taking His name upon me

I'm supposed to be writing a talk right now on that topic.

But here’s the thing—I don’t want to be writing this talk. Today I feel unattractive, moody, and kind of like bawling my eyes out whenever I think of some new thing I should be doing but am not doing because I am too busy feeling sorry for my hormonal self. I know what I should be talking about. It’s been talked about a katrillion different ways. I know that it’s important, and that’s why I’m supposed to buckled down, suck it up, and just do it. But all I can think about is myself. How bad I feel. How men don’t understand what we go through every month. How nothing could be worse than having to give a talk tomorrow. 

But that is so far from the truth, it's not even kind of funny. SO many things could be worse than having to give this talk tomorrow. Like my wailing and gnashing of teeth distracting my sweet husband to the point that he is unable to finish his studying, falls behind, and fails his classes. Like getting a phone call saying that my family is yet another person smaller. Like losing my hearing and eyesight and not even being able to prepare to a talk tomorrow, even if I wanted to. This could go on and on, you see?

My point is-- I was just talking to my very wise and benevolent spouse-friend about the unfairness of having a pill to take away cramping pains but no pill to take away the sad pain that some times goes with it. He listened to me very patiently, just like he always does. Then do you know what he said to me? "Guess you're just going to have to deal with it." He gave me a quick, cautious smile and a hug and told me he was kidding. And he was.

But you know what? He's right. Sometimes there are things we just have to deal with. Sometimes the only fair thing would be for the world to just slow down, pause for a second and let us catch our breaths. But it never does. Because life as we can see it is not fair.

Someday it will be fair. Someday I'll understand why for one gosh-darn minute the world can't pause and let me wallow in the past. Why someone doesn't know to call and say, "Becky, I've always dreamed of giving a talk on that subject, would you mind if I gave the talk tomorrow instead?" Why people do die and do lose precious things and do have to do things they don't want to do. But today I will just "deal with it." I'm going to smile and write a talk and hug my husband and go to bed and get up and give that talk. And you know what? It's going to be just fine. And you know what else? So will every other time I think life isn't fair. Because at one point very loving Savior felt all of this mess and lived through it so that I could know that I can, too.

And I think maybe I've stumbled across a nice starting point for that talk...