Been thinking.

A couple of things have really got me thinking lately. They aren't related actually. But they have both been on my mind.

1. A week ago, I was meeting with a friend in the RS Presidency for my VT interview. (If that load of LDS garble meant nothing to you, don't sweat it.) We were chatting about odd things, and at one point were ranting about our least favorite chore. Mine is dishes and washing the counter. I told her that it isn't my house if there aren't dishes to be done. Or, more accurately, my mother isn't currently in town to clean up faster than I can blink (sorry for being such a dissapointment, mom . . .). She said hers is laundry. I think what gets us in each case is that they just never get DONE. You finish them, sure. But then next time you turn around they need to get done all over again. I could clean my kitchen counter 5 times every day, but since we all eat there and toddlers never contain messes to just their plates, it will get messy again faster than I realize.

I then confessed that I am really struggling lately. Not with actual problems that can be fixed, though I certainly have those too. But I told her I felt exactly like I did my senior year of high school, which was a rather tough time for me. I won't go into detail, since it is rather personal. I just feel like . . . like I've been working hard on things, and then stopping now to wonder if that is even where I want to be in the first place. Like I'm not sure that I want to be where everybody else thinks I should be (or even thinks I already am). And I hate that. Because I thought I worked through this. I had a rough time with this last time, and for years I was so much stronger and happy with where my life was, and now I am doing it all over again.

And she pointed out that maybe sometimes life is like that chore that never gets done fully. We can clean things, we can "finish" the job, but inside I am still the same person with the same strengths and faults that struggled last time. And if I solved things last time, I can work it out this time.

I'm working hard to see the optimism in that statement. Because sometimes I just want to give up. Sometimes I think that if I watch my little girl wreck something I just finished cleaning one more time, I am just going to give up trying to clean it in the first place. Kinda like how I stopped going to the gym when months of daily workouts never lost me a pound. And I feel like that internally now.

I don't have the answer now, but it is something I am thinking about.

2. The next thing that really has been hard this week happened to someone I barely know. My older brother had a best friend in high school, and I knew his younger sister fairly well. At the younger sister's wedding reception, I got to meet Steven's wife Catie and hear about their family. They had two little kids, and it turned out that we were expecting at about the same time. I didn't talk to them terribly long, but they had a good, happy little life out East where he was teaching at a college. I started watching their blog shortly after that- I never commented, but I liked keeping up with them.

Instead of being born the same time as Kaitlyn, their little girl ended up being born as soon as it was safe to take her, because Catie was diagnosed with cancer and they had to get treatment started. Thankfully that little 2 lbs girl was nursed into a healthy toddler now. But after a couple of years of struggle, Catie passed away last week. Her children are 6, 4 and 2 now. And I just cried.

She wasn't that much older than me. She wasn't that much different from me, on paper. But she was stronger than me, I know that much. By all accounts, she was a wonderful and loving mom. Her blog was entitled "Our Life is Good", and at times it was rather hard to follow how her health was doing because she only talked about the good things in her life. She talked about what mattered to her: how much fun she had with her children recently, how wonderful her friends were that came to visit or ran a race in her honor, how much she loved her husband. After her death, her husband posted that it struck him when he started collecting photos how she never lost the gleam of happiness and hope in her eyes, even at the end when she was in so much pain. He said that she never lost her faith or her optimism, in public or in private.

What an amazing thing to have said about you. I lose my optimism all the time, and I'm not even facing anything! I've been trying to take that example lately, and enjoy the time that I spend with my little kids every day. I guess it just reminds you that every day is a blessing from God, and not something to be wasted.