Blessing

My baby turned one. It is such a blessing to be a mom to learn about love, sacrifice, patience, and true happiness. There have been a lot of sleepless nights and constant stress from worrying every single day of every little moment. I remember when he first slept through the night without waking up for 7 hours, I was worried if something happened to him, I woke up every hour to check if he was all right. Looking back at the last few years of my life, I couldn't be more grateful to my Heavenly Father for the amount of blessings I received from him. We often focus on what is wrong and why it’s wrong in our daily life instead of focusing on what is right and how much we are blessed from standing up for the right. Ironically enough, when we compare our lives with others or our past; we focus on what and why of our situation. I could also get stuck thinking of my past and could be very miserable and sad for my life now. With a little baby, I can’t go place-to-place like I used to or I can’t spend my day doing what I like to do. I could look at my friends who pursued careers and made a lot of money and feel jealous how much she could spend on herself and live comfortably without worrying about anything. But once I start counting my blessings from the very little things, I begin to recognize the bigger and greater blessings as well. I am grateful for families and friends who I love the most, scriptures and temple for keeping me close to God, missionaries who share the Gospel so that people around the world would get the chance to be completely happy, a car that I can get around from place to place, food that keeps me healthy. I am also grateful for laundry machines, dishwashers and all the things that make my day easier so I could focus on more and important things. I can literally go on and on about what I am grateful for. When I start counting my blessings I noticed, my blessing list has far more items than my list of what I am lacking.

The opportunity to be a blessing to others can come unexpectedly. In that reason, we often don’t recognize blessings. When my husband graduated from BYU and was looking for a full-time teaching job in Washington DC, we found out that there were no place of employment that could give the proper visa to a Canadian due to sudden policy changes that had just taken place with Canada and the US. He contacted every district from the State of Massachusetts down to Texas and all the way to California. The timing couldn't be better; we were beyond stressed with the job situation and me being pregnant with a baby on the way. The baby would be born in two months and the only way for my husband to get a job would be to extend his US visa. After getting the visa extension, the only job he was able to find at that moment was a temporary one. We were very disappointed and worried that we couldn’t meet our ends need. We prayed really hard to get a “good job” to support our baby and growing family comfortably. It was a few months after the baby was born and that my husband was working full time that I realized it was a huge blessing in disguise that my husband was in that situation. Since we didn’t have family nearby, it was extremely difficult going through the pregnancy and birth on our own. Having my husband at home helped me get through the day a lot easier and faster. We learned to live within a tight budget. We always thought we would need more money to take care of our family. But by cutting out the things that we wanted for what we need, we were still able to live comfortably.

I hope when you go to bed tonight, you can go to bed counting all your blessings that you have. Blessings are gifts from Heavenly Father to keep us happy and keep learning. 

Those of you who are patient enough to read this far, Thank you. I just wanted to share my blessing and help you realize your blessings as well.