Greatfl

On Sunday, I was dreading having to substitute for Primary again. I haven't been to an adult Sunday School class in years and I was having a pretty negative attitude, ok a horrible attitude. After class, we all meet together as a large group to sing songs and listen to a lesson that is long enough for the attention span of 25 kids who are on the verge of bouncing off the walls. The chorister was giving the lesson today and for the few short minutes that she spoke, she had those children mesmerized.


She told the story of the Ten Lepers from the New Testament. How after Jesus healed them of their disease, only one came back to thank him. After the children read the story from the scriptures, she asked several intriguing questions. She asked the children to picture in their minds how the one leper, who was thankful, felt. Then she shared a simple story.


When her oldest son was on his mission, and he had been out in the mission field about a year, she was feeling very discouraged and just wanted him to come home. She was feeling sorry for herself and just wanted her son home safe. In church the next Sunday, she spoke in church and outwardly expressed how thankful she was that her son was serving a mission. From this experience she learned that when you are thankful and grateful for something that may be hard for you at the time, in some miraculous way it makes you feel better inside. Now, those aren't her exact words, and I am not a really good writer, but when she said this the first thing that came to my mind, and I almost wanted to say it outloud: I AM THANKFUL THAT I AM A MOM. Just for that moment I wanted to feel a little bit better about what I am doing in this crazy world of motherhood. The stress of parenting and how your kids are feeling about different things and if you are doing the right thing to help with all those awkward feelings. The guilt you feel for losing your patience or yelling, at a moment where you should be hugging or saying, I love you. I just wanted to say how grateful I was at that moment to be a mom, so that I could feel good for a fleeting moment. There were many thoughts in those few minutes that came to my mind of all the things that I was thankful for. I am so glad that I was in Primary today, so I could learn from this amazing woman, and remember to be thankful, especially when it is the hardest to be grateful.


I am in the process of making a scrapbook page of the things at this time in my life that I am grateful for, the overwhelming blessings I have in my life, so I can look back on it when I am not feeling very thankful, and remember. The reason that grateful is spelled "greatfl" is because last year I saw a license plate that had the word spelled this way and as soon as I saw it, I went home and made a list of the great things in my life and for all those things, I am truly greatfl.