I was joking with my friend Laura at church today, after the Sacrament Service, that trying to keep four, young children happy and quiet through church can feel like Chinese water torture sometimes. Every little fight or fuss or whatever that breaks out while you are trying to preserve the reverence for those around you picks at your sanity until you find yourself feeling completely unraveled.

When I only had two kids, I oftentimes came to church alone without Justin. I wondered some weeks, even though my testimony was strong, why I even came to church at all. Instead of being able to be in the classes and meetings being edified (which I needed so bad) I found myself walking the halls with my children, constantly soothing someone else.

In retrospect I am so glad I stuck it out and kept it up though. My parental workload has only increased over the years and it would have been easy to just say it was too much and stay home with Justin. But I am glad that even if it put me at wit's end most days, that my children and my husband knew that on Sundays I woke up, put on our best and went to worship in whatever way I could.

What kept me going was the thought that our actions define who we are. I had a testimony and I couldn't just shelf it because life was hard. I couldn't just shelf it because more was required of me than others, it seemed like. Even if I felt like some weeks I went home with my own personal well still depleted, the Lord has found ways to bless me throughout the years for doing what I knew was right; even when it seemed like I was getting nothing out of it.

I am beyond grateful that Justin is now by my side at church each week. I am grateful that my actions, even when it wasn't easy, showed him where my heart was at and what was important to me. It helped him to find the desire to rekindle his own testimony. It means so much to me to be able to share my spiritual side with my husband. It means so much that even though life is crazy, I know I have my back-up right next to me. It makes all the difference knowing we are in it together. We are a team. We are unified in purpose.

Today as Justin took a restless Devyn from me to go walk the halls with her so I could go to class, I just thought about how much I love him. How grateful I am that he is my husband. While it was so hard at the time, I am glad that I weathered those Sundays alone. I am glad that I had to really think hard about my testimony and what it meant to me. Glad that I fought for what I believed even if it meant a lonely road for awhile.

I don't take for granted that even if we are a wild and restless bunch some weeks and it feels like Chinese water torture, we are all there. There is no one unaccounted for. I am grateful for the trials of the past because they have made the blessings of my present so very much sweeter. I am grateful for a husband who loved me enough to seek a change of heart. I am infinitely thankful for a loving Father in Heaven who has shown time and time again that He will find ways to bless and lift up those who earnestly seek Him.

Keira, thank you so much! It's funny, like I said it is just a small snippet in a book full of other authors. But it's amazing what a boost it was to me. When I entered my submissions I remember thinking "This is such a waste of time. No one is ever going to pick me." Every time the people compiling the book would send out update emails saying they hadn't chosen the winners yet because they were working their way through piles of submissions and running them through different judging panels, I thought "I should just mark these emails as spam because even when they do pick the winners, I won't make the cut. Why waste my time reading all these update emails?" Even as I was reading the final list of winners, I was scrolling down, down, down and I was no where to be seen and I thought "See, I was right. I knew I wouldn't make it." Then in the last chapter, second to last on the list of authors, there was my name. I was shocked.

I was the girl no one ever told was capable of doing anything out of the ordinary. No one ever talked to me about grades, or pushing myself or college. My parents are wonderful people, but seriously, I think they were just happy to see me barely graduate from high school. I have spent my adult life scratching and working hard for any feathers in my cap. But in the back of my mind, I knew I wasn't really good at anything. The directionless girl starving for self-esteem from my teenage years haunted me, chased me.

The first glimmer of hope in myself came after I ran my first and singular marathon. I wasn't an athlete. I wasn't a runner. But I was tired of being a quitter. And so I literally ran away from that girl. That doubter. I ran away from the voices in my head that told me I wasn't strong enough to do hard things. That finish line was a new start.

But demons are hard to keep away...

So I could finish something. So what. I was still considerably dumber than those around me.

The demons were on my back again. So I went back to school last year with four kids, which in itself is completely nuts. But I had again found myself toe-to-toe with a breaking point in my life where I had something to prove. Priority number one in sticking it to those demons was, in addition to other coursework, was to start with Math classes. I hadn't been in school in over a decade and I was pretty sure I was crazy. I had previously repeatedly flunked out of Math classes in high school, because let's face it, I'm an idiot.

I worked my tail off and studied until the wee hours of the morning. I literally cried tears of frustration and pulled on my hair. I wasn't one of those who's mind was mathematically wired. But the shadows of underachievement stalked after me and so I pushed forward, in hopes of getting out of their reach.

Report cards came back and I got straight A's. The next semester, the classes got harder and once again I was able, through sheer grit, to pull off straight A's again.

We ended up moving and so I wasn't able to keep going to school. But those two semesters taught me that maybe being a worthless idiot was a lie I sold myself. Maybe it wasn't that no one never believed in me. Maybe their belief was just strangled by my own unbelief and went unrecognized.

Writing is something I am not good at, it's something that I enjoy. Any dreams I had of ever getting published or writing a children's book were ridiculous pipe dreams. Uneducated, unextraordinary people like myself don't have their loftiest dreams come true. They die with sweet visions of could-have-beens floating through the windows of their mind, knowing their life found meaning in other ways.

But seeing my name in the Twelfth Chapter of that book, which is ironically about 'The Power of Moments,' was the hammer to my thick skull that someone else saw the value in what I have to bring to this world. I know I will never be the fastest, I will never be the strongest, the smartest or the most decorated. But dang it, I matter. I'm worth something. I have something to contribute and share.

I don't have to be scared to try or to shoot for my loftiest dreams. Because at the end of the day I know I am of worth. Not because somebody else told me so, but because finally for the first time in my whole life I believe it for myself. And even if I fail and go down in a burning ball of flames, I have the confidence of knowing that at least failure teaches you sweeter lessons than the apathy of never giving a rip to push yourself.

Seeing my name at the end of that list triggered a new starting line in my life. One where I, finally in my heart of hearts, believe that I can run without the companionship of constant, nagging doubt. But rather I can run towards my dreams with lungs full of hope, breathing to life who I really can become.