I took a shower.
My kids did something besides watch tv all day.
I ate and kept down two separate meals.
There was something for Jordan to eat for dinner and I helped make it, and it didn't come from McDonald's.
These are the simple ways I measure the days passing. And although today at 7:30 I am now so near vomiting and exhausted that I have retreated to bed, I'm congratulating myself on all the things I've accomplished today in an attempt to not feel so pathetic. Heck, I even did two loads of laundry and topped off the nearly full dishwasher, and ran it! I am hot stuff.
Today stands in stark constrast to the days that I do feel are a complete failure. Days when Jordan finds me in the same bed he left me in when he left for work. Days my children were neglected, plugged into screens, fighting each other and desperate for some kind of attention or affection from the lifeless blob on the couch that flinches every time they touch me because I'm afraid I might throw up on them.
All I can think about is a story Elder Eyring told.
" This story is about his father, the great scientist Henry Eyring, who served on the Bonneville Stake high council. He was responsible for the welfare farm, which included a field of onions that needed to be weeded. At that time, he was nearly 80 and suffering from painful bone cancer. He assigned himself to do weeding even though the pain was so great that he pulled himself along on his stomach with his elbows. The pain was too great for him to kneel. Yet he smiled, laughed, and talked happily with the others who were there that day weeding that field of onions. I now quote what Elder Eyring said of this incident:
“After all the work was finished and the onions were all weeded, someone [said to] him, ‘Henry, good heavens! You didn’t pull those weeds, did you? Those weeds were sprayed two days ago, and they were going to die anyway.’
“Dad just roared. He thought that was the funniest thing. He thought it was a great joke on himself. He had worked through the day in the wrong weeds. They had been sprayed and would have died anyway.
“… I [asked] him, ‘Dad how could you make a joke out of that?’ …
“He said something to me that I will never forget. … He said, ‘Hal, I wasn’t there for the weeds.’"
That story is what I aspire to everyday. As a mom so much of what I do is mounded into an ambiguous pile of drudgery known merely as "housework." And lately I have had days of literally pulling myself along the floor of my existence. But the truth is, I'm not here to keep a clean house. (which is good because I don't) and on days that I feel like I've weeded a field that didn't need weeding, and I have accomplished nothing but my own suffering, I remember how blessed I am to be where I am. I am a Mother, made so again in November, and that I'm not needlessly suffering. I, like Brother Eyring, am doing the Lord's work. I can laugh about my misery because I know the real meaning of it. I know many women who put up with worse to get their babies, struggling through infertility or adoption, and they would take my place in a second. The service is more important than the suffering. This spirit must receive a body, so they can do their work. Even when I have those days that feel like failure, I remember that I can't see how much growth happened just from enduring it all one more day. Success.
So I will try to be more like Henry Eyring. Just laugh about it! It is pretty ridiculous, after all. The Lord will see me through to the other side of this onion patch.
