The Longest Hour

Disclaimer: I love church, I know the gospel is true, and I learn something new nearly each week I attend meetings. It is a blessing that I have the opportunity to and am capable of attending church every week.

Now, with that being said, I have to admit that sometimes the Sacrement hour with 4 small children and husband in the bishopric can be a bit overwhelming, sometimes even torturous, today was one of those days. (Sacrament is our main church meeting where everyone congregates to listen to fellow members teach/talk about Christ, scriptures, prophets, etc.)

I'll back up and explain how my day started. I woke up this morning to my room spinning, I have been getting dizzy off and on for over a month and today it hit hard. Normal people would probably say "I'm going back to bed for the day", but for some reason I always think if I just keep going eventually it will get better...not my best idea today. Trying to battle the dizziness and nagging headache while keeping 4 kids quiet in Sacrament meeting was almost unbearable. I felt like I was losing my mind at times. I'll try to portray the scene...

There we were, Gideon, me, Makenzie, Lily and Steele. Gideon is asking me what page the next hymn is on by saying "is it this one?" over and over and over. Makenzie is screaming everytime a finger even comes with in one foot of her cheerios, and not just the "shh" it's okay scream, it's the I will break windows with my high-pitched voice scream. Lily is whining that she wants a blanket, a doll, or whatever other thing Makenzie pulls out of my diaper bag and Steele is tearing up multiple pieces of paper to make airplanes and who knows what else. Eventually, Makenzie's screaming gets out of control and I have to meet another sister in the foyer so I can watch her baby while she plays a special musical number. (Mind you the 5 minutes in the foyer where quite possibly the most well behaved 5 minutes Makenzie was the entire 3 hours.) Once the musical number is over I attempt to go back and sit with my other 3 children because heaven only knows what they will do without any parent supervision. By the time I sit back down it is now Lily, Makenzie, me, Gideon and Steele and the entertainment has turned to Lily make loud car noises with a neighbor's toy cars, Makenzie climbing up and down off of the bench, me reminding myself "to stay calm, they are only children", and Gideon and Steele playing a loud game of thumb wars. To make it worse, everytime I turn to one child and ask them to be quiet or to sit still the others realize I'm not watching and return to their antics.

It probably seemed a lot worse to me than it really was simply because of the fact that I didn't feel well, but either way, that hour and 10 minutes was pretty rough today. In fact lately that first hour of church is just plain hard. The amazing part is, even with all the craziness around me I somehow always leave feeling uplifted and thankful that I was there. Today was no exception, the talks and testimonies were wonderful and I felt close to the Spirit.

Someday I will look back on these years and smile and reminesce about the "craziness" of it all, but until then forgive me if I complain or if I look overwhelmed. For now, I am trying my hardest to simply make it through each day, or in this case each hour of the day. I know I am blessed, I know I am loved and I know my Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ understand me and will provide comfort when needed. How grateful I am for this knowledge, because it makes the hard times (or the long hour) more bearable.

Happy Sunday!