I am Willing, . .

I had to have a tough conversation Tuesday with my cute missionary daughter. She is absolutely the sweetest spirit I know. However, she does have one weakness which is very similar to a weakness of mine. Which is why I can recognize it. It gets in the way more than I care to admit, BUT. . . it is also true that it is my very strongest characteristic too. I live life with my HEART. I simply care. I listen with it, and react with it, and I make good or bad decisions based on the way my heart is feeling.

Monday, Jacey flew to Peru to spend her last week in the Peru MTC rather than spend all 6 weeks in Mexico. They did this because Peru would only let the Church send 50 missionaries at a time, and 60 were planning to travel to the field from Mexico the week Jacey was to leave. I was startled awake at 6:00 in the morning by a tearful missionary calling home. The first word she said was, "Mom?" Like I was a lifeline she was hanging on to. My heart broke. I am powerless to fix it. I have tried my hardest to help her navigate through both the big and small trials of her life. To point her to a higher power that will help her navigate this life. He is the only one that has the power to give her strength to not only get through them, but to enjoy the journey at the same time.

By Tuesday, I had had time to process the reality of the situation, and was able to tell her what she needed to hear. I am not always so in tune, and I guess if I had figured it out sooner, I could have told her before, but I didn't. This is the conversation I had.

Me:  "Where does your heart want to be?"

Jacey:  "What do you mean?"

Me:  "If you could be anywhere you wanted, where would it be?"

Jacey:  "Utah!, but I KNOW I am supposed to be here!"

Me: "Then you are going to continue to struggle. Does your heart want to be where the Lord wants you to be? Does your heart want to do what the Lord wants you to do? Does your heart want to be what the Lord wants you to be?"

Jacey: "I want to be where the Lord wants me to be, but it is so hard. I don't know how to do it when I miss so many things."

I then said I just wanted her to think about what we had just talked about, and I changed the subject. I didn't want to lecture like I so often do. I was just trying to get her to think about why she is there. Does she want to be there, or is she just doing it because she thinks she supposed to. So, So Hard!!

So often in our lives we persevere doing things we have to do, and just get through them, but there are also pivotal moments when you have to know why. It is in the knowing why that you find purpose and meaning, and it allows you to have a power to move forward. I am speaking from recent personal experience.

This last weekend, I was sustained as our ward Relief Society president, and try as I might, I did not feel like I had what it took to be a relief society president. My world right now is chaos. Gregg is out of work, Jacey is in Peru wanting to come home. Max is left being an only child who prefers not to have all the attention, and me, I can not fix any of that. We had a lesson on not judging, and not worrying about what isn't ours to worry about, but that is so much easier to say than it is to do. I am a hands on kind of mom who hasn't learned to let her kids fail in order to succeed later. I think I am doing it, and then reality hits me in the face with my lack thereof.

The morning I was sustained, I woke up at 4:30 in the morning with a deep awareness of ALL my weaknesses and insecurities, and since that is the time of day I get revelation, I wondered why I was feeling like this. To be honest, I questioned the Lord's timing.  Why was he telling me all of this if in reality Satan had been letting me know ever since I had accepted the calling? Then I felt the spirit whisper, "I know who you are. This isn't going to be you. I can work with your weaknesses." I absolutely know that my Savior is real, and that he has a work for me to do. I need to have the faith that I am asking Jacey to have to trust Him. AND, Trust His timing.