We need our Heavenly Father

Image source

 I super like this image. I found it on the blog Pocketful of Sunshine, by a missionary named Kelsie. She's not posting while on her mission, but she has a ton of old posts I plan to go back and read :)

I find "Sinday," "Tearsday," and "Shatterday" especially applicable. Wait, applicable isn't the right word. They resonate with my conscience? Now that sounds all English-class-analysis-with-some-Zen-like-qualities. 

Anywho.

I am guilty of doing homework on Sundays. I already have a big to-do list planned out for tomorrow. Less than half of it will get done due to procrastination. But I will still solve math problems and struggle though online French assignments. I'm much better at refraining from shopping on Sundays than I was before, and I try to do some Personal Progress or something, but I need to quit saving homework for Sunday. 

In my family, Sundays usually go like this: get up late, barely get out the door on time, sit through an hour of mass, come home, do homework. Then eat lunch and do more homework. 

That's why "Sinday" speaks to me. Moving on. 

I hate crying. Sometimes. But I don't cry easily. So sometimes I hate not being able to cry. It's weird. For example, on a day when I cry a lot, I start measuring my mood (and sometimes my self-worth) based on how many times I've cried in the past few days. If I've cried once or more per day for those few days, I elevate my mental screwiness scale to level "something is majorly wrong" and proceed to feel sorry for myself for the next couple days. 

On the flipside, if I feel like I should be able to cry but I can't, it makes me freak out even more (but I don't keep track of how many days in a row that happens), because I know that sometimes I just need that emotional release that crying can provide. 

This concludes "Tearsday." Moving on. 

On a few occasions, I have described my mental state as feeling "shattered into a million pieces on the floor." I hate that shattered feeling. It scares me. I barely had the energy to stand up and interact with people on those days. (PS I don't remember if I've told you this before, but I self-diagnosed myself as having depression. I'm much better than I was before, this post is just calling out memories for the sake of illustrating a point). 

By definition, shattered glass is very difficult to fix. You could do it with glue, but the glass would be very weak. You could tape it, but it would look dumb. You could call it useless and dangerous and throw it away. OR you could melt it down and completely recreate the glass pane. That takes lotsa skill, lotsa sophisticated tools, and lotsa time and effort. For one little pane of glass. Which method does Heavenly Father use? He's constantly melting us down and painstakingly creating smarter, better, more beautiful panes of glass out of all of us. We shatter sometimes, due to difficult trials, but He will always help us back up. 

Thus concludes my analysis of "Shatterday." 

I hope you can see how we need Heavenly Father's help to prevent these kinds of days. If I ask Him for help to get my homework done before Sunday, and if I actually make an effort to do so, He can provide a way. If I turn to Him in everything I do, if His love is more important to me than anything that might make me cry, then what reason do I have to cry? If I feel shattered, He can pick up the pieces and help me to emerge even stronger than I was before. 

<3 Marie-Rose