Restless

Life lately has been good to me. Lots of opportunities for service, visits with friends, and small moments to share with my children. Really, it is a peaceful time.

I love this time of year in the post holiday rush. I go to bed earlier (most days) and take more naps because sleeping just feels good when it's cold outside. The kids are on a better schedule and we are free to create our own activities and adventures, now that the expected holiday traditions are completed. I am free to work on projects of my own.

I have several friends now that will set up "workdates" with me. We take turns meeting at each other's homes and do a chore or two as we visit and the kids play. I especially enjoy doing this with my friends that have babies, so I can get my baby fix and give their arms a chance to get something else done.

I've also enjoyed making meals for people, visiting my friend in the nursing home, visiting teaching appointments, and other storytimes and playdates with people I love. Life feels so much more meaningful when you share it with people.

I've been able to attend this beautiful building thrice in as many months, giving me added peace and joy. Mike has readied quite a few of my family names and I have enjoyed learning tidbits about ancestors as I have done their work. (More on Mormon temples here.)

Still, amidst this reprieve from life's storms and upheaval, I can't help but feel a certain sense of restlessness. It's not that I don't enjoy the calm, I do. It's just that I like to have an idea of what's on the horizon. Sometimes, I just want to run ahead (or float up in a hot air balloon, like that one above that we saw on the way to the temple on Saturday) and get a better idea of what's next, before returning to enjoy the views and sunsets along the way. As a runner, I often liked running routes I'd taken before, so I knew how to pace myself and where I could get a drink of water or take a rest stop. 

But that's not how life is, so we just have to keep trudging along. We don't know how long we'll have to go or what's next. We must enjoy those sunsets and peaceful moments as they come, preparing for tomorrow, learning from yesterday, but living today.

But why is that so much easier said than done? Tell me I'm not the only one who gets impatient...

And as for how I'm doing on my "commitments": I'd say overall, pretty well. I am getting up earlier, starting my day with yoga a few times a week, being more purposeful with my children's activities, and recording more. Definitely better than had I not made the commitments. :)

More Favorite Quotes

In a 1982 address entitled "The Inconvenient Messiah," Jeffrey R. Holland and his wife Patricia spoke about the realities of discipleship to the BYU student body.

Then-President Holland said, "If for a while the harder you try, the harder it gets, take heart. So it has been with the best people who ever lived."

I take heart in that philosophy.

Doesn't Emily look like she was trying hard to pour that milk? I think she is one of the best people that ever lived.
#backintheday #almost3yearsago

The Savior's life was not easy. And if we want to follow Him, neither will ours be. We will have our own trials to face, our own mountains to climb.

Others too, have walked lonely and difficult roads. Some quietly, unnoticed. Others, leaders of nations, heroes or heroines. (Speaking of, this Joan of Arc special is on my "to watch" list. Anyone else seen it?)

The last three years have been a challenge for me. Especially the past year-and-a-half.

What went wrong?

I suspected I was "slightly" depressed during my pregnancy with Max. I thought something about boy hormones was not sitting with me right.

Swings of anxiety and depression hit me post-partum. I brushed it off as being overwhelmed with my four cute kids five and under, with other stresses of family and acquaintances weighing on me. 

I knew I had a problem when I called 911 the day after Thanksgiving 2014 with a severe panic attack. 

And I was devastated in April 2015, when despite trying to work with doctors, counselors, family members and spiritual leaders, I ended up in the state hospital in a severe state of psychosis (for those less acquainted with the term, psychosis is a break with reality).

Should I just give up?

Now, I am in recovery, but going through a grief process of sorts. In some ways, it feels harder now than it did as I was going through it all, because now I have more time to process all that happened. Mental illness has, at least for the short term, thrown a wrench in my plans and added an air of uncertainty to my hopes and dreams for the future, as well as zapped a lot of time and energy. However, as I come to terms with what I went through and continue to work on my own, with my family, with professionals, and with God toward the best path for healing, I know I am richly blessed and God's hand is in my life. I have had challenges and ups and downs in my life before, and while none of them compare, I know some of them have prepared me for this one.

I share some of my story not to elicit sympathy, though I am grateful for friends and family that have lifted my family and me during this time of need. I share because one of the most helpful things for me has been as family, friends, acquaintances, and even strangers have shared their stories of dealing with mental illness. It is a taboo topic in our society, a subject of many jokes, and one laced with shame. I actually had terrible thoughts where I wished I had cancer or a severe car accident instead. Something people would better understand. Something physical. Something that showed up in blood work. Anything.

I now know those were foolish thoughts. No one really understands another's experience. Even two people who go through the same event, cannot completely have walked in the other's shoes, as we are all viewing life through a unique lens.

However, there is One who has paid the price to know us all. And, as Elder Dale G. Renlund, a newly called apostle, said in an October press conference, "The Holy Ghost can bless us with the Savior's compassion."

In closing, I wanted to share Sister Holland's message from "The Inconvenient Messiah."

She told the story of her daughter Mary running in and losing the election for seventh-grade class president. When her daughter came home from school, she ached to be able to take away the pain and tried words of comfort. Her daughter requested they simply pray together.

Sister Holland's words follow:

"As we knelt in prayer, [Mary] said, 'Heavenly Father, I promised you I’d do anything if I could win, and now I know I must show how to be a good loser.' And then she said, 'I don’t want you to be my servant anymore. I just want to be yours.'

 "You see, it was because of her pain and disappointment that she was given to say in a twelve-year-old way, 'Maybe what I wanted would not be the best thing to serve you at all.'

"I guess what I’ve come to you today to say is that God uses broken things—and I quote:

" 'It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give bread, broken bread to give strength. It is the broken alabaster box that gives forth perfume. . . . it is Peter, weeping bitterly, who returns to greater power than ever.' [“Broken Things,” an excerpt from Vance Havner, The Still Water (Old Tappan, NJ: Flemming H. Revell, 1934). Quoted in Guideposts, October 1981, p. 5]

"Our Father in Heaven sometimes uses our pain as a megaphone for very significant instruction as he did with Joseph Smith, with Spencer W. Kimball, with Mary Holland. And as he did with Peter who, weeping bitterly, returned to greater power and service than ever."

I echo Mary Holland's prayer: "I don't want [God] to be my servant anymore. I just want to be [His]."

During this experience and in the aftermath, I have felt a closeness to my ancestors and the phrase "saviors on Mount Zion" keeps returning to me. I know as I use this experience to better understand the Savior's atonement and all it means, I can be a savior on Mount Zion by helping both the living and the dead accept His priceless gift.

My Favorite Quote

I heard this quote by Virginia H. Pearce several years ago on a BYU television series entitiled Messiah. I echo her words:

"I believe there is a sense of loneliness in every human heart, and separation, that we don’t talk very much about. But if you look at the way we behave, we’re acting to fill that loneliness. Everyone does. You know, will money make me feel less hollow, is there one person out there I can love and then I will never feel lonely again? Will my children if I have enough of them and they’re good enough, will they make me so I will never be lonely again? No. No. We are lonely animals. That is the nature of the mortal condition. Because we are separated from God. And so when we talk about the final winding up scene, I think the unfathomable part about it will be that that will be gone. That we will be back in His presence, and we will feel complete, we will feel whole, we will feel safe, we will feel part of everyone. We will all be just awash in this heavenly love of God, and the Savior. That’s what He is about, is bringing the whole human family into that circle. I think when we use the word encircled in His arms, that’s all of us together. The whole human family who confess His name and partake of that will be reunited in love in a way that we can only imagine now."

I struggled with rather severe postpartum depression after Max without being aware of it for a long time. But I guess why it was difficult to recognize is because I loved my life, so I couldn't figure out what was wrong. And I see around me that most of us do struggle at some time or another. Whether the loss of a loved one, sickness, bad choices, one's circumstances, body chemistry or heredity put us at the breaking point, we all will feel at some point in our lives that poignant sense of loneliness that is part of the human experience.

But the good news is we don't have to stay there. Because the Savior has promised "I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you" (John 14:18).

  Painting by Justin Kunz obtained from lds.org

I am so grateful for a Savior that suffered not only for sin, sickness, and death, but also for fear and loneliness and depression. I know He lives, I know He loves me, and I feel His comfort time and again when I take the opportunity. And when the loneliness increases I know it's often because I have some growing and learning to do that will make me happier and better than before. It is just hard to "have to wait and be patient" as Prairie Dawn tells a frustrated Cookie Monster waiting for his cookies. But I am trying and keeping my chin up. :)

"Are We Not All Mothers?"

At church for Mother's Day, each of us adult women received a little booklet of this title by Sheri Dew. The quote was familiar to me and its message is one that I have been pondering lately.

Motherhood is nurturing, caring, loving, and protecting. It is setting an example in word and deed. It is putting others' needs above your own. It is putting the family unit and love of God before all else. Because how can we better serve him then by caring for each other?

I am so grateful to both be a mother and to have been mothered by so many good women in my life. My mother, of course, is my number one inspiration. She taught me both by word and example that there was nothing more important than that sacred role and no earthly sacrifice too great. My mother-in-law exudes love and taught me the same, with her life bearing testament of that truth. My grandmothers, too, were instrumental in teaching me to live with wisdom and order and follow the commandments. They helped care for me during times in my life when my parents were overwhelmed by the stresses of providing for a large family.

My sisters and sister-in-laws also have been examples of loving and helping children in so many ways. All of them have taught me so much and been mothers to me by caring and advising and loving me and my children. Similarly, many good teachers and friends and their mothers have aided me and continue to help my life's journey.

Charity is the pure love of Christ and I am so grateful for all the times I have felt it from the women in my life. I know in God's plan women were his crowning creation. I know the Lord loves women and I know, in particular, that he loves me. I know that charity never fails, as the relief society motto reminds us.

I'm grateful to have a mother and be a mother. And I am eternally grateful for all those that mother me and that have mothered me.