Pregnancy Angles

Today was a rough day. It started by not being able to sleep in the early am due to heart burn or reflux and nausea. Then Loumy had a "hurting foot" that needed massaging about 3:30am. Finn woke and was hungry about 5am. Kids all whined and cried at 6:45am because they didn't want to get up (except Loumy. He never complains in the morning. He's the best for sure of any of us in the morning!). I felt awful. Deedle begged to stay home. She promised to let me relax and would play with Finn. I was sorely tempted but forced myself to say that wasn't the right thing to do. But then, while trying to make toast for the kids, I couldn't find my little, vintage, metal cinnamon container that I saved from Chancho's grandma and use to mix cinnamon and sugar. The kids had been complaining that we were out a few days earlier and I was sure they'd thrown it away. I started to cry. Haha. Then I found it. But I kept on crying while I filled the kids water bottles, brushed hair, etc. I'll blame it on the hormones. I felt sorry for myself that I am sick and pregnant and uncomfortable and that Finn wouldn't let me just go back to sleep. I started letting dark thoughts come into my mind like, "Why does God think I can handle another baby? I can't! I'm too tired!" Super silly, I know, but sometimes these are early morning kinds of thoughts.

It took a little while, but I finally decided to pull myself out of my sorriness and look at the pregnancy from another angle.

There are these angles.

And then there are the angles where I think about how lucky I am that Lila is cooking inside my tummy, just under my heart instead of struggling in an incubator, or, worse, in an orphanage.

Then a completely different angle came to my mind--an image that kind of surprised me but has sustained me all day. I thought about my Great Grandmother Alice. I never met her, but I know my mother adored her. Alice had 15 children. FIFTEEN. Her husband was an apostle. So, he had to have been very busy. Here she is with her husband, George, and 12 of their children. How often did she sleep? What about babies in cloth diapers? No dishwasher? What about a microwave? What about a clothes washer and dryer? My mom tells me that when people asked how she was able to spread her love to so many children, she would tell them that she didn't have to, that they brought more love with them.

All today I just kept thinking about her and wondering where she pulled her strength from just to keep up with the sheer amount of work it would take to keep that many children fed and clothed. But she not only did it, she did it well. One of her daughters is my amazing grandmother, Edna. One her sons also became an apostle and has influenced hundreds of thousands of lives for good (Legrand Richards). She also held influential church callings, including that of the first temple matron of the Salt Lake City temple, and others where she devoted great amounts of time and service to others. But today I just kept thinking about her sweet face I've seen in photos and imagined her surrounded by her children and how she must have just created her own strength, pressed forward, and endured--WELL and GRACIOUSLY.

What a miracle and a blessing it is to know something of our family who has gone before us. Perhaps there are many more things that Alice would like to be remembered for other than the fact that she had the strength to carry, give birth to, and nurture 15 children. But thinking of her doing that was my salvation today.

Doctrine & Covenants 128: 15 "And now, my dearly beloved brethren and sisters, let me assure you that these are principles in relation to the dead and the living that cannot be lightly passed over, as pertaining to our salvation. For their salvation is necessary and essential to our salvation, as Paul says concerning the fathers—that they without us cannot be made perfect—neither can we without our dead be made perfect."