Tender Mercies

This photo has nothing to do with this post. I just love it. Yes, that is a Sea Lion named Shanna. 

So... I'll be honest... I HATE THE PHRASE "TENDER MERCIES".

Maybe it's not used much in the outside world of regular people that aren't Mormons. But here in Mormonland, it's used all the time. Sometimes to describe finding a shopping cart abandoned at the grocery store when you are carrying more than your basket can handle... i.e. a gallon of milk on top of produce. (Totally done that before. The gallon of milk thing, not the describing it thing, that was someone else.) Sometimes it's used to describe things that aren't tender mercies... they are just things, like remembering you have no clean undies and you gotta do laundry so you don't go commando in the Lord's house.

Sometimes it's used to describe real, simple happenings that have helped a person out on the worst day of their life, or in the pits of despair. I totally get that tender mercies are real, but something about the phrase just makes me feel like someone's standing in front of me using their "this is my talking to puppies" voice, and their eyes have gotten all glassy, and their pupils have turned to flowers, and all they see are hearts in place of people's eyes.

I know... cartoon morbidity. But really... that's what that phrase does to me. It oozes of soccer mom jeans creepy over the top gushy happiness.

But anyway... Justin and I experienced this very thing one night this year.  And we reminisced about it tonight and both started laughing at the thought of it. Justin happened to bring it up while I had a mouth full of Scope and I nearly swallowed it because I was laughing so hard at the memory.

Here's the rundown:

It was mid-March of this year. (I'm laughing before I even tell you guys what happened... aaaah....)

I had spent the better part of my week crying to Justin, or being tough at the U of U hospital with my mom who had just undergone brain tumor removal on a tumor that had just suddenly appeared and turned out to be a very rapid-growth type of brain cancer. I had spent the day walking around the shops in downtown SLC with Justin as we waited to hear if she was doing ok after surgery. They told us that anything was possible and we shouldn't expect the worst or hope for the best... aka... normal-life or vegetable-ness. So naturally, I couldn't hang out at the hospital waiting. I had to get out of there.

To give you an idea of how awful a week this was, I was walking like I was carrying a backpack equal to my own weight. I'm serious. I passed a mirror in a store and stopped dead in my tracks when I saw my reflection. I was hunched like Quasimodo. I carry all my stress in my shoulders, and this particular day it was obvious that something was going on in my life that was awful.

Justin and I were in bed later that night just kind of decompressing from the madness. We fell asleep for about an hour and then he got up to pee. When he got back in bed, he readjusted to a position of comfortable sleep, and then things were quiet. I started to fall back to sleep and right before sleep hit me, something else hit me... well, hit my ears. The loudest possible fart that has ever been heard ripped through the quiet of the night.

A couple seconds of silence lingered before we both busted up laughing so hard that we couldn't contain it and practically started snorting. I had tears streaming out of my eyes and couldn't breathe. And we just kept giggling. Things would die down and we'd be like "ok we need to sleep," and then we'd bust up laughing again. It didn't even smell bad. It just ripped through the night like a chainsaw.

On the worst week of our lives, we were laughing uncontrollably.

I sometimes wonder if God sent that bedsheet-ripping fart to Justin to help us in our time of need, or if it just happened. Either way... as blasphemous as this might seem to you Mormons out there, that is my tender mercy story.

And you can't tell me it wasn't one.  I mean, it was one incredibly mercilous fart.

But seriously.