing nodules then obviously that’s not good enough for you.” I’ve literally been saying that for YEARS! He suggested trying to up my meds in lieu of removing my thyroid. I immediately started losing weight, the swelling in my thyroid has gone away, and the nodules are not growing- as long as they stay their current size they are fine. So this medical problem ended up being a blessing in disguise.
I wasn’t sure what I was going to do about having the moles removed and not being able to lift for a week. You don’t exactly get sick leave from your children. As I was trying to figure out what on earth to do, my little brother ended up deciding to move back to Arizona to search for a job, which meant that he didn’t have a job yet when I had to have the procedure so he was able to come and be my nanny. In general having him back has been a huge blessing to our little family.
And the mold/heater/car issue. All of those right on top of each other. People often ask, “Where is God?” when they go through a significant trial. It’s hard to keep perspective and rarely are we given the opportunity to see how bad things COULD have been. Not that we should constantly dwell on that while going through trials, but when He does help us with the perspective it can be very strengthening.
The mold issue was bad, and initially we weren’t sure if insurance would cover very much of it. We were being faced with the possibility that this would decimate our savings. Then our heater went out on top of that, which was a possibility for another $4k right there. And on top of that the car was not sounding good. We are pretty big savers and avoid debt as much as possible so this was really scary. We talked it over and agreed that we would keep Christmas gifts really small as we couldn’t justify spending more money when we were so unsure of how things would work out. I immediately felt a burden lifted realizing that I didn’t have to spend effort on finding gifts, and I did have a box of books in the closet that I had been saving so there would be at least some gifts for the kids. Then we found out that heater was actually a very simple fix, only about $100 instead of $4k. Then we found out that the insurance company was going to cover almost all of the mold/ water damage remediation. We still have some out of pocket expenses but nothing compared to the total. The car died close to my parents’ house and they work at the same school together so they were able to loan us one of their cars without any extreme inconvenience on their part. And while we did have to get a loan for the new car, which was something we had hoped to avoid, it’s not the end of the world. Plus we got to upgrade to a van which has already been a blessing on many occasions.
With this set of trials we have been able to see how devastating everything COULD have been, and yet at each turn it has turned into more of an inconvenience. We have seen the hand of God helping us through. Kind of like how that song wouldn’t have been as meaningful if I hadn’t been sick and emotional, if we hadn’t gone through these struggles we wouldn’t have necessarily recognized all of these blessings.
I’m grateful for the challenges because of the blessings they highlighted, I’m also grateful for the positive and fun things we experienced. But overall, here’s to 2018 being far less interesting than 2017!
Stones that shine in darkness 