My Valentine: charity personified

"The dark days" Continued...

"Love is not love which alters when alteration finds"

-William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116

I started to feel better.  Hallelujah, I started to feel better!  The day after my first round of steroids I woke up at 6 am with a desire to go running. This was new, very very new.  I had spent the better part of a year dreading physical exertion and now I felt like I had energy to burn.  My symptoms didn't go away but I was able to feel like I could get off the couch.

The weight of my burden lifted just enough that I felt like I could breath again.  Though the clouds were still hanging heavy around me there was just enough room to hope that there was some way out of this mess that I called my life.  I was able to stop the pity party, take a deep calming breath and survey the carnage.

Throughout my whole life I felt that optimism was one of my gifts, it was a big part of who was and what I loved about myself.  Katie Jane could always find a silver lining.  This was a different story.  I was so unrecognizable to myself at this point that the girl looking back at me in the mirror was a complete stranger.  The Katie Jane I saw in the mirror was faithless, negative, and completely unworthy of Heavenly Father's love.  I know I was wrong in thinking that, but at the time it felt like a reality.  Heavenly Father trusted me to choose well and I had failed him.  I turned away from Him and was mad at Him for the things I had to endure.  I was feeling better physically but emotionally I had a long way to go.

I started to pray again, even if a lot of it was begging for forgiveness.  I started to take charge of the things I could control and letting go of what I couldn't. I wanted to understand what I needed to do to be happy again.  I started serving and loving and trying to relate the scriptures to my life. Things were starting to look up.  I looked for a new doctor and diets for me and tried different meal techniques with Claire, she graduated from her PCMC GI doctor, and she was finally tubeless by her first birthday, but even through these milestones the guilt hung on tight to my heart.  How could God trust me with trials-or anything for that matter- if I didn't handle them well?  I would beat myself up and then try to do my best but my best would never be good enough because it didn't change the past.  Through it all I vowed to never let my circumstances make me unhappy again. I decided that life demanded faith and faith demanded action.

Slowly, and at times painfully, I had life changing realizations.  Most of all I started to understand what the atonement meant in my life and the power and beauty of God's love for me. The way I learned God's love for me is the reason for this post.  It was done through the power of example.  The example of my husband.

During "the dark days" I couldn't see anything but me and my suffering, but all along there was this humble incredible man who stood by me through it all.  From my dear sweet Jer I learned the true meaning of charity.  When I didn't feel worthy enough to feel God's love in my life I was able to recognize God's kind of love through my own husband.

When I think of what my trial put him through I cringe.  I remember crying over spilling Claire's outrageously expensive formula and he held me.  When I pulled into myself for days he waited patiently.  I was critical to him and he wasn't offended. He tried to asses my needs and call in my sisters for reinforcement when he knew I needed help.  I was a complete stranger to him and he just prayed that "his Katie" would return to him one day.  It breaks my heart to know the kind of damage I could have done to our marriage but am eternally grateful to the rock star of a husband I am sealed to.  I leaned heavily on him and he was my rock.  He mustered enough faith for the both of us.

He saved me.  My dear sweet husband was my silver lining.  Not once did he make me feel bad for how I was coping.  He loved me for who he knew I was deep down and for the potential that I had to be great.  If that isn't true charity, I don't know what is. I am indebted to that man forever for the way he loved me and continues to love me.  He made me understand that there are no qualifications for love or requirements to be filled.  He loved me unconditionally.  So very unconditionally.  And it healed my heart.

I came across the quote by Shakespeare "Love is not love which alters when alteration finds" and I cried.  That was my Jer. I was altered for quite a while but he never loved me less, in fact, he loved me more.  I don't think I can quite put into words my tender feelings for him or express the deepness of my gratitude to my Heavenly Father for letting me have him. I love that boy, I love him something fierce.

So Jer, this post is mostly for you.  I want you to know how much I adore you.  Not because you are ruggedly handsome (which you are), or because you are the hardest worker in the world (you are that too), but because of your heart.  Your heart is gold.

I also write this post for my ladies.  Oh, my dear lovely girls, find someone like your daddy to marry and never settle for less than that feeling from the spirit that says, "yes, this one's a keeper".

And this one...he is most definitely a keeper.

Happy Valentines Day!