Finding Joy through Life's Trials
Last month I finished reading the book Look What You’ve Done: The Lies We Believe and the Truth that Sets Us Free by Christian music artist Tasha Layton, and I loved it! Before I dive into my book review, though, I want to tell you …
The winter doldrums have definitely set in. If you, too, suffer from seasonal depression, then you get it. The fun and excitement of the holidays are over, and I’m worn out from the festivities and dealing with my kids’ frequent sicknesses. I’m never a cold …
I have always loved Christmas. Unlike many people, I’ve ALWAYS looked forward to it. The lights, the decorations, the music, the movies, the family time, the traditions, the spirit of giving—it all warms my heart. (Notice that I did not list snow as something I love. I’m not someone who needs a white Christmas. Snow=COLD! 😂)
Even though I love Christmas, I’m just as guilty as the next person of getting sucked into the hustle, bustle, and expectations of the season and getting overwhelmed. I love having my house decorated for Christmas, but I don’t enjoy the in-depth cleaning I feel like I need to do beforehand. I love buying gifts for people, but my procrastination often leaves me shopping and wrapping right up until the very last minute, making me stressed and unable to fully soak in the season. I love having get-togethers with friends and family, but I can get frustrated with December’s tightly-packed schedule. Does this sound familiar to anyone? (I hope there aren’t crickets…)
Years ago I purchased the book The Christmas Experiment: 6 Ways to Include Christ in Your Family Christmas by Denise Wamsley. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve read it in an attempt to simplify Christmas and focus on what really matters. It seems like I’m always in need of a refresher and ideas for how I can make my family’s Christmas season what I truly want it to be.
Early this October I started looking ahead to Christmas, eager to plan out what I wanted this year to look like. I knew one thing: I wanted this year’s Christmas to be simple and peaceful. I didn’t want to put things off and then feel rushed and overwhelmed. I also didn’t want to bring a truckload of new gifts into our home.
I already feel like we’re drowning in our boys’ toys. I’ve been trying to declutter and organize our home all year, and I still have a LONG way to go! Plus I want to teach our kids the importance of giving and serving over getting. I knew that we’d be freshly home from Lincoln’s Make-a-Wish trip to Florida, where I knew we’d all get gifts and souvenirs.
I knew all of these things, but I still didn’t know how I wanted to reach my Christmas goals. As part of my morning routine, I always try to read something uplifting before or after I say my prayer. I’d been reading, praying, and pondering how we could make Christmas this year as close to my version of “perfect” as possible, but I was still turning things over in my head.
Near the beginning of November, I went to an incredible retreat for Utah moms with kids who have/have had cancer. During my morning prayer the day I left for the retreat, I asked for my Heavenly Father’s help to know what my family should do for Christmas this year. I felt like the cancer moms retreat was the perfect time for me to have some peace and quiet and to be led to divinely-inspired ideas. The Spirit whispered to me to pack my copy of The Christmas Experiment and a notebook and reassured me that answers would come.
My weekend up at Bear Lake with about 40 other cancer moms was incredible. It deserves a post of its own, but I haven’t had time to write one yet. I’ll share a piece of it that’s close to my heart here, though. The first night I was at the retreat I found some free time along with a quiet space (well, quiet-er—there were 40 women in the same house, after all😉). I pulled out my book and notebook and started reading and taking notes. I jotted down ideas for what we could do to not only make Christmas magical for us but also how we could serve others. The ideas flowed, and I was filled with peace and the Spirit. My beautiful weekend was just beginning, though.
The following morning I was able to read and write down ideas again. Then we were all invited to participate in a group yoga session. Before we started, we all sat on the floor as our instructor introduced herself. Her name is Jackie Culley, and very soon after she started speaking, I felt like I had been led to being there in that moment.
Jackie is a fellow cancer mom. Her angel, Riley, gained his wings in January 2020. Like so many other mothers in the cancer world, Jackie—along with her family—chose to use her knowledge and experience to help others. They founded Christmas for Cancer Families. This amazing non-profit brings light to families in the dark cancer trenches every Christmas season. You can read more about Jackie’s non-profit as well as how you can help here:
https://christmasforcancerfamilies.org/
While Jackie talked about her experiences and shared what her organization has already done and hopes to do in the future, I silently praised my Heavenly Father and thanked Him for answering my prayers. I knew I was supposed to meet Jackie. I knew my family was supposed to contribute to Christmas for Cancer Families this year—and perhaps every year from now on! Jackie said that she doesn’t believe in coincidences anymore. Neither do I. I met Jackie the very weekend I was seeking ideas for how my family could make this Christmas more meaningful.
I talked to Jackie after our INCREDIBLE yoga session and volunteered to put together the stockings for a family this year. I can’t even begin to describe everything this mother and her two daughters have already gone through. Now the mom is fighting aggressive cervical cancer. I wish it were possible for me to take their pain and suffering away, but at least I can try to put some smiles on their faces. I had so much fun buying cute stockings and filling them with things I thought the family would enjoy. Yesterday Josh delivered the stockings and a few extra things to the person who’s coordinating Christmas for this family. I can’t wait to see how it all turns out!
I am also happy to report that my goal to procrastinate less this year has been going well! As I finish writing this post on December 16th, I am proud to say that I am 100% done with my Christmas shopping! I really don’t think that’s ever happened before. I know plenty of people get done with their shopping and wrapping well in advance, but that has never been me before. I’m really looking forward to seeing how this will make the last week before Christmas less chaotic and more serene. I can already tell a difference!
Do you have a desire in your heart to simplify Christmas? To focus more on the Savior’s miraculous birth? To change something about your December traditions and routines, but you don’t know what to change or how to go about it? I promise you that if you turn to God for guidance, He will help you know what to do. I wish you the very happiest of holidays, everyone!!!
This post is my permission to myself to sometimes write and post simple, short & sweet articles. As a recovering perfectionist, I often feel like I have to work on my articles for hours and hours, and they need to be amazing. Here’s the truth: …
Do you consider yourself a morning person? I do, but there’s a caveat. I enjoy getting up early, but I do not enjoy having to get up and going quickly in the morning. I’m usually awake and willingly out of bed by 6 or at …
We’ve all had those heart-sinking moments when we can’t find something important and we briefly (or, perhaps, not-so-briefly) feel like life as we know it is over. I had one of those moments a few weeks ago. For a total of about 18 hours, I thought I’d lost all of the work I’d been doing getting ready to launch this blog, and I was devastated.
I’ve been wanting to start a blog since at least 2016. I attended a Stampin’ Up! event that year a couple of my friends put on. One of the presenters at the event was an incredibly successful SU! demonstrator, and she contributed much of her success to a blog she’d started. Her motivational talk lit a fire under me. It was a slow-burning fire, considering I’m just now publishing my blog six years later, but it was a fire nonetheless.
First I thought I’d start a blog about either Stampin’ Up! and/or infertility, but I let that ship sail. After I got pregnant and delivered my boys at 23+6 gestation, I thought I should start a blog about premature birth. I even bought my domain name and started crafting a blog back in October of 2017, but I let my perfectionistic tendencies get in the way and never carried out my plan. I’ve still paid for that blog ever since then, though. That’s right. Over almost five years, I paid close to $1k for a blog that only I could see. Talk about embarrassing! 🤦 We live, and we learn, though, right?!
Ever since Lincoln’s cancer diagnosis, the desire to finally start and stick with writing a blog had been growing inside of me. To stay sane when your child is diagnosed with a life-threatening illness, you have to develop a gift of looking for the positives you can be grateful for. One positive I hoped for early on was that our experience could somehow help others who were forced to walk the same path later on. In order to help more people, I knew it was time to expand my audience, and I knew it was time to act on my goal of starting a blog.
Like Ryan Holiday details in his book by the same name, The Obstacle Is the Way! I could either use Link’s diagnosis as proof that we were destined to be picked on in this life, or I could use it to learn, grow, and help others. Don’t get me wrong. We still have plenty of moments when we feel put upon. However, we’re learning how to make those moments fewer and further between.
When this year started, Lincoln was nearing the end of his treatment. After going through so much in 2020 and 2021, I had an overwhelming desire to really make 2022 count. I wanted it to be an incredible, milestone year for us as a family and me personally. I was determined to tackle some big goals and celebrate our victories.
Just like I wrote about in my post about Big Magic, the universe/God heard my desires and opened up paths for me to turn my dreams into realities. Out of the blue, Facebook showed me a friend suggestion for someone I hadn’t seen since high school. I don’t know why, because we weren’t particularly close in high school, but I really felt like I should send her a friend request. I did just that, and it didn’t take long for me to notice and start following her inspirational posts and videos in her business group. Not long after that, she opened up registration for an updated 6-month life coaching program she’d be starting soon.
The Elevated Mother program would include weekly 1:1 coaching sessions, Zoom meetings, training videos, books, a private Facebook group for all the women going through the program, etc. It was geared toward moms who had big goals but wanted help reaching them because they often felt “stuck”. It sounded tailored to my needs, and after talking to my friend Robyn, praying a lot, and weighing the pros/cons, I decided to make the investment and sign up for the program.
Let me make something clear, though. This was WAY out of my comfort zone and wheelhouse! I grew up thinking that getting a life coach was a punchline. Crazy, rich people like Paris in Gilmore Girls got life coaches! I certainly didn’t need one.
Technically, I was right. I didn’t *need* to get a life coach. However, I knew that my good intentions of doing big things weren’t transitioning to actions. I knew that I had the potential to reach my goals and make a difference in the world, but I also knew that I am NOT a great self-motivator. I definitely get things done better when there’s an accountability factor. Finally, I knew that I was worth investing in.
I was very aware that even contemplating paying for a life coach was a very privileged position to be in. I was so grateful my family was in a place financially where I could make that decision. In the end, I took the plunge and paid to be part of the program, and BOY am I glad I did!!!
I decided back in April that I was officially going to launch my blog. I started crafting posts the next week, and I made my blog public on July 1st.
It wasn’t a completely smooth process, though. Remember how I started this blog post? When I talked about having moments when we feel like our life appears to be over? Yeah. That moment happened for me at the beginning of June. Since I wasn’t launching my blog till July, I’d just been storing all of the blog posts I’d been working on on Evernote. One morning the app made me log in, and when I did, EVERYTHING was gone. Absolutely nothing was there—lists, brainstorms, in-progress blog posts, completed blog posts… Nada. After panicking, trying everything I could, and having my hubby try to recover things, I contacted Evernote support. By the grace of God, they were able to restore everything. 🙌 In the meantime, though, it became abundantly clear how important launching this blog was to me. I felt sheer horror at the thought of losing over a month’s worth of work. I dreaded the thought of having to either re-write all of my posts from scratch or just give up. I was SO FRUSTRATED with myself that I’d saved everything in this one app, and I was sure I would never be able to remember all of the ideas I’d written down. I was literally sick to my stomach at the thought that after all of my dreaming, planning, and hard work, people still might not ever see my writing. It was a wakeup call. Before this incident, I had a goal of launching my blog. Afterward, I realized that I wasn’t going to let anything stop me. You’d better believe that I immediately started backing up—and double-backing-up—all of my files.
You’ll probably hear this a lot throughout the years, but I LOOOVE Oprah. One thing she said several times throughout her talk show (which I still desperately miss, BTW) was something along these lines:
“A lesson will keep repeating itself until it is learned. Life first will send the lesson to you in the size of a pebble; if you ignore the pebble, then life will send you a brick; if you ignore the brick, life will send you a brick wall; if you ignore the brick wall, life will send you a demolition truck.”
Life had been throwing pebbles, rocks, and bricks at me telling me to get my writing “out there” for years. I’m so glad I finally heeded the promptings.
What “pebbles” has life been launching at you? What themes keep showing up for you? What do you feel in your bones you should do? What thoughts have you had as you’ve encountered roadblocks? USE THOSE THOUGHTS! Pay attention to those signs. Take that first step. No one wants to come face-to-face with a demolition truck.
I am a self-help book junkie. I read books from all genres, but I have consistently read several self-help books every year since college. I had Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert on my must-read list for a very long time before …