Sundays are Hard

I don't know why Sundays are so hard for us. I think it is because we are in a more spiritual place. I was standing in front of my bathroom mirror thinking about how heavy my heart felt. I was wondering, "Is this ever going to go away? Am I going to feel like this forever? " Then I started thinking about how lucky we are to have our grandchildren close. We have the opportunity to see some of them everyday and most of the others at least once a week. I'm sure there are grandparents that would love to see their grandkids as much as we do. I started thinking about all the cute things they say. It seems like just yesterday that I heard my nephew Jeremy say he wanted a hangabur,(Hamburger.) Candi came running in to Rich one night down in Lehi and said, "Daddy look at that cokerotch." I still can't call them cockroaches. Now we have the next generation of kids and they make me laugh. Troy comes in all the time and wants a "rootbeer dote"or "yungyuck," which when translated means rootbeer float and chocolate milk. Yesterday Spencer's boy Tyton came in telling me he wanted a "Peepop" he took me by the hand down to my kitchen and opened up the door to the fridge. I finally figured it out that he wanted an otter pop. I'm so thankful to have the opportunity to be a grandma. I know sometimes I feel overwhelmed and out of sorts when all ELEVEN of them are here. I wish we would have had more time with Kamber, but she is our inspiration to do all we can to return to our Heavenly Father. I can't wait to see her again, but for now we will focus on getting the other grandkids closer to her everyday. I have a saying in my laundry room that says, "Grandchildren are God's reward to Grandparents for not killing their kids." Boy is that true!

Life is Eternal!

I'm really not very good at this grieving thing. On Sunday in Primary we were talking about how there are three stages to life. We lived in Heaven before we came to Earth, we were born to get a body, then we die and go back home. I believe that, but when Kamber was taken from us my perspective changed. Some days I can go along without a thought about how sad I am, and then out of nowhere it's back. So I decided to pull up talks written about death and do some reading. I read some really good talks given by prophets and apostles. One article by Ezra Taft Benson says," Life is eternal. We live on and on after earth life, even though we ofttimes lose sight of the great basic truth." The spirit world is not far away. Sometimes the veil between this life and the life beyond becomes very thin. Our loved ones who have passed on are not far from us." I know the reason it hurts is because we love our family so much. In D& C 42:45 it says "Thou shalt live together in love, insomuch that thou shalt weep for the loss of them that die." I admire Ethan and Jenn so much. They are so strong and they are such an example of strength to me. I don't think they realize how they have touched our family, the dignity they show us through their loss. President Monson said, "Because life is fragile and death inevitable, we must make the most of each day." So I guess I better get to work and make each day count.

Workouts with Spencer

This week has gone by so fast. As everyone knows Spencer plays for the Denver Broncos in the NFL. He has absolutely worked his butt off trying to be strong enough, fast enough and mean enough to make it. This week he came home after his morning workouts and helped a group of us work out, (Well, I mostly babysat) but he did do some one on one training with his mother. As most of my family knows I graduated with a degree from ASU with a Bachelor of Education in Physical Education and Secondary Ed. I was pregnant with Mindi when I did my student teaching at Arcadia High School in Phoenix. It was then that I realized that I really didn't enjoy other people's children. I liked coaching kids that were athletic, but the babysitting part of teaching I hated. So I became a stay at home mom to four children and began to live my life through their activities. After a miscarriage, thyroid radiation, knee, gallbladder and ear operations, I pretty much gave up the active lifestyle of my youth and became more sedentary. Hence the workouts with Spencer. Some of the things he was asking me to do with my poor old arthritic hip was "are you kidding me right now." Anyway, after a couple of sessions I have realized that I haven't done what I was educated to do. I have put my children and everyone else before myself when it came to exercising. I need to do better and become more active. I complained alot when he was trying to help me but I really appreciate him taking his time to train us, too bad he's only going to be around for a couple of months. Anyway, it was fun while it lasted.

Sadness Eveywhere

My sister called me last night to tell me about the tragic car accident that happened over the weekend in East Mesa. Two brothers 5 and 10, the families only children were killed. I talked to my friend yesterday whose jewelry store was robbed right before Christmas. Her husband tackled one of the robbers after being sprayed with bear pepper spray. He shot and killed one of them but was shot in the eye. They are hopeful that he will get his vision back. My daughter-in -law Jenn's high school friend recently had a baby that was stillborn with many birth defects. The husband of a friend of mine has been diagnosed with cancer. I had a doctor tell me many years ago, that if you buy a red car, you notice all the red cars on the street. So it goes with adversity. Once your family goes through a major life altering trial you start to notice everyone else who is going through trials. My heart aches for these families. I turned on the 5 o-clock news and they found a 4 year-old boy at the bottom of a pool. Does it seem like there are a lot more tragedies happening, or are we just more sensitive to them because of the loss of Kamber? Today on Oprah they had a show about becoming spiritual. They had a couple on who had their 20-year-old son, who was a twin killed in a motorcycle accident in New Zealand. He was a half hour away from his flight home. They talked about how much their life has changed in the nine years since his death. They say you never get over it, but you learn to accept it. I know there is a bigger picture than what I can see. Sometimes I wish I could see the big picture, or do I really want to? Life is an experience, we knew that when we chose to come to earth we would taste the sweet and the sour, the joy and the pain. As my sister and I talked about the tragedy in Mesa she said,"They say that if we all put our trials on dispplay so they could be examined we would leave choosing our own." I am so thankful for my trials, I feel like they were given to me for a reason, someday I hope I will understand that reason.

Why?

I have been wondering alot since Kamber passed away WHY it happened. Why weren't we warned about it or why we didn't see it coming? Also why didn't Heavenly Father step in and save her? I was talking to a friend about it and he said, " Teri, the "Why" question isn't about desired information about the event. It's about denial for what happened and a refusal to accept the reality, the truth about what happened and that it did happen. It's about avoiding the pain of what happened." We all know about the 5 steps of grieving, they are Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. I sometimes think I am doing pretty darn good and then I'm slammed right back in to the denial stage. I know that we must all experience grief at some time or other. We will all experience loss while on this earth. We are taught at an early age that we lived in the spirit world before we came and we will return home someday. I pulled up an article on the internet and it really made sense to me. The last paragraph says," You will heal, even if you cannot believe that now, just know that it is true. To feel pain after loss is normal. It proves that we are alive, human. But we can't stop living. We have to become stronger, while not shutting off our feelings for the hope of one day being healed and finding love and happiness again. Helping others through something we have experienced is a wonderful way to fascilitate our healing and bring good out of someting tragic." That is my hope for all of us who suffer a loss, that we can find the good that can come out of the pain of loss and find comfort and healing.

Tenna's Birthday

After I had finished my post on Monday I realized that it was my Aunt Tenna's birthday. She passed away in Oct. 2000 after a botched heart operation. She was my mother's only sister and one of those special people who come to earth and leave a mark for good. She was married at a young age to a handsome Air Force pilot and had four small children when his plane crashed into a mountain and killed all aboard the aircraft. She met a nice family doctor with five children and married him and became a stepmom to them and went on to have 2 more children. That put the number at 11. As a young child I remember spending the night with my sister and the cousins. We had so much fun! We only had four children, with a Lamanite brother, but when we went to the Heap's it was an experience. Their house was always clean, and Tenna made sure those kids had lots of good food. Sometimes it wasn't stuff we were used to like brown sugar on our cereal and lots of veggies. Anyway, as she got older I remember asking her how she did it. How do you raise eleven children? All the boys and one girl went on missions and they were all married in the Temple. She had trials that I know I wouldn't have survived but she never lost her faith and bore her testimony about the Book of Mormon to all of us. I have thought a lot about Tenna since Kamber's passing. I have prayed that she has wrapped her arms around her and loved her like we do. I'm sure she has, and we will always look up to her as an example of love and charity.

Same Old Thing

It's the start of a new year and I always have good intentions of making some changes in my life. But last night as I went to bed the old Teri came back and I realized that making that "mighty change" it talks about in the scriptures is harder than ever. I think the older we get the more set in our ways we become, and having a true change of heart is really hard. During the Holidays it was easy to ignore the fact that something really tragic happened in our family last July, but as I have struggled to get the last bit of Christmas put away the depression and sadness started creeping back into my mind like an old friend. I guess being distracted for a while was good, but now it's back to the old trying to make sense of the loss of Kamber. As I sat in Primary yesterday and listened to Rich talk about our theme this year which is "we are spirit children of our Heavenly Father," I realized that Kamber is with our Heavenly Father, but that didn't make it any easier, my heart is broken and I have to live with this the rest of my life. I started feeling sorry for myself and wondered if I will ever be "okay" with it. I long for the days that my New Years Resolutions were losing weight and eating healthier. The challenges we face this year will be more about how we move to a more spiritual level so we can see Kamber again some day.