All is Well

"Why should we mourn or think our lot is hard?
'Tis not so; all is right.
Why should we think to earn a great reward if we now shun the fight?
Gird up your loins; fresh courage take.
Our God will never us forsake;
And soon we'll have this tale to tell-
All is well! All is well!"

Life has been really hard lately.

Nothing terrible has happened and we are all healthy and happy it is just that life hasn't been as charmed these last few months it once was.
The other night I was lying in bed thinking, and I realized that a LOT has happened to me in the last 6 months, some of it good, some of it bad and some of it neither good nor bad, but they have all been hard things. All of them take some adjusting. I got out a paper and pen to write them down and there were 38, right off the top of my head, 38 hard things. Regardless, I am sure that I look much older than I did 6 months ago.

Some of the good things were moving into my dream house, having my sister move to town, having my parents come visit, my dad buying me an amazing mailbox, my eldest son turning 10 and having a great response to my hair accessories. I had a wonderful Retro Housekeeping Party and a lovely inaugural Memorial Day barbecue.

Some of the neutral hard things were having my brother-in-law move in with us for a month, trying to set up a new house and be friendly with the new neighbors, I put my house up for sale, showed a house for 3 months while living in it with kids, I moved house. I have to live without my washer and dyer and refrigerator until the old house sells.

Some of the bad hard things were my sister breaking my heart and getting married without any of her family there, my old house still not selling and watching home sales plummet since the day we put it on the market, My tooth troubles reached a peak with a crown, mercury removal sickness, residual pain and extreme sensitivity = pain.

I had find a job. Looking for a job was one of the most humiliating things I have ever had to do. Finding a job is not easy these days (especially after a 10 year hiatus from the work force) and the indignity of on-line applications knows no bounds. It wasn't the fact that I had to look for a job that was humiliating, it was the way I was treated, disrespected, patronized, taken advantage of and ignored.

After a month of job searching all I had to show for it was 3 severely neglected children, 2 interviews at The Spaghetti Factory but no job and finally a job as a contractor for a sewing business, which was not fun, barely paid and from which I was fired this week. I am an outstanding seamstress and I was fired. Fired! I can't even get a job and the one measly bit of work I get I can't even keep. I used to think I would be able to make a living if I needed to and now I feel pretty useless.

Which leads me to mention my sewing rut. Things are not going well in my sewing studio these days. Everything I make has a dreadful flaw and takes twice as long to make as it should. It happens to everyone and normally, I would just it off to bad luck and persevere, but suddenly my sewing needs to pay and my time is money. The sweater I have been working on since Christmas is still an UFO.

And money, when you have 2 mortgages to pay, houses to maintain, a new house to furnish, and 2 yards to maintain, money becomes annoyingly scarce and I find myself really worrying about what will happen if the car breaks down, or if someone gets sick or if ANYTHING unexpected happens.

To top it all off like a moldy banana peel on the top of this pile of kitchen waste is the fact that this has been the coldest, wettest, most gray spring ever. Portlanders come together to complain about the weather, usually we don't talk about the weather, but we all reached our limit in May and this June stuff is driving us mad. We say things like "Can you believe this rain?" In Portland! While I was picking up strawberries at a stand this week I was trapped under the tent for 10 minutes while I waited for the hail to stop. My kids were 5 feet away in the car.

I realize that all in all I am very blessed and my troubles are small compared to others. But it has been a lot to handle in 6 months and I am really feeling the strain. I know that the Lord is preparing me for something, trying to teach me things and I am trying to accept it all gracefully, but it doesn't make it less hard to get through it.

There have been so many blessings in the midst of all of this turmoil and I am grateful for them every day. I have 3 wonderful, beautiful, healthy smart children, a loving husband who is a great provider. I live in the promised land. My husband has a job. I live in my dream house.

As I was watching General Conference the phrase "The mother should not work outside home" kept running through my mind over, and over, and over again. I feel so blessed that I haven't had to work outside of the home, that was a special prompting and I am glad that I have so far been able to follow it.

I have wonderful friends and family who have helped us through all of this. Relationships have been deepened and strengthened. Love, joy and service abounds.

So I try to keep my chin up, focus on the good and keep plodding along. Sometimes I think simply "All is Well."