Pinpoint

You know when you look back on your life and you think about the highlights and lowlights? Times when things in life were super smooth, fun, interesting....or times when they really were awful? Funny thing is, I can almost exactly pinpoint the bad stuff, but the good times are more blurry.

It's like this. When I think about my 20s, I think about saving for my mission, serving my mission, going to college, getting married, having two babies. Loved my 20s, really loved them. They were amazing. But it's all a bit blurry, a haze of happiness I guess.

But then there's dates like November 11, 2006, when I was diagnosed with cancer. A pinpoint in time.

In a few years I will look back on this year, 2014, at least the beginning and be able to tell you that time in my life was one of the hardest times I've ever been through. And I'm not done yet. Every time I think things will calm down, they just don't.

Last night as Harold and I were discussing events he actually asked me to stop talking about what was going on because he simply could not take it any more. I was irritated by this, but I still understood.

I won't go into nitty gritty details. There are too many and there are people to protect.

Let me start here: It's Savannah's senior year. At the beginning of the school year I distinctly remember thinking that we were almost done with her high school career and we had escaped any drama that I was sure would accompany a girl through high school.

Now we all know what happens when you think things in your life are easy, right? Yep, all of a sudden you hit a wall....hard.

Savannah is a great girl, this isn't about her. This is not about her choices. She got a bit overwhelmed and overbooked and that played into this year. But the biggest thing is that she was betrayed by a person she trusted, a best friend. The best friend turned on her and then others followed the best friend. Now my daughter has no best friend. And her peripheral friends aren't really speaking to her either.

Can you imagine being a senior in high school, supposedly the best time in your life, and you have no friends?

If you can't remember what it was like, let me help you out. It's devastating.

And if you think a mother can sit by and watch this kind of thing happening and just take it.....well, that's exactly what I have to do, "take it." I do everything I can to help, support, love, embrace, hold, and empower. But I pretty much have to sit back and take it.

And I have to take it from people who live really close, who go to my church, my schools, my neighborhood stores. I have to smile, tell them I'm sure the girls will work it out, when I'm not sure at all. In fact, my daughter says she is through with this friend. Savannah feels betrayed and unloved. She feels used and walked on. She doesn't want this friend back. But she doesn't want to be friendless either.

She's lonely.

She will graduate in two months, actually 9 weeks from today. I will rejoice that she no longer has to face the people who wronged her every.single.day.

She deserves to walk with her head held high, yet she skulks around school like she has something to hide. This is NOT my girl.

I want my girl back. I want her to feel empowered and lovely and beautiful and strong and peaceful and spiritually bold.

I will look back on my daughter's senior year as one of the worst of my life. Because my daughter was betrayed and I had to take it.

She makes me proud to be a mother and my heart hasn't stopped aching for oh so long.

I love you my darling, wonderful, brilliant, lovely girl.

If thou art ^aaccused with all manner of false accusations; if thine enemies fall upon thee;.....  if thou be cast into the ^bdeep; if the billowing surge conspire against thee; if fierce winds become thine enemy; if the heavens gather blackness, and all the elements combine to ^chedge up the way; and above all, if the very jaws of ^dhell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee^eexperience, and shall be for thy good.

The ^aSon of Man hath ^bdescended below them all. Art thou greater than he?

D&C 122: 6, 7

I love you my girl. Love, love, love, love you.