'From the Shadows into the Glorious Sunshine'

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I cannot believe it has been a month and a half since I posted on my blog.

I mentioned a couple of posts ago that my hard drive crashed and took all of the photos I had prepared to blog in order to catch up on my blog posts. My brother used a program to salvage anything he could from my hard drive, but sadly, a lot of the photos were corrupted. I am hoping I had them all backed up on my external hard drive or still on my camera compact flash. I have been going through all of the files and folders that were found and the next step is to go through both places and make sure I have them all somewhere.

I am hoping and praying to get everything caught up and all of my photos caught up on here. It is stressing me out not having my blog caught up. This is my journal.

Since I last posted, I had my birthday on March 1st and we celebrated Aaron's birthday at the cemetery on March 29th.

March was a tough month for me. I think life is full of roller coasters with emotion. Beginning with my birthday (which I didn't want to have), I had a few weeks of rough waters. I was in a dark cloud and I couldn't get out of it. Every year when I turn another year older, I get really down because the older I get, the number of kids I will be able to have in my life goes down. I just really want life to be progressing towards what I want... husband (father for Aaron Jr), more children (siblings for Aaron Jr).

After a few weeks of that, my mom told me again that I need to be grateful for the blessing of having Aaron Jr in my life. I knew she was right, but I still couldn't shake the cloud. One night, as I was praying, I cried and realized that I had been acting very ungrateful for my blessings... and that I was not enduring my trials very well. I knew that I needed to be a happy mom for Aaron Jr and I knew that I needed to be a more grateful daughter of my Father in Heaven. He has trust in me that I can handle what I have been given, good or bad... and I know that I need to prove that I can be faithful and cheerful even though life is not what I had expected or hoped it would be at this time in my life.

I stupidly did not write down all of the inspiration I received during my prayer that night and I have forgotten a lot of what I felt and what I learned that night during that prayer. I need to be better about writing things down and I hope the Lord will remind me of those things so that I can write them down.

Ever since that night, I have been having better days. I am looking forward with a brightness of hope.

I taught a lesson in Relief Society at church this past Sunday.

It was called "Faithfulness in times of trial: From the Shadows into the Glorious Sunshine"

by Lorenzo Snow.

It was an amazing lesson. You can read it HERE.

Preparing this lesson came at a perfect time, just when I was coming out of that slump.

I have always loved the sunshine and light, so I was grateful to have some wonderful words of wisdom to read and remind me that the Savior is my sunshine and my light.

I sing 'You are my Sunshine' to Aaron Jr all the time, so I asked him if he would be willing to sing that song during my lesson to all of the women. He agreed, but I wondered if he would go through with it. Well, at the end of my lesson on Sunday, my mom went to get Aaron out of his Primary class and brought him in and he walked to the front of the class and stood there at the microphone and sang 'You are my Sunshine' for all of the women. It brought me to tears. I was so proud of him. I told the ladies that when I sing that song to Aaron, of course I am saying that HE is my sunshine, but as I prepared this lesson, I kept thinking about that song and I was thinking about how Jesus Christ is our sunshine. So, that is what I hoped they had in their minds as it was sung.

You are my sunshine

My only sunshine

You make me happy

When skies are gray

You'll never know dear

How much I love you

Please don't take my sunshine away.

Aaron was so brave and he sang it so sweetly.

I will never forget those moments when he sang that song for me.

I love my little boy.

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