18 months later . . .

My return to college classes has come to a cessation. I turned in my last paper and finished attending my last class this past week. Now I'm just waiting for grades to finalize. I feel like I can return to being a mom again. It's been a grueling 18 months but I now have 32 credits post-baccalaureate. There were days and weeks I felt like the enslaved Nephites in the Book or Mormon.They prayed for some relief and instead of deliverance, the Lord blessed them with stronger backs. I too felt so overwhelmed and in bondage to everything required of me. But, the Lord helped me keep moving forward with the important things. I found time I didn't have to complete what needed to be done. Many times my kids stepped up to clean and cook when I wasn't available.

I loved what President Nelson said in our last conference a week ago: "If you are not sure you even believe in God, start there. Understand that in the absence of experiences with God, one can doubt the existence of God. So, put yourself in a position to begin having experiences with Him." This past year's experiences undoubtedly has left me with a knowledge that God lives. When faced with insurmountable fears and uncertainty, he "strengthened my back" and opened up my Red Sea that was before me. I think God permits these life experiences so that we will remember his grace, his goodness, his love. It is in these extremities that we come to know him.

To celebrate I treated myself to a session at the Salt Lake temple and a late night of finishing a book, Return to Red Castle. A backpacking trip to Red Castle in the Uintas is in the works for this summer so I knew I needed to revisit this book that I had read as a teenager.

Well, it was definitely fluff and kept me up late finishing it. Despite being a cheesy escape novel, it was worth reading again as the hike into this lake called Red Castle was described in the book. I'm excited to visit this summer. I'm also discovering that rereading books I read in my youth leaves me with a much different taste than I had the first time I read them.

Maybe this is why reading the scriptures over and over again is so valuable. With each read, I discover new insights simply because life is different with each reading.

My celebrating continued the next day as I cleaned out my pantry, fridge, and freezer. I cranked the music loud and went to town. I have projects to finish that I had to abandon for awhile. I have books to read and another half marathon to retrain for. Life is finally beginning to feel normal again. Whatever normal is. It seems like we have this certain story that we like to tell about our life and how it's going to be. But really, does anyone ever live the story they started out to write? There's always twist in the plot that you never seem to see coming. But it always gets solved one way or another. It's the plot twists that makes a good life story, isn't it?

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Some funnies

*Alex was in the car with Tyler and me. He was playing some sort of word game on his Kindle when he piped up from the backseat, "Mom, do you know any 4-letter words that start with S?"

Hmmm . . . I sure do :)

*I had a student call me Alexa the other day. It's a title I'm not sure I've mastered yet.

*I also left a note on the board for my students to write me a post-it with something they learned that day (they had a sub).