Divine Compensation

It's been one of those days...super busy, mostly good, but with a few too many distractions to write both a blog post and a letter to Savannah.  So I just copied and pasted the email I wrote to her this morning because it sums up the things in my head today and I didn't want to have to translate it into generic blog form.  

Hello little Mouse of my heart,

I'll send pictures and house updates in a little while, but holy cow, I needed to jump out of bed and write this down and apparently hurry send it to you because something yelled in my ear this morning, so here it is...weirdness and all...

I've been having these crazy, lucid dreams since we got here...like I always have dreams, but these have been SERIOUSLY CRAZY and not attributed to any late night eating or TV watching.  :)

Daddy woke up at like 5:45 this morning to go fishing out on his little lake.  He's kind of loving this permanent vacation lake house he gets to live in.  And I woke up and thought about getting an early start on the remaining boxes that are left, but they're not the fun ones and the things in them don't have obvious homes, so I was totally irritated and unmotivated by that job.  Instead, I just pulled the covers over my head and went back to sleep.  And then I had the CRAZIEST, super vivid dream, right in the middle of the morning.  So weird!  

I dreamed that we were staying in that Courtyard hotel...the one we just came from, except we were living in one of the conference rooms.  And Daddy came home from work and was irritated about something, but then the doorbell rang (I know, weird huh?  I even asked him in the dream why we had a doorbell when we were living in a conference room?) and it was a pizza delivery guy.  And then Daddy threw this giant pizza on one of the big banquet tables and said, "I just felt like it was time for us to have a decent meal!"  ...what the heck?  But it smelled really good and I was hungry, so I rounded up the kids.  Except by the time we got back to the table where Daddy and the pizza were, all these security guards had come and taken like half the pizza.  :(((  So frustrating...  

Then the doorbell rang again and it was this giant group of people that at first I didn't recognize but then as they all came into the room, they started to look familiar.  It was the RS sisters from the Allen 1st Ward.  And they had all come to decorate the conference room in this HUGE Christmas ice scene (think Gaylord Texas ICE kind of huge...) with all these Christmas presents and treats and little gingerbread houses everywhere.  And it was just for me!  (I could tell because it was all my favorite stuff.)  And then at the end of the whole long line of women decorating, there was Sis King orchestrating the whole thing!  And when I saw her, I just hugged her and cried and cried.  (it totally still makes me cry thinking about seeing her standing there in that conference room in the middle of June in this big giant white parka decorating the whole place for Christmas.)

And then I woke up and thought, "what in the heck?? That was the most random thing ever!"

But then that little voice in my head said, "Nope.  It wasn't random.  It was divine compensation in a way that you could understand it."

So apparently, my mind thinks of sacrifice and reward in terms of pizza and Stephanie King.  Who knew that Sis King surrounded by ice sculptures, Christmas presents and treats was my head's idea of the ultimate reward?  :)))

And this is the song that was playing in my head along with that little voice about divine compensation...it's from Isaiah and also from D&C 121 when Joseph Smith was in Liberty Jail...via Rob Gardner.

For a little while

Have I forsaken thee; 

But with great mercies will I gather thee.

In a little wrath I hid my face from thee

For a moment.

But with everlasting kindness will I gather thee,

And with mercy will I take thee 'neath my wings,

For the mountains shall depart,

And the hills shall be removed,

And the valleys shall be lost beneath the sea,

But know, my child,

My kindness shall not depart from thee!

Though thine afflictions seem

At times too great to bear,

I know thine every thought and every care.

And though the very jaws

Of hell gape after thee I am with thee.

And with everlasting mercy will I succor thee,

And with healing will I take thee 'neath my wings.

Though the mountains shall depart,

And the hills shall be removed,

And the valleys shall be lost beneath the sea,

Know, my child,

My kindness shall not depart from thee!

How long can rolling water

Remain impure?

What pow'r shall stay the hand of God?

The Son of Man hath descended below all things.

Art thou greater than He?

So hold on thy way,

For I shall be with thee.

And mine angels shall encircle thee.

Doubt not what thou knowest,

Fear not man, for he

Cannot hurt thee.

And with everlasting kindness will I succor thee,

And with mercy will I take thee 'neath my wings

For the mountains shall depart,

And the hills shall be removed,

And the valleys shall be lost beneath the sea,

But know, my child,

My kindness shall not depart from thee!

My kindness shall not depart from thee!

Anyway, the point of all this rambling about dreams is that there has been some pretty heavy sacrificing made by all of us...by you, by me, by the kids, and even by Daddy.  But Heavenly Father has not left us out in the lone and dreary world.  He knows us and He knows what's coming.  And He knows what will best prepare us for that.  He's got this.  He's not going to let us give up all these things we love so much just for the security guards to come eat it all and leave us with half a pizza.  What He ultimately desires for us is better than anything we could dream up on our own.  Better than the best Pinterest wedding, and Jed Thunell-video of you and Alex coming out of the Payson Temple that you've ever dreamed up.  Better than any infinitely happy reunion or retirement plan.  Better than any house on the lake with a baby grand piano.  Better than whatever all of us have imagined in our limited earthly minds.  

So hang on, little Mouse.  We seem to live parallel lives for some reason while you're on this mission.  So on those days that are frustrating for you like they are for me, and on the days when you'd rather be done with all this refining and just get to the good part already, just keep going one more hour, one more day, one more transfer.  There will be little joyful things along the way...and they will be enough to make the hard things worth it.  

Love you heaps and heaps!

Mommy

It's just like that CS Lewis quote that I love...

“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of—throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace” (C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, New York: MacMillan Co., 1960, p. 160).