Are you keeping up with the recent rapid rate of all of these posts? Feeling slightly overwhelmed? Ready to give up on trying to stay caught up? (Seriously, there is so much in my head – I could easily sit and write at least five other posts, right now…)
I have mentioned this before, but writing this blog through the Meal Train platform has been a rather unusual experience. It’s not like a typical blog would be, where people are able to leave comments after each entry. After I post a new “update” I really don’t know who might read or care about what I’ve written. I purge my brain of whatever felt important to share in that moment, post it, and then move on. But I recently checked and was astonished to see that nearly 300 people receive an email when a new update gets added. Certainly all of those people aren’t still reading and following these posts (especially with how many there have been lately), but I know that at least some of them do, along with people who come across my posts on Facebook.
I also know that there are people who have been following our family’s journey who now feel very connected to us, or to me in particular. I appreciate those specific prayers that have been offered in my behalf, my family’s, as people have had a window into the things we may be facing or struggling with at the time. I think that when people are vulnerable and open with us, real, it naturally does make us love and feel connected to them.
But there are also times that I have felt a bit self-conscious, not knowing how something especially vulnerable or tender that I had shared (yes, quite publicly) might have been received. No question that I love my “Meal Train family” here, but it’s hard to feel a lot of real connection back without much feedback (although yes, I know I get occasional comments or likes on Facebook).
This isn’t me fishing for reassurance, just acknowledging what a strange place it can be for me sometimes. On more than one occasion I have run into someone whom I have not interacted with for many years, and by reading my posts they are caught up on my life, feel they know me well, when I have no idea what has been happening in their life. (Are they married? Have kids? Working? Where do they live? You get the idea.)
Yet despite that, I do continue to feel a compulsion to keep posting and documenting my story, this journey. I’m also feeling a pressing urgency about my book. The story there isn’t finished yet, but I can feel that it is close. And that scares me. A lot. I know that this has been a story worth telling, I know that there have been people who have been helped or touched by the things I have shared. But I worry that I won’t be able to, I don’t know, get out of the way so to speak, in telling the story that is meant to be told. Did that make sense?
I’m reminded of an experience I had a few months into Kendall’s illness. Of necessity I needed to be released from my church calling. I knew that, knew that with my full-time care giving responsibilities, trips to the hospital, and forced isolation that I wasn’t able to completely fulfill my calling any longer. But it was REALLY hard for me when I was released. I had loved getting to work individually with the women in my ward (congregation), so valued that sense of connection and love I felt for each one of them. When I was released it felt like my tether to my ward, to the outside world, was completely severed.
I was driving up to Huntsman one morning and was complaining a bit to Heavenly Father about that. I was lamenting about how unfair it was that I couldn’t have a calling, couldn’t serve other people in that capacity like I so desperately wanted to, when I had an overwhelming impression come to my mind. I could feel God telling me that I DID still have a calling, it was just no longer confined to serving the people within my ward boundaries.
And you know, that’s been true. I think that Meal Train has been part of that, and also the many opportunities I had up at Huntsman to share my faith and testimony (I was shocked at how few medical staff I encountered were actually religious, not what I would have expected in Salt Lake City, Utah), or the other widows and people who have experienced loss that I have had the privilege to interact with.
I do now have a calling within my ward, for which I am grateful. But I think there’s more I am supposed to do. Probably more we are ALL called to do. We all have a story worth sharing, ways that we can impact and uplift those around us. In spite of being scared, I am writing that book. It will likely be one of the hardest things I have ever done, but I trust that the message that is supposed to be shared will be somehow, despite my shortcomings. And while there is nothing about me in particular that especially qualifies me more than another to play a part in the work, I have seen how the Lord has used these experiences, this story, to His glory. I’m humbled to have been able to be a part of that.
(And I absolutely adore that mouth vase, and the matching ear vase on a different shelf, that I have out in my parent observation room. They’re so fun!)
