Have a holly jolly October!

Two things.
1. This has become a widow blog. Let's all just accept it.
2. This post is about Christmas. Buckle up.

As I write this, I'm listening to the Pentatonix holiday station on Pandora. I've been watching Hallmark Christmas movies since Friday (I would have been watching them before then, but they only just started). I've been reading sappy Christmas books for the most of the month. I know I'm one of those people that most of the world is annoyed by. "Don't overshadow the other holidays!" they scream at me as I walk past the Halloween costumes to buy Christmas pajamas for my son.

For the record, I've been watching Halloween movies too, and doing all kinds of fall activities. I love and am looking forward to Thanksgiving. But I like to start my Christmas cheer early. Just in case. I should probably explain.

For a few weeks now I have been thinking about the Christmas tree in our apartment three years ago. We lived in BYU housing, and they didn't allow real trees, so we went out in search of a fake one. Josh said he'd rather have no tree than I fake tree and I was adamant that we needed something because no tree is just depressing. The year before we lived in this converted house with weirdly tall ceilings- and had like an eight-foot tree that my father-in-law got straight out of the woods, so you can see why it would be a bit of a let down. Anyway we found a dinky little fake tree and strung lights on it before Thanksgiving and then let it sit because we weren't going to decorate until after. We're not monsters. But then Josh got sick and the tree was never decorated. I pretty much moved out right away after he was gone. When we were packing up I sat in the chair next to the tree and stared at the bare branches. Like it was mocking me. A perfect match for the bare holiday.

The year after that my most prominent memory is sitting with Logan on Christmas Eve just the two of us. I'm honestly not sure what we did. Hopefully I tried to make it festive, but I think I was too sad. Christmas Eve is one of my absolute favorites parts of the season, and we didn't even get to enjoy it. Logan got ridiculously sick and had this scary rash. His hands and feet turned purple. It was awful and I wasn't holding it together well. So everyone went to my brother's for Christmas Eve like usual, but there was a brand new baby and we didn't want to risk exposing her to whatever Logan had, so we stayed home. And then on Christmas day he wasn't up for a ton either, so opening presents wasn't very fun.

According to extensive research (Hallmark movies), I think when bad things happen to people over Christmas it tends to ruin the holiday. Maybe I'm wrong. You can let me know. But I still love Christmas, I'm just scared of it. The bar for Christmas has been significantly lowered in recent years. Basically if I never had to step foot in a hospital I consider it a success. Last year I started celebrating about as early as this year, and I kept saying it was to redeem myself for the last two years that were so bad. But I think it was more of a defense mechanism. If I start celebrating early, and Christmas is lousy, then at least I will have had some comfort and joy before it all fell apart. This year I've realized it's a bit of a tradition.

I don't really have plan for the end of this post. I'm not trying to get everything to celebrate like me, or feel happy, fluffy Christmas spirit all year round. I think after a few rough years I was a little worried I was getting bitter about the holidays, and I really didn't want that to happen. I promise I won't shove Christmas down anybody's throat though. And if you're a die-hard Halloween fan and you see me playing Christmas carols on my ukulele, please don't stick my head on a pike?

Miracle! (not the whip kind)

I've been thinking a lot about miracles lately. And blessings. I can't decide if they're the same thing. They're probably not, but also they kind of are. For example, is it a miracle that I'm writing again after a year and a half, or is it a blessing for all of you? Why not both?

My exhausted declaration that "it's just been one of those days" has been going on for a couple of weeks now, and I can't seem to shake it. All the while, I seem to be finding a multitude of opportunities to preach joy. "We can be happy in all our circumstances! The turmoil of the world shouldn't affect the peace we feel inside" I say before I go home and cry myself to sleep. Please just read that sentence and then keep going without thinking about it because I promise I'm not trying to make anyone feel bad for me. Let's move on!

So miracles. I've been pondering them lately, and I have been trying to remember the events surrounding Josh's death almost three years ago. It's actually a real scientific thingy that trauma can cause memory loss (yes, "thingy" is the technical term obviously). A month after he died, I went with my mom to a devotional where Elder Holland was the speaker, and I remember NONE OF IT. Elder Holland, you guys! Whilst in the middle of my grief and shock and having-a-newborn phase, I definitely didn't take much time to think about the miracles/blessings that occurred. I didn't even want to. Because I was mad and sad and also sort of a zombie who forgot how to think or smile. But now I feel like it. So here's a list! (I think making lists is genetic, and my mother has a serious case of it, so it's only natural I would too.

• That we went to the hospital when we did (and that I have parents who told me we needed to). There are many things that I had to work through and go to therapy for to deal with the fact that Josh's death wasn't my fault. I still sometimes feel like it was, but those feelings happen way less often now. Progress! We went to the doctor more than once when he was sick, and of course it was just this crazy fluke disease that got very aggressive very quickly so it didn't get caught the first time around. Things still did not go in our favor, but I am still haunted by the thought that maybe we would have never gone and I would have just come home one day and would have found him and I can't think about this anymore.
• My stupid cholestasis that I stupid wrote about before any of this stupid happened that got stupid quoted back to me all the time. I hope you all got that because I'm not rewriting it to make it clearer. Basically, having a liver disease that could potentially affect my baby scared the crap out of me, but in the end I had to deliver three weeks early, and Josh got to meet Logan. Miracle!
• I happened to meet with the right doctor before going in to deliver. I went to a practice where you could see any of the doctors there depending on your visit. There was one who didn't think we needed to deliver as early as we did. Thank goodness for Dr. Broberg being all, "no we're definitely going three weeks early." You the man.
• Bonus to that one. When I went in two days before I had Logan, I explained the whole situation and I was very much under the impression that he was adamant about delivering while Josh was still in the hospital. Later I discovered that he thought it was me who was really adamant about it. I feel like that is one of those tiny miracles that you don't really notice but ends up being huge.
• Our nurses. These beautiful and hardworking saints got me through the hardest time of my life. They all deserve raises,
• My parents living in Utah (and taking me in). I can't even imagine what I would have done if my parents had decided to retire to Hawaii. They of course didn't even hesitate to let me live with them and they have done more for me than I can even begin to articulate. Just know that I'm shedding tears as I write this. 
• Logan. When he was born he was the greatest baby on the block. He was a seriously good baby who came to the world easy and was pretty much just super chill for a good few months there. And even now he is just my very favorite person. He is full of light and hope and I look at him and it makes me whole.
• I'm not putting this last one in bold because it seems to harsh right up front. Also it's a blessing not a miracle. I just need you to bear with me on this. Don't make harsh judgments right away, and just listen for a second. Josh's death was a blessing in my life. DON'T QUIT ON ME JUST YET. First of all, it is a blessing that I would return in a fraction of a heartbeat. I would take my sweet husband back over any of the things I just listed here. I would trade him for any of the growth I have had over the last three years. But I can't. And so I find the good. At the widows conference I attended a while back, we had a speaker who said his wife dying was the best thing that ever happened to him. And maybe that's not the best way of putting it. And maybe calling it a blessing isn't the best way to putting it. But I understood him. I wouldn't say that Josh's death was the best thing that ever happened to me, but I would say that I have been blessed more because of it than any other event in my life.

There are obviously many other blessings and miracles in the tiniest moments of those days that I may never realize or remember. Or others that I do remember, but I'm just not going into it all right now. Every time I write I am afraid of upsetting someone with my words, or saying something the wrong way. But today I needed you all to know how I feel. In this time of trial I am experiencing, I truly want anyone who reads this to know that good can come from anywhere. That joy can be felt always. That "happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light." The light is a metaphor, you see? And yes, that quote is from Dumbledore.