Conniptions of the Heart

 2018 I saw your name and email today on Family Search. I evidently was following you in some work you had done for a family member. I saw your name and it stopped me in my tracks. I clicked on your name just to see what it would bring me. A box popped up with your email. It asked me if I wanted to send you a message. I had to pause. Oh, how I wished that I could. If only I could just send you a little message now and then. That started me thinking, what would I say, if I could send you a message?    I think I would start off by telling you how very much I miss you. I think you know how very much I love you. But I don’t know that you know how much I need you and miss you and long to be with you. It truly physically, mentally, spiritually hurts in every way imaginable not to have you close. To know that you aren’t coming home tonight and won’t be coming back for a very long time. I can’t even bear to think about how long it will be. It hurts too much. I have got to ju...

  6 Jan. 2020 My mother is a wonderful outgoing friendly person. She was often visiting with someone, either in person or on the telephone. I used to love to walk through a room and overhear her in c onversation with someone because she was usually talking about her children and she always spoke in such high praise and esteem of me. I never heard her say anything negative about me in my life. And I tried to live up to her praise. I liked making my parents proud of me.    I felt rather bad for a couple of my siblings who did not always get the same praise. Oh, I’m sure that my mother loved us all the same. I don’t know, perhaps they just didn’t give her as many reasons to praise them. I know that one sister in particular seemed to always act in contradiction to any of my parents’ commands. I was often quite flabbergasted at how she and I would be given a certain command and then the second we were out of sight of our parents this particular sibling would do an exact o...

  January 2019 I realized for the first time in my life last night that I am beautiful. I never, ever believed it. But last night I happened to see a small program about a certain famous female actress. The program talked about how she was the most gorgeous woman ever. I disagreed. There have been many, many sublimely beautiful women in movies and on the earth. This particular young woman used her body to get attention and money. She thought her body was her beauty. She enjoyed displaying her body as much and as often as possible.    In a younger day, I may have wanted to hate or envy such a creature. Especially since, for some odd reason, I seemed to believe all the cruel little boys of my youth who repeatedly informed me of my ugliness, over any contrary compliment from anyone all the rest of my life.     Last night as I finished this program, instead of feeling envious in any way, I couldn’t help but feel very sad for this lost young woman. How...

5 January 2019     It was one year ago today that all my hopes and dreams for this life dissolved in one sudden, sleepless night. Thankfully, the gospel of Jesus Christ gives me hopes and dreams that go beyond this temporary existence. This and my precious children are what get me out of bed each morning and keep me going throughout each day.    I will probably never know all who contributed to our Go-Fund-Me last year. But I want you to know what a huge blessing it was for our family. I don’t know how we could have gotten along without it, without you and your generous contributions. We faced a lot of changes and major events last year. I pray God bless each and every one of you that have done so much to bless our lives. Thank you for helping to ease our burdens. 

            For some reason, I have been surrounded in my life with men addicted to pornography. Maybe it’s everywhere now. I don’t know. Maybe it just seems that every man on earth today is addicted to pornography, but I don’t feel that this is truly the case. We all sin in different ways and have different weaknesses and strengths. But pornography has certainly spread itself thick all over the world and is quickly encompassing and destroying so much that has been precious in this world.          I am most familiar with two particular men who each have or had a pornography addiction. One was my late husband. The other, my ex-boyfriend.              I was not aware of my husband’s pornography addiction until after we married. He brought home a pornographic video one night and tried to convince me of how much more fun sex would be after viewing the video. He told me that pornography was only fo...

                          How did I get here? How did Satan get such a hold on me? I have always tried to do what's right. I am a very faithful, prayerful, obedient child of God. Of course, I am not perfect. I repent daily and acknowledge my faults to God. I know that I need Him. I am nothing without Him. So, which door was it that I accidentally left open for Satan to get in and get such a foot hold?            I recently had an experience with a man that was different than anything I have had to deal with in my life before. Perhaps because I have led such a sheltered life. I am a forty-seven-year-old widow. I never really dated or had any boyfriends growing up. I married at the age of nineteen and began having children and being the best wife and mother, I could be.              All I ever wanted in life and dreamed o...

3 Sept. 2020               Don’t judge me because I’m single. Married people have no idea how hard life is Single. Maybe they had a taste of it before marriage. But it is very different. I did. I felt ready to marry at the age of sixteen. By the age of nineteen, I decided that I must be destined to be an old maid because I had not only no one to marry, but I had never even had a boyfriend. The only date I ever had was set up by my mother for my 18 th birthday. What was wrong with me??? Why did nobody want me?              Fact is, other than Church, I had never really been outside my home. My parents believed that the female role was based in the home. They also believed that it was the Father’s responsibility to protect and provide for and preside over his daughters until he handed them over to the care of their husband. Which is all well and good, except, I...