what i believe: tender mercies

this is going to seem like a long and rambling post, but i do have a point. feel free to read it or not!

i do not have easy kids. i am pretty sure it's my fault, but they're still hard and life for me as their mother is a near-constant struggle. i have watched lots of my friends kids lately and it's become even more apparent that i do not have easy kids. i don't know how to fix it, either. i'm sure some of you have advice. that's not what this post is about.

something you need to know for this story: we have this toy that i got at the byu bookstore a few years ago. it's a long skinny stick thing with a motor that you hold, and you put a circular spinning thing on top and push a button and it launches the circular thing into the air. we lost the circular things months and months ago (way before we moved) but i've never gotten rid of the base for some reason. then my mom bought my dad a new tv for his birthday last saturday and when they moved the old one, they found one of the circular things--a purple one. isaac was so excited to play with it but the base was at our house and he fell asleep on the drive home that night, so he never got a chance. keep this in mind for later.

sunday night (Easter) was a horrible night for us. i went to bed around eleven, and i was just starting to doze when noah woke up. that's not unusual, he wakes up almost every night at least once. i usually give him a bottle (don't judge me--i know this is one of numerous reasons that i have hard kids) and he goes straight back to sleep. not that night. he started screaming and i could not calm him down. i still have no idea what to do with him when he gets like this, because nothing works. he was gnawing on his fingers so i tried orajel and when that didn't work, tylenol. after about 20 minutes he woke isaac up so i decided to take noah out to the car. he hates his carseat, but when he's tired he will usually go to sleep in it. i drove around for almost 40 minutes...with him screaming the entire time. since that wasn't working (and seemed to be making him more upset) i went back home and put him in his bed, tried another bottle, changed his diaper, nothing. still screaming. finally a little after 1 am he fell asleep on me. i laid him down and he woke back up...but after a few minutes he went back to sleep. he woke up again around 3:30 or 4:00 and it started all over...this time i tried benadryl, because he was so stuffed up and i thought maybe it was waking him up, then i let him cry in his bed....he fell back asleep after an hour or so until about 6:30.

he was a wreck. so was i. dave was leaving for work and i was so nervous about when isaac woke up. generally isaac doesn't wake up happy and wants me to hold him for a while as he slowly wakes/cheers up, but when noah's like that, i cannot put him down and then i have two screaming kids. this actually happens a few times a week and it always throws our entire day off to get a start like this. so i asked dave to give noah a blessing because i didn't know what else to do. he was obviously in some kind of pain, but i had no idea what to do for him because no medicine helped. so dave gave him a blessing, and of course noah freaked out during it, but after dave left for work i laid down on the couch, and after 20 or 30 minutes, noah fell asleep on me.

around 7:30 isaac came running out of our room (he was sleeping in our bed) yelling "mama!" and i thought, "oh boy, here we go." i put my finger to my lips to shush him so he wouldn't wake up noah but i was too late. i almost started to panic but the next words out of his mouth were "i want to play with that purple thing!" he was happy. he was cheerful. i calmed down a notch. noah started to get a little agitated, but as isaac began launching the purple thing into the air, noah started laughing. it was a miracle. noah sat and watched for a minute, then jumped down and followed isaac around, watching and laughing. isaac shared with noah. noah shared with isaac. they laughed and played. isaac played with that thing all day. i'm not exaggerating. except for the hour we were at the park later that day, he played with it the entire day.

noah sat by himself and played a little, read books to himself (he holds up books and jabbers, it's very cute). both boys were in an excellent mood all day. i was able to get everything on my to-do list done that day (including cleaning out my fridge and freezer completely, took out all the shelves and everything) and it was a genuinely good, happy day. i was exhausted, but i could function because the boys weren't being hard at all. and all day the words "tender mercy" kept coming to my mind. i'm sure you remember elder bednar's talk from conference a few years ago where he spoke about the tender mercies of the Lord.

“But behold, I, Nephi, will show unto you that the tender mercies of the
Lord are over all those whom he hath chosen, because of their faith, to
make them mighty even unto the power of deliverance” (1 Ne. 1:20).

this seems like a long and pointless story to most of you i'm sure. but to me it was a powerful testimony-building experience. God cares about the small and simple things of our every day lives. after very little sleep for both noah and i, this should not have been a good day. noah never plays by himself. neither does isaac. they never share. i'm telling you it was a true miracle for me. and i had to acknowledge it. as elder bednar said,

"A loving Savior was sending me a most personal and timely message of comfort and
reassurance .... I testify that the tender mercies of the Lord are real and that they do
not occur randomly or merely by coincidence. Often, the Lord’s timing of His
tender mercies helps us to both discern and acknowledge them."*

on monday i discerned the hand of God in my life, over a simple thing, and i had to acknowledge it and express my gratitude.
i believe in the tender mercies of the Lord.

*(David A. Bednar, Ensign May 2005)

art: "in thy tender care" by kathy lawrence