Some weeks are not as good as others.
When the week started last Sunday, our refrigerator stopped working. The guy who finally came out to look at it on Wednesday said that technically it was still running but it was no longer keeping things cold. Which seems like the entire reason it exists and runs in the first place. But whatever.
The ice cream turned to soup. Everything started to smell. We gave up, salvaged what we could, and started eating at room temperature.
Life is definitely harder without a refrigerator, but you know what I miss the most?
Ice.
Oh, for a cup full of ice. I might trade my first born son. (Not really, Caleb. You outrank ice every day of the week.) But it turns out that ice is one of the nicest comforts of life. I had no idea I was buffering with ice.
The whole week kind of felt like this.
Harder.
More uncomfortable.
I had to speak at a youth conference on Thursday and Friday. I spent the week thinking and praying and writing and worrying. I put everything else on hold as I prepared.
I gave two talks on Thursday afternoon and felt horrible about both of them.
I texted David that they were the worst talks I had ever given and cried all the way home.
I rewrote the talk on Friday morning and tried it again later that afternoon during two more sessions.
And I didn’t feel any better about it the third and fourth time. I still don’t know what went wrong exactly, but it felt disastrous. I was despondent by the time I drove home.
Sometimes this is how it goes.
Sometimes I think we just can’t overcome the fall. The ice cream melts. The chicken goes bad. No matter how hard you pray or fast or prepare, you can’t rise above your own weaknesses.
On Saturday afternoon I found myself dejunking our large storage closet. I pulled out every box and decoration and old halloween costume stuffed away and put it in the hallway for sorting. David came home from a baptism and bishop errands to find all the boxes pulled out and years of detritus stacked in piles along the floor. “What’s going on? You’re doing this now?”
The thing is I just needed to control something. I needed to make order out of chaos somewhere in my life.
I may not have ice or cold eggs and I may not have access to the spirit when I need it, but my closet is clean. So there, universe. I guess now we know who’s boss.