I very much enjoyed the talk by Elder Bednar entitled "Tender Mercies of the Lord" Here is a excerpt from that talk:
Tender Mercies are all around as we see things for what they truly are: a gift from God.
A friend that stops by just to say hi.
A friend that says "I'm here to help!"
A scripture that jumps out and brings peace.
A thoughtful act of service.
A talk in church that is exactly what I need to hear.
People that reach out to my kids in teaching and kindness.
These sustain me in their Simpleness, Sweetness and Constancy
The Lord is good to all and his tender mercies are over all his works - Psalms 145:9
I really enjoy my lawn. Grass has wonderful memories of my youth. I enjoy mowing the lawn - getting your tennis shoes green, the smell of fresh cut grass, the lines in the grass from the tire-marks. I would mow our lawn and my grandparents lawn regularly. What a treat!
I was very pregnant with Summer and we had a push hand-mower. I really wanted to bring order to my backyard and get the lawn mowed. Meanwhile it got longer and longer and bothered me more and more. Now don't get me wrong, Colt is very good at looking after us and doing things around the house, but this just happened to fall on a very busy time, and I get a little fixated on things :)
Anyway, it was too much of a project for me with 2 little ones and as pregnant as I was and as long as the grass was - you would have to forcefully push the mower through and get a couple of inches, where you would need to back up and try again. I went out and tried only to be completely exhausted after a few minutes, making no progress and conscience gently whispered to stop with how pregnant I was. I went inside and got a knock a few minutes later. Two neighbor boys saw me attempting to mow and came over to finish the job. Their kindness meant so much to me.
Seeing a need and going out of their way to help.
Tender Mercy of the Lord.
Another very personalized tender mercy of the Lord has been both through my sleep and lack of sleep and what they have both taught me about myself and the Lord. ~This will be a post for another day - as this post will be long enough as it is :)
VIDEO: Summer
My lively, teasing, energetic, loving 22 month old started to get bruises.
At first I noticed some small bruises - but this is a very vibrant child that tries to keep up with her sisters. A few bruises are to be expected. Then came deeper bruises - the kind that you would expect a kid to cry and scream over. But these would show up without me ever hearing her cry, and I am a very aware mother. Monday night we had a combined family night with 2 other families - with kids running around Summer came in with another bruise on her chin - and one on her hip - just small bumps were causing major bruises. I would find them when changing her diaper - big ugly bruises on her hips and side. There were even small bruises all up and down her back - just picking her up - would bruise her back.
This all developed very rapidly and I took her in to the doctor to see what was going on. He ordered several tests to check for a wide variety of disorders. I got a call to bring her back up to the clinic immediately after they received the results of the blood work - she had no platelets. Each spot of blood that they test should have 150,000 platelets. They tested 10 spots of blood and found 2 platelets. This little ball of energy was to not bump herself because of the high risk of bleeding in the brain or internal bleeding if bumped wrong. YIKES!
Sweet tiny Summer with some bruises. She is so petite, and was all of a sudden so fragile.
We needed to check for the possibility of Leukemia. They sent the blood to Primary Children's Hospital to run tests. Colt had given me a Priesthood Blessing that night and in it I received much comfort. The Lord knows Summer. He knows me. He knows what we need and we are in his hands. I also received much comfort through my Patriarchal Blessing. We received the call that the Leukemia tests came back negative. My heart went out to all the parents who's test results were not negative.
What a tender mercy of the Lord that I had so many willing friends to take River and Silver while Summer and I had some mellow days and weeks. It was a very special time as we would read and play quietly, and without her sisters to get her going, she wasn't as rambunctious as usual. It was neat to get to spend time just with her one on one for so long.
No, I never could take pictures of her with all her bruises. Some of these here were after the bruising started to go away or just in the course of normal picture taking :)
It turns out she had something called ITP - in a nutshell they get sick - Summer had had a cough and runny nose - but nothing I would have even taken her to the doctor for. The immune system goes on hyper-drive. Antibodies attach themselves to the platelets and then the spleen filters out the antibodies which removes all the platelets.
We put her on steroids for a few weeks - which was hard trying to get a child to take her medicine twice a day when it tasted awful! In the beginning she would choke on it, and throw it back up. We got our routine down towards the end - she would come for her medicine and we would mix it with chocolate syrup. Then she would get some candies for drinking it down! It was really sweet to pray with her and hear her little voice echoing every word we said in the prayer. "Please bless my blood" she would pray.
She was a trooper in getting her blood drawn several times and going to the doctors office. They were amazed at how good she was and how brave she would be. After getting her blood drawn for lab work she could go over to the drawer and pick out a small toy. She chose a bee every time, and now she has a bee collection :) She got better and the amazing part is that for the most part I was very calm and assured that all would be well and that we were known to our Heavenly Father.
We'll end how we started - I get fixated on my lawn. We recently moved and with packing and one thing after another the grass got rather long. I REALLY wanted to leave it mowed for the new owners. I went out the day before we were to hand it over and the mower started and died after a few feet. I could not get it to start again. Colt after much pulling and yanking multiple times throughout the day couldn't get it to start.
It really bothered me to leave the lawn long. I drove the mower over to our new house as the very last load. Colt's brother was around and he had noticed that the gas lid was off and that rain water could have gotten in the gas tank. He got out his tools and fixed the mower! Oh Happy Day! I went back over to the house and mowed the back lawn just as the sun was going down. I enjoyed the sunset, the twilight and the fresh cut grass. It was the perfect way to say goodbye to our house that had served us so very well. A tender mercy of someone reaching out to me to help in my need for closure.
The Lord answers prayers and is aware of our needs both large and small - President Thomas S. Monson said "Our Heavenly Father is aware of our needs and will help us as we call upon Him for assistance. I believe that no concern of ours is too small or insignificant. The Lord is in the details of our lives."
I know it was a small thing, and probably not very important to anyone but me, but it was important to me, and the Lord knew that and helped me in my need.
