Hi. I’m Aubrey. :)
This is
my sweet husband Chris.
And this is our sweet baby Thomas Parker, now six months old.
We’ve
spent the past several years in Flagstaff while Chris finished his coursework
as a Music Education Major. We have now
moved back to our hometown of Mesa, where Chris will be student teaching in
junior high and high school choral classrooms and where I will be
stay-at-home-raising our little son. So that's a bit about us (hence, "Our Exposition").
You may
be wondering why I’m here. I’m wondering that a bit, too. But perhaps walking
you through my thoughts will help me answer that for myself.
My
husband gave me a blessing a couple months ago. Through it, he provided me with
counsel and blessings from the Lord as I sought help to deal with postpartum
depression (something I am still struggling through). In it, I was counseled to
write. And more specifically, I was counseled to write down my joys. After the
blessing, Chris and I talked and we both felt that I should make that writing
available to others. I did a little bit of journal writing following that, but
overall, I have not followed that counsel. I’ve shied away from it for several
reasons (hence, "My Disclaimers").
Number
one, I’ve psyched myself out of feeling comfortable as a writer. As a kid, I
loved to write stories. In junior high, I wrote overly melodramatic poetry and
used it to find myself. In high school, after my junior year in AP English, I
considered myself a pretty darn good writer, capable of taking on most subjects
in just about any format.
But then
I just – fell out of it. I graduated. I spent three years as a Music Education
major, one year as a kindergarten DIBELS parapro, and another year working on
beginning courses for Elementary Education. You’d be surprised by the lack of
writing required of me in my four years of college (which, by the way, has not
yet ended with a degree). I also worked as a voice teacher, a children’s music
workshop director, and a nanny, none of which required much writing out of me. So,
it’s a muscle I haven’t exercised in a long time, and since I’ve generally
never been very confident about myself as a person, it’s kind of scary!
Now, as I
re-enter a writing zone, another confidence obstacle looms: everyone and their
mother (take that almost literally) are mommy bloggers, and that makes me feel quite
small. To write about one’s experiences as a wife and mother is about as cliché
as it gets these days. Besides, I’m really not a mommy blogger. Look how I’ve
neglected this blog, for starters. I don’t write with a particularly witty or
cheery tone. I don’t have expertise to share in crafting or beauty or recipes. I
don’t take cool pictures to put with my posts so they can be pinned on
Pinterest. Heck, I don’t even know how to add a hyperlink into my text!
Perhaps
the biggest confidence buster is the worry that no one cares. I’d be just one
more mommy blogger spouting opinions, right? Just one more person who thinks
that her daily happenings and personal views are newsworthy to someone else,
when they probably aren’t. It’s kind of a presumptuous thing, making a blog.
Blogging functions on the assumption that there are people out there who want
to hear what you have to say. And let’s be real, social media has taught us that
we care too much whether other people care, that we don’t always care as much about
other people’s cares as they might like us to care, and that not everything we want people to care about is really
worth caring about. And nobody, including me, likes to feel unimportant.
And yet,
here I am. Throwing one more post into the millions of others already like it, floating
around in the online universe. Why? Because even if I’m self-conscious about
putting myself out there and writing about my life, my heart feels that my
voice has Something to say. Several Somethings to say, in fact. Some of those Somethings
include my testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ and His Church on earth; my
experiences with my trials and how they’ve changed me and if I’ll end up the
better for them; preserving memories of my marriage and my first baby for the
sake of my family in the future; using plain-old narrative as a coping
mechanism as I try to find myself again after PPD (they say hobbies help,
right?); and maybe, just maybe a bit of ego-feeding opinion-spouting on days
that my emotions get the better of me. ;)
But I
think most of all, as the Lord counseled me through a blessing, this is about writing
my joys.
So here
is a Joy to share today:
“In
any circumstance, our sense of gratitude is nourished by the many and sacred
truths we do know: that our Father has given His children the great plan of
happiness; that through the Atonement of His Son, Jesus Christ, we can live
forever with our loved ones; that in the end, we will have glorious, perfect,
and immortal bodies, unburdened by sickness or disability; and that our tears of
sadness and loss will be replaced with an abundance of happiness and joy, ‘good
measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over’.” These words by
President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, from his recent talk “Grateful in Any
Circumstances”, are a joy to me. One of the things I love about this Joy is
that it is always available to all of us. Whether I am overflowing with love
and happiness as I enjoy my new son, or whether I am just trying to force
myself to even get out of bed in the morning to face a new day, the facts of
the Atonement and God’s plan of happiness remain the same. That is a Fact of
Joy, the truth of which no depression or trial can alter and the truth of which
sweetens all other Joys. Knowing of God’s love and his redemptive plan for his
children is the foundation for all the other joys I hope to write about from
now on, so it seemed a fitting place to begin my journey of seeking joy.
