A Voice for Him

          Our ward has been given a few challenges for the beginning of this year. One is to give away a copy of the Book of Mormon. My kids took this seriously and each gave a copy to a friend. While my son's friend was leaving with her copy, and her father was standing there at the front door, he yelled from the top of our stairs, "Read that book!" My first instinct was that of embarrassment. I even apologized to the father. My son did what he was asked to do. He was an instrument in His hands. More than that, he was a voice for Him. He didn't mearly hand her the book and let her go. He didn't leave it lying around and hope someone would find it, just to check off the task with minimal effort. He yelled, "READ IT!"  He gave Heavenly Father a voice. We can do good deeds, and good actions, but what happens when we don't back it up with words? He needs us to be His voice. I was a bit appalled at myself for being embarrassed. My son had no fear. I could see in his eyes and hear in his voice the joy he knew he was giving a dear friend whom he loves. He wants her to know her Heavenly Father's plan for her. He wants her to have His love in her life where she can see and recognize it. And there I was, embarrassed.  Embarrassment to me is just fear.  Fear of rejection, judgement, anger.  "Become like a little child" never has had more meaning to me. No fear! I'm not sure who said, "Fear shows a lack of faith.", but I think of it daily. I try not to have fear, but it definitely holds me back. My son is 9, but I looked up to him that day.
          I know the scriptures and our leaders are good examples of His voice. We sit in our lessons knowing the manuals are inspired, but I want to be a voice for Him too. Some people haven't been taught how to hear "the still small voice". They need one a bit louder to help them make that connection, so they can learn to hear His whispers. I'm so thankful for the missionaries that taught me. They were His voice. They showed me how to hear Him on my own. Sometimes how we hear Him has to change, and we have to relearn. I think He sent a new set of people to help me with that as well. Here I am, repaying Him with embarrassment! Yikes! I wasn't a voice for Him that day, but next time I will be. My son and I will shout together, knowing He needs a voice that at that moment only we can provide.

Shattered Glass

          So, what's it feel like? Like you're a piece of glass, and if you bend you'll shatter.  Hell, I imagine. If hell is worse, I can't even begin to comprehend it.  You reach out to others, hoping they'll say or do something to make "it" go away. "It", the emotional pit of despair that no one can see or begin to understand unless they've lived it.  When all you can do is curl up in a ball and cry, which you have no energy to do, so you just stare and wait to be able to move without breaking.  You know time is ticking by and there's so much to be done, but you just can't move.  Physical pain is easier, so you cause that to mask "it", just so you can function until you start all over.  Smiling feels like a hot knife thrust into your gut, but you do it so no one knows. Sometimes you do it too much, smile, make people laugh, over compensate so the most important people in your life are kept from the knowledge that you're dying inside. You tell people, "I'm fine." You're smiling on the outside and screaming on the inside, hoping they hear the scream...so maybe they'll say or do something to, again, make "it" go away.  Faking it becomes second nature. You smile, you laugh, it cuts. At the end of the day you hate yourself for being fake. Why couldn't you just tell someone? Because you know they can't do anything to stop it.  You've fallen into that trap of false hope before, and at least this way they were happy. If anything their happiness lessens the pain a bit more than it would if it were they that were trying to make you happy, because you know that wouldn't have worked anyway.  You go to bed telling yourself, "Tomorrow will be better. I'll wake up, get up, feel whole, go on about my day, and everything will be fine." You wake up paralyzed.  You tell yourself to "Snap out of it." You wonder why life seems so hard for you when really it's no different than anyone else's.  You have infinite blessings, no reason to be down.  So why does it feel like you physically have an elephant on your back? Your body is heavy, it's hard to breath, it takes too much energy to do anything.  Anything life sustaining is not only too much work, but going to prolong your hell. You pray and beg for help, and when you don't start to feel better you start to pray to die.  You wake up in the morning thinking, "Again? Really?" Then have to repent for being so incredibly unappreciative of His hand in your life. You know He's there, you see it with your eyes, but your heart didn't get the memo.  It never ends.  "It" never ends.  

A Road More Traveled

         A friend told me the other day, "once you travel down a road, you are always more vulnerable to travel down that road again." Humans are habitual creatures. I guess that's why the definition of insanity is "doing something over and over again and expecting different results." There's only one way someone figured that out, and that's by experiencing it. I've always felt more at home on the roads I traveled first. Unfortunately those roads were the dead ends.
          I visited my home town last week. I stayed in the neighborhood I grew up in. I drove the streets I did as a drunken teen. I watched the same yellow line on the side of the road as I did so many nights on my way home from smoking pot out of bongs I had made with beer cans. Watching that yellow line kept me on the road back then.  I could almost still see that big penguin I hallucinated sitting on the traffic light. I could see me, walking down the busy road, as slow as i could, too afraid to go home. Listening to the rattling of the mini vodka bottles in my backpack, trying to forget the bitter cold biting the fingers that clinched my cigarette, hoping a car would veer off the road and hit me.  I stared at the trees as they went by, and thought of the daily fantasies of driving my car into them, remembering how angry I was at the air bag between myself and the wind shield.

          Part of me missed that road. As hard as it was, I was able to escape. I could do those things without it effecting my eternal salvation, without guilt. I could think freely without feeling guilty for being "evil". After all, ignorance is bliss, right?
          I went from that place straight to the Temple. The same Temple I went for Katrina's sealing just two weeks before. What an awesome day that was! This time...I felt ... quite the opposite. There was no light. I won't say He was gone from me (I know better), but I was certainly gone from Him. The road from those sidewalks to the Temple the first time was quite a few years, and a lot of preparation. This time, "older" and "wiser" didn't exactly connect. I guess that's why we are urged to stay so close to the iron rod. If we waiver just a bit, we will fall into the darkness. The darkness is exactly that, dark.
          The next day I listened to a friend bear his testimony about how he was able to "touch heaven" by witnessing his daughter's sealing in the Temple. He spoke about feeling His love, and about how that love is what gets him through life. This person is on a vastly different spiritual plane than I, and my immediate thought was, "I'm not going to make it. I don't have those feelings. He said that's what gets him through, without it he wouldn't make it."  In that moment I was totally fine with giving up. If there's one thing He has made known to me, it's that I don't feel Him like most.  I'm trying to remember exactly that, that He's made it known unto me, and let that knowledge be enough to get me through. He's whispered it to me, and shown me. He knows, and He's let me know.  
          There's only one thing that can fill darkness, and that's light.  He shows us our own paths to the light in different ways.  If everyone's road was the same, we'd have nothing to learn on our own.  Sometimes we all need to take wrong turns, but we can be thankful He's hovering above us with a map.  The road at the end of those childhood streets was dark. Even though I was standing in the Temple, my mind was still on those streets, and I wouldn't let Him in.  I'll admit, sometimes that darkness feels more like "me" than the light.  It's easier to fall.  It's easier to let my guard down to all my natural tendencies, and let my brain do what it naturally wants to do.  I'm not sure my road will end with "touching heaven". I know it has a few extra curves and twists in it that I'm not always as appreciative of as I should be, but when I'm ready I can look up and hope He'll show me which way to go to reach the light. 

Pre-existing Covenants

          Have a seat, this will be a long one, but I hope it's worth the read :-).  This story starts out in Maryland at my first job, when I was 15.  My parents decided I would be a lifeguard, I went through the training, and there I was on the first day with the Assistant Manager, Katrina. Our first assignment was to clean the pool, deck, and bath house before opening day. She removed a lid from a trashcan and a swarm of bees flew out, and "F#$%" flew out of her mouth. I listened to her for the next several hours tell me how she was now a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and she was "going to hell for cursing." She had made a covenant to stop. Seriously, THIS GIRL WAS CRAZY! 
          Picture this, a grungy 15 year old who spent every waking moment trying to find, bribing people for, and consuming beer, pot, and cigarettes having to spend 40+ hours a week with a Mormon! AHH! I was grumpy about this to say the least. I left that day dreading the next few months. As it came, my fears were justified.  Our personalities clashed big time.  She preached, and I smoked in her face. At some point I think we agree'd to disagree.  The summer finally came to an end.  We parted ways on the last day and I thought that was that.  
          In October she called me. "Let's go see a movie", she said.  To this day neither of us has any idea what we were thinking, but we went. We decided that day to work together again the next summer.  I know, it boggles my mind too.  Truth is, behind it all, deep down, we had a weird connection.  A comfort level I really can't explain.  I realized I could be myself in front of her, when I couldn't anywhere else. 
          Skip ahead to next summer. We worked together 10 hours a day 5-6 days a week.  We laughed. A LOT! We started to finish each others sentences. Often we didn't even have to say our thoughts out loud, we knew what we were thinking. We spent most of our time together despite our differences.  She started tricking me into dinners with the missionaries, and even called me at night to read me the Book of Mormon over the phone.  I still thought she was crazy, and continued my teenage shenanigans.  She convinced me to take discussions (at least I think so, it's possible she had the missionaries slide them into regular conversation). They'd ask me to "pray about it." Geez, Katrina had been asking me to do that since last summer! I guess I should mention, prayer and religion were not a part of my home life. At all. It was as foreign as a different language would be.  I refused. Mostly because I wasn't sure how. I was certain He wouldn't listen to this messed up teen.  
          Again, the summer came to an end. Katrina and I remained good friends. We talked frequently. A couple months later, she convinced me to pray about it. Well, we know what happens next. In October of my senior year in High School, I was baptized.  Between my mom turning my alarm off for seminary, sneaking coffee into my hot chocolate mug, and pot head friends, my activity didn't last long.  I graduated, and life separated my great friend and I. My parents moved me to Florida, and she was going to go on a mission.  I missed her, but I knew we'd always remain intact.  
          Well, she was called to the Key West, Florida Mission. Yep, I was in her mission boundaries!! My activity was still so-so, but I was able to receive my Patriarchal Blessing, and she was actually able to attend!! The Patriarch said "You have met a dear friend here on Earth. You covenanted with each other in the pre-existance to find each other and bring one another to the gospel." WOW! No wonder we have such a connection! 
          As time went on, our lives drew us geographically apart.  I moved back to Maryland to live with a member family. It was much easier to be fully active then! She moved to Utah to teach at the MTC, then Nevada. We'd go several months without speaking at times, but always picked right up where we left off.  Katrina and I had similar up-bringings, not the most supportive.  She became frustrated and discouraged and eventually left the church.  Several years went by. She found a man that loves her, and she was finally happy. Except she knew she wasn't following the Lord's plan.  I knew she still had a testimony, and I knew it was killing her that she was breaking her temple covenants.  She was finally married, and I was so happy she found a companion.  We had many conversations over the years about how neither of us were sealed to anyone in the Temple, and how that was the goal. She was married, I was married, but all the pieces of the puzzle weren't quite there. I had a Temple marriage, she didn't. 

          I thought quite a bit about how she gave me this great gift. She gave me the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  She changed the course of my life. She introduced me to the member family I lived with that saved me from so many things and helped me grow in the church.  I called her one day and read the testimony she wrote in my scriptures.  She just wasn't ready. She was scared to talk to her bishop, and scared to tell her husband about this part of her life because he would then know the rules she broke.  She was scared he would lose respect.  
          I was sitting in Relief Society one Sunday and the lesson was on missionary work.  I knew I had to do something more for Katrina. I called her shortly after and told her how I was feeling. She happened to be driving by a chapel. We had a good chat, although it was a chat we had had many times before so I wasn't convinced anything would be different this time.  She called me a few days later and told me when she came home that day, her husband was watching a church movie on BYU TV.  It enabled her to talk to him about it. He was receptive, and she was going to talk to her bishop.  Again, I wasn't super convinced. She had made and broken appointments with her bishop before. I called her frequently until the day of her appointment.   She went! Her mind was eased, and he gave her a blessing.  She taught her husband, and brought him to church. Well, we know what happens next, he was baptized! He re-proposed to her to marry him for time and all eternity in the Temple.  A year later (19 years after this story started), and a couple weeks after baptizing his mother, they were sealed. 
          The sealing was this past weekend. What an AMAZING day! Not only because it made an amazing end to this story, but because I was able to attend and FEEL the gravity of what was happening. I felt how happy He was that we did what we came here to do.  We found each other, and brought each other to Him. In the Temple, she kept saying "What if you hadn't made that phone call? We wouldn't be here today." All I could respond with was "You started it! All those years ago!" 

          

Howler Monkeys

          "I believe it's important to learn to endure life's challenges with a certain amount of grace and aplomb, but as a person who has pretty much gone through life enduring life's challenges like a howler monkey, I confess to struggling with the ideal." I love that quote.  Whoever wrote it is human, like everyone else. We all have challenges, and we have good days and bad days in how we deal with them.  The "ideal" is a notion of perfection we have in our head of what we think we should be.  Everyone has a different "ideal", put there by our environment.  My "ideal" is probably something I will never be, as it's someone that gets dressed to perfection every day, never yells at her children, is always kind and never bitter, reads scriptures and prays every day, ect.  It's what we are taught we need to strive to be.  Thinking about that bigger picture stresses me out. It's easy to give up with the task of perfection day in and day out.  
         So I decided I would have an "ideal for the day".  When I wake up, sometimes getting out of bed and doing just what needs to be done to survive is the ideal.  Sometimes it's a little more. Sometimes it's an act of service, or a little more effort in dinner made for my family.  Every day is different, so the ideal for each day should be different, with the same common goal, of course.  Little goals every day that add up to one bigger goal.  And if I don't reach the little goals? I can be a howler monkey for a day. They are probably all around me and I don't even know it, because everyone struggles sometimes.  They are our neighbors, and our colleagues, and our family members.  When we see them, they radiate grace and aplomb, but when they go home, they too, feel like howler monkeys.  So even if someone appears to meet the "ideal", give them a hug, offer kind words, ask if they're ok.  You never know if there's a monkey howling inside of them just waiting for someone to be a kind friend.     

Science or Him?

     "Take everything you think you know about religion and throw it out of the window. This is a science class, and everything here has a scientific explanation.", said my first professor in college.  It was anatomy and physiology.  I had only been baptized a year before. I let the thought enter my head that maybe I had let myself believe in something because I wanted it to be true, not because it was.  However, every day of that class I sat through, my testimony grew. The human body has so many parts working and growing at all times.  If one element is missing, everything stops.  I kept thinking how we are all made with the same parts, like a car, but we have such different and unique personalities.  There's only one logical explanation to this, we have individually made spirits.  

     My daughter taught a family home evening lesson on nature this week.  She spoke about the water cycle, and about trees growing to excrete what we need to breath and vice versa. She said, "Heavenly father made a world that works perfectly, so we can live perfectly."  He made foods of all colors of the rainbow, and plenty of it.  He's given us a habitat beautiful to look at. We can marvel at waterfalls, fall leaves, snow capped mountains, species of all kinds.  That professor would come to class right off the beach.  He had half the puzzle.  He loved the beach. He appreciated being able to go.  He was missing out on his relationship with the creator of all of it, and of him.  I think of him often, and how I missed my chance to introduce him to the creator of science.  

     This world is perfectly created.  We are perfectly created.  Our hearts pump unoxygenated blood through our lungs to oxygenate it before it gets to our brain.  Our kidneys keep what we need and excrete what we don't.  Water is recycled so our food can grow from the ground, and lakes and rivers can be full.  These are just a few of the things we can "see" working for us wherever we turn.  All you have to do is look out the window, or just think about how you are reading this. You can read, you can think, you can interpret...but not like anyone else, because He made you just to be you.  If we didn't have individual spirits, we'd all work like robots. Made of the same parts, but no spirit.  

Walking Through Water

This is a great read if you are wondering if you have depression, or if you want to know how someone feels that does.  

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/jamie-flexman/depression-mental-illness_b_3931629.html

Wrapped in a Ribbon of Hope

         I'm lying in bed, feeling...well, lousy. I have no reason to. I have everything I could need or want. I've had so many days of feeling guilty for being ungrateful. I must be if I'm so sad when I have so much, right?  2 nephi 2:25 states "Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy." Am I doing it wrong? I've heard so many times, "You can choose to be happy."  I agree I can choose how I react to situations. I can choose to try to find the silver lining in whatever situation I'm in. But what happens when my brain chooses one thing, and my heart can't catch up? When my heart feels dead, and my brain says "but look, there's pretty flowers!" If there's an answer to this one, I haven't found it yet. I wish my brain had a bigger pull over my heart, but for me it just doesn't work that way. 
          So now there's a few things to do. Wait. Patience. Patience with myself. Patience with Him. It seems a pretty important quality and lesson. It must be, He gives us many lessons on patience. Sometimes that and prayer are the only things we can do. I can keep asking. And, as I wrote about in the last post, try not to have unrealistic levels of hope in that prayer. If tomorrow is any better, I can let that be an answer to my prayer. I won't be "fixed". This won't miraculously go away, He won't do that. But maybe He can help ease the pain. I can look, and try to "see" Him. Looking around me, and seeing His hand reaching out to those around me, helps me know that if I can't believe if for myself at this moment, He is there. He gave me that knowledge. My brain knows. When He "fixes" us all in the end, then maybe my heart will catch up. As a blind person's eyes will finally see, and a deaf person's ears will finally hear, my heart will feel whole. I guess all of this is wrapped up in a nice little ribbon of hope. 

Hope and Prayers

I mentioned that sometimes I spit out words that I know people want/need to hear without feeling them.  One of my biggest fears is that my children will feel my lack of feeling.  I tell them I love them daily, and that I'm proud of them.  Of course, I want nothing more for them to feel loved and that their accomplishments aren't going unnoticed.  I guess that's where hope comes in.  We're told He makes up the difference.  I end each day with a prayer that He will let them feel what I don't. That He'll make up that difference.  

       On to that "hope"...to me it's a scary thing.  I don't like getting my hopes up, more often than not they are crushed.  I have recently realized that my "black and white" thinking probably creates unrealistic levels of hope.  "Black and white" = "All or nothing", right?  If I have a high hope, and maybe whatever I'm hoping for on some level comes to pass, then I guess I should be grateful.  I want to feel an overwhelming love for my kids..."all".  But sometimes I can't..."nothing".  If I have a day that I feel just a little bit of something good towards them, then that has to be ok.  It's not failure.  Maybe "hope" can't be what I want, or what my brain needs, but I guess it has to exist so I can hope that prayer at the end of the day on some level will fix anything I've broken in my kids that day.  I have to hope they'll forgive me for my short comings because they believe in His grace as well.  I have to hope that hope doesn't have to be "all or nothing".  Even a little change is hope coming to pass. I have to let it exist in gray areas, or else it's too easy to believe it doesn't exist at all.  

Food For Thought

Most people are good nature'd. They want to help others in need. They see an ill friend and want to bring a meal, or send a note, ect...Although I think there's a fear behind helping the mentally ill as opposed to the physically ill. Is it fear? Or something else? I used to see friends flock to others that are physically ill and thought, "It seems you have to be dying on the outside for loving hands to extend. What if you're dying on the inside?"  I'm sure I'm guilty of this myself. Maybe it's just easier to see physical illness. Or it's easier to know what to do. I'm not sure the answer, but I do know there is so much more good that can be done in the world if that separation was taken away. This is a great article...

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/family/2013/11/families_dealing_with_mental_illness_need_support_too.html

Definitely food for thought.