Pearl of Great Price

***WARNING THIS IS LONG-ISH***

This is something I wrote for a creative writing class, then updated for a multi-cultural class.  It is the story of me.  I have shared it with quite a few people who are going through trials and it seems to help them.  So...Here is that paper/story or whatever.  Feel free to share it with whomever you want.

All my life I have been told that I am strong.  I am a fighter.  I am a miracle child that is here for some special purpose because of the way I was brought into this world.  The year was 1986, my mother had just finished the first Christmas in the home my father built with his loving hands.  Those same hands held a video camera capturing the momentous occasion on film.  Seeing my three older siblings playing with their toys and my oldest brother, victim of a stroke at birth, run and jump around and over my two sisters (His is another story for another time).  The camera pans out to show my mother, pregnant with a daughter that was due in the end of March of the following year.  Little did she know, my mother was due to have yet another daughter in the newborn ICU for months. 

After my mother spent twenty-two days in the hospital, I was born at twenty-six weeks on January 23rd; a whopping one pound ten ounces; and an inch or two longer than a dollar bill.  Each day my parents would hear that I lived through another night, but would most likely die during the next.  Friends and family spent who knows how many hours on their knees in prayer for my little life.  I was in the hospital till the month of April.  On oxygen for one and a half years, I was walking and crawling around with a tube in my nose, oblivious to the inconvenience of limited range. I walked and laughed and smiled as often as I could.  

            The miraculous events of my birth aside, growing up I did not feel strong.  I could run and jump, but others could run and jump better than I.  I could play volleyball in high school, but could not serve overhand until my junior year, and had freshman starting over me my senior year.  Placed as a captain for my ability to lead and teach rather than to bump, block, and spike.  I was always an expendable person when it came to my physical strength.       

            The matter of my inner, or spiritual, strength was another matter.  I knew the girl my parents saw, and the girl I saw.  They were two different people.  Where my parents saw a drop dead gorgeous bombshell of a girl, I saw a lanky awkward average girl.  Where my parents saw a girl any man would be happy to marry, I saw a girl that was nothing that wasn’t found in other girls.  I was someone to be cherished and loved, yes, but that was nothing different than any other girl deserved. I had nothing unique and special to offer.  I was just a silly girl that liked to read and listen to—according to my younger brother—“weird music”. 
     There is one thing that I felt I was in agreement with my parents about myself. I have always known that I am a kind person, someone who does not get mad…ever…someone who finds the good in everyone and everything.  Other than those few facts, I did not feel like much of anything special.  I did not feel I had anything special to offer. 

Suffice it to say that I had a very low self-esteem.  A self-esteem that would shoot to the extreme low through the event that is supposed to bring happiness, the event called marriage.  Jon was the man that I loved.  However, the man I loved was not the man I ended up married to.  The man I loved spent hours with me enfolded in his arms.  The man I loved kissed me whenever he first saw, or left me.  The man I loved, most importantly, loved me back.  The man I married spent hours nearly every night with his “buddy”.  The man I married only kissed me when he wanted sex.  The man I married was annoyed by everything I did. 

“I am moving to Oregon with or without you.” He said.

I went.  I went, wanting to save my marriage.  I went hoping being around his family would return him to the man I loved.  I went with false hopes.  Weekends spent husbandless, surrounded by strangers who were supposed to be family.  A mother who took me aside and told me I was a bad wife.  A mother who told me my marriage was failing and what I needed to do to fix it.  A husband who never said hello before I did; a husband that would go out drinking on those weekends I spent husbandless.  A husband who decided to join the United States Army.

I returned home to the house my father’s loving hands built, to that home of mine forever and always.  I returned with the hope of patching up a marriage after the dreaded two and a half month boot camp—excuse me, basic training.  Christmas Day, the last day I saw my husband, the man I loved, or the man I married.  My parents, seeing me that day, worried at my sickly state.  Two weeks spent waiting, waiting for the agonizing slowness of the letter he had to write so I knew how to write him back.  Hope resided in that letter.  He missed me!  He was the man I loved again! With more letters came more hope.  He planned our lives together.   He had everything figured out.  I was not supposed to come to graduation to save some money.  But I could call him!  He would have a cell phone!  I would come to loathe that phone.

The date was Monday, March 30; the time, 0700.  I get woken up by my phone ringing, only one person would be calling me at this hour!  I get to talk to Jon!  I have not talked to him for a few days, he must have been doing some weird Advanced Individualized Training thing.  I grab the phone practically wrenching it open in excitement.  My excitement turns to dread as I hear the words, “I don’t love you anymore” come out of his mouth with seemingly no emotion.  The next words out of my mouth startled me, “Shit Jon! What am I supposed to do now?  Do you want a divorce or something?”  What followed was a short conversation I cannot remember…then came the waterworks.  I tried to stifle my cries so I would not wake my parents sleeping the floor below me.  I throw the little bear in army getup I was given as a representation of my “beloved” at the wall.  Then, after I do not know how long, I go downstairs and tell my sister, Karlie, what had just happened.  Then I go and tell my parents. 

 Within the span of a few hours, my aunts and uncles knew…my mother had called…deep in the grief of her daughter’s suffering.  Daisies, my happy flower, and a new teddy are sent with a card saying “Life suck sometimes...Karma to you” from loving aunts.  Chocolate and Diet Coke brought from friends.  School…what school?  My life as I knew it was over.  I failed at my marriage.  I was a bad wife.  I did not give my husband what he needed.  I was not someone anyone wanted.  My self-esteem has reached the extreme low I had mentioned. 

Two days passed.  I ask with tears in my eyes, for a blessing.  My father, unable to give one because of his anger and frustration, calls our bishop.  Together they put their hands on my head, and bless me with many things.  Perspective that this is only a pinprick of a moment in my life; the power of discerning men’s hearts, now and in the years to come; and guardian angels, in people I know here on earth, and those I knew up in Heaven.  Comfort and peace wash over me.  I do not feel alone anymore…God is with me.  He loves me and His Son knows exactly what I am going through.  Tears were still in my eyes, but for a different reason.

Healing finally began.  I began to see the things my parents saw in me.  I threw myself into school, knowing I had to pass each class.  I began working out with a girl who became one of the angels my blessing spoke of.  We worked through our sorrow—her husband was in the two and a half months of basic training—by hitting the gym.  We hit the gym most often when I was mad, and boy did I get mad.  He says he did not cheat.  He says he was faithful.  He says that he was just going down a different path.  I ran and ran till my legs were jelly. He called changing his mind, wanting to talk, wanting me to delay sending the papers.  I ran.  He text telling me to go ahead and send the papers.  I ran.  He called again saying that he wanted to talk.  I ran.  He called saying he sent the papers in.  I ran.  I ran to prove him wrong.  I ran to show him that I am beautiful.  I ran to show him that I am a woman he would regret throwing away.  I ran to show myself that I could.  I ran to show myself that I want something more.  I ran to show myself that I am worth it.

For the fourth or fifth time I call the courthouse, inquiring as to the status of my papers.  The papers that kept a tie to Jon…the tie that I desperately wanted cut.  “Its final” she says. 

“What?”  I replied. 

“Its been final since July 15^th.  The Judge signed the papers.”

I am free!  I had been free for a whole two weeks and did not even realize it!  I felt lighter than air.  It was almost like I was twitterpated.   I could move on.  I was not stuck in the middle.  I could date if I wanted to.  I could flirt and not feel guilty.  I could be my own person!  The world was at my feet.  I had a new beginning, a fresh start.

Almost one year from the day he called me, I fully see the strength I have been told I had.  I see the spirit that fought for months to survive when other little spirits went out.  I went through a divorce that was more of a roller-coaster than I let on…and came out of it with the self-esteem of a woman who has never known heart break.  Again, when other spirits went out from a similar situation, mine stayed strong.  I know what I want and I am not afraid to wait for it.  Who cares if “Mr. Right” takes years to find me, he will.

In September of 2010, my life changes dramatically again. My Mr. Right, Brandon, had found me, it took some help with an internet dating site to get us to know of each other’s existence. Funny how forty-five minutes separated the person that was to be my knight in shining armor, the beloved that I did not think I would find till much, much later.  Six months of commuting back and forth, countless hours spent laughing, learning and loving one another, and we got engaged.  Four months later we were sealed for time and all eternity on July 22, 2011 at 02:22 PM. 

The man who married us told us about the mother of pearl oyster, and how something that is priceless is made out of sacrifice. He likened our relationship, even our lives, to the mother of pearl oyster.  Each grain of sand, or trial we face, will cultivate and create something amazing and beautiful, a pearl of great price, in this case, love.  Love of yourself, love of your spouse, and love of anyone you are in the trial with.  Sacrifice and trials gone through with a person you love makes a pearl of great price.  

I am adding this extra tidbit now... Christ went through the atonement, suffered more than any of us can fathom, all to make each and every one of us a pearl of great price. No matter what our trial is, it is there to shape us into bigger and better people.  We may only feel the pain of sand rolling around making us hurt, but one day we can look back and see how beautiful we are because of that grain of sand.