It's been a rough... year.

Life is so weird. There's no greater feeling than having your prayers answered. Knowing that Heavenly Father hears you & knows what you are going through is an amazing thing. But as I look back at the big & important answers I have received in my life, I see a pattern emerge. With every prompting, there is an inevitable in-between period that always KILLS me! I know where I am supposed to be going & have a fairly decent idea of what I am going to do once I get there but that indefinite time between having made the decision & actually getting to follow through with it is like torture to me.

My mission was probably the first time I really experienced this. I knew I was supposed to go, felt it was where I should be, sent in my papers, & even received my mission call but still had to wait several months before I was able to go & serve.

When I knew I was supposed to marry Sherawn it was better however "engaged but not yet married" (as any young Mormon kid will surely tell you!) is about as hard as it gets!

When I knew I was supposed to move up here to the White Mountains to do Fire & EMS, I was really excited & couldn't wait to leave my hated job doing pest control for an evil soul-sucking company. Everyday seemed like agony!

Then, this last answer that I should pursue medical school has been such an amazing feeling. But now, I am again consumed with frustration at having to wait to begin another new chapter in our family's life! When I broke my foot a few months ago, it was, in many ways, a great blessing in disguise as it allowed me to reconsider my future in firefighting. I recognized that, as much as I loved firefighting, as much as I knew I was prompted to come here to Snowflake, I also felt like Heavenly Father was providing me with a unique new perspective. He was helping me to realize that He had other plans for our family. So, again, I searched out my feelings & prayed. The answer came like a flood of understanding & I know that we are supposed to be going back to school right now.

But this is where my current frustrations come in. While that broken foot allowed me to get this monumental answer to a question I didn't even know I had, it also put me out of work for nearly two months. Since we had been living little better than paycheck to paycheck, we got seriously behind on our bills & whatever savings we had were quickly depleted. Our landlords had been really great, allowing us to pay when we could but it was quickly apparent that there would be no way for us to recoup our lost income much less be able to pay our outstanding bills. It was time to eat some humble pie & we moved back in with my parents.

My poor parents. They've been so great helping us out. Helping me to find work & even allowing me to work around the house & yard to earn money when work outside the house has been scarce. Yet, it has still been a huge struggle to stay ahead of (even with) what we owe. But each day we work at it & I have the hope of deploying on several wild fires this summer as an EMT on the fire line. But no husband feels like much of a bread-winner when he begins to receive calls from creditors 3-4 times a day.

I just have to stay positive I suppose & remember that if Heavenly Father is aware enough of me to guide me this far, He is not going to abandon us now. So here's hopin'. ;)