Exposition, Why I’m Writing, and My Disclaimers

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.