There is a gigantic, green bowl sitting next to me, and a package of saltines next to that. The saltines are to keep my stomach from getting empty, and the bowl is where I empty my stomach. No one wants to know those kind of awful details, but this is my blog, and this is the reality I am experiencing right now.
Pregnancy is awful. It really is. Anyone who says anything different is either lying or delusional. From the constant revulsion at all foods that smell or taste stronger than dry flour, to the complete energy suck, building a baby is no fun. This week was the worst one (for this pregnancy) so far. I won't go into the details except to say that late Thursday, after not being able to keep anything down (including medication) for what seemed like forever, I felt like I really needed to go to the instacare down the road. I had no idea that I was burning up with a fever from severe dehydration, but I followed my feelings and came away grateful that I listened.
I have been prone to ask my Heavenly Father on more than one occasion, "Why? Isn't it enough that we are taking the leap and bringing another one of your spirit children into our home? I know I am one of so many countless other women who are made so weak and frail during pregnancy. WHY does it happen to any of us?"
Josh was at a meeting this evening and I lay on the couch, wondering how on earth I would get my kids to stay in bed, when I got a phone call. It was my visiting teacher. This is our church's "assigned friend", who often times blossoms into a real friend. She checks in on me, and if things are not going so great, she figures out a way to help out. Since we haven't been here that long, and I have turned into the world's biggest recluse, I don't really know her. But this woman had heard that I was struggling. I explained the kind of dread that came with each new day, and she was silent for a moment before relating to me the horrors of her own morning sickness and saying, "I have been there. It is hard. I know exactly how you feel, and I am SO sorry."
Those words were my answer. I had heard them before, but somehow, hearing them from a stranger hit home. Women are strong. We build families. We build homes. We give our bodies to the growing of children. We carry burdens that are enormous, and at times, overwhelming to the point of total exhaustion. Why are we brought so low during pregnancy and in the years of child rearing beyond that? I think it is so that we can succor each other. We share in struggles so universal that when another suffers, we immediately empathize. Women need other women to be the answer to one another's most heartfelt prayers; to be those mortal angels that can relate to one another. Knowing that my visiting teacher truly understood the kind of struggle I wrestled with gave me the comfort I so desperately needed.
I testify of angels, both the heavenly and the mortal kind. In doing so I am testifying that God never leaves us alone. never leaves us unaided in the challenges that we face. -Elder Jeffery R. Holland in "The Ministry of Angels"
