Happiness Ahead

On Sunday morning I had the kids dress in their reserved Sunday clothes. We'd packed everything else in their closets, except their chosen outfit for their last Sunday in this ward.

Benjamin had been playing in his room—with DUPLO, the one set of toys that we had yet to pack away—and he came out to ask me a question. I looked up at him and gasped in horror. 

He had blood smeared all over his arms and shirt sleeves (and dribbling out of his nose)!

"Benjamin!" I shrieked. "You have a bloody nose!"

"I do?" he said.

"It's all over your shirt..." I nearly cried. 

"It's fine," he sniffed, wiping his nose on his arm again. "It's not that much blood!"

"Oh, Benjamin, please stop!" I said. 

On Saturday he'd gotten quite a spectacular bloody nose. I'd thought he'd fallen off the swing but when I mentioned this he chirped, "I didn't fall out! I jumped out at the wrong time and did a flip and landed on my face!"

That explains the epic amount of blood. And the bruising. 

Nothing happened to him on Sunday morning, however. It was just "crusty" inside and he was "getting it out." So, basically, he picked out whatever scabby growths occurred on Saturday and caused his nose to bleed again on Sunday. 

"This is your only Sunday shirt!" I said (which wasn't exactly true because I had a Sunday bag packed to ride in the van to Utah, but I didn't want to dig that up, either). 

"Seriously, it's fine," he insisted. "It's not that much blood."

"Benjamin," I said. "You can't go to church looking like that. How did you get it all over your sleeves like that, anyway?"

"I thought that it was just snot," he shrugged. 

Because wiping snot up and down your arms is perfectly logical (well, at least for a five-year-old).

I took off his shirt and sent him to the bathroom to wash his arms and hands and face while I rifled through his drawers and managed to procure a polo shirt. So it ended up being a bit of a casual Sunday, but he still had a collar on and there was no blood on his shirt, so...everything worked out just fine.

Andrew gave his farewell address, which went well (even if he was still writing the conclusion while he was sitting up on the stand), Zoë refused to go to nursery but Andrew managed to put her to sleep and then watched her for the rest of the block of meetings, which meant I was free to attend adult classes on my own.

Since being released a month ago, Zoë was sick enough that we stayed home, I took her to classes with me the next week, last week she went to nursery fairly well, and this week Andrew took her.

Anyway, we discussed pioneers and enduring hardships quite a bit in both classes (two things that go hand in hand in a Mormon's brain, I guess) since Pioneer Day was coming up (and because that's what was on the schedule, I suppose). In her lesson, Sister Rubow shared a clip from Elder Holland's (October 1999!!) talk, "An High Priest of Good Things to Come." This clip, to be exact:

I'm not sure this talk was particularly inspiring to me when I first potentially heard it, but in recent years it's really struck home with me—probably because we've been slogging our way through graduate school the past several years (and by "we" I mean Andrew, obviously, but I've done my fair share of slogging along with him so it's "we"). A couple of years ago I even made a magnet with "Don’t give up... Don’t you quit. You keep walking. You keep trying. There is help and happiness ahead..." on it (or some truncated version thereof). 

I had been good the whole Sunday up until we started watching this clip. I had smiled and given out hugs and taken a few pictures and was totally prepared to make it through the day without tears. But this little video did me in. 

Moving is exhausting and emotional and full of any number of little bumps in the road. 

It was a good reminder to for me to "keep [my] chin up. It will be all right in the end. Trust God and believe in good things to come." Unfortunately, instead of keeping my chin up...I cried. 

We went to say goodbye to the bishop after church. He'd spent the last 6 weeks away in Italy/India (for work) so it was good that we got to catch him on our last week. I neglected to take a picture of Andrew with the bishopric though, and I really had meant to. Oh, well. 

After hugging the bishop Benjamin declared, "I'm going to hug everybody in the church!" and as we (very slowly) made our way out of the building he proceeded to do so. Fortunately a lot of people had left by this point in time or we might still be there hugging people today! He went into the primary room and hugged all the leaders (and their children) still there. He hugged everyone we passed in the hall. He hugged the people emptying the trash cans. He hugged the people visiting in the foyer. He literally hugged everyone he saw on his way out the door. 

He's a little torn up about leaving behind his home. Our home. 

And I'm a little bit stressed about sending my babies across the country without me (not that Andrew isn't a very capable father because he is...he just can't find their toothbrushes...and Zoë has never (not once) gone to sleep without Mommy there so I'm freaking out a bit because I'd really like for her to let everyone else sleep). 

But there is happiness ahead, so I guess we'll just keep walking.

PS. We watched this video in Sunday School, and it was also awesome (but it didn't make me cry):