Life lately has been… I don’t even have adequate words. I’ll just call it “hard”. Really hard. Life has been really hard lately.
Strangle enough, the harder it gets and the more challenges I face and the more struggles I encounter from day to day confirm to me that I need to keep a diary for so many reasons. The most notable reason that I will mention here is to keep a daily record of my life and while acknowledging the difficulties of each day, to primarily use this record to focus on the good things in my, what’s going right in my life, and the all the beautiful moments that stand out to me amongst the chaos.
I NEED this. For me. I need this. I need to be able to see the good in my life and in the world around me, or I don’t think this life and it’s many challenges will be kind enough to me to allow me to be able to not completely and irreparably break in the midst of it.
It’s early in the morning right now, which means nothing much has happened yet, except this: I woke up this morning before the sun had and the first thing on my mind was the thought, “You need to write down right away what your day was like yesterday.”
What was hard about yesterday
Yesterday was all sorts of stressful. My limbs were struggling to maintain their strength all day again yesterday. Not only my limbs, but my face, too. I was having difficulty moving my facial muscles and difficulty moving them normally enough to be able to speak without sounding like I had just come from the dentist. My facial muscles were all moving slowly like that. My husband even noticed it on his own and pointed it out to me with worry and concern when I was bawling my eyes out yesterday. I had reached my breaking point from the stress of the day and just completely lost it. As always, he swooped me up, held me and just let me cry and cry and cry until I was able to pick myself up again (both metaphorically and literally speaking).
I have always had difficulty speaking my whole life because my facial muscles are “lazy” (my term, not what others have ever said to me about it, thankfully). Especially my tongue. I have the hardest time with speaking because my tongue doesn’t move as it should when I’m speaking, so I very frequently slur my words and sound intoxicated. It has always been embarrassing to slur my words, but I mostly don’t noticed it anymore when it happens because that’s just how it’s always been. I mostly notice it when I’m socializing or speaking to someone in some formal manner. Then I am suddenly hyper-aware and self-conscious. I don’t like that feeling.
I had trouble with my arms and legs, yesterday, too. More muscle weakness. It’s so frustrating. It’s frustrating for many reasons, but especially because it slows me down so much because I have to rest when it happens otherwise it gets worse. Usually, the muscle weakness happens most often after I’ve over exerted myself. “I over did it, again”… Or, I experience muscle weakness or increased muscle weakness during or right after being sick. Even a common cold is enough to trigger it, which frustrates me so much.
It frustrates me so much to have muscle weakness at all in the first place. It makes me very emotional to talk about it because of everything it affects in my life and the extent that it affects it. It basically stops me from doing basically everything. I am left feeling “useless” because I don’t get much done…
…I just noticed that my muscles are twitching again.
That happens along with the muscle weakness, too, but it seems to happen most frequently in between each episode of muscle weakness that I experience. Muscle twitches, spasms, weakness… sometimes pain (I think from tiny muscle spasms). My muscles frequently twitch slowly, too, which the best way I can describe that is a feeling like they are contracting and relaxing on their own or are trying to. I try to keep my muscles from contracting themselves, but my muscles act like they are experiencing an involuntary reflex or something when it happens. They end up contracting, anyways. It doesn’t matter. I just have to let it run it’s course, I guess, because there’s nothing I can do to stop it, except for maybe avoid the known triggers that cause all these symptoms. But there are still so many that I can’t seem to identify the exact things that triggers my muscles do these things sometimes… I’m having trouble writing write now. My muscles are twitching and some of the twitches are strong and painful, almost like the burning-like painful feeling you get in your muscles after a good workout. It hasn’t happened like this before now… I don’t like it and I don’t like any of this at all.
What was good about yesterday
Yesterday…
I have to think for a moment…
Sometimes it is very difficult to see or recognize what was “good” about any particular day because it had felt like the day had everything “wrong” with it and nothing good had happened.
When it feels that way, I start with basic things that I am grateful. Even if I have to list things that maybe aren’t normally even considered “things” by most folks these days because we have all be programmed to think these things are just a “given”. But I think even the smallest of “the little things” deserve gratitude, because I have learned how much of a “building block” and foundation each of them are in helping me to recognize and be grateful for the bigger ” big things” in life.
What I am grateful for about yesterday
I am grateful that I woke up yesterday. I am grateful for another day of life and breath. I remind myself of this each morning, first thing when I wake up, and every night before I roll myself into bed, as I kneel at my bedside and utter whispers only God can hear.
I am grateful for everyone having full bullies in our home at each meal. I didn’t always have that as a child when I growing up.
I am thankful for a warm roof over me and my family’s heads. I gained a deeper appreciation for having adequate shelter in my childhood when my family experienced homelessness twice before I had even turned 17 years old.
I am thankful that yesterday was somehow (even though I don’t quite understand how) manageable, even though it didn’t feel like it. But that’s how it has always been for my entire life. Everyday is hard, and every day feels like there’s no way that I can make it through the day, and then suddenly I wake up and it’s the next day and I think to myself all over again each morning, “How am I still here? How did I make it through yesterday?” But somehow, I did and I continue to do so with every the dawning of the morning each new day. Life has been unkind to me, but God has been kind to me. And even though I have been sure more days than I can count that I could not see how it was possible to survive another day… yet here I am. I now count that as nothing less than a miracle and one that I experience every single day of my life. I don’t know how I am still here, but I know that I *am* still here, and if I am still here, it means I am meant to be here, and that God is not done with my life and with me. And I *am* here, and I know it’s because my Savior carries me through it all and into each new day. Each new day is now proof to me that I am supposed to be here.
I am thankful that this year I have felt closer to my Savior this year and closer to my Heavenly Father, too, for the first time in many years. I have felt Them both near so many times, and I have witnessed miracles and answered prayers more times than I can count this past year. I know They are near.
I am thankful for the blessings that I have received this year, many of which are the answers to prayers that I have been praying for more than a decade. Not all of my prayers have been answered yet, but so many have and it has given me a renewed hope in the future and given me more reasons to believe that this are (ultimately) going to be okay.
I am thankful for everyday-ordinary miracles. Miracles that aren’t usually considered “miracles” because they are so small in nature or even common place and of which we usually assign them the label of “coincidence” or “luck”. Far too many “coincidences” that I have experienced or witnessed in my lifetime have been too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence. I have had so many “tiny” prayers answered exactly as was needed in the very moment that I needed them answered, and so many little things that I did not pray for but that happened in the moment
I am thankful that my family is healthy, and for the amount of health that I do have. I have been sick my whole life, which having dealt with health struggles for my entire life, that experience has always given me such a deep appreciation for the times when my health challenges ease up a bit or for the things that I don’t struggle with in my health. I am thankful for other health of others, and that many people don’t have to worry too much about their health.
I am grateful for things that I call “the real finer things in life”. It’s my family. For me, the things that matter the very most in life, are the things that are designed to last the longest. That’s my family. I want to be with them forever, together and happy somewhere in the eternities. They are my treasure in heaven, my eternal reward that awaits me on the other side of the veil between this world and the next. They are the heavenly inheritance that my Father in heaven wants to give to me when I someday return to Him.
I am thankful for the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and for the Plan of Happiness (“The Plan of Salvation”) that my Father in heaven has provided for me and every single one of His children here on earth, and my Savior, who is Jesus Christ, which my Father in heaven has given me to be my Savior. I love Them so much, and I know that They both love me. I know that Heavenly Father sent His Son, Jesus Christ to do for us what we could not do for ourselves. I am thankful that He loves us all so much and that He loves us enough to allow His only Perfect Child, out of all of His billions of children, to save the rest of us, and to suffer for all of us, because Heavenly Father loves us all that much. He was willing to let One of His children sacrifice Himself for the rest of His siblings, so that we could return home, sanctified and mad whole in the end.
I am grateful for prayer, too. I have felt for a very long time that prayer is like calling Home to talk to my Father in heaven. Sometimes I can feel Him near, as if it’s right on the other side of that heavenly line. Other times it’s more like leaving a message on an answering machine. But I know that He will return my “call” as soon as He is able.
I am thankful for scriptures. I have also felt for a very long time that scriptures are like letters from Heavenly Father to His children on earth, dictated and written to help given us instruction, guidance, comforting, hope, and strengthening to help us keep going and not just endure faithfully, but have joy until the end. It’s not easy. I know that just as well as any one else who has ever I call them “letters from home”.
I am thankful for a lot of things. More than this. So much more. But kids are awake now and needing my attention so I’ll need to write more later.
I can write about today later tonight and what I am thankful for and the good I see in the day, today. I am going to try to be more intentional about looking for the good today. I don’t want all the hard things of each day to weigh me down and win. Not today, and not ever. I will fight for my happiness and joy, even if its’ an intermittent experience until eternity comes.
-Stacy
