I was curious about how the second General Women’s meeting would go. Spring was difficult and I’m still cooling from the heat of summer. I have felt spent and restless and impatient and enduring. My heavy-worn heart and wrenched, wrung-out soul needed a balm not just for recent church events, but for me in my own life fraught with questions and requests for answers. At the point in the meeting when we were all asked to sing “I’m a Child of God” I hit my threshold and everything I’d been holding in tumbled out and down my cheeks: tears for all my bottled up anxiety and annoyance. Ashamed, I realized my frustration probably looked like I was moved by the spirit instead of anguish. How can I be honest with myself and my religion when I ache for more than I have now? I want to sing I’m “A Child of God” the way I do to my own children, to loudly pronounce the tender truth I hold hard in my heart: God is love, love is family, Mother and Father are God. “Teach me all that I must do to live with Them someday,” audibly, not just under my breath in insistence for my own integrity. Each week begin the YW theme with my young women, “We are daughters of Heavenly Parents, who love us and we love them.” And when I offer prayers to God, have it understood and accepted outside of my own self that I acknowledge and reverence Her and Him together, as they are.

Patience, the spirit whispered. Patience is what is so hard and hurts so much in this and all my other wrestling of who, and what and when or where now and next. Wait. Wait. Wait. Can you wait? the spirit counselled and asked. Wait here, and there will be joy. The joy will be great here.

Calling my controlling calm to myself, I resolved that I could. And could certainly be patient for an answer (but impatiently hope I wouldn’t have to wait long.) Sitting up, I steeled myself for waiting and listening, and praying for some message to stem the hot tears on my face.

It came.

President Utchdorf immediately and boldly professed of our Heavenly Parents that love us: the God that hears and answers and knows. And he said it all again, so as not to be missed or misunderstood. Or maybe so I couldn’t imagine it away–it spoke right to the heart of my ache for belonging and feeling of a full divine family. Patience. The pieces will come and help me as I wait for more.

*        *        *

This summer I dug up the roots our family had laid in Texas to replant them in the second-driest summer California soil on record. Driving up I-5 with most everything I own in the back of a box truck, I read printed sign after sign of upset farmers, parched and cracking at the water they should have had. What about the requirements of trees and plants for fruiting? All living things cry out for attention, nourishment and water. It was June, and I was parched and tired. The ground and I, we just needed water. I feared my thirst would make me bitter and blaming as the signs on the side of the freeway.

We waited two and a half months of living here until the first rain. It was a long dry summer and I wondered how was it that the plants of Davis were not all dead. Then I remembered my favorite part of California–the cool of evening and morning dew–although not rain, it still sustained our little yard of fruit trees and succulents while we all waited for the rain. Realizing the gift I prayed: “Dear God of love and family, thank you for just enough. Thank you for thirst and vulnerability that make all drops a gift, a grace.”

Saturday was also a gift for my sustaining; President Utchdorf spoke of rain and the God I know. But I also know enough of drought dwelling to see an easy end by ground-saturating, soaking to the skin, flooding to vanquish all the depletion and memory of it. Combine mist, fog, drizzle dampness, spotty sprinkles, sun showers and torrential downpour. I’m throwing my umbrella aside asking (and at times dancing) for the rain.

Any of it.

I’ve been thirsty long enough. My aching will be answered, but sometimes it is just sustained a while longer with a respite of cool air and morning dew. I’m still waiting for a monsoon season to satisfy the drought around me.

That much craved water of the first rain, and the drops that began in yesterday’s meeting marked the beginning of the wet season here. The sound and the sight of the water falling is music to my ears and art to my eyes. I thank God, Father and Mother, for the eventual and achingly anticipated downpour.

Did you attend in Salt Lake or watch the broadcast? Wasn’t it wonderful to have more attention to sister saints overseas? It was lovely to hear the sound of so many women’s voices sharing their words in their own native tongues.  Add your response to the General Conference Women’s Meeting.