Two Stories. One Message.

First Story:

I remember the day I found my first apartment.  It was the summer between my freshman and sophomore year at BYU.  I started the search early and found the perfect place, a darling, clean little apartment close to campus.  I signed a contract and checked "find apartment" off my list.  I was like, a real grown up!

Two weeks later, I received a phone call that my new apartment wasn't going to work out.  They'd accidentally double-rented it and I needed to find somewhere else to live.  At this point, most of the housing near campus had been claimed, so I had very few options.  My carefully planned world came crashing down.  After a tearful phone call to my mom, I searched online until I found something reasonable. An older apartment complex "with a pool", it said on the listing.  It was the pool that swayed me.  I made an appointment.

When I walked inside the deteriorating building, the fresh odor of what I later described to my mom as "a petting zoo" greeted my nostrils.  During my visit to the apartment itself, which was decorated in pastel pink and blue, a friendly group of girls stopped by and invited the residents of T-10 to dinner that night.  It must be a sign.  I signed the contract.

It wasn't until later that I found out "the pool" actually belonged to the apartment complex next door and that Terrace Residents occasionally crept through the fence to swim.  My roommates and I never received another dinner invitation from friendly girls the entire two years I lived in the Terrace.  But it was in that reeking lobby that I meet two people who would change my life forever:  a boy who made my world click into place, and a girl who turned out to be the kind of friend who would spy on the boy for me at a ward party after he broke up with me.  (He ate potato chips.)

Second Story:

Fast forward 15 years.  I am sitting with the boy in a doctor's office.  We've been married 13 years and are expecting our 7th child.  The doctor says words I didn't expect.  No heartbeat.  Non-viable.  World crashes down.  Tearful phone call to mom.  The girl brings flowers.  She's been through 3 of these with me and she now lives 2 minutes away.  Our daughters attend junior high together.   She is the only person in the world I would let pack up my underwear drawer when we moved.

Three weeks later it is Columbus Day.  I'm still dealing with the after-effects of the miscarriage, but they are manageable enough that I agree to clean the temple.  It is something I'd been wanting to do and our assignment happened to be on one of those strange holidays bankers have off, so my husband could help with kids and get them to and from school.

As I sat in the orientation room in my white temple scrubs, I realized this could be a disaster.  (If you've ever had a miscarriage, you know the kind of disaster I'm talking about.)  I said a prayer.... please let this not be a disaster.  I worked a four hour shift, vacuuming, dusting, scrubbing, bending... by the end I could hardly walk.  But it was not a disaster.

I was so invigorated by the experience, the next day I decided I would clean MY house like that.   I vacuumed, dusted and scrubbed.  After two hours, the miscarriage was in full force.  The pain was unbearable.  The carnage could not be contained.   I started to feel like I would pass out, so I texted that boy to check on me every 15 minutes to make sure I was alive.  He dropped everything and drove straight home, keeping me on the phone the whole time except for when he was calling a babysitter.

Looking back at that moment checking in to the emergency room, I would not have claimed any relation to myself if I'd been him.... I was a bloody, sobbing mess of a person.  He not only claimed me, but knew the last four digits of my social security number.  He stayed within arm's reach of me until they could get the drugs going, pushing as hard as he could on one spot of my back to relieve the pressure until I'm sure his arms were aching.  While I was stuck in a most unladylike position as the doctor ripped out stubborn tissue with salad tongs, causing pain even morphine couldn't fix.... I stole a glance at that boy.  He winked at me.  We got this.  He bought me Cafe Rio and percocet on the way home and I started to believe him.

I am still amazed at how I didn't see it before... but he like, loves me.  Really and truly loves me, like the kind of love I've seen in the movies.  Out of this horrible and uncomfortable experience, a really good thing happened, one I never would have foreseen. I understood the depth of his love for me.  

Sometimes worlds come crashing down.  Most of the time, the new one is better.