Well, I wanted to post about Emma today, but the technical difficulties continue and my laptop, with all of my photos on it, is being repaired right now. I'm using a loaner. But I did want to post something to let everyone know I'm still alive.
I have been having a really hard time the last few days. This horrible melancholy comes and goes, but never GOES away for good. It seems to be something I have to deal with. But that's not what I want to write about! What I want to write about is how great it feels to come out of the melancholy and to think of the ways it was accomplished. My kids are treasures. They are the best gift EVER. It was fast Sunday here yesterday, and my Emma bore her testimony by herself! It was her own desire-not a result of FHE or anything. She shared her testimony of Joseph Smith and the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon. Alex followed her example and shared his testimony as well. As a mother, I sat there feeling just plain happy to see my kids be so good. They lifted me up. Their testimonies gave me some strength during a difficult time for me. I listened to them while holding my curly-headed little Ivy on my lap and sitting next to my Ethan who was wearing his plaid shirt with one of his big brother's ties :) What a BLESSING our children are! How I don't deserve them.
So, today I am grateful and I am enjoying feeling happy and peaceful. I am thankful to be an American more than I can say. I am looking forward to returning to America which makes me mindful of the special folks I love here who have no such blessing to look forward to. How I have complained about America before! How ungrateful I have felt. My time here, where I am truly living with some difficulty (graduate school just doesn't seem like a difficult experience at all anymore :) ) I hope has mellowed me out a little bit and made some lasting changes in me. I don't ever want to forget what it's like to really have to be careful not to run out of food. I don't ever want to forget that T.V. should never be used to babysit a child. I don't ever want to forget that there are millions of people who don't have water, electricity, or enough food. I have become friends with a woman here who works as a housekeeper in one of the neighbor's apartments. She spends all day here looking after the laundry and food for another family when she wants to do those things for her own family as much as I do. She is paid enough to survive. While she washes the fancy clothes of her employer's family, she is in one of her two shirts that is falling apart. Her children are in clothes that Americans wouldn't even find in a Goodwill store. But she is happy most of the time, though I know she must suffer from feeling a member of a "lower class". She has made poverty real to me. She has also made the real blessings of America more real to me. I think we are spoiled in America, but I don't think we are bad. Americans are good. While there IS evil in all its varieties there, good in all its varieties is thriving as well. There are opportunities there that people only dream about in other parts of the world. When I told my housekeeper friend that she should come with us to America, her face lit up and I discovered later that she assumed that if she came to America, she would be my Nanny. "No," I told her, "you would come and be our friend." This is one of those times when I really do wish that I had a million dollars so that I could get her and her family to the U.S. legally and put them all in school so that they could create lives of their own. America is a blessing beyond description.
I am also grateful for my extended family, both living and dead. As I have trudged through the feelings of despair this week, I have also had the priviledge of feeling a departed loved one near. I have known that I am being watched over and have felt support and strength given me from those I cannot see. How real the Plan of Salvation becomes during times of struggle. I am thankful for my grandparents who are always in touch. I can always look forward to an e-mail from them that will make me laugh or make me think. I am thankful for mine and my husband's parents. I am turning from my need to always declare my independence to feeling a grateful realization of my blessed dependance! I call it blessed because I am certainly not entitled to have parents and in-laws who offer so much love and support and on whom I am able to rely so much. It's something a lot of people do without, and I am grateful that Joe and I don't have to go it alone! Siblings also are one of life's greatest blessings. My mom and dad always told us growing up that my sisters and I would be best friends. How true, and how BLAH, BLAH, BLAH to not have them around! I feel like Jane Eyre, attached by a string from my heart to each of these people that I love, and the distance between us all really does hurt.
Well, I feel like I got most of my thoughts out. I hate being sappy, and I know that when I read this later I'm going to think "Sarah, do you always have to be such a drama queen? No wonder you're so tired!" But, whatever. There it is and now I must go because the laundry awaits....still.
