Battling the Dark

Some days I really work hard to fight the darkness.  The other morning was one of those days. 5:15 AM the alarm sounded. My early morning bible study class started in a hour, yet this dark forbidding blanket enveloped me.  I uttered a quick prayer as I rolled out of bed and my feet hit the cold tile bathroom floor.  "Please, Heavenly Father, I have to feel the spirit to teach... please... help the darkness to go away."  As I brushed my teeth and starred blankly into the mirror, I kept rehearsing that prayer in my mind. At that moment all I felt like doing was crying, but determined not to let the darkness control me, I kept moving forward.

After breakfast, morning prayers and scriptures with my two teens, I was in the car by 6:00.  "Please, help me today,”  I repeated as I drove down the dark unlit country road, still feeling that oppressive feeling. 

Is there something I have done to bring this darkness on?  

Why do I need to suffer through this again?  

These were the questions swirling through my mind during the drive. "Please, help me to feel the spirit.  Help me to teach today." I hustled into the church building to set up my class.  With a smile on my face, I greeted my first student.  The darkness miraculously left and I was able to teach. However, later at the store, I felt the darkness settle back in.  I sighed and just kept moving.

One of the regular cashiers, who knew about my husband’s death, noticed my expression and asked me how I was doing. I just couldn't help it, right there in the store, I broke down and cried.  The words just spilled out of my mouth, toppling over one another,  "This is just a really hard time of year for me..."

After 10 minutes of empathizing and a hug, I headed to my car. During the drive home, I cried, not just tears but gasping sobs.  Try as I might, I couldn't make myself stop.  The weight of the darkness was so oppressive that I literally wanted to crumble to the floor.

As I sobbed, I worked to put the groceries away and get ready for my morning service project.  The more I sobbed the more angry I got... not at God, or the people responsible for the accident, but at the darkness.  I was sick and tired of having this overwhelming, oppressive feeling come over me.  I was tired of being hounded and thwarted when I was trying to focus my life on doing good.

So I let the darkness have it! Right there in my house I screamed out to this dark unseen force that we bent on ruining my day.

"I don't care what you do... how hard you try... you are not going to win!  I am not listening to you!  In fact… I'm going to do more good today than you can imagine! You picked the wrong girl to mess with!”

I stood again in front of the mirror starring at a very different face.  The eyes were not darkened with sadness... they were are on fire with determination.

I cheerfully pitched in at the service project. Afterwards I met up with a former student. As I listened to him tell me about his recent struggles with feeling the darkness, I knew exactly what to say.  The words just flowed and my experience fit perfectly. The spirit was there.  We both felt it.  A smile crept on my face as I watched him leave. Not only was the darkness gone, but I felt incredible, amazing light!

It was all so clear to me now. I knew why the darkness had attacked me and tried to thwart the good I would do today, and I had won.

We don't like to think about the unseen forces of evil in this world, but they are real. They exist, and we have to face them. The darkness has power but not more than what we give it. It only wins when we give up and choose not to actively fight against it. 

There are time when we are lifted and protected, when we are cradled by the light, but there are also times when God in his wisdom pulls back and lets us feel the dark. Those times are temporary, and if we keep asking for help and moving forward, the light always returns and banishes the dark.  

God is there to help us fight our battles.  He will come, but he will also let us learn how to fight.  He gives us light and strength so that we can learn to be powerfully on His side.

Today was a temporary win.  The darkness will return, but each time I overcome it, I get stronger for the next encounter. God lets me grow in confidence and faith and bit by bit into the person He wants me to become.

Questions to Ponder:

1. How will you respond when you feel the dark?

2. What are the steps to overcome and feel the light again?

Finding Joy among the Crashing Waves

The holidays are approaching and I watch everyone else filled with excitement and anticipation.  Scott loved the holidays and it was always such a happy time in our house, but I find now that I dread those days.  I have learned to live with all of the normal days of the year... I have had well over 1000 of those days to practice being without him, but this is only our 4th thanksgiving, our 4th Christmas, his 4th birthday, and our 4th wedding anniversary apart.  Four really isn't that much, and I think the lack of practice on these special days makes them all the harder.

Honestly, I am tired of being sad... tired of dreading the day and looking for distractions to make it go quicker... I am tired of faking a smile and tired of the triggers that make me well up with tears. I really truly want to be able to live and enjoy those days again.

My children are growing up and leaving, and already we are not all together on those days.  I suppose this loss is something everyone faces, even without death in the picture.  Children grow up and leave home to create their own families.  Change is constantly in motion in our lives like waves crashing on the shore. We often catch ourselves fearing the next wave to come.

I am reminded of our surfing lessons in Hawaii this summer.  As we were trying to paddle out with the waves crashing in, we were toppled and tossed off our our boards with each new waves.  With eyes stinging from the salt water, we would recover our boards and try to make up the lost distance before the next wave gathered strength.  It was a tiring, loosing battle until our instructor taught us to dive under the wave.  Instead of sitting up on the board and trying to fight our way over the wave, we simply laid flat on the board and bowed our heads to dive beneath it.

It was effortless to get to the other side of the wave this way. We avoided the churning and emerged smoothly on the other side.  So as the waves of change crash upon our lives, we can either fight miserably against them or we can learn to peaceably roll with them.

Maybe I am finally at the point where I am tired enough of being beaten up in the resistance that I am finally willing to embrace the process of change in my life.  Just as we bow our heads to go under the powerful crashing waves, I can bow to the power of He who creates these waves of change, and as I do that, I know that He can help me pass to the other side of them.

So what is holding me back?  As I think about it, it has to be fear.  Fear is that beast that always tries to paralyze me and prevent me from moving forward in faith.  It is what dampens my hope and kills my joy.

What do I fear?  

Unfulfilled expectations, more loss, being alone...

How do I combat those fears?  

There is only one way that I know to combat fear, and that is through prayer.  Through prayer, I can get the power to overcome those fears.  So tonight that is what I was doing.  Not formally on my knees, but pondering through out the evening and when I slipped into the tub tonight.  My mind went back to earlier today and a lesson formulated in my mind.

This afternoon, my daughter sang a solo in the all city choir.  In the audience I was trying to get the camera ready to video her portion of the song that was coming up.  I was fiddling with the settings, when I looked up towards her.  I found myself wishing that I had brought my glasses so that I could see her better, and then in the middle of that thought, superimposed upon it, came a clear voice... "Isn't she so beautiful?"

I stopped everything as tears welled in my mind.  "You're here!" I thought shaking my head slightly, "Of course I'm/you're here... I/You wouldn't miss this." It was if there were two voices thinking the same thing in my head. Then I was still and I just felt... felt the emotions flood me... the love that my husband had for his little girl filled me with such an alarming strength that I fought back more tears.

As I video taped her part, I just shared that moment with him... the two of us watching together... both soaking it in... and then he was gone.  The song was over and just as quick as it had come over me, it was gone.

After the performance, I told Rachel that her dad was there.  She smiled and said, "I know." So tonight I have been thinking about this and what I wrote earlier about special days being hard.

Why today?  Why did I feel that today?  

I sunk down in the tub in my darkened bathroom letting the water cover my ear to block out every sound but my breathing.  The realization came as I pondered those questions.

I get to be physically here and I get to enjoy all of these special moments with them.  Scott does not, but it's what he wants more than anything.  Together we watched her today, and I felt those emotions in him.  Today I wasn't thinking about him not being here.  I wasn't lamenting it.  Sadness was not blinding me, and it just happened... Maybe his ability to experience and be with us is contingent upon me not being sad and focusing on myself.  Maybe he depends on me to focus on the kids and the joy I can have with them.

This is a new thought for me.  It makes sense in my mind.  I know that for Scott to be with us and for us to feel him, we have to have the spirit with us.  It is absolutely critical. That is why we live the way we do.  It is why we have given up things that drive the spirit away and why we try not to argue or fight, but I had not pulled sadness into that category.  Maybe it's time now for me to understand this... maybe it's time for me to make that change and I needed to know why in order to have the power to do it.

If I choose to turn inward and be sad and dwell on what I do not have, then I block the spirit and I block my husband.  I miss out and he misses out.

I don't have much time left with my children... It's time that I stop missing out on the joy that I felt today.  I have a lot of big things coming up.  My son, Alex, is getting married this Christmas.  They are coming home for Thanksgiving and we are having it together with her family, Scott's birthday is the beginning of December and then the wedding is on our anniversary.  I can't miss this... I can't be sad and miss this... miss all of the joy my husband wants to experience with me and share with me.

Maybe if I view it this way, I will have the incentive to push those bad thoughts away and I will be able to be still and just feel. Maybe this is how I duck my head and dive under the wave.

That is what today and tonight taught me... now I just have to do what I believe to be true.  I have to act in faith and trust that the feelings will come and I will feel a great measure of joy this year.  This new revelation is exciting to me because I think I have somewhere to focus now and I feel like I can do this better this year.

So if you struggle on those special days because you have a loss that eats at your heart, choose to push away the sadness. Choose not to dwell on it and to be grateful. Choose to be still and to see the joy around you.  Open a place in your heart for the spirit to fill you.  You may not have a spouse on the other side of the veil, but you do have a Father in Heaven who loves you beyond description.  He wants us to find joy in this life and He wants to fill us with it, but He can't if we don't want to receive that gift.

If we are so focused in fear on the next wave to come, if we are bracing for the impact then we will miss the ease of the water flowing over us as we bow and dive beneath it.  Choose to bow.  Choose to trust your instructor and you will come out less beaten up on the other side.

Tears from the Heavens

Tears from the Heavens

It's raining this morning, and as I watch the tears fall from the heavens, it seems to match my mood.  The last two weeks have been a struggle for me.  I have learned that this roller coaster ride through grief has periods like this. No matter what I do, I cannot escape these periods of sorrow and suffering.    This has caused me to ponder on the purpose of suffering this morning...

I know the purpose of the Savior and His suffering for us was to alleviate our personal suffering not only from sin, 

but from every sorrow. 

I know that to access that healing power that I have to turn to Him by...

• studying His word, 
• praying, 
• repenting and then 
• acting on the things that I know to be true.  

I have many times felt the relief that comes through doing those four things.  In fact, it is why I share what I am learning with others.  When I reach out, as He did, to those who are suffering, then I get His peace in return.  He blesses me with that as I go about doing His work..."mourning with those that mourn" and "lifting up the hands which hang down, and strengthening the feeble knees."(Mosiah 18:9, D&C 81:5)

Yet today and the past two weeks that peace has been harder to find.  There have been moments of relief, but the enablement and peace that I search for has been pulled just out of my reach it seems.

I feel like I am on a bike ride through the hills of the Ozarks.  It's either uphill or downhill with very little flat.  Right now, I am in an uphill stretch, and I think I have forgotten how hard those are.  Having just finished a two months of downhill period, where everything seemed easy...

I was lifted.
The answers flowed.
I felt direction.
I felt healing and peace.

But I suppose I can't ride downhill for ever, and for every time of ease there must be a time of greater testing...

to stretch me...

to keep me grounded...

and to help me retain empathy and understanding for others who struggle more than I do.  

Having this understanding maybe makes it all a little easier to bear.  When I see a purpose, when I know that I am learning and in the long run it will help my character and help me to be of better use to Him, then I know that I can push through the dark, finish climbing that hill because another downhill awaits.

Fortunately God knows what we can handle and He doesn't give us more than we can handle with His help.  I add that last part, because I think He does give us more than we can handle by ourselves.  It is that over burdening that makes us turn to Him.  When we realize it is too much to do on our own, then we are willing to yoke up with Him so that He can help us pull our load. (Matt 11:29)

So another purpose of suffering is the incentive that it is for us to turn our hearts and wills back to God.  In fact, the quicker and more easily we do that, the quicker the relief comes.

"When you pass through trials for His purposes, as you trust Him, exercise faith in Him, He will help you. That support will generally come step by step, a portion at a time. While you are passing through each phase, the pain and difficulty that comes from being enlarged will continue. If all matters were immediately resolved at your first petition, you could not grow. Your Father in Heaven and His Beloved Son love you perfectly. They would not require you to experience a moment more of difficulty than is absolutely needed for your personal benefit or for that of those you love." -Richard G. Scott

As I am schooled though this process, I see and feel the periods of support that help me move forward and learn how to better act on the things I know to be true.  I also see and feel the pain of the phases of enlargement as that help is pulled back...almost as a carrot before a horse.  Having tasted the sweetness of the help, I am coached to continue to take those steps in the dark or to peddle the last part of the hill on my own.

I know that the "pull back" helps me to grow, but it is still hard to like these periods of enlargement.  No one likes the last few sets of lifting weights that the coach urges you to complete when you are sure there is no more in you...

but it is those sets that make the difference in the training... 

it is not the easy ones in the begging, but the ones that push you to the brink.

The rain is still falling and I know that I need to get on my knees, spend sometime studying and get moving again.  I do not know when the relief will come, but I am going to act in faith that it will come.

it always has before, 

and when it does, it is always worth that final push up the hill.


For More study:

I highly recommend these previous posts... I went back and restudied them today.

Healing = Courage + Action + Grace  

(part 1 of 5 with links to the additional sections) 

from a speech given by Jonathan G. Sandberg a therapist and professor in the BYU School of Family Life

Richard G Scott, "Trust in the Lord"

Setbacks

Setbacks

Just when you think you are on the mend,

 and you think you have things all figured out...

WHAMMM!

You are shoved back into grief.

Father's Day weekend I just really fell apart....  

I could blame it on all of the stress this past month... the airplane crash investigation, Mother's Day, my second son's high school graduation, the same son's preparations for a two year mission for our church, Memorial Day, two birthdays, the potential sale of my house that fell through, and then Father's Day.  

There has definitely been a lot going on. 

(Plus the thought of my senior son leaving in only 2 weeks for Ecuador is causing me some major anxiety.  I have relied on him for so many things this last year, and I'm not sure what to expect of life without him here.)

I had been trying to keep it together all month.

I kept going back to the things that I rely on... 

• studying, 
• praying, 
• writing, 
• helping other people, 
• exercising, 
• and talking to friends and family, 
• (We won't mention my daily dose of sugar.)  

Momentarily, I would regain my hope and faith only to have it slide backwards again.

I felt very unstable, and despite my efforts, 

I feared that I was sinking faster than I was rising.

The weekend hit, and I just couldn't shake the cloud that I had been feeling.  All week I had bailed on my exercise routine, my sleep was out of whack.  I went out of town to visit my sister and her family. Despite their kind words, I struggled to be positive... 

Everywhere I looked around me life was moving forward.  Families were doing things together... 

moms and dads and kids.  

My family felt broken.

The loneliness intensified, and I desperately missed my husband.

Everything we did reminded me of my past life that could not be rekindled.  

We drove home late, and I went to bed blue despite studying the entire way home.  I just couldn't pull myself out of it.  I even prayed for help, but honestly I wanted to feel sorry for myself.  

I wanted to have a little pity party,

 and I even wanted God to pity me.  

I knew I needed to not dwell on such thoughts, but I did not want to let them go quite yet...

Like a child who has tripped and fallen in the mud, I was determined to sit a little longer and slam my fists down.

"Darn it!  I deserved to be sad and troubled!" 

"Who could blame me with all of the stress that I have been under!" 

In my mind nothing was my fault and everything was happening to me.

I had given up my agency to control my thoughts.

Sunday morning I stayed in bed past 10:00.  I prayed, but my prayers were not prayers of hope, but prayers of complaint.  I drifted in and out of sleep.  I cried.  I felt that no on in the world cared about me.  I debated about whether I wanted to show my puffy, tear stained face at church that day.  I prayed that someone would reach out to me...

Finally the words that I wanted to ignore came into my head, 

"I know this is hard, but it's time to get up.  You need to get yourself and the kids going today. It's time."

Reluctantly I pulled myself out bed, checked on the kids and started to do my hair because I knew that is what I should do, not because I wanted to.  I was still debating church. I felt hurt that no one had thought of me, and that made me miss my husband all the more.

Then a text came from a close widowed friend

 followed by a phone call. 

Someone has listened to a prompting from the spirit and had answered my prayer!

That gave me HOPE again.  

I have used the phrase, "Caring Creates Faith,"  but I was always on the caring end trying to create faith in someone else.  This time someone was caring about me and that simple act allowed me to start to feel faith and hope again.

I shared a lot of my pent up frustrations...

I was angry at myself for being so down and weak.  

With everything that I have been blessed with, I wondered why I was still struggling?  I felt very ungrateful.

   

My friend told me I could just be sad today and to take a few days if I needed it.  That it was okay not to always be strong for everyone else.

I think I needed permission to do that.  I was feeling so much guilt over breaking down. I needed to be reminded that healing and becoming someone better is a process.

I knew I had a choice...

• A choice to continue on the path I was on and feel alone and sad,
• or to try to turn my will back to God and allow Him to help me.  

I knew the second was the harder choice, but the one that would bring me healing the quickest, and I also knew that He would help me if I would only make it. 

I know that God can make weak things become strong.

When I got off the phone, I made a choice.  I decided that I was going to go to church and teach my music class.  I knew that serving and helping others always put me in a better place to receive extra help from God.

I decided that I was going to start acting and not be acted upon.

I cried a bit at church, but thinking of the help my friend had given me, I began to text other people who I knew would be having a hard day.  By the end of church, I had been lifted by the smiles of the children I had taught.  I felt lifted from the return texts of friend who were also struggling.  I realized that I was not alone in my sorrow.  

I spent the evening studying and I resolved to start exercising again.  

So I'm writing this Monday night and Monday has been a surprisingly good day.  I'm not saying I'm out of the woods and probably will never be, 

but I'm back to choosing what to dwell on.

  I'm back to choosing faith.

  I'm back to choosing hope.