This Side of Invisible

Published on the Liahona Project, link here Something I always tell my children: "It's not about you.  It's about what you are doing and how that effects those around you."  Of course, that is the lecture they hear when they are doing things wrong, when they are having a negative effect.  You know, to help them see that they can't just behave like monkeys and do whatever they want.  I have been beating my head against the wall the last few weeks trying to figure out why they aren't getting it.  Today, I had an epiphany. The statement is true.  Even how I am delivering it to them, it is true.  I haven't been mean or fierce or fuming.  My voice is usually at least placid, at best loving.  However, the context is wrong.  The emphasis is misplaced.  Trying to change their negative behavior by pointing out their negative behavior isn't fruitful.  Something that started to pull this together for me was a quote from Elder Dieter F Uchtdorf of the Quorum

Everything was black as pitch.  I couldn't see my hand even as it was touching my nose.  My eyes stung from trying.  The sulfurous air was cold and drafty; it seemed to circle about me in slow motion, a predator eyeing up its prey, each pass of it clawed at me and stole away my breath.  There was at once a gentle whistling and a vicious roar that filled my ears until they felt as if they would bleed from it.  Any time I moved there was a prolonged echo.  An echo of the damned.  The pit was big.  The pit was deep.  There was no telling what nightmares it held in its belly.  My heart started to race as my panic peaked.  Soon, my fingers, raw and oozy from trying to climb, confirmed my fear.  There was no way out. Some people would describe being depressed as akin to the feeling of being buried alive.  A suffocating  torture.  It is not so for me.  For me, depression is the pit.  It is despair, fear and it is completely overwhelming.  

Yesterday I wrote about my journey, my marathon and how/where I am.  But you know what?  It's not really about me.  This is what it's about. Those sweet faces are the faces of warriors.  They have been through a lot and are still loving, kind, and cheerful 99% of the time.  What about the other 1%, you say?  Funny you should ask. Saturday, I had a 14 year old crying about not being able to go to a school dance... and by crying, I mean, crying.  While I was mopping the kitchen floor and trying to reason with him, my daughter came into the kitchen soaking wet.  My first thought: I just mopped that spot!   My second thought: "Why are you wet?"  She informed me that she was wet from chasing after Big Brother down the street.  And it was raining.  I looked out the window astonished.   Why yes, it is raining , I thought, and when it rains it pours, apparently.

Seriously.  I want to finish this book.  I do.  Maybe, probably, most definitely more than anything else I want to do.  Actually, there are quite a few things I would like to do: finish painting the second coat on my fabulous red wall; reorganize my closet; write the ten blog posts I have compiled notes and outlines for; take my kids to the park; watch a movie; finish a baby blanket I started in May, so that I can finally send it to my newest nephew who is now 3 months old and it may be too small for; fold the four loads of laundry eyeing me from the couch; go grocery shopping; finalize my homeschool schedule; be on time (for anything); get a hair cut; purge my house of all junk; tidy up my garden (aka finish the clean up after harvest everything died).  You know, stuff.  The problem is I am tired .  Not sleepy.  Not fatigued.  I am bone weary, wake-me-next-March, my-soul-is-collapsing, are-you-talking-to-me, brain-fogged, bleary-eyed, numb. I know.  That last sentence doesn't e