The other night I was having another bad night. The kind of night where I was feeling bad for myself and had been wishing I were dead rather than live for another moment with the pain and humiliation that comes with a disease that causes chronic pain. I had a long talk with my Dad, who understands chronic pain very well, and he opened my eyes to several things including what an amazing person he is. (which I already knew!) That evening though, I was still feeling awful so I decided to check out Stephanie Nielsen (Nie Nie) and see how she was handling her day. Needless to say she and I felt some things that were quite similar, like the discontent that comes from hanging out in bed while your children go about their normal day without you. But for the most part, she has it worse by 1000x more than I ever could - and I went to bed feeling grateful. Grateful that Stephanie was home from the hospital. Grateful to feel this funny connection for a person that I had never met. Grateful that I am only dealing with endometriosis and not trying to recover from a near fatal plane crash. Grateful for people who are willing to put their lives out on their blogs for the whole world to see and grateful for the perspective of the restored gospel that gives millions of people hope in a dark world. In the Scriptures it says:
And again, I command thee that thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife; nor seek thy neighbor’s life.
Doctrine and Covenants section 19:25
When I've read this scripture before, the first thought I've had about the second sentence was "don't kill your neighbor" - right? Well, when I read this the other day the second sentence made me think about how often we, as women, wish that our lives were like so and so's. We wish that our husband were like Jane's and that our house was as big as Mary's and that our children were as well behaved as Lizzy's. How many people, I wondered, had wished and even sought to have a life like Stephanie Nielson did before her crash? If you haven't browsed through her blog or read the article in the AZ newspaper that details her accident, Click Here. Her life seemed perfect, even she felt like it was as good as it could get - but if you had to go through her trials, would you really want her blessings?
