I haven't had words I guess.

I'm super emotional today and it feels good to have a place to come and write.  It helps me so much.  I don't think these emotions are sad ones though, just feeling like crying.  Maybe it is because I've been thinking about this last year and all our blessings.

It has been a roller coaster ride.  The highs have been really high and the lows have been really low.  When we were doing our family calendar I reviewed the year in pictures.  It felt so good to look through those pictures and see that it really has been a good year.  It really has.  We have been so, so blessed and have made some wonderful memories.  That is a wonderful thing to recognize.

I've been wanting to write about a recent blessing, a miracle for a few weeks now.  Probably because I learned some good things from it that I don't want to forget.

The week of Thanksgiving my dad was put int he hospital for an appendix rupture.  He had been sick for at least a couple weeks before that and thought it was flu, or food poisoning or, or, or and there was always a reason not to go to the doctor.  We came down to their house one night and they kept our kids while we went to the Temple.  After the Temple, Zach visited with my dad while I chatted with my mom.  After talking with him, Zach offerred a Priesthood blessing.  My dad accepted and Zach asked my brother Matt to assist him.  In the blessing among other things, my dad was blessed that he would see miracles.

The next Monday he went into the doctor and was admitted to the hospital.  They said they were surprised that he was even walking in and that he would be there for the whole week at best.  My dad's insides were full of infection and there was no way they could operate.

Hearing that he wouldn't be home for Thanksgiving made me very sad.  I told him I would pray for a miracle and I did.  We prayed for him at every meal and every family prayer.  We asked Heavenly Father to bless him to heal quickly and if it was His will, to have him home for Thanksgiving.

I know other people prayed.  I was most definitely not the only one.  I do know I prayed hard and I felt like my prayers were heard.  We had a special spirit enter our home sometimes when we prayed for dad.  There was a difference in those prayers.

A few days later my dad called me and thanked me for my prayers because he would be home Thanksgiving morning.  The doctors were amazed that he was even alive, let alone eating corn chowder and custard.

I felt so humbled and grateful.  I felt something different in my testimony that night.  I learned some things about prayer and faith that I hadn't realized before and I also learned some things that have been holding me back about these principles.

I realized that faith as a mustard seed is truly just that small.  Its believing just enough to get on your knees and ask...and then to keep asking.

I learned that the Lord wants me to ask for miracles.  He wants us to see them.

What was the difference in my prayers that I felt?  The difference was, that I wanted my Heavenly Father to listen.  What I had to say was important to me and to my family and I needed Him to hear me.  And I also knew that He could and would, and I prayed like it.

I opened to the Brother of Jared story in Ether this morning.  I love that story so much.  I also love that the whole things reiterates the importance of praying.  He was blessed so much because he had faith enough to pray and ask for the things he needed.

Through this miracle for my dad, I realized that so often, too often, I just simply don't ask.
It is so foolish to try to get through this rocky road of life without the help of the One that sees all.  In fact He told the Brother of Jared that it is a sin.

I felt so grateful to see a miracle and play a small part in it and I know that it was one of the many ways that my Heavenly Father was sending me a message.  He loves me and cares about who and what I care about.  There is nothing more real than that.