Hard News

On Thursday my 3 year old nephew Karsen was in a tragic accident and lost his left leg mid-calf. It's been a very hard few days for our family, but mostly for his mom and dad. They are both self-employed and so money is tight and insurance is not so good. Please visit this blog, karsenmery.blogspot.com to read his story. There has been a trust fund set up at Mountain America in his name, and you can donate via paypal on the blog.

During the past 4 days I've been amazed at the out-pouring of love for the Mery's. Nicole is my husband's sister and her and her husband, Rick, have 4 kids. Karsen is their youngest. He is 3 months younger than Keighlee. Anyway, it's been so great to see how many people have stepped up to help them. Their house has been cleaned and repairs have been made. They've had so many visitors and well wishes. Even strangers have sent their thoughts and even their money to help. It's so great to see that there is good in so many people.

I've been thinking a lot about Karsen and what he's going to have to go through to recover. He has a long road ahead of him and his parent's have a lot of healing to do. I know that Heavenly Father will bless them and help them through this trial. In Relief Society today, we had a lesson on adversity. It was such a great lesson. I thought a lot about Nic and Rick and this awful trial they are going through. I was wondering how they were going to get through it. After the lesson I realized that they will come through as better people. This trial will shape them and make them so much stronger in the Lord. I know I already knew all that, but it was so wonderful to be reminded of the reason the Lord lets us go through trials. Watching them go through this has made my trials that I've been struggling with seem so insignificant, and yet I am still struggling and having a really hard time with things in my life right now. It almost makes me feel ungrateful that I'm still struggling when people I love are doing so much worse. I've realized I need to just keep having faith in Heavenly Father. I know I need to put my burdens on his shoulders but it's so hard to do sometimes. I don't even know if I know how to do that. I'm going to try to be more faithful and I hope the Lord will allow me to figure out what I need to do to fix some situations in my life. I don't mean to be poor me, poor me, but with what's been going on the past 4 days, I've had a lot of things put into perspective and these are just some of my thoughts about all that! I hope I can learn from Nic and Rick and their strength and faith and put the same faith into my small trials.