God’s hand

When I was a young teenager, I used to be so faithful and involved with my church. Sometime around seventeen, I got a job and quit attending church as often because I had to work. Eventually, I found that my desire to attend anything church related dwindled. I got to the point where I wasn’t attending any meetings or activities at all. That has how I have lived for the last seven years. My husband and I have recently decided to try to become active again. We are starting small and only attending the first hour during Sunday meetings. My husband has been the one to push for the change, and I am very grateful that he has because I have seen God’s hand in my life more than usual over the last two years.

My husband and I got married in 2022 and had been together for five years before our wedding, so we were ready to start a family. After two or three months of trying without any luck I started seeing a doctor. I was having some issues that prevented me from getting pregnant. Month after month nothing happened. We finally got to a point where my doctor told me that she would give us one more month and if we were still unsuccessful, she would refer us to a fertility clinic. My heart sank. I have friends who have shared their struggles with infertility, and I didn’t know if I would be strong enough to go through all of it. Then a miracle happened. On the 3rd of December, a week before my last appointment, I found out I was pregnant. I was so excited to welcome a baby in August of 2023, and I started making plans. I wanted to stay at my job as a head custodian until the end of 2023. Then I would quit to work at my mom’s daycare so that I could be home with my child. In January, of 2023 I started getting the feeling that I needed to quit my job. I continued to push the feeling aside telling myself, “Brooklyn you already made a decision, and you are going to stick to it.” Quitting earlier than I had planned was not a smart financial decision, but the feeling kept coming back no matter how hard I tried to keep it at bay. I fought it until March when the feeling got so strong that I couldn’t ignore it anymore. I walked into my boss’s office in tears, still unsure why I was in such a hurry to leave and put in my two weeks.

August came fast and before I knew it, I was a mom. I was so excited, but the day after I came home with my daughter, my grandma was taken to the hospital and later diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma, terminal bone cancer. My aunt was covering for me in the daycare while I recovered from having the baby and continued to work with us when I returned to help take care of my grandma. We always needed three people there to make sure that when one of us was upstairs taking care of grandma, we would have two people downstairs taking care of the kids. This made it so we didn’t go over numbers with the adult to child ratio laws created by the state. I helped my mom and my aunt care for my grandma on several occasions. The first time I helped with her I was so nervous. I was worried that I was not strong enough to watch my grandma decline. To my surprise, I found that helping take care of her taught me to feel compassion and love on another level. My grandma passed away in April and I had the honor of being there to watch her leave this life and be welcomed home. This was another situation that I was terrified to experience as I questioned my strength to get through it. I was again surprised with my ability to cope.

It didn’t hit me until after my grandma’s funeral just how perfect Gods plan for the year was. All the pieces fit together like a puzzle. My daughter had to wait to come. During the time that my grandma was sick, my daughter was still so little and needed me for everything. She was my reason to get up and keep going instead of shutting down. If I would have stayed at my old job my mom would not have opened spots to watch more kids at her daycare and we would not have needed my aunt to come help us. Without my aunt it would have been extremely hard to take care of my grandma. We all needed each other.

            Through all of this I questioned my own strength, but I was never expected to endure it all alone. The lord was with me carrying me every step of the way. My journey back to the gospel is just starting, but any doubt that I had has been washed away over the last year as I have seen how my Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ bless my life. They knew what I needed and when I needed it. I am far from perfect, but their love for me is forgiving and unwavering. No matter how far I stray, they will love me as I am and give me strength to get through trials. Trusting the process has been so hard this last year, but it could not have worked out more beautifully. I am so grateful that I get to experience trials so that I may witness firsthand God’s grace and love.