Kontrary To Belief I Made It!!!: My Temple Day

Today's the BIG day!

A day I honestly thought would never take place.

It's not just me that believed this day would never happen.

Ask around...

Anyone who knows me would have told you the same thing.

Actually, they probably did!

March 26, 2011 The best Saturday of my life!

At the beginning of the year I was still attending the Cooley Station Ward. I finished my Temple prep. classes with Brother and Sister Strader in their home, where I instantly fell in love with them. I loved the intimate setting in their home and the wonderful spirit that I felt while there. After I finished up my classes with them, I met with Bishop Porter (that same night January 11, 2011) and received the first part of my recommend. Then on February 2, 2011 I met with my Stake President, President Anderson and went through the second portion of the interviewing process and received my completed recommend. 

Most people go through the Temple immediately following the completion of their recommend. However, I waited 2 months so my entire family could be their with me. Tiffany, Roger, and the kids all came down from Colorado and stayed at Merri and Richard's house to share this amazing day with me.

My Dad, Kade and I came up Friday after work and met Merri and Tiffany at the Church Distribution Center where they helped me prepare and pick out everything I needed to enter the Temple for my first time. It was so nice to do this together. I will never forget it.

Merri and Richard graciously opened up there home to all of us, so that we could all be together. We celebrated Roger's Birthday, and just enjoyed each others company. When it was time to part ways, Natalie and Justin offered to take Kade and Michael to their house for a slumber party. I have to admit it was very nice of them.

Saturday morning we all met back over at Merri and Richard's. 

Tiffany plucked my dreadful eyebrows, and then Natalie did my makeup, and trimmed my eyebrows with a little help from Miss Maggie of course. Together they all made me look and feel beautiful on my special day. It is always nice to be pampered. Thanks guys!!!

Maggie doesn't even need to look apparently while she does makeup!

Since my Mom did not make it to the Valley for me to go through the Temple, all of my sisters got together and nominated Natalie to be my escort. They knew I could never pick between them, so I am so grateful they chose for me. I could not have asked for a better escort. I love you Natalie, and I am so glad we got to share this amazing experience together. We went from sharing a bed growing up to this. 

I love these pictures of Natalie and I together. 

Natalie and I arrived to the Temple before everyone else needed to be there. I honestly felt like I was in Heaven while I was in the Temple. Everyone dressed in white standing throughout the Temple wearing angelic smiles upon their soft faces. They were at every entrance to every room to help me along the way. I got all of my crying out at the very beginning before Natalie and I met up with each other again. Everything that the wonderful Temple workers said to me at the very beginning filled every part of my being that felt hollow or weak. Their words reinforced me and made me feel whole and worthy of every good thing that I have now and am yet to still receive. Word's can't describe how beautiful it was. Almost like the words were perfectly tailored for me and me alone.

When Natalie and I met up again, I was blessed with another wonderful experience. Natalie and I were sitting next to each other, and she grabbed my hand and just held it. She later removed her wedding ring and placed it on my finger. My eyes were still filled with tears. As I looked at my hand through tear filled eyes at the wedding ring on my finger I felt like my spirit was hovering inches over my body, and a warm reassuring feeling that I can't describe in any other way comforted me and let me know that my day to enter the Temple with an amazing man who would be a wonderful Father to Kade and loving companion and friend to me is not too far off, and will one day join me to be sealed as a family for time and all eternity. Heavenly Father must really know how badly I needed that reassurance. 

It was beautiful being in the Temple with the people I love. I am so glad that my Dad, Natalie, Justin, Tiffany, Roger, Merri, Richard, Tammy, Tawna, Brother and Sister Strader, and even a fellow Birthmother Jill (who just happened to be in the same session), all got to be there with me. No empty chairs!!!

I MADE IT!!!

Thanks everyone for supporting me on this eternal life changing day. 

My Dad and his 4 Girls

Natalie, Katie, Dad, Tiffany, Merri

The Clan

I sure love the bond that my sisters and I share. I think we are all pretty neat.

Their unconditional love and good examples played a large role in me making the life changes that were needed to get me into the Temple.

Youngest to Oldest

Katie, Natalie, Tiffany, and Merri

...on the steps of the Mesa, Arizona Temple

The cutest Escort in the Temple that day (Natalie), and I.

One of my biggest Cheerleaders Tamy Scheurn. Thanks for being my shining star through my difficult journey.

Tawna and I.

Tawna seems to be present at all of my most important days/milestones. She was in on Kade's birth and is now here with me in the Temple. Love you Tawna, thanks for being there for me through thick and thin. 

I think I am glowing.

After the Temple Natalie and I hit up Bahama Bucks and had a delightful treat.

We got back to Merri's, and I guess I wore Natalie out because she literally passed out on the couch. You are too cute Nat.

I love you Roger. You have seen me at my worst, and I am proud that you were here to see me at my best. I have always looked up to you so much, and you calling me and you telling me in person how proud you are of me will never stop playing over and over again in my head, because those words coming out of your mouth changed me forever.

I will never forget the time in High School when my Dad picked me up and told me he was disappointed in me! It hurt more than any physical pain I had ever experienced, and for nearly a decade after that experience I lived up to nothing more than those 4 words. 

Having my Dad by my side in the Temple smiling, and telling me that he was so proud of where I am at, and how far I have come, healed the pain I carried with me in my heart all of that time. I am Happy again! I am Me again!

I had to get a picture with the 4 best big Brothers in the World. With these guys as my role models their is no way I can pick me a Dud next time around, especially because they will be doing the picking for me!

Konsider Looking Past What It Seems

I read a blog called Brave Girls Club. It is so uplifting. One day I will personalise this with all of my life.

"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a difficult battle."

After a dear friend telling me about a hurtful experience she’d had this week…..I began thinking again about a story I have told a few times….a story that my children will tell to their children, and maybe even beyond that… because it was such a learning experience in our family….maybe even a turning point…it’s a story that I think about often because we were the main characters in it 3 or 4 years ago, and even though it was something that lasted less than 15 minutes….it changed all of us….and now I see others differently, especially when it seems that they might be main characters in the same story…or one a lot like it. I used to be too embarrassed to tell this story….but I am not anymore. This is a human story that everyone needs to hear, I truly believe this…I hope you will stay with it, it’s kinda long.
As we move along…I want you to think about some of the big signs with big messages that I bet you wish you could wear around your neck sometimes so that people would be more gentle….or even that you could put around the neck of someone you love….so that you didn’t have to go into a big long story to defend yourself or someone else….so that people would just stop judging and and just be kind.
First, if you don’t know my history because you are brand new to Brave Girls Club…welcome welcome welcome! I need to start this story by giving you a little bit of background….. you see, my husband had an accident in 2004 that injured the frontal lobe of his brain……it has taken 6 years to get him back……but in the middle there, between 2004 and now…lots and lots of stuff happened. He was essentially out of it…but not just that….he changed to someone else, we lost him. His personality changed completely, he could not work, he was angry and depressed and could not cope with human beings. He did not feel love or affection, really he only felt anger…rage…and he was suicidal most of the time. He did not remember a lot of things. He could not take care of our family or even himself, really……..(and I want to mention again that through lots of miracles, he is 100% recovered now…we are so thankful….he is even BETTER than he was before his accident)

But……during that time…..he would have these confusing and amazing glitches of time when he would be totally normal. It was bittersweet. They would last for an hour sometimes, and sometimes for days…or even weeks…then he would sink back down into that horrible place. When he was sick, I protected him fiercely. I didn’t want anyone to see him like that…I had faith that someday he would recover….but man oh man it was lonely…I wished every single day that I could just walk around with a sign like this….

First, if you don’t know my history because you are brand new to Brave Girls Club…welcome welcome welcome! I need to start this story by giving you a little bit of background….. you see, my husband had an accident in 2004 that injured the frontal lobe of his brain……it has taken 6 years to get him back……but in the middle there, between 2004 and now…lots and lots of stuff happened. He was essentially out of it…but not just that….he changed to someone else, we lost him. His personality changed completely, he could not work, he was angry and depressed and could not cope with human beings. He did not feel love or affection, really he only felt anger…rage…and he was suicidal most of the time. He did not remember a lot of things. He could not take care of our family or even himself, really……..(and I want to mention again that through lots of miracles, he is 100% recovered now…we are so thankful….he is even BETTER than he was before his accident)

But……during that time…..he would have these confusing and amazing glitches of time when he would be totally normal. It was bittersweet. They would last for an hour sometimes, and sometimes for days…or even weeks…then he would sink back down into that horrible place. When he was sick, I protected him fiercely. I didn’t want anyone to see him like that…I had faith that someday he would recover….but man oh man it was lonely…I wished every single day that I could just walk around with a sign like this….

….because on the outside…I looked like I had EVERYTHING GOING FOR ME…I looked like I might just have a perfect life….but I was hiding a very painful secret….

Well…a lot of other things happened too………you can imagine what might happen over the years while we have a 7 acre farm, a pretty big international business that we own with lots of employees…..a life that HE managed before his accident, while he just let me do the fun and creative stuff….now we had lots of medical bills…lots of sorrow and lots of distractions……we also had LOTS of kids…..and no one competent managing the business…

Well…after a few years, I couldn’t hold it all together…our business was suffering for all of the reasons listed above and a few more reasons on top of that……..and we discovered that we were really SINKING. Well……one day when he was partly lucid….he was THERE…he was coherent….I told him the condition of our life.

He kind of panicked and he went straight to work figuring out what he could do. It was insanely heartbreaking when he would “wake up” after weeks or months and I had to tell him how much things were deteriorating financially, etc. It was very hard. But when he could, he did what he could….before his mental illness sucked him back into the prison it kept him in most of the time.

He called a sign place and had a huge sign brought out to our house…the kind that you can put letters on, and it was electric and lit up…….He put it by the road in one of our horse fields……then he drove our Suburban….both of our trucks….my classic Thunderbird that he got me for my birthday a few years earlier…..our tractor…all of our tractor implements…the boat that I worked 10 years to get for him (and that caused his brain injury, incidentally)……….and he lined everything up along the fence and he put a price tag on every single thing. Then, he put the letters on that big huge sign and plugged it in.

You have to understand that we had worked for MANY years for those things. We started a business in our twenties and we sacrificed everything we had for all of those years to make it work. We owned almost all of it outright…….but, when I told him that the business was struggling….this is what he did….

Sooooo…..there it was….all in a row……all of our stuff…..out in our field.

All of the neighbors driving by…our friends…the community…..people who knew us most of our lives and people who knew nothing about us…..we were just the young family who lived in that beautiful little farm house on Beacon Light road with the perfect lawn….or what USED to be.

You see, in addition…for months….our once beautifully manicured yard started to be filled with weeds that were now several feet high. I just couldn’t keep it up. The lawn was a nightmare. Everything was just falling apart all around me and my heart was broken over my husband, too. It was humiliating and exhausting and horrible, really.
Well, the sign was not up in the field for more than a few hours…….when my husband’s phone rang….it was someone who saw all the stuff and my husband’s phone number on the big huge sign. We were sitting out in the yard while he was still coherent and he was feeling devastated about the condition of our lawn…..I was apologizing that I just couldn’t do all of it………..he was so heartbroken at his limitations and that he had left me to try to handle our life alone……we were trying to make a plan…..

He answered his phone…I saw that he was just listening…I could hear that the person’s voice was getting louder and louder and louder………..my husband just listened. He turned his back to me a little so I wouldn’t hear. But I could hear it….It seemed to go on and on and on……..

These were the things I could hear on the other end of the phone call….

“You are bringing down the value of my property with that ugly sign!”

“What are you doing?”

“That is the most obnoxious sign, do you have a permit to have that out there?”

“Are you starting a used car lot?”

“You have got to get all of that moved and out of here or I am calling the authorities”

I sat there, mortified, embarrassed, humiliated, mad, sad, devastated. I was certain that this would snap my husband back into his dark hellish place.

But, when the man was done ranting, my husband waited a second and then very calmly said something that I will never, ever forget…….

“Sir,” he said, “There was a time in this country, in this community…when if you drove past your neighbor’s house and saw every single thing they own was for sale in front of their house…and that their lawn had not been mowed for weeks….that you would stop and say….WHAT IS GOING ON, SOMETHING MUST BE TERRIBLY WRONG, WHAT CAN I DO TO HELP YOU?”
The man was silent…..and then my husband went on to tell him a few details about what was going on with our family….

The man waited a moment and then his tone changed…..he apologized….I mean, really apologized and then said…

“I am going to call all of my friends and see if any of them need any of this stuff….”

***************************************
I wish with everything in me that we could have put a sign up on that big stupid lit up billboard in our field that said OUR LIFE IS FALLING APART…. but all that we really could put up is a sign with the price of everything that we owned that was worth any money…….

WHAT IF we could all wear a sign that said what WE REALLY MEANT? What if we could go straight past the small talk……..or the masks…….and we could actually go straight to the heart of the matter…….what if our friends and family wore signs like this?

…we would treat each other differently.

I think we should just try to imagine it………that when a friend is quiet…or not showing up to stuff she usually shows up to….or acting a little “off”….or a family member is wearing pajamas to the grocery store for weeks on end……or not answering the phone…..or the lawn is not mowed…..

whatever it is……….

IT IS A SIGN. It is not a sign that can be read in words and letters, but it is a sign that someone needs to be treated gently…that they need help….most of all, that they need love, understanding…and that they DEFINITELY DO NOT need to be judged.

Every time I think of this story….I want to be better…I want to do better, I don’t want any silent signs to go unread before my eyes or my heart…..I don’t want to make up my own answers to what must be going on…I don’t want to assume………..
Let’s be gentle with each other.

Let’s read each other’s signs.