I haven’t blogged in a long time. Sorry about that. My life is amazing. Thanksgiving and my birthday were wonderful and it was so great to have Arctic Boy back home from his church mission to Cambodia. He came back only slightly thinner and loving God and spicy food even more than when he left.

Today he is getting married in the LDS temple to his best friend who wrote him letters and prayed for him every day he was gone. It’s going to be a beautiful day.

I woke early this morning and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I was browsing social media and saw a grateful, but overwhelmed, New Years post by a mom of young kids. She’s in the thick of raising her children to be educated, responsible, faithful people and it’s hard. Some of my daughters are living through the same challenges now also. It’s hard doing all that mom stuff and still have the energy needed to be a loving wife to your husband. Sometimes I read these kinds of posts and let them go by with a short comment and a little love, but on this special day I felt the need to respond more fully. Here is what I wrote: 

I’m in a different stage of life than you are now. My youngest son is getting married today. But as someone whose been in the same trenches (battle analogies definitely apply) as you, trust me when I say it’s ALL worth it. It’s worth it to have family fight night – oops Family Home Evening – every single week. Even when you are so tired of kids you just want to hide in your closet. It’s worth it to drag them out of bed early so they can sleep through family scriptures and family prayer. It’s worth the art projects on the wall. It’s worth the puky (how do you spell that word?) laundry. It’s worth the late-night conversations – because that’s the only time a teenager wants to talk – when they bare their soul to you. It’s worth giving up a trip to Italy because someone has to get through driver’s ed. When they stand at the pulpit in church before they leave on a mission, when they talk about how much it mattered that you helped them through their crisis moments, and how they appreciated that you went to the temple and filled your callings, when they kneel at a temple altar to be sealed to someone wonderful, then you will have some understanding of what you were doing it all for. BECAUSE. IT. IS. WORTH. IT. All of it. Every. Single. Exhausting. Moment. 💞 

Have a beautiful day. I’m going to get ready for a wedding now.