The Story People story of the day yesterday was about the hidden ocean of emotions we try to hide – Hidden Ocean. If the emotions of my hidden ocean were to spill on the floor last week first would come…

Infertility SUCKS! Our illustrious POTUS is willing to fight tooth and nail to make sure you have “free” access to not just 13 ways to prevent children, but a full on 15, many of which increase women’s risk of stroke and breast cancer to name a few, all in the name of helping women because they can’t help themselves. Yet he does NOTHING to help women have children, to help people become parents (see exhibit A – the form letter I got back about contraception coverage when I wrote a letter about conception coverage). Infertility is a federally recognized physical disability, but we get no help from the federal government, not even for testing! Want to talk preventative care? Carrying a child, breast feeding that child, lowers your risk of breast cancer, cervical cancer, uterine cancer, ovarian cancer. It’s backward what’s going on in this world. And the stupid Affordable (HA! hello higher premiums) Care (what care? doctors leaving the field, increased wait times for procedures and appointments) Act has the potential to overthrow the infertility coverage that some states had already passed. And then there’s the stupid idiotic politicians and lobbyists going around saying infertility treatments are akin to abortion, making a difficult, intimate process even more difficult. What the crap?!?!?
– Me

Which would be followed by…

There may be times in our lives when rising up and continuing on may seem beyond our own ability. … Even when we think we cannot rise up, there is still hope. …
Our destiny is not determined by the number of times we stumble but by the number of times we rise up, dust ourselves off, and move forward.
President Uchtdorf, “You Can Do It Now!” October 2013 General Conference.

And…

I guess what I’ve come to you today to say is that God uses broken things—and I quote:

It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give bread, broken bread to give strength. It is the broken alabaster box that gives forth perfume. . . . it is Peter, weeping bitterly, who returns to greater power than ever. [“Broken Things,” an excerpt from Vance Havner, The Still Water (Old Tappan, NJ: Flemming H. Revell, 1934). Quoted in Guideposts, October 1981, p. 5]

Our Father in Heaven sometimes uses our pain as a megaphone for very significant instruction.
– Patricia Holland, “The Inconvenient Messiah,” BYU Devotional, 15 February 1982

And…

15 And he said, Hearken ye, all Judah, and ye inhabitants of Jerusalem, and thou king Jehoshaphat, Thus saith the Lord unto you, Be not afraid nor dismayed by reason of this great multitude; for the battle is not yours, but God’s.
17 Ye shall not need to fight in this battle: set yourselves, stand ye still, and see the salvation of the Lord with you, O Judah and Jerusalem: fear not, nor be dismayed; to morrow go out against them: for the Lord will be with you.
2 Chronicles 20:15 & 17

And finally…

On one occasion Jesus came upon a group arguing vehemently with His disciples. When the Savior inquired as to the cause of this contention, the father of an afflicted child stepped forward, saying he had approached Jesus’s disciples for a blessing for his son, but they were not able to provide it. With the boy still gnashing his teeth, foaming from the mouth, and thrashing on the ground in front of them, the father appealed to Jesus with what must have been last-resort desperation in his voice:

“If thou canst do any thing,” he said, “have compassion on us, and help us.

“Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.

“And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.”

This man’s initial conviction, by his own admission, is limited. But he has an urgent, emphatic desire in behalf of his only child. We are told that is good enough for a beginning. “Even if ye can no more than desire to believe,” Alma declares, “let this desire work in you, even until ye believe.” With no other hope remaining, this father asserts what faith he has and pleads with the Savior of the world, “If thou canst do any thing, have compassion on us, and help us.” I can hardly read those words without weeping. The plural pronoun us is obviously used intentionally. This man is saying, in effect, “Our whole family is pleading. Our struggle never ceases. We are exhausted. Our son falls into the water. He falls into the fire. He is continually in danger, and we are continually afraid. We don’t know where else to turn. Can you help us? We will be grateful for anything—a partial blessing, a glimmer of hope, some small lifting of the burden carried by this boy’s mother every day of her life.”

“If thou canst do any thing,” spoken by the father, comes back to him “If thou canst believe,” spoken by the Master.

“Straightway,” the scripture says—not slowly nor skeptically nor cynically but “straightway”—the father cries out in his unvarnished parental pain, “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.” In response to new and still partial faith, Jesus heals the boy, almost literally raising him from the dead, as Mark describes the incident.
– Elder Holland, “Lord, I Believe,” April 2013 General Conference

And I’d push it around with my foot and hope nobody would notice.

Help thou mine unbelief.