Are We Not All Broken? A post about living with high-functioning mental and emotional disorders.

The following are things that have been on my mind as of late.  Then I was asked to speak about them in church.  It was an opportunity for me to try to verbalize some of the impressions I had been having for months prior and I was grateful to have been able to do it using some of the most beautiful doctrine and insights offered by a prophet of God.  Later I added the other half.  As you read, please do so with mercy in your heart.  These things are vulnerable yet sacred things of my heart and I share them because its finally time.  

I’ve been asked to speak on the talk given by Elder Holland a few years ago.  The title of it is “Like a Broken Vessel.”  This is a talk that hits home in so many personal and sacred ways for me and my family and it is about things I am very passionate about.   As you probably know, this talk is about knowing how to best respond when mental or emotional challenges confront you or those you love. What you may not know is that at just 9 years old, I was clinically diagnosed with OCD, severe anxiety and early-onset depression. So I hope to really dive into what Elder Holland says as well as tell some of the tender mercies I have seen in my own life.  

He sets the stage for his talk and the overarching feeling of it, by stating that 

“the apostle Peter wrote that disciples of Jesus Christ are to have ‘compassion one of another’”  and that these are difficulties that no one can responsibly suggest would surely go away if those victims would just square their shoulders and think more positively, though I am a vigorous advocate of square shoulders and positive thinking.” 

 Elder Holland says, 

“However bewildering this all may be (speaking of the various forms of psychoses and neuroses), these afflictions are some of the realities of mortal life, and there should be no more shame in acknowledging them than in acknowledging a battle with high blood pressure or the sudden appearance of a malignant tumor.”

Elder Holland emphasizes that if you had appendicitis, God would expect you to seek priesthood blessings and get the best medical care available. We are expected to use the wonderful resources available to us.  On that same note, someone would seek that help from someone best suited to give medical advice for appendicitis.  So it’s possible that we may not know enough about a very personal and vulnerable situation to judge the amount of faith someone has, or the way they are applying the atonement in their lives.  I fear that sometimes in an effort to be right, those around us often forget that our ultimate goal is to have charity and one of the best ways to show charity is to withhold judgement. There is a lot of controversy and a lot of opinions in the world about the best ways to treat any sort of mental challenge.  For one person, one thing may work better than for another and our perception of what is happening may not be completely accurate.  For me, it took years to finally get a grasp on what treatments worked for me and to develop the skills necessary to live, what my parents and I prayerfully felt was a functioning life. 

So in his talk, Elder Holland gives specific council on how to respond to these challenges.  These points apply to both those who suffer with mental challenges, and to the loved ones around them, doing their best to help and love.  I’ll summarize and point out 5 of them.

1 - “Never lose faith in your Father in Heaven, who loves you more than you can comprehend.”

The Lord has promised that he will not leave us comfortless. He knows what things will provide us with the most peace and happiness and He will provide those blessings.  In his due time. However, he explains that, his ways are higher than our ways, and his thoughts higher than our thoughts.  He knows what tests in this mortal life will ultimately lead us to become more like him, and which ones will make us stronger.  One way I have seen God manifest His love for me during difficult times is particularly through angels - both seen and unseen.  Friends and family and even at times strangers have provided me with unconditional love and support that has completely pierced my soul.  These people strengthen my testimony and help me know of God’s love for me.  We need to recognize the hand of the Lord in all things, but we also need to BE the hand.  We need reach out to those around us realizing that we are all in need of the Savior, and we are ALL His children.  God’s love is always there for us.  

2 - “Faithfully pursue the time-tested devotional practices that bring the Spirit of the Lord into your life.”  

• Study the Book of Mormon with diligence.  This will open up the gates of our hearts for the spirit to touch and comfort us.  It is a book of truth, and therefore light.  Even if the specific words in the particular scripture don’t bring comfort, reading it opens the way for the holy spirit to do so.  
• Serve others.  We must lose ourselves in the service of God in order to find ourselves.  I recently learned about a girl named Jocie who at about 19 years old was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder.  This is the same young woman who in the Woman’s general session of conference, Sister Stephens spoke about.  For days at a time Jocie, couldn’t find the strength to even get out of her bed.  After years of searching for answers to her difficulties, she found the courage to step outside of herself and reach out to others to find joy in the journey.   She founded what is called the 444 project, based on the scripture Alma 44:4 -  

“Now ye see that this is the true faith of God; yea, ye see that God will support, and keep, and preserve us, so long as we are faithful unto him, and unto our faith, and our religion; and never will the Lord suffer that we shall be destroyed except we should fall into transgression and deny our faith.” 

For her project, she travels all around the world, inviting others to reflect on the things that bring them joy and what good things help get them out of bed in the morning.  She reminds them of the love of God and serves them by exemplifying it despite her own struggle to find light and peace.  In D&C 19:23, the Lord explains that 

“he who doeth the works of righteousness shall receive his reward, even peace in this world and eternal life in the world to come.”  

• Practice Gratitude.  Elder Holland said that

“Through any illness or difficult challenge, there is still much in life to be hopeful about and grateful for.”  

Growing up, my mom always encouraged me to literally count my many blessings.  She would tell me to sit down and write out all of my blessings big or small.  I can’t tell you how many sticky notes from work are filled, and school class notes interrupted by little lists of things I had to remind myself were blessings I enjoyed.  Even during dark times. These little lists were gifts to me.  They helped me move on in the day and my spirit was quickly lifted and I was humbled to give thanks to my Lord for His love. 

3 - “Seek the counsel of those who hold keys for your spiritual well being and ask for and cherish priesthood blessings.” 

When I was only 9 years old, I had an experience that was just the beginning of years and years and years of struggle.  My family was having FHE on a Monday night and I broke down into a complete panic attack.  I was completely overcome with a feeling of suffocation and despair.  At 9 years old.  I didn’t even know what the word “suicide” was, and yet I became completely lost in not wanting to have to deal with the pain I was feeling and to just return home with Heavenly Father.  In that moment, my dad stopped our family home evening to give me a priesthood blessing.  In between my sobs, I remember him telling me that the Savior carried out the atonement for me, and that in the Garden of Gethsemene He had felt what I was feeling. My dad promised that Jesus knew and loved me.  I remember my sobs slowing, and my breaths becoming deeper and longer as a feeling of calm and peace filled my soul.  I was finally able to fall asleep on the sheepskin rug on my parents’ floor - a place I would sleep for months at a time in the next several years.  We determined we needed to seek the counsel of my bishop.  He obviously wasn’t trained in therapy or in mental disorder, but he did have stewardship over me and he was able to connect my family with an LDS family therapist, a woman who I still to this day, refer to as “my Lisa.”  She was my children’s therapist for years, and inspired my desire to study social work and help others in a similar way.  She was one of my God-given, Priesthood-leader-inspired angels.  

4 - “Take the sacrament every week, and hold fast to the perfecting promises of the Atonement of Jesus Christ.”  

Elder Bednar explains that “the ordinances of salvation and exaltation administered in the Lord’s restored Church are far more than rituals or symbolic performances.  Rather, they constitute authorized channels through which the blessings and powers of heaven can flow into our individual lives.”  

I know of nothing else that can call upon the power of God into our troubled lives than  priesthood authorized ordinances, also including temple service and worship.    As far as the atonement goes, it is one of the basic principles of our gospel, and for me, it was only when I was reminded that the Lord knew perfectly my pain, that I was able to find a bit of peace.  The Lord pleads for us to let Him heal us.  Sister Stephens refers to Jocie, as I did before, who said that her mother so badly wanted to bear her pain and Jocie was deeply impressed to tell her mother, “You don’t have to, someone already has.”  In that moment, the spirit testified to her that Jesus Christ carries our burden’s because of his love and willingness to undergo all of our pain.  Cast your burden’s at his feet and trust in His promises to relieve us.  In his due time. 

5 - “Believe in Miracles.”  

President Monson says that Faith always precedes the miracles, so believe that the miraculous stories told of Christ healing the sick, still happen today and that they can happen for you and your loved ones as well.    

Elder Holland closes by saying that, 

“though we may feel we are like a broken vessel, as the Psalmist says, we must remember, that vessel is in the hands of the divine potter.  Broken minds can be healed just the way broken bones and broken hearts are healed.  While God is at work making those repairs, the rest of us can help by being merciful, nonjudgemental and kind.”  

I would also add, are we not all broken?  As King Benjamin says, 

“Are we not all beggars?  Do we not all depend upon the same being, even God?” I know that each of us is on a journey of healing and that true healing and happiness comes only from Jesus Christ and the blessings, resources and inspiration He provides for us.  We are also told to have joy in this life and what Elder Holland said are some great places to start in proactively obeying that counsel.   I know Christ  is never unaware of our suffering.  A sparrow does not fall to the earth except He knows it.  I also know that difficult times can bring us closer to Him and shape us to be exactly who He needs us to be.  I know of these things for myself because I have felt them and the Spirit has born witness of them to me personally.  If these are things that you don’t know yet, or are unsure about, stick with it.  Trust that God will show his hand.  In his due time.  I testify of His love and tenderness and friendship and miracles and pray that we can all be faithful, merciful, and joyful through Him.  

**********

I've become more and more...aware...I guess you could say of the mental struggles I face.  Not that my anxiety or depression has increased significantly - it has always fluctuated - but I have just become more cognizant of it in my life.  Every single day there are things that I do or feel or say that are results of these disorders.  To be honest I don't always realize it because They have sort of just become part of who I am.  Early on I learned to function with them in my life and I have made it work.  And it has worked.  

 Only a few months ago was I reminded that not everyone has the same views as I do about how the mind works, and about how to respond when someone around them has these burdens, or in my mind, blessings.  Having graduated from social work, I know many of the differing views.  I am aware of, and have studied about the various controversies about mental health and where it stems from, how it should be handled so on and so forth.  You'd think I would have known better than to just assume everyone I interacted with would be accepting of this "baggage" of mine.  

I have grown up being constantly surrounded by friends and family who immediately opened up to this part of me, who loved me not just despite it, but in some situations, more so because of it.  My friends have made me feel completely "normal" and I have always been able to just be myself with them.  They have taken me in in every way possible and I am forever grateful for them.  People who are close to me quickly learn my languages of receiving love and know that they often revolve around my anxiety, OCD, and depression.  And boy, did/do they know how to show me that love.  As my brother says, as he pats me on the head in the most endearing way possible... “constant validation is key with this one.”  haha (we have come a long way since him calling me OCD when I was 7 years old.  I was so offended by that).  

 I won't go into detail, but several months ago, as I mentioned before, someone I cared a lot about saw things differently than than the people closest to me, and I, see things.  I recognize and honestly appreciate that everyone has their own experiences and that those experiences shape their understandings of things.  I don't hold bitterness toward people who have learned things differently, but different experiences don't change the fact that I am far more than the labels on my medication bottles. No matter how much I tried to explain that I live an extremely happy, functional life, and that my disorders have only enlarged my heart and that I chose a career path as an effort only to help others, it was hard for our relationship to progress.  Then I learned that I shouldn’t have to defend or explain myself.  At first I was angry and extremely hurt.  In all my years of dealing with this, I have never been made to feel so “different” or so defined by these difficulties.  I felt a self-consciousness that I hadnt felt since I was a little girl barely learning about what these disorders even were, and that I had early onset versions of them.  I felt ashamed and questioned so much about my whole being that for a bit I had a hard time trusting people with this very vulnerable information. Then my anger turned to sorrow.  A type of Godly sorrow, I feel.  I felt sorry for anyone who limited not me, but themselves, by not embracing...me.  Even some of my weaknesses that I work every day to apply the atonement to, to make easier.  Much of the good of who I am comes from these burdens/blessings and the world of Hannah Joy Russon is far more than me just meeting that threshold of stress that I can handle before having to take a step back and allowing myself to reset.  It's more than me becoming fixated on ideas or concerns, then sometimes crossing lines while trying to be in complete control of  those things.  More than the face that I sometimes put on while trying to not be consumed by what is going on inside of me.  It’s more than me completely crashing and introverting after a long, hard week.  It’s me getting up and being better than I was before because of it.  It’s me learning skills necessary to turn my stumbling blocks into stepping stones. 

My anxiety scares me in the workplace. It scares me in dating.  How will people respond?  How will these things interfere?  How can I show people to not only look past these things, but to try to look with, or along side of them...to really know that this is not a filter to look at Hannah through, but is rather part of the picture itself...and it's beautiful.

  For me, I have learned to try to greet pain as the occasional visitation of an old friend.  A friend who has pushed me to my limits and stretched me and who, most importantly, has introduced me to another who also knows it well.  It is Him and our Father’s plan that I chose.  Pain in this life sometimes reminds me of that.  It reminds me that I am quite alive and there is great power in that.  I wouldn’t have the relationship with my Savior that I do now, had I not been drawn to my knees at such a young tender age.  To really know and understand pain is possibly one of the greatest gifts of our mortal experiences.  Without it we wouldn’t know joy.  I always pray that when I see the presence of pain in others’ lives, I will recognize it, and not turn away from it, but do my best to help lift, love, and encourage them.  Perhaps help quicken their coming to know the Savior as well.  No one can truly determine the amount of someone else’s applying the atonement of Christ (except maybe an authorized Priesthood leader).  One person may get up out of bed and live a seemingly normal life, another person may be bed-ridden for weeks at a time.   The two may have equally sacred relationships with God.  

So, having said all of this, this post is not a way for me to try to convince myself of what I want to believe.  It’s what I know about myself and what I have felt as I have gotten to know others in some of the most painful situations this life has to offer.  It’s not a post to belittle or deny the differences that we all have in the way we have been raised or what views have been instilled in our minds.  Quite the opposite, actually.  Its more of a prayer for people to just try to understand - to just try to embrace peoples’ stories and see the good in them, no matter what they may be.  This journey is a hard one and the least any of us can do is see that we may not know the whole truth in someone else’s situation and that we should love them for the divine beings they are rather than just the “convenient” parts of them.  The least we can do is try to bring others closer to Christ by sharing His love and mercy with them.    Because truly, are we not all broken?  Are we not all beggars requiring as much of that love as possible?  How wonderful it be to one day rejoice with one another in our perfected states.  Until then...hello pain, my old friend. 

EMERGENCY

Again, I know it has been forever since I have posted.  I promise I journal in my personal journal and lately my mind has just been full of so many other things, I haven't had the time or brain capacity to form clear writing thoughts!  But my experience tonight led me to have very clear thoughts of how I should express myself and so I felt like I better run with it.  So, in case you didn't know, I just started a new job!  It is a fantastic job with the state.  I have a fancy badge on one of of those cool zip-line things that hooks to my belt loop, and I know codes and secret stuff and I'm learning a lot.  I moved just for the job and I love my new place.  I'm getting to know my roommates and so far we are becoming friends.  However...ooooohhhh HOWEVER.  This.  Is.  Hard.  I didn't know.  I didn't know I would struggle so much.  I feel like I'm having a harder time transitioning to this than I did when I moved away to college for the first time.  I call my mom a lot.  This is a hard field to be going into.  There are a lot of heavy things I'm trying to prepare myself to have to deal with.  Right now I'm reading an assigned book about how to prevent secondary trauma in the workplace.  So tonight while reading that, I had an absolute MELTDOWN.  I was so incredibly overcome with self-doubt and fear.  I was ready to march into my supervisor's office tomorrow morning and tell him I couldn't do it.  I got scared of the things I was going to have to face.  I started to feel suffocated thinking about having a full-time job and being restricted in a lot of ways because of that (hello, no two week Christmas break?).  I got scared that this job would change me - that I wouldn't be my happy/optimistic self after so long.  I wanted to pack up my things and just go home.  So I knelt down and told the Lord all of my fears.  I told Him I didn't think I could do it, that I came this far and maybe that was good enough.  After praying for a bit and getting my sobs under control, I knew I needed to get to the temple.  And fast.  It all of the sudden became this mad rush to get to the temple.  I quickly changed and with a warm washcloth did my best to wipe the "cry" off of my face.  With PB&J in hand I ran down the steps of my apartment building.  I felt like I was on my way to the hospital or something.  Never in my life have I felt such an urgency to get to the temple.  I couldn't think of anything else besides getting there.
What a blessing the temple is.  It is everything.  Being there tonight healed my soul.  Immediately I started to feel lighter.  I started to feel alive again after being so consumed with doubt and fear.  This was home.  It was a hospital.  A spiritual hospital.  I felt lifted and empowered.  I felt strengthened and supported by my loving Heavenly Father and Savior.  While there I was reminded that angels are around me and that they will bear me up.  I felt the Lord say to stick to it, even just for a bit longer.  One day at a time.  There is a plan.  In no way am I alone in this.  I was reminded of this by going to the temple.  In my complete loss of confidence and everything I was doing, I (quite literally) fled to the temple and was reminded of God's love.  Oh, how we all need to do this.  Whether it means we need to get there more often, or it means we do everything in our power to become worthy to enter, I would most definitely say that there is, indeed, urgency to this.  So much urgency.  Go.  Please, please go.  I know the temple is a sacred, heavenly place.  It is the house of the Lord.  It connects us to Him.  Without the strain and confusion of the world, I can feel Heavenly Father and Jesus' love so easily there.  In what I would consider a spiritual and emotional emergency, I was desperate to get to the temple tonight

and I pray I always will be.

Words of My Soul

"Lift."  A few weeks ago, I was able to attend the sealing of my cousin, Kellee to her sweet Erik.  Oh, that was a tender day.  I wept throughout the whole day!  Like, I'm not talkin' just some little "awww" tears...I'm talkin' my nose and eyes got red and I wanted to run off into the bathroom and just let out an ugly cry sound instead of hold it in and give myself a "hold-in-your-cry" headache.  I just...I had so many feelings!  They were beautiful, good, happy, pondering-of-eternal-things feelings.  Without saying anything I shouldn't, I want to tell about a story the sealer told.  He told about how he has been married for some long about of time (I can't remember) and that when he and his sweetheart first got married, he loved praying for her.  He would pray for her throughout the day.  He would pray for her protection and happiness.  He prayed for her desires to come through and for the Lord to bless her.  He said that after they had been married for quite some time and his prayers just got a little habitual and mundane, he was quickly praying for the common things when he had a distinct impression saying "Well why are you asking me?  Be her blessings.  Bless her yourself."  He said he was a little shocked by that answer but that it was an important one for him to receive.  When he told that story, I lost it.  I love that!  I have been thinking about what love is a lot lately, and that is it.  I have been thinking a lot about the people who I love and have just felt so strongly, "if I could just lift them, even a little...what an honor that would be.  If I could just help bare that burden in some way..."  That is who I want to be.  I want to be a blessing to others around me.  "Where love is, there God is also."  Of course prayer is involved.  Of course depending on the Savior is the only way to live such love.  It is so unbelievably easy to get caught up in the day to day habits and to speed through the day just going through the motions.  But to lift someone...to slow down enough to truly lift someone.  That would be a blessing.  "Thee lift me and I'll lift thee, and we'll ascend together."  One of the greatest truths ever told.
"Fortunate" is another word that has constantly been running through my mind lately.  I am so incredibly fortunate.  God has blessed me in ways I can't express.  When I think of these blessings - when I think of what I have, the veil is thin and I feel God's love so purely.  Even in my small apartment in Logan Utah. Why me?  "Who am I, that this day, He should come to me?"  To have such wonderful people in my life?  To have had the experiences I have in order to teach and stretch and strengthen me? Someone who has so little to give back, that's who.  But I'll give it!  What fortunes we as children of God have to share!
"Sit."  Another word that, by what I believe to be divine intervention, continues to flash through my brain.  Just sit.  A while back I had a conversation with someone I look up to greatly and who I consider to be very wise.  We talked about how in some ways we were both in places in our lives where we wanted so badly to move forward and to be the "doers" that we are.  She said, "we have the faith to DO," but sometimes we have to have the faith to just wait until the Lord reveals our next step to us."  Ha, I kind of think of it like that one dog trick my dad used to do with our ol' Rascal (may he rest in peace).  My dad would make him sit down, then he would place a treat right on the tip of his nose and tell him to stay sitting.  My dad would back away slowly just telling him to "staaaaay, staaaaay."  He would do that for minutes at a time and poor Rascal just had to sit there looking at the treat.  It wasn't until my dad would wave his hand and say a loud "GO" that rascal would toss his nose up and catch the treat in his mouth.  That dog had some serious self control.  The Lord says we will be blessed after the trial of our faith.  Sometimes we really do have to just sit tight for a minute.  And that takes a lot of faith too!  Sometimes, I think, more than just going ahead and digging would.  I say digging because that same wise person who pointed this out to me, also told me..."Hannah, the Lord will move mountains but don't be surprised if He hands you a shovel."  Here I am!  Ready to dig!  Ready to MOVE!  Let's go!  But in a lot of ways, I have yet to get that "GO!" from the Lord.  Sitting and waiting for it, whatever "it" may be, can be uncomfortable and yet He is standing right there promising us that we WILL eventually get the answers...it's just a matter of His timing.  His plan.  He does find ways to make it more comfortable..."Here, have a lawn chair.  Here's some lemonade, a butterfly, encouraging friends, the Book of Mormon, the temple..."  Oh what a journey we all chose to embark on...
Lift, fortunate, sit...funny and seemingly completely unrelated words, yet words that fill my soul every day.  God is good and I am indeed fortunate.  So fortunate.

"This was not my plan."

"It is as truly a blasphemous interference with the prerogatives of Diety to set limitations or make fixations of time or place at which the divine power shall be made manifest as it is to attempt to usurp that power.  God alone must decide when and how His wonders shall be wrought."   - James E. Talmage, Jesus the Christ

So I suppose it is about time I wrote this post.  It has been several months since I promised I would share it so here it goes.  

Let me start by giving a bit of a background.  Ever since I was in ninth grade I have known what I wanted to be when I "grew up."  I remember the specific text conversation I was having with a good friend when the thought even crossed my mind.  Then meetings with my bishop, even at that young age, continued to build in my mind the idea that being a children's therapist was an option.  After receiving my Patriarchal blessing the summer before starting high school, my way was pretty set.  See, there were several things said in that blessing that set me, even more concretely, on the social work path.  Pretty specific assignments and prophecies and promises had been laid out in my Patriarchal blessing - ones which the specificity of them even shocked my parents who had sat through each of their children's blessings.  

All through high school and my college years I knew what I needed to do.  No question ever arose in my mind about what I needed to major in, what steps would be necessary for me to take, nor arose any deterrent from my willingness to take those steps.  I was going to fulfill those assignments!  A couple of those steps would include going to grad school to get my Master's in social work along with getting my LCSW license.  Taking these steps was exciting to me and I worked hard to make sure I would qualify for them.  Well, the only way I know how to describe it, is that my heart started to change.  My mind started to lean in other directions.  Going to grad school became less and less appealing.  In a conversation I had with my mom, I told her that path started to look blurry.  This was during the end of my junior year when I would need to start preparing to take the GRE or MAT in order to apply to grad school the following Fall.  During the summer, it got even worse.  I honestly "wrestled" with myself about it for months.  The previous Christmas my gift to Jesus was, "I offer all I am for the mercy of your plan."  This very subject in mind.  Anyway, I prayed and prayed and had large amounts of anxiety about it.  What was the right thing to do?  How would I fulfill God's plan if I didn't go to grad school?  Then one Sunday during sacrament meeting, I had been fasting about it and felt overwhelmed with the answer that I was NOT to go to grad school immediately upon graduating.  With only weeks before my applications would be due, this was an incredible blessing and relief.  It came so powerfully, I had to write my thoughts down as they came.  I started writing vigorously right there in church.  My thoughts came as this:  the Lord's ability to make me fulfill the assignments talked about in my patriarchal blessing are not limited to this one path.  "How would I fulfill God's plan if I didn't go to grad school?" - where is the faith in that?  Thus the quote at the beginning of this post (which I happened to read just tonight.  Perfect).  It was like my perspective was extremely widened.  Other options flooded - and have continued to flood - into my mind.  

Well, because I'm human, a while later I found myself really questioning myself again.  What if I had ruined the plan or done something wrong?!  Then another confirmation.  This time in the temple, where I had been taught that I could have confidence in any answers received there.  He had already given me an answer, but kind Heavenly Father gave it to me again.  I wept as I sat in the Celestial room and felt peace that it was okay that I didn't apply to grad school.  

Okay.  Got that answer.  But then what?  I would have liked to think that I wasn't to go to grad school because I was going to start a family, but I don't know that.  I then seriously considered a mission for a while, but that faded.  Again, extreme anxiety.  Because I didn't know exactly what I would be doing instead of continuing in school, graduation became extremely daunting.  In the last few months I have felt almost lazy - like I was lacking in effort in proactively having a set plan.  People have asked me, "what will you do after graduation?" and I have just kind of said "I don't know...get a job???"  I imagined those people in their minds saying:  "Oh, she doesn't have a plan.  Nice one."  But even more recently, I have felt a lot of peace about the unknown.  Like I said, several options have presented themselves to me.  

For example, while in the temple (again) a couple of weeks ago, I was overjoyed thinking about one of these options.  I felt extremely excited about at least moving forward in that direction.  In that moment I was kind of in amazement that so much about my path had changed.  In my head I sort of bewilderingly chuckled to God, "Father, this was not my plan."  Complete relief.  I felt Him say in His kind fatherly way, "it never was."  It was never MY plan.  It was like a weight had been lifted off my shoulder and I knew that for now, the Lord was going to reveal answers to me step by step.  For now, I need to walk blind for a bit.  It is stretching me and it is so scary, but He IS guiding me.  Even though my path is not always clear, and I don't have answers, I know He is near.  I know He has not left my side and that HE has a plan.  I thought I understood it, and maybe that's how He needed me to understand it for a while, but He knows all things and will give me gifts and abilities to fulfill His assignments.  I feel that so strongly even now as I write this.  He will give me answers right when He needs me to know.  I feel so willing to move.  He knows that, so He will guide my feet.  In His time and way.  Oh, how strange this is.  All of my cohorts are saying, "I was accepted to so and so school."  "I'm going to grad school here..." I just kind of laugh and stare into space thinking, "I thought that would be me!"  Nope!!  Not now anyway.  Maybe next year I'll feel the need to apply.  Maybe now fuzzy things will become less fuzzy and I'll look back and go, "ooooohhhh...that's why."  Maybe not.  Maybe I won't know exactly why.  I do know this:  God is so merciful.  Jesus Christ is my friend.  They carry me and are ever near.  Nothing is our own.  The temple is the most important thing in this world, and the veil thin within those walls.  Thank heavens we don't have to navigate through this life on our own.  Thank heavens we don't have to KNOW our every next move and step - or even the path we are to take.  

Except one.  We follow the Savior's path.  Always.  

 

My Miracle

So I have been debating writing about this  just because it could be taken the wrong way by some.  I feel, though, that not writing about it and sharing it would be me not acknowledging that a miracle did in fact happen.  It needs to be shared.  Be warned.  It gets a bit personal.
A couple of months ago I started feeling tenderness in my right breast.  I tried to brush it off and just think of different things it could be...maybe I was sleeping on it weird or something.  I started giving myself little breast examinations just about every day trying to feel for lumps.  If you didn't know though, the breast is lumpy tissue anyway so that made it rough to figure out if it was really anything or not.  However, I continued to have to have pain in a very isolated spot and I started to get more and more nervous.  I was also having some breathing problems and my chest was hurting a lot so I got scared that they were somehow related.  In my mind I thought the worst thing possible - I had cancer and it had spread to my lungs.  So I made an appointment with the campus wellness center.  I explained what was going on and they were more concerned about my heart and lungs that anything else.  EKG and chest X-ray showed nothing wrong in either though.  The doctor told me it was probably a new way my body was trying to cope with stress.  Okay.  Then they told me I could go.  I quickly reminded them about my other concern and the nice lady doctor gave me a quick breast exam.  She told me to show her where my pain was.  I pointed.  She felt.  Lump.  She told me I would need to go get an ultrasound at the hospital the next morning.  She also immediately told me that the fact that I have tenderness is a good sign - less tumor-like.  She said she thought it was probably just a fibrosis agnoma (or something like that.  I don't know the terms).  Okay, great, well I'm still scared.  I left feeling extremely discouraged and scared.  I tried to just stay positive while I was at my internship, but the second I got back to my apartment, I lost it.  The only thing I could do was fall to my knees and pray.  I knelt there weeping.  I was terrified.  I told Heavenly Father that it has always been easy for me to trust Him when it came to all things physical.  I knew that if my family members were ever to get sick, or if I were ever to get sick, it would be His doing and we had something to learn.  In my mind, I put my hands out like I so often have - completely lost at what to do or think and just trying to be open to whatever answers He might give.  I asked Him what I had to learn from this and how I could have peace.  In that moment I thought about the other concerns I have in my life - mostly dating and school related decisions.  In that moment Heavenly Father told me through the Spirit that I needed to trust Him in ALL things.  Not just all things physical.  My sobs paused for a moment as I tried to process the impression I had just had.  I felt a wave of humility and relief at the reminder that I can truly give my burdens to the Lord - that I didn't have to do anything on my own.  I felt peace and stillness.  I knew things were going to be okay.  Still my mom came up to Logan so I wouldn't have to go to a scary appointment by myself - after all, what if it was scary news?  I wasn't about to find out I had cancer by myself.  So we went to the appointment, got my ultrasound and there was NOT a mass.   A small cancer-less enflamed gland or group of fibers or whatever (I don't know - I was just focusing on the fact that it wasn't a tumor).  They said we would keep an eye on it and if it got worse or seemingly bigger that we would do a biopsy, but so far so good!  Cancer free, baby!  Again.  Relief.
I left the hospital with my mom feeling a little sheepish at the ordeal this had been just for it to turn out to be nothing.  Why had I been so afraid?  Then I told her my experience praying and she told me that if that experience was what this was for, then it was worth it.  I had a special experience with my father in heaven and with my loving older brother.  I felt their love and was told that I could trust them no matter what.  Some things in my life are just as out of my control as getting breast cancer is.  The Lord is in charge though.  That, I had to know for sure.  My mom and I had a good talk about how sweet it was that God would give me this opportunity to learn from Him.
I think of this experience often when I get caught up in trying to have control over everything and when I start to feel impatient about different things in my life.  "Trust me in all things - not just the physical," He said.  So maybe me not having cancer wasn't exactly the miracle in this situation.  I obviously never had it and while it was an incredible relief to not have it, I think the more profound miracle was the spiritual experience I had the night before and the next morning in realizing what had happened.  Like the woman who touched Christ's robes knowing she would be healed, my cancer-free self was not the miracle - it was that my relationship with Heavenly Father and Jesus were strengthened.  The Lord showed His hand in a way I hadn't really expected.  He taught me a lesson I needed.  Right there in my little apartment, next to my stilted bed and mini fridge.  He taught me a lesson I won't ever forget.     That is absolutely a miracle!  And they happen everyday if we are willing to listen.  If we will humble ourselves enough to let Him reach us, He will.  He always will.  I know we have a loving Heavenly Father who is watching over us.  I know we have a Savior and Redeemer in Jesus Christ.  He is in everything good.  How grateful I am for the constant line of communication we have with those who love us perfectly.  How grateful I am for the any lesson and answer I can get whenever they deem fit.  How grateful I am for the constant miracles they reveal to us if we turn to them.  I believe in Miracles, indeed.  

"For I Saw Him and I Heard His Voice"

I just love General Conference.  Don't you?   Not only does it strengthen my resolve to be a better person in the future, but it also makes me think back to the moments when I gained my testimony about the most fundamental principles of the gospel.  Elder Neil L. Anderson's talk did that for me this time.  He spoke all about Joseph Smith, remember?  He mentioned that we must all gain a testimony of Joseph Smith in our own way.  He then listed a few examples of how that is done.  When he said this, I was taken back to the very moment I knew without a doubt that Joseph Smith was a prophet of a living God.

I was just thirteen.  My family flew out to Nauvoo Illinois to participate in the Nauvoo Pageant.   I loved learning the songs, making new friends, staying up late playing signs, and visiting various church historical sights.  We would spend only two weeks there.  One week learning the pageant and one week performing it.  I have never sweat so much in my whole life!  

One of the Sundays we were there, there was what they called a Sunday Sociable.  It's now called "Our Story Goes On," but it was just the first year they did it so it was still being developed.  It forever has a special place in my heart and I go to see it whenever I can.  It was basically a medley of well-known broadway show-tunes put to a script about life and love and the pursuit of happiness, to put it simply.   A few church songs were also added or written to be included in the program.   I remember loving the songs and the uplifting messages but there was one that, as cliche as it sounds, changed my life.  The man who played Joseph Smith, Dallyn Bayles - a man who I knew well from Savior of the World and who I already greatly admired - got up to sing.  It was a song being sung as if by Joseph Smith himself.  It was Joseph telling his story.  "As a boy alone in a quiet grove, I knelt in earnest prayer..." He sang the words, 

"For I saw Him and I heard His voice.  And the answers that He gave me made my heart rejoice.  So now I testify.  I'll tell the world until my dying day.  I have seen Him - the truth, the light, the way." 

Immediately upon hearing him sing, "I saw Him and I heard His voice," I was completely overcome - head to toe - with a feeling I had never felt before.  It wasn't a line upon line, precept upon precept acquiring of knowledge.  It was all there.  Right then.  I knew it was true.  I knew Joseph Smith was a prophet of God who saw my Heavenly Father and Savior Jesus Christ.  He saw them!  I was able to see Dallyn as Joseph Smith and hear his story as if it was him telling me.  Instead it was the Holy Spirit confirming to me that what I had been singing and dancing about for those two weeks was real.  I could taste it.  I couldn't control the tears.  I wept during the whole song.  It was one of those moments that I have previously talked about, where the ground shook.  At least it seemed to.  I ran up to my dorm room and cried and cried - my awkward little body didn't know how to handle this new feeling!  I felt like I was going to burst!  I wrote in my journal, and this is directly from it, "Christ is real and I feel so close to Him now than I ever have before.  Joseph Smith is real and I love him so much.  When I see him, I will thank him and hug him."  I grew such a strong, deep love and appreciation for the prophet of the restoration that day.  Most importantly, I recognized that if he was real, the Book of Mormon was true and I had an older brother and redeemer who loved me.  I felt what Joseph Smith said himself about being completely unable to deny the truth he knew.  

At the time I didn't know how unbelievably crucial this experience would be to my entire testimony, but I can honestly say that it was one of the most important moments and the beginning of my true conversion.  Everything changed after that.  Ever since then, I have never had a doubt in my mind that Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon and saw God the Father and His Son.  Not a doubt.  It is instilled in my heart forever.  I think about Nauvoo and that moment often.  I can still smell it in certain hairsprays or lotions, the songs still get stuck in my head, and I thrill whenever someone tells me they are going to see or be in it...but nothing is as much a part of me as that bit of truth I learned that day.  Not much younger than he was when he was introduced to this gospel, it became real to me that day and has been ever since.  

How grateful I am for the miracle moments we are blessed with.  Moments when the Lord teaches us the most important things we can possibly learn.  I know Joseph Smith was a prophet of God.  He translated the Book of Mormon.  He saw and heard Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ.  They live and it does, indeed, "make my heart rejoice."

Men and Women Alike...or should I say...Men and Women Different?

I need to get this down while my heart is so full.  I have been thinking about this post for a good while now, knowing that I needed to defend my beliefs, but not knowing exactly what words to use.  I have written, revised, and re-written what I think might be okay to say in order to explain why I believe women do not need to hold the Priesthood.  Let me start by sharing a little experience I had the other day.
Several of my friends and I drove down to Zion's National Park for a fun weekend getaway of enjoying God's good green (and red rock) earth.  We decided to hike the narrows - a hike that is 60% wading through water in a river.  The hike is beautiful, but finding the right footing in the bottom of the rocky/slick river can be pretty difficult.  We young adults slipped and lost our balance multiple times throughout the hike.  After we reached a certain point we turned to head back down to the base of the water hike but found an older woman sitting on the ground with her wrist in the freezing water.  She and her husband were hiking the river when she fell and broke her wrist.  We immediately offered her some ibuprofen and asked what we could do to help.  Her husband was making a sling out of a plastic bag when my cute CNA girl friend whipped out her first aid kit.  I watched as she kindly spoke to the lady and as she gently wrapped her arm in a sling and cushioned her elbow with a towel.  She was one prepared woman!  She nurtured that sweet old lady and provided her care when she needed it.  Half of us then walked further down the river while we waited for the rest of our group to come down with her.  I turned around and watched as my sweet friends formed a safety circle around her:  two of my good strong, guy friends held on to her waist and arms on either side of her as she made her way down those slippery rocks.  Imagine the comfort she felt knowing that if she did misstep, those good young men would be there to protect and stabilize her and not let her fall yet again.  I was so  overwhelmed with gratitude for those good boys who would be tender enough to offer this woman, a complete stranger, their strength when she needed it.  My mind immediately went to the Priesthood.  The Priesthood of God is never about benefitting and blessing ourselves.  Anyone who is benefitted from this power of God is benefitted at the hand of another.  The Priesthood is not about woman being "strong" or "prepared" enough as men.   It is not about women earning more responsibility and being promoted.   It is about blessing the lives of others.  The other girls on the scene at the hike were not competing or thinking they should be the ones holding on to the woman going down the river.  Everyone's priority was simply to get the woman the help she needed - everyone's individual gifts and abilities involved.  Woman with her preparedness and nurturing abilities.  Men with their strength, sense of duty, and willingness to help.
 The priesthood is about serving others and we women offer other gifts and ways to serve others that men do not.  God given gifts and abilities.  But besides that, it's not a competition.  Nothing about this gospel is a competition.  Our true competition is against sin.  And ALL men and women alike, high status or low, prophet or nursery leader have been drafted to fight in that competition.  I support my Priesthood holders.  I love watching the young boys pass the sacrament and serve us.  I love feeling the protection of a humble man of God righteously using this gift.  Yes it is a privilege for these men to hold the Priesthood, but I consider it an extreme privilege to be the recipient of the blessings that come from supporting and watching and encouraging the practice of Priesthood authority and ordinances -  even if I am not ordained as a Priesthood holder myself.  They are not the Priesthood.  They hold it, yes.  But it is God's power and we honor Him and His designs.
Despite "the need to be needed" (that everyone innately has) and my personal desire to give all that I can to this gospel, I do not feel inferior and discriminated against.  I do not feel that I am less needed because I don't hold the Priesthood.  Why?  This is what it comes down to:  I know my Savior Jesus Christ.  I have a good enough relationship with Him to know that He is not a being to oppress, discriminate or be unfair in any way.  He suffered for the very cause of justice.  I encourage, no plea with, you to come to know Him as well.  Come to know of His love.  Faithfully seek for answers of truth, not for answers of power and validation.  Come to know of your value to Him.
What are each of our priorities?  To be recognized with certain authorities?  To be considered equal?  To have numbers and statistics be exactly matched?  Those are not Christ's priorities.  Just like with my friends and the woman who broke her wrist - their priority being her comfort - Christ's priorities are each one of us.  People matter.  Not status or title.  The building of God's kingdom, requiring all of us men and women alike (or should I say different), should be our priority as well.   The perfecting of the saints - everyone's individual gifts and abilities involved.  It comes down to each of us becoming more like our Savior and preparing to meet Him again.  It is about helping each other get there as well by practicing the pure love of Christ.
I love the Priesthood of God.  I love watching my sweet male friends honor it and honor God - they seem to glow with the future godliness inside of them.  I stand by them.  I support them and offer the individual gifts all of us women can give as well.  I support the prophet and his counselors.  They are called of God.  They are His mouthpieces and I will crawl to follow them.   Joseph Smith was not just ahead of his time (a time when woman's rankings were just above prisoners) when he gave women places in the church, when his wife Emma was commanded by personal revelation to help in the building of Christ's church.  It was necessary and prophetic.  We pray and speak and expand scriptures.  We serve missions, we work in the temple, we create human beings, we kiss scraped knees, and wrap broken wrists.  Does this sound like a church that oppresses women?  Does this sound like a church that holds women back? (See Sherri Dew's "What Do LDS Women Get?" video HERE). No.  Not to me.
God has His own agenda, and if women were ever to receive the Priesthood, and I firmly believe that will not happen in this earth life, it wouldnt be because the human race petitioned it.  It would be in His time and way.
I know He loves us with a perfect love that we cannot comprehend and that He has a plan and divine assignment for each of us.  Man and woman alike...
Different.  

"Look to God and Live"

     One bible story that has always amazed me, especially the way it is talked about in Alma 33, is the story of the fiery serpents and the brass serpent.  The account in Numbers 21 explains how many of the people of Israel were sinful, so the Lord sent serpents as punishment.  Many of the people were killed from being bitten by these serpents, but Moses prayed and was instructed to make a brass serpent for the sick people to simply look to.  That's it.  All they had to to do was look at it and they would be healed.  The accounts in Alma are my favorite.  Alma 33: 19 - 22 says, 

19.  Behold, he was spoken of by Moses; and behold a type was raised up in the wilderness, that whosoever would look upon it might live.  And many did look and live.  

20.  But few understood the meaning of those things and this because of the hardness of their hearts.  But there were many who were so hardened that they would not look, therefore they perished.  Now the reason they would not look is because they did not believe that it would heal them.   

21.  Oh my brethren, if ye could be healed by merely casting about your eyes that ye might be healed, would ye not behold quickly, or would ye rather harden your hearts in unbelief and be slothful, that ye would not cast about your eyes, that ye might perish?

22.  If so, wo shall come upon you; but if not so, then cast about your eyes and begin to believe in the Son of God, that he will come to redeem his people, and that he shall suffer and die to atone for their sins; and that he shall rise again from the dead, which has bring to pass the resurrection, that all men shall stand before him, to be judged at the last and judgment day, according to their works.   

     1Nephi 17:41 reads:

41.  ...[the Lord] prepared a way that they might be healed; and the labor which they had to perform was to look; and because of the simpleness of the way, or the easiness of it, there were many who perished.  

     Those who refused to look saw the healing power the Lord had prepared for them and I'm sure they were happy for their loved ones being healed, yet they wouldn't be healed themselves.  Why?  It's so easy just to look!  They just had to look.  In the past whenever I have read this I have just been dumbfounded at...well...how dumb they were NOT to look!!!  However I look back at the last several months and realize that I have related to them as well.  Their hearts were hardened, perhaps mostly against themselves.  We can be so hard on ourselves.  Perhaps they didn't believe they were deserving of such healing.  

     I think of how often I will sit down with a dear friend and testify with all that I am that the atonement of Jesus Christ can work for them - that if they keep their covenants they can be happy - these are things I know with all my heart.  Yet, when it comes to my sorrows, insecurities, and hurts, I forget that the plan of happiness is not just for everyone else, but it is for me.  Christ will heal even me.  

     This has been a humbling yet empowering realization for me.  Our Savior and older brother is in this with me - not just the people around me.  We are in this together and I am His.  Making a constant effort to have my focus and vision be on Him has made such a big difference for me in the last several nights.  I too can be healed.  

     I need Him and the way is simple.  It is through Him and only Him.  Whatever else I don't "understand" at this time...whatever else may not be "simple" in my mind...well, I still look.  Eye on the target, I will believe that Christ's miracles will work for me too - that He loves ME enough to make me happy as well.

I will allow myself to do as it says in Alma 37, and "look to God and live." 

A Red Marble Promise

Okay.  Let me tell you a story.  It's a good one.  Promise.  Worth the read, in my not-so-humble opinion.

So for a long time I had been feeling like I needed to get involved in family history work/indexing and all that good stuff.  I would get on my computer and see the little tree icon in the corner of my desktop and get a haunting pit in my stomach...then I would quickly facebook it out.  Well done, Hannah.  Anyweee, so finally the feeling wasn't so much of an anxiety or guilty feeling but it was more of just a need to do something.  Clearly the latter is the one that came from the Holy Ghost.  But I just could NOT get excited about it!  I couldn't bring myself to do it even though I knew that I was holding back as far as what I could give to the gospel went.  So this Christmas, I decided to make my gift to Jesus be that I would learn about and become more involved in family history work.  We take our gifts to Jesus pretty seriously around here and so I started going to the three week course of family history sunday school.  Then I knew I needed to sign up for an institute class but my schedule is all weird so in my brain I kept justifying NOT signing up for a family history class (guys, Satan can be tricky, k?).  So finally I just did it.  I just registered for the once a week class.  Theeeen I debated actually going because it was during a nice little break I had in between classes - a break that I would usually take a small snooze on campus during (like I said, Satan is tricky and plays at our weaknesses.  We all know how much I love a good campus snooze).  SO!  This is where it gets good.  And a bit more serious.  Wednesday night, the night before I would have to decide whether or not to actually go to this institute class, I had a good conversation with my roommate about how the Spirit works in our lives and how we need to act upon the promptings we get.  I knelt down and prayed and prayed that I would have the energy, motivation, and excitement I needed in order to make it to my class.  I knew I couldn't do it on my own because I am human and ridiculous.  GUESS WHAT HAPPENED NEXT!  Well, I went to bed.  BUT!  The next morning, when my tired wave usually hits around 10 in the a.m., I was wide awake!  I had a bounce in my step and I went into that family history class and LOVED it!!  I cannot even explain to you the joy and assurance I felt as I left my class.  I couldn't wipe the smile off of my face.  A) because I knew that I had been blessed - that the Lord got me there and B) because I truly felt confirmation that I was supposed to be in that class.  Since then, I have found a few names, given them to my parents, and those members of MY deceased family have received their baptismal and temple blessings.  Then I showed my dad how to do it and HE found some names.  Then I showed my brother and my sister and my nephew, and THEY are now determined to do the same.  What a joy.  A true, you-can't-find-it-anywhere-else joy.  My dad told me how excited he was about all of this after he found the name of a Russon man who needed every ordinance performed.  I thought to myself, "imagine how excited he is."  Which reminds me of a simple scenario I once heard that describes the importance of family work, missionary work, and our promises to "our fathers."  I re-wrote it in more of narrative form, and it is not doctrine by any means, but it personalized it for me.  I'll include it at the end of this post.  Read it, I say!!!

So to make a long story...less long, let me just tell you how exciting this has been for me.  Let me tell you how my testimony has grown in so many different facets.  I know family history work is important.  It is necessary and is most definitely us red marble holder's responsibility to participate in.  If the family history bug hasn't bitten you yet, pray for it to!  Pray for some motivation and desire and help.  You'll get it and you'll be blessed.   Promise. :) 

Well done for making it to the end of this story.  

The End.

Actually the end is after the red marble story, soooo....GO!

It was what seemed just a moment after the final decision of how our Father’s plan would be carried through, that we all lined up - waiting!  Excited and nervous to see what color of marble we would get.  We knew that the choice of receiving a body and going to earth would mean hardship.  We knew it would mean forgetting, for a while, the face of our Father.  We knew it meant being tested, but we didn’t know whether or not we would have the truths of the gospel to accompany us on our journey.  That’s what we were waiting to find out. 

If you were handed a red marble, you would be born into the gospel.  Of course you would still have to experience you own conversion process, but with the red marble, the gospel would constantly be at your fingertips.  If you were given a blue marble, you would have to wait a bit before coming to the knowledge of Jesus Christ.  You would be lucky enough to receive it still in the mortal life, but just not immediately.  A while without the truth and assurance of our Father’s plan and love would be required.  If you were given a green marble, oh everyone dreaded the green marble, you would be expected to walk the world without the complete truth - without the promises that can so fully be ours with the ordinances of baptism and the temple.  Perhaps you would be born during a great apostasy, or perhaps you would live in a far corner of the world where the messages of Christ couldn’t be spoken.  Whichever the case, the green marble was least desired.

So we patiently...anxiously...waited to see what lot we would face in life.  Two of my friends and I stood in line next to each other tightly holding hands until it came our turn to break our clasps and hold them out for a single marble to be dropped into.  My fist clasped tight around my marble before I even saw the color.  I slowly opened my hand only inches away from my face.  Red.  A never before experienced surge of relief fled over my body.  I couldn’t have been more thrilled.  I would have the companionship of the Holy Ghost to get me through whatever I would face in life.  I would have this glorious truth.  I hurriedly looked up to see my friend’s marbles, completely forgetting that theirs might be different than mine.  Neither of them spoke.  They both just looked from their hands up to me with small, faithful smiles on their faces.  One blue and one green.  Their tear-swelling eyes seemed to say to me, “what will we do?  What will you do?”  “I will find you,” I said, sealing my promise with an embrace for each of them.  “Whether it mean I walk long miles bolding testifying of the gifts I will be given, or it mean I spend hours searching for your name on old faded records and certificates, I will find you with the Lord as my guide. 

Each time I go to the temple or share my testimony, I can’t help but think of my brothers and sisters I quite possibly knew, loved, and promised to help receive the fullness of the gospel. 

This is the responsibility each of us have.  This is the promise of which Elijah has spoken.  May our hearts turn to our fathers...and our mothers and brothers and sisters.  May we ever give because we have been given much.  

Throw Down!...those weapons of war, that is.

Sometimes it takes everything inside of you to remain silent.  Even though what the world would tell you to do  - to stand up for yourself and the slight betrayal and hurt, to confront the battle, to have a spine - is what you would normally do.  Because you believe in being assertive.  You believe in talking it out and understanding every angle.  But even more so you believe in kind words.  Ones that don't sting or stab.  Even though they come to your mind and they are really clever and pretty dang accurate ...you keep them in.  Sometimes the right thing is to step back, even though you were the one wronged, to give in, throw down your weapon of war, and be the bigger person.  And.  THAT.  Is.  Really.  Really.  Hard.  To do.  It is heavy on the chest and watery in the eyes and it takes a lot of fist-clenching, teeth-grinding, praying, and grace on the Lord's part to help fiery and unresolved feelings go away.  No one wants to be bitter but sometimes those feelings come.  It's natural to be angry sometimes.  The Lord feels anger, right?  But it is how we respond to those feelings that define who we are.
I imagine the Anti-Nephi-Lehi's had great reason to want to fight - to defend themselves, yet they refused to lift their swords.  Because Christ enabled them.  And ya know what?  We too can be enabled.  Living proof of that right here, folks *fingers pointing right at my little face*.  Sometimes I am quite surprised at the frustration that can boil up inside of me!  Like, "whoa where the heck did that come from?"  Then I'm like, "oh yeah.  Satan." And that's when you wag your little finger and cobra your head and say "uuuuuuh uh!  No way.  Get outta town!"
God is good.  Just remember that tid bit, okay?
Night!

P.S.  Umm re-reading over this, you can totally tell the transformation that takes place in my attitude and heart.  I started writing it with bitterness still in my soul and as time passed and I depended on the Lord, my heart lightened.  The atonement is real!  If you don't know that for yourself, lean on me for a minute, because it IS real and I know it.

A Few Things...

1) I know, I know, I haven't been very good at blogging lately.  I guess I blog in phases.  BUT!  I really do think it's important.  For Christmas my mom gave me a book of my great great great grandma Hannah's writings and I love reading them.  She has written hundreds of poems and written out her life history.  The things she had to say truly strengthen my testimony and I think it is so special that I have that to read.  So I decided I need to be better at writing down my thoughts, the daily miracles that I witness, and the testimony that I have.
For example, I have been thinking a lot about adversity and how unbelievably grateful I am for the pains that I have experienced in this life.  They have truly helped me grow and gain a testimony of my own.  They have made me depend on the Lord in ways that I can't even fully express.  The other night I was reading in Mosiah, chapter 14 verse 5 and I was struck with a new meaning of "with his stripes we are healed" (Isaiah 53:5).  Not only are we healed by the stripes and burdens he bore for each and every one of us, but we can be healed - if we allow - through the stripes that we experience ourselves.  The burdens we bear, the trials we face, the hardships the Lord sometimes places in our lives...if we recognize the opportunities of growth that come through our faculties, we can truly be healed, strengthened, and prepared by them.  

"With His stripes we are healed" is a powerful phrase to me.  

Not only the lashings He took to have justice in our place,

 but the adversity in our own lives He deems necessary for us to face.  

These trials heal us and they make us strong. 

 These stripes and markings prepare us for our rule through all eternity long.
Sometimes amidst hard things I find myself asking "why?  Why this way?  How?"
It is then that in my mind the Lord seems to simply say, "to heal you.  To heal your soul - to remind you that I am the one who can make you whole."
The Spirit of my questions quickly change and my head slightly bows.
  "What would you have me do Lord?  What is thy plan?"
See, it is in these moments that we are edified and are able to see our Savior for who He truly is -
one who does what we cannot, one who helps us understand.
Hardships help us become more like Him, they help us learn His name.
So to His heart mine is forever sealed, because though they may be heavy,
it is with His stripes we are healed."

2) I've been thinking a lot about friendship lately, and how unbelievably fortunate I have been in that area.  My friends build me up when I have lost bits of who I am.  They lift me, they respect me, they love me.  But like Alma, I can rejoice because, though we have not seen angels, we have been angels for one another.  We have grown in testimony and in the gospel together whether it be for years and years or just months or even the smallest of conversations.  We have shared and experienced the joys that come from following Christ.   This brings me so much happiness.  We are friends in the Lord!  "Friends."  I have always thought the term "friend" was an inadequate term to describe the relationships I had with my non-family family.  However, it was when I was reading this account of Alma (Alma 17), that I remembered that there several times throughout scripture when Christ refers to His followers as His friends.  Because of this, I cannot think of a better way to describe the good people - LDS members, and non-members alike - around me.  They truly are "friends."  If the Lord Himself uses that term, it must be important.  Perhaps the world has deemed it less than what it really is.  I am forever deeply deeply grateful for the connection of souls I have with some of the most amazing people.  You know who you are.  So from the bottom of my over-flowing heart, I do rejoice!  In the humblest, and most honored way, I rejoice.  

3)  When I first realized we were studying the Old Testament this year, I sorta felt like...."oh no.  Isaiah."  Then we had our first lesson this last Sunday.  Ooooh it was beautiful and I was edified.  We just read Moses 1 and those are some for serious amazing and applicable scriptures!  I didn't know it!  He learned who he was - so can we.  He was tempted by Satan - so are we.  Yet he was able to discern the difference between the glory and light of God and Satan - so can we.  However, he even had to be edified and "changed" in order to "see" and know God.  So must we.  How?  Our church meetings, institute, prayer, scripture study, service, family home evening, personal revelation.  It is through these experiences that we can know we are no "son[s] of man," we are children of God!  And because of that, we have the light of Christ in us.  Each of us.  "For his Spirit hath not altogether withdrawn from [us]."  I am completely excited to continue to study the Old Testament and come to know about my Savior and my relationship with Him.  I greet these scriptures as an old friend and am excited to learn!  Here we go!  

"My Lord and My God."

After watching this year's Christmas Devotional put on by the first Presidency, I am overwhelmed with love and gratitude.  What beautiful messages that were shared this year!  I truly felt the love of the living Savior while hearing the words of His chosen servants.
It got me thinking about a tradition that my family has had ever since before I can remember.  Every Christmas Eve, we do a gift to Jesus.  It's one of my favorite traditions that I fully intend on carrying on into my own family one day.  We sit down as a family and think about a gift we want to give to Jesus - a goal or resolution of sorts.  We then share them with each other one at a time, put our written down goal into a little frame and keep in by our beds throughout the entire year.  Last year mine was, "as I'm fed, I'll feed them.  As I learn, I'll teach.  I will feed His sheep."  These are some lyrics from Savior of the World - nothing says Christmas to me more than that show does.  I can't imagine Christmas without participating in, or at least seeing it!  I like to make my gifts to Jesus from the messages of that show because it has and always have a special place in my heart.  While listening to the devotional, I was just  flooded with awe that the Savior of the World died for me.  Can you imagine?  A babe born in a stable, destined to save all who ever lived - He saved me.  I am forever completely indebted to Him.  But as inadequate and undeserving as I am, I can still do something with the life He has given me.  As I reflect on this past year, I think of opportunities I have had to share and to feed His sheep.  He even gives me those!!  Oh, heavens.  He is far to kind to me.  "Our lives are the gift of 'what happens next?'".   So what happens next is me taking just another opportunity to make sure I share and maybe feed a few more sheep by testifying of Him.  I know Jesus Christ lives.  He rescues me and each of us in every way possible.  He is the good in everything.  He bore the burden of living a perfect life and still gave the glory to His father.  Our father.  I need Him always.  Every minute of every day.  I have learned in more personal ways than I ever have in the last several months that we are constantly under His wing - that He is in the details of our lives.  The tiniest of details!  His atonement covers every pain or heartache we could ever feel and He reaches out to us constantly.  Constantly!  His promises are real!  I know Him.  I know His kindness.  I know His love.  I have felt it and seen it and have been sustained and lifted and strengthened because of it.  He loves us in a way that we can't even fully understand in this life.  I know He lives.  I know I will see Him in person one day.  I so look forward to the day when I can fall at His feet, bathe them in my tears and say, "my Lord and my God."
He lives, my friends!  He lives.

Move

I was so touched by this video.  Sometimes we have to take a few wrong paths in order to get on the right one.  But the truth is, it is all progress in some form isn't it?  It may not seem like it, but it is.   I know Christ loves us.  I know God will guide us.  Through all of the hardships, confusion, chaos, and heartache.  He.  Will.  Guide.  Us.  In a way He knows will help us the most.  Be open to the direction of His loving hand.

A Man is Stronger on His Knees, Than He is on His Feet

I'm fairly ashamed to say that for the longest time, I said my personal prayers without kneeling.  I have always grown up seeing my mom and dad kneel to say their personal prayers - at the beginning of the day before work, or before starting the daily chores, and at the end of the day when they could barely think straight.  I've always known that kneeling is the best way, that it shows respect to God, that it is reverent to do so, and all of those things.  But.  I have always just hopped in bed to say them, or if anything, sit up or kneel in my bed.  Of course, we all know what happens when you try to say your prayers while laying down.  You fall asleep.  Some mornings I would even notice myself finishing that fragmented prayer between pushing the snooze button.  I would always say my morning prayers (once I finally learned that lesson - that I couldn't NOT say my morning prayers without it greatly impacting my day) in the car, or on the bus, or walking to campus.   I guess I just sort of justified - as if it were some sort of "understanding between me and Heavenly Father" or that "that's just how our relationship is."  Oh, lanta.  How ridiculous is that.  Im cringing.  Like, gagging a little bit.  If you don't know what deception is - that's it.  Oh, but He was kind.  I know Heavenly Father still listened.  He never ceased to show me His love or answer my prayers.  He waited patiently for me to learn my lesson....which, I did.  One day when I was studying in 3rd Nephi, I read the scriptures about Christ going off on His own and  kneeling to pray to His father.  They were scriptures that I had read many times, but it hit me so hard that day!  If our Savior, the king of kings himself, kneels to our Father in Heaven...then I am dust!  Well, I sure wished to be dust at that moment because at least dust does exactly what the Lord expects it to.  Who am I to not kneel?  How selfish I had been?!  Now, I think the chastisement I put on myself was even more harsh than the gentle reminder that the Lord had to give me in that moment, but I sure realized how important it was for me to kneel when I can.  

Let me tell you something...it has made all the difference.  My relationship with Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ has changed.  I LOVE kneeling, on my own, morning and night, to talk to my Father.  I love it!  Probably some of my favorite parts of the day.  I was only hurting myself by not kneeling before!  Now, of course sometimes I forget to kneel before running out the door in the morning, or sometimes I'm too cold, and just have to hop under my covers!  And of course, my prayers throughout the day - when I'm in class, or in a specific situation, or not at home - are just said in my heart, but even those prayers have seemed more meaningful because I have chosen to kneel when I can.  The communication line just got so much clearer!  Sahhh-weeeeet!!!!    

Guys, I'm not telling this story to do a big awkward confession, or to boast of my magnificent epiphany or whatevers haha.  I'm telling it to share that I know that from small things come GREAT things.  Oh, the lessons we learn in this life...sometimes over and over and over again because we are goofball humans.  Also, to share how real deception is!  What?!  Not me, I don't get decieved.  HA!  Yes, yes you do.  In little itty bitty ways.  In tiny, justification-you-don't-think-it-has-to-apply-to-you ways....IT ALL APPLIIIIIIES!!!  :)  Always.  Because God is good and He loves us, that's why.