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Friday, January 25, 2013

The Caleb Miracle: Redux



by LJ (bio)


In late August 2012, I began what would be my first hurdle toward my own Caleb miracle and wrote about it here on MMM.

On December 13th, 2012, I dropped off my application for a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at the University of Virginia. Then I went home to eat half a tube of Toll House cookie dough.

Turns out applying for grad school is a huge boogery process, including mysterious "processing" fees, blood sacrifice and references to prove that you yourself can be connected to Kevin Bacon in six degrees or less. For someone who consistently pulled C+ grades at the BYU, this also meant two months of intensive cramming for the GRE (I still scored in the dumb-kid range in math), a personal statement and an original 23-page short story.

To top it all off, I decided to do this one month after moving 2300 miles cross-country with our extremely active toddler to settle here for my husband's new jobAnd I was like four months pregnant with our second kid.

All the circumstances melded into one perfect storm of SWEET FANCY MOSES ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR GOURD from sources both without and within. Many of my beloveds cheered me on or fielded incoherent phone calls when I was too tired and pale and weepy to edit my own work, much less melt a dang quesadilla for dinner.

If I get into this program, it will be a miracle. No kidding. It's one of the top MFA programs in the nation. They only accept five students per year for fiction. I'm sorry, but I feel the need to reiterate that I will be mother of two children when and if this lightning strike happens, and my husband will still be working full-time and basically it will be two years of crazytown for our entire family.

So a few Sundays ago, we read through the last few chapters of Moroni in Sunday School:

"... has the day of miracles ceased? Or have angels ceased to appear unto the children of men? ...
Behold I say unto you, Nay; for it is by faith that miracles are wrought; and it is by faith that angels appear and minister unto men ..." (Moroni 7: 35-37)

It was in that moment that I realized that I had entirely missed the miracle. The fact that I was able to manage a home, 1.5 children, hang out with my husband, cook a few meals and still find the extra three hours a day to study and write is a miracle. I took leave of my senses, took a leap and the Lord was there with a safety net and an extra measure of clarity.

I sat on the back row, tears rolling down my face to land in the neck of my sweater while my husband patted my back and I repeated Thank you, Lord over and over in my mind.

Have a recent Caleb miracle you want to share? Leave your comments here or e-mail me at modernmormonmen at gmail dot com with "Caleb Miracle" in the subject line. I'll post some on here in the next couple of weeks, providing I'm not delivering a baby at the time.

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