My Story

I have mentioned before that I belong to an online message board for LDS women. I have been a member on there for many years, and I have gained some really great friendships over the years and have even had the chance to meet many of them IRL (in real life). We refer to ourselves as the MOFia (my online friends). Anyway, this week there is a thread where someone asked all of us to share our “stories.” Kind of how we came to this point in our lives sort of thing. It also served as a getting to know you thread to help us get to know the women we have all come to know and love as well as the new ones better.

I don’t usually participate on these threads, but for some reason this week I did. I decided to post it here on my blog since this is my journal and I hope to print it all out one day. I think it is good for my posterity to know where I came from and all of the major life experiences up to this point. Also, to see the hand of the Lord in my life and to know that I am truly a Daughter of God. “To whom much is given, much is required.” Most of this is deeply personal and I more or less just want a record of it. Some places and names are vague for a reason since this is a public blog.
So here is my story.


I too came from a good LDS family. I was born Idaho, then my parents moved us to Northern Ut until I was in 3rd grade when they moved us a little further South. I am the 2nd of 12 kids. My mom had to have an emergency hysterectomy after she almost bled to death after #4. But she was one of those great women who saw her children in dreams and knew there were more to come. So they pursued other avenues to get all of their kids here. They had always done foster care, including housing a few birth moms, so adoption was always an option to my parents. Over the years, and one by one, my siblings joined the family. Some came as babies from private adoptions. Some through foster care and some came when they were contacted from the state to take more kids after they were all done. All are different races and nationalities. It's pretty much the UN in my family. There is a 7 year age gap in the middle. Because of the gap, growing up it was always like we had 2 families. Each of us had a buddy to help out with all the time. It wasn't weird at all, just my family. Being the oldest girl, naturally there was always a lot of responsibility placed on my shoulders. Also, my mom was the authoritarian in the house hold and we all knew it. Seeing her as a strong woman has really helped shape the kind of woman I am today. My dad was a very hard worker and at early ages we all learned the importance of hard work and that work becomes before play.

I was a quiet shy kid and I have always been overweight. Part of why I was shy and quiet. If I would just kept to myself no one would notice me. But I was teased quite a bit because of my weight as a child. As a result I have ALWAYS had low self esteem. I didn't ever have any real close/best friends, just lots of good friends.

I did my own thing in HS. I wouldn’t really call myself a loner, I had friends, seems like someone in each of the clicks. It would depend on the day who I would sit with at lunch, or by myself. But I did often feel lonely and wonder if I would be missed if I wasn’t there. I was in choir, drama, and FFA. :) I was a home body and never struggled with my testimony. I was pretty molly. Once when I was called a Molly Mormon I spoke up and said “I’m not a Molly Mormon. I’m a Melissa Mormon. “ I did what was right, because it was right. I never skipped class. In fact I thought it was ridicules to skip and then have to make up the work AND the time you skipped. Just go and sleep through it and then you only had to do the work and not the time too. It was just easy for me to CTR.

I took a class in HS where I learned I was really good with flowers and I began an internship at a flower shop when I was a Jr. I learned there was a degree I could get from a school in Idaho called Floral Design Management and I knew where I was going to go to college.

I can count on 1 hand the number of dates I went on in HS where I didn't do the asking. This contributed to my low self esteem some more. My mom would comfort me and always tell me that in college things would be different, boys in college were looking for wives and I had all the skills and things they would be looking for. She was wrong. I didn't get asked out in College much either when I didn't do the asking. I remember a night sitting in the backyard of the house I was living in. All of my roommates were getting ready for a group date and I was bawling and praying my guts out while I was sitting on the swing set and looking up at the stars. Telling Heavenly Father how unfair it was. Begging for him to let it be my turn for boys to notice me. When I was comforted by the holy ghost and told to just hang in there. I have something amazing for you, just hold on.

I had my life all planned out through the College years. I just knew I would be married by then, or 21 so I could go on the mission. My whole life I always said I was going to go on a mission. When it was about graduation time and there were zero prospects and I still had a year before I turned 21 I was at a loss as to where my life was supposed to go. I was reading the school newspaper and I saw a add for young performing missionaries in Nauvoo. I had a strong impression that, that was what I was supposed to do next. So I tried out, and I didn't even make the first round of call backs. I left the church office building in shock and tears. I prayed the whole way home and said, "Um, weren’t you the one who told me I was supposed to go on a mission to Nauvoo a few months ago? So how come you aren't holding up your end of that and making a way for it to happen??" I was at a loss. I moved back home and found another job at another flower shop. I worked and went on a few blind dates, all of which sucked and I learned people didn't think much of me if these people they were setting me up with were "perfect" for me.

As I got closer to my 21st birthday my mom started bugging me to turn in my papers. But the closer it got the more scared I got. Remember I am a shy person and the thought of going to strangers and telling them what I believed wasn't looking so good to me anymore. But as I was recovering from some surgery she began to fill out my papers. I took a big gulp and realized what else was I doing with my life? What was preventing me from going? A few weeks later, we were all gathered around a table at Olive Garden and I opened my mission call. Peoria Illinois. Nauvoo was in my mission. Again I felt the spirit whisper to me, “I didn't let you down it was just in my own time not yours.”

I served my mission and gained some tremendous friendships. I came home and moved in with one of my mission companions. We had a good time together and I was just working doing odd jobs. About this time my parents invested in a flower shop for me. I didn't have the financial back ground to buy it for myself so they did and I ran it. It was a really rough couple of years. Due to the dishonest people who sold it to us and 9/11 it eventually tanked.

During those years though I moved into the apartment above the shop and I began going to the singles ward where I lived. I felt old. I was beginning to fear that marriage wasn't in my future. The guys who were asking me out now were the almost 30 year olds who were a little strange. Nice guys, but after a few dates you learned why they were single. I pretty much gave up on getting married. (Even though my patriarchal blessing told me otherwise.) One of my dear mission companions (who I also was a visiting teacher to when I was at college) began emailing me and telling me I needed to go on a blind date with this guy in her ward. She tried REALLY hard to get us together. But honestly I just wasn't interested. I had been down the blind date road and it always ended up bad. But she didn't give up. She finally got both of us to agree just so she would stop bugging us.

It wasn't until our 2nd date that we saw that there was a future there. Our first date was in December the 2nd was in Jan. By March we were engaged and July married in the Nauvoo Temple. When we were dating, one afternoon I was sitting in the temple doing a session and began wondering if he was the one, the impression that came was Heavenly Father laughing at me. The spirit said, "Why don't you think I love you enough to send you someone so wonderful?? Why don't you feel you are good enough for someone like him?” That was my answer.

The first year was wonderful. We would always comment to each other, “They always say the first year of marriage is the hardest. Well if this is as hard as it is going to get then we are in for some awesome years!” That was the wrong thing to say.

We decided to start trying to get pregnant. I was done with school, he had a good job and it took both of our moms a while to get pregnant. So since I was 24 we decided we should start trying right away. Even though we were having a great time just the 2 of us. Well I am fertile Myrtle and it didn’t take long at all. Everything was going well with the pregnancy until I was in my 25th week. I started feeling sick. But it was probably just the flu and not something I was worried about. But upon going to my 26 week appointment was put on strict bed rest for the duration because I was pre eclamptic. That was on a Friday.

Sunday I was being life flighted from one hospital to another with a NICU. I had gone from being pre eclamptic to full eclamptic shock. I had suffered 2 seizures and if they didn’t deliver the baby my body would start rejecting my organs. Princess E joined our family weighing 1 lb 10 oz. She spent 14.5 weeks in the NICU and is now 7 years old. She truly is a miracle as she has been completely healthy and has had only very, very minor residual effects of her prematurity.

After much prayer we decided to try again for another child. I was more eager than King J was. I wasn’t the one who had to watch and feel helpless as the one you love is practically dying in front of your eyes. But it was a rather un eventful pregnancy (well minus the heparin shots I got to give myself every day). Princess M joined our family at 35 weeks. She was our big girl weighing 5 lbs. 3 oz. But she ended up spending 12 days in the NICU when she decided breathing on her own was too hard. I also had more complications after her birth when I decided to start birthing baby size blood clots and they had to go in and remove them.

A year after Princess M was born we decided to have my tubes tied. But it was a very hard decision since I have received strong impressions that there is still another spirit waiting to join our family. But I was reassured when making that decision that we will cross that bridge when we come to it. I have since had a Hysterectomy after having a cancer scare and feeling like I was a ticking time bomb.

I struggle now with knowing where my place is. What I should be doing with my life. But writing this all out has really helped me to see that the Lord has always had a hand in it and really is the one who is in control. He is always just waiting for me to be patient. I also see that he requires a lot from me and expects me to rely on him to help me through it, when the time is right. When I let go of my own expectations and ideas he brings wonderful purpose and direction.

I just wish I could remember that every day and have more faith that he is always there and aware of me. Just be patient.