Last night David gave the lesson at Family Home Evening.
It was just what I needed.
He said it was for the kids, but I think we all know better than that.
After a full day of adrenaline and cortisol on Sunday, I was crashing yesterday. Emotionally. Physically. Spiritually. We had a wonderful fireside on Sunday night, but after so much anticipation and energy and prayer, I was spent, and just as unsure about what it all meant and what happens next. David called me a little after noon to check on me. He knew the crash was coming. I have no secrets from him. (I wish he'd share a few of them with me because I am only mostly baffled by myself.)
After flying home, I made a meager attempt at starting the laundry and made a simple (and delicious) Wimmer Truc dinner, but couldn't manage much more than that. (At the bottom, when there is little faith in myself or my plan, there is still faith in baguettes and sirloin steak and the succor of breaking bread around my table.)
And so last night after we sang and prayed, David had us listing our blessings. I don't mind saying, he topped my list. I cried of course, when he had us share them out loud.
Also on the list,
my parents who traveled with me and Rachel to Salt Lake on Sunday afternoon, paid for our room and board (I don't know when a cheeseburger has ever tasted so good), drove us to the stake center where we were speaking, and then sat on a bench and smiled their prayers and good wishes at us the whole time
my two lovely aunts and one gorgeous cousin who came only to give bolstering hugs (I don't know when one has felt so good)
and my sisters, the bravest women I know. It was because of both of them that I was there in the first place.
Add to that list the kindness of friends: one showed up on Sunday night, another wrote a heartfelt letter from Paris that I have reread a dozen times already, one left a message on my answering machine, one promised to pray for me (and she always keeps her promises), and still others wrote and left their good wishes in comments. They all blessed me more than you can know.
And so this morning, I awoke with a headache, but a much lighter heart. Succored, as it were, across another dark pass in my journey through the wilderness. I awoke brimming with a quiet determination to do what I can, where I can. I intend to scrub my house down, and finish the laundry, and put the flannel sheets on the beds in anticipation of the coming holidays. And to be still about everything else.
I awoke with Henry James in my head,
"We work in the dark. We do what we can. We give what we have."
I made hot chocolate and toast, and packed the leftover Wimmer Truc into sacks for lunch, and then we sat and read the scriptures. We were at the temple with King Benjamin and he reminded us that we are all beggars before God.
And I knew exactly what he meant.
Yes we work in the dark, we do what we can, we give what we have, but we don't do it alone.