What's a Saint?

The word saint is a translation of a Greek word also rendered “holy,” the fundamental idea being that of consecration or separation for a sacred purpose; but since what was set apart for God must be without blemish, the word came to mean “free from blemish,” whether physical or moral. In the New Testament the saints are all those who by baptism have entered into the Christian covenant (see Acts 9:13, 32, 41; Rom. 1:7; 1 Cor. 1:2; Philip. 1:1; 1 Pet. 1:14–15). See also Holiness.


During this pandemic, I've been struggling to know what to do to help. A few ideas have come to my head. Good ideas. Go to a nursing home and put up encouraging signs on the outside of windows. Go to a widow's home and pull some weeds with my kids. Contact a friend who's fighting cancer and let him know I've been thinking about him.  I haven't followed through with any of them.


And then there are other ideas I have followed through on. I gave a copy of The Book of Mormon to my neighbor. I texted a friend who just had a baby to see if I could bring her dinner. I got out the paints and tried not to hyperventilate while my kids made masterpieces that leaked all over the kitchen table. I even busted out the sewing machine and made a few face masks to donate to a hospital.

The difficult thing about making the choice to do something is that the consequences of good choices don't always happen the way I think they should. I have a good relationship with my neighbor who accepted the book, but I could tell she felt obligated, so now I'm worried the relationship is tainted. My friend who just had a baby never texted me back, so now I'm worried I'm just annoying her when she's just trying to get some rest. My kids artwork is hanging up, but the fun lasted all of 2 minutes while the paint smudges on their shirts will last much longer. The masks I made were supposed to be easy (the tutorial said 5 minutes was all I'd need) and yet every single one of them turned out to be too tight or too loose to be functional.

I always seem to get stuck in this cave of worry. It's claustrophobic, worrying about whether what I did was more hindering than helpful. Why can't I just do a good deed and be done with it? Why can't I be satisfied with my efforts and then put in more effort elsewhere?

I read a story to my kids the other day from The Friend magazine that was so relatable. It was about a little girl who learned to crochet to help with a ward humanitarian project. Each sister was working on a small square that would be put together with all of the other squares to make crochet quilts. The girl finished her square and brought her little offering to the table, only to discover that the rest of the squares were tightly woven and bright happy colors while her little square had many mistakes and was a dull gray. She decides to hide the square behind her back, when the sister heading up the project asks if she's ready to turn in her square. (This is where the relatable-ness ends for me.) This kind sister then makes an announcement to the rest of the ladies in the room that the group has just received their 1000th square. And the little girl feels much better as the room fills with applause for her little gray square and all the other bright squares that are on the table.

I know this life is supposed to be hard. I know it's going to be tough. I just wish I knew my little gray square was actually a really important part of a big project that was going to help somebody. I'm trying hard to be a Saint, to consecrate my life so I can be tool in God's hands, but I often feel like a hammer facing a bunch of screws. My attempts are clumsy, ill-timed, and painfully awkward.

Then I have days like to today...where I didn't do much of anything. Sure, I fed the kids a couple meals and got caught up on a bit of laundry and vacuuming, but that stopped being satisfying a few years ago. It doesn't feel like an accomplishment any more. Most of the time, I was yelling at the kids to stop fighting. They were bored out of their minds while I was moping around the house, throwing dirty looks when they were being...well, little boys. On days like today, I think, "Sure I could be ambitious and wash the outside windows or clean out the car, but they'll be dirty again in a few days." I could have let the boys have a water fight and they would have been entertained for hours, but I didn't want to have to go outside and tell them to quit leaving the hose running a million times so they don't flood the grass. Plus, I don't feel like fighting them to put on sunscreen today.

At the end of days like today, I wonder which is more exhausting? Sitting at home and working really hard to do nothing? Or getting out to do something? I'm definitely happier when I do something. Sometimes I'm incredibly uncomfortable doing it, but the happiness is there.

So what is a Saint? It's somebody who gets up and keeps trying, trusting that the Lord will make up for my short comings. I pray that he'll accept my offerings and that somehow, my little gray square will make a difference. 

Soon to be 3

Long time no see, blog world!

Since we are expecting baby boy #3 any day now, I figured I would do a catch-up post...those are the only posts I do anymore. Ha!

Heber is now 2 years old and he fills that role quite well, if you know what I mean. Heber's hilarious and has so much personality. He is not shy at all. When he was a baby, he was the most mellow, contented little baby I'd ever seen. He hardly made a sound, but how the tables have turned! He is a screamer (happy and angry), a giggler, and a big talker. He no longer just sits back and takes any guff from his older brother, but fights back. He's very aware that people are watching him and he shows off quite a bit. Here are some of the funny things Heber does that I want to remember:

*He has this cute speech impediment where he replaces the "er" sound at the end of a word with the "ay" sound. Water is "Wadday", Heber is "Hebay", etc.

*He loves Emmitt and will often give up his toys or a yummy snack to get on Emmitt's good side.

*When we make him apologize for something, he will try to get close to who he offended and pat them on the head while he says sorry.

Heber is excited to meet his new little brother soon. He's very affectionate when it comes to little kids, so I'm not too worried about the transition for him. It may be a bit of a shock when he doesn't get as much attention as he used to, but I'm sure that's how it is for every kid. Having a baby brother will be a really good thing for him. 

Emmitt is 4 now and has grown up so much in the past few months. I feel like he came out of his "terrible twos" just as Heber was entering his. He is a hard worker. He loves to help out with chores alongside an adult. When we were living with my parents (more on that later), he loved helping with the chores. Maybe it's an oldest child thing, but I think Emmitt really wants to be big. My dad is in charge of the 11 year-old scouts in his ward and Emmitt wanted to be a part of scouts every week. He soaks up learning and is very curious. The other night when we asked him what he wanted to do for 5 minutes before bed, he said he wanted to learn about the moon. We had to put that one off for a night because we had to do our own research. He'll be smarter than we are before too long. Emmitt's also starting to read small words and I'm so excited about that. Both he and Heber will take a book to bed and just look at pictures. I'm glad Emmitt's passing on his love of books to his little brother. Something we've been working on is Emmitt's shyness. He's always been shy, but I think all the moving around we've done for PA school has contributed to it. It's very hard to talk him into doing anything public. He had his first primary program a few weeks ago and just going up to the stand to sit with his class brought on the tears for a good 5 minutes. Tom and I were sweating the whole time, wondering if we should just go get him, but he had an awesome teacher who calmed him down. We just moved into a ward that hasn't done their primary program yet, so we'll see if he can muster the courage for round 2.

I can't believe Emmitt will be starting school in less than a year. He's very excited about it. He brought it up once and I told him I'd be sad and wouldn't know what to do without him all day when he went to school. He patted me on the shoulder and said, "I'll come back, Mom." *(sniff)*

Tom has finally finished school. We are soooo happy to not be students any more. I know they say you should live in the moment, but I think we've been living for this time for the past 6 months. That's about when we moved out of the house we'd been living in for a year and a half and became vagabonds, bouncing from my parents house to my brother-in-law's house, with a few trips for job interviews, board exams, certification classes, and graduation in between. I want to say here that our families have been so encouraging, helpful, and supportive! Tom's parents have always been up on what we're doing and helping out, even though they live far away and my parents were good enough to let us move in with them for a total of 4 non-consecutive months during the year, always going with whatever changes came up. We are so grateful to them. I think the fun family reunions and other get-togethers got us through the last bit of school, giving us something to look forward to. Family is awesome.

We are now living in Pasco, Washington. Tom took a position at a family practice here and starts this Monday. He has done so well and I'm so happy he found a job he's excited about. He'll get to use his Spanish and he's glad he's not specializing right away. We love the house we're renting in Washington and we're excited for this new chapter to start. We really like Washington so far. Our move was successful, although poor Tom had to unload most of the moving truck by himself and the first two disorganized days in our house were really miserable. We were trying to buy Craigslist furniture while we had our moving truck rented and figure out how to get the house together and get to all the administrative stuff that goes along with moving out of state. I got a little emotional, to say the least. By day 1, we had a washer and dryer, couches, and everyone had a place to sleep, thanks to Tom. He's a very patient man, but we won't go into how I know that. (:

Now back to the most exciting news of adding our third boy to the mix: This pregnancy has been really weird. With so much other stuff going on, I don't feel like I've given myself enough time to be excited about it. Since our move was so close to my due date, the first week in Washington was a little tense because I hadn't set up care with a doctor or figured out which hospital we would go to. Now that that's out of the way, I feel lots better. For the first time, I've unpacked some baby clothes and given myself time to soak up what's happening. The hospital bag is packed and we're anxiously waiting. The next post will be all about number 3!