THE WHOLE POINT

Defeated. If I had to describe the beginning of 2026, that is the word that comes to mind. The word that allows me to take a breath and remove the mask I feel like I’ve been wearing since long before January 1st. The three syllables that completely encompass just how I have been feeling.

Defeated.

There are several culprits behind my less-than-stellar start to the year:

I think thirty is finally hitting me. With the holidays on the heels of my birthday, it seems as if the past few weeks have been the first amount of free space my brain has been given. To think. To measure. To compare, to others, to myself, to the dreams I had envisioned for my thirty-year-old self. I think I’m grieving what I thought she would have by now.

Speaking of holidays, those are exhausting, right? The parties and the gift wrapping and the decorating. Uggghhhhh the decorating. My Grinchy self will never understand why we put up decorations, only to take them down three weeks later.

I knew, I knew going into Reunited that it wasn’t going to get the fanfare Reframed did. Reframed was my very first book, of course there would be more excitement around it. And I still have so much wonderful support, I truly hope I don’t make the incredible people in my life feel like I am ungrateful for all they do. Honestly, they are just about the only thing keeping this writing thing going right now 😂 On the tail end of a mentally exhausting release, less talk about the book then even my negative self had prepared for, asking a friend to post a review and feeling as if I have let her down, and the genuine fear that this whole career thing is never going to take off for me, I am feeling like the worst writer to ever walk the earth.

Right after Christmas, I got hit with that horrible flu that seems to have taken hold of my entire congregation at church. I have never been that sick before, ever. For someone who needs a run to relieve the stress in her life, not being able to for fear of passing out has not been exactly a fun bonus to the aches and the cough.

Lastly, I don’t know. I guess I have just been feeling like my life doesn’t really have a purpose. Or, that its purpose is to cater my life to those around me. I know, of course, that service is an incredible blessing in our lives, but it is starting to feel like my wants and needs are being lost in the name of helping others. It’s like I’m being erased from my own life. I am just so tired of bearing the title, “The One People Can Rely On”. I guess I’m wondering when it’s my turn to be able to rely on someone.

Yup. We are having a full-on pity party over here. And I just…have not been able to pull myself out of it. It’s starting to feel like this is my life. That there is no changing it.

So, one can imagine that last week, when I was informed we had a Youth Temple Trip scheduled for that Saturday, that I was less than thrilled about it. Honestly, I felt like my sickness had hit me just one week too early 😂

In the days leading up to the trip, I was so close to praying for an out. Sickness, other obligations, anything. I just could not imagine folding myself into a car for a six-hour round trip to Texas. Exhaustion was overtaking me. I was bitter that, once again, another responsibility seemed to be falling on my shoulders. It was becoming very easy to believe that the Lord had forgotten me in His pursuit of others.

But, I’m a people pleaser. And I am responsible to a fault. So, I piled the youth in my car, donned my sunglasses, and headed for the New Mexico/Texas border, praying the day would go by quickly.

That was all I was hoping for in the day. I was not planning to have a good time, I was not planning to be spiritually rejuvenated. I was begging the Lord for a time turner like in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Except, instead of going backward, I was hoping to skip ahead to when I was back home on my couch.

And the Lord heard that prayer. My day did go by quickly. However, as He often does, He blessed me with not just the things I wanted, but the things I needed.

I did have a good time on that trip, I should have know I would. Our youth are some of the funnest, sweetest people on the planet. I should have known hanging out with them would boost my mood by lightyears.

However, it was the revival that I wasn’t expecting. And it came in the most unlikely of places: the locker room.

While holding hairbrushes, helping to get wet clothes and towels in their proper places after the youth completed baptisms for the dead, and then directing the youth to their next destination, a quiet phrase was whispered to me. One that reminded me what the whole point was.

While we waited for her straightener to heat, one of my girls turned to me and said, “Thank you for taking me to the temple.”

Yup, that will do it. That will change an attitude faster than you can say, “Negative Nellie”.

Instantly, it all made sense. My life made sense again. I remembered that I did have a purpose, even if I wasn’t fulfilling it in the way the world might have wished I was. I was right where I needed to be, where the Lord wanted me to be, and where I wanted to be. Because, would I really have wanted to miss out on that moment? Or the dozen others like it with my girls?

No. I wouldn’t. Not for a million dollars.

So, even though life is feeling super-extra heavy right now, that moment in the temple reminded me: it doesn’t last forever. There are good moments in the dark. Your outlook can change in an instant. Service does bring joy. And living and loving as the Savior would is the whole point.