On the Rise

I've had this post in my mind for a while now but haven't really known how to write it exactly.

I guess to start, I'll share the inspiration for this post. There is a YouTube movie called Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog and in it there's a song called My Eyes (lyrics at the bottom). It's a juxtaposition between Dr. Horrible and his crush Penny's views on the world around them. Dr. Horrible only sees all of the bad around him while Penny focuses on the good. Their points of view are so completely on the opposite ends of the spectrum that Dr. Horrible feels himself becoming more evil as he looks around him while Penny feels more hopeful.

I already really, really liked this song, but with everything that's been going on in the world this year, this song has hit home more and more as I continue to listen to it.

Let's not beat around the bush. 2020 has been REALLY sucky in many, many ways. The apocalypse bingo memes just keep on coming as the weeks and months go on. There is sickness, loneliness, violence, lies, natural disasters, dangerous animals, and on and on and on. And it can be so easy to feel hopeless and frustrated and disbelieving of not only all that is happening, but also at the responses from other people that we see. People arguing, endangering others (whether Coronavirus related or rioting, police brutality, murdering related, etc.), and generally just being crappy to each other.

On the other hand, there's the oft shared quote from Mr. Rogers;

When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.

With great trials always comes great blessings. We have seen neighbors looking out for each other, teachers going the extra 100 miles to help their students, essential workers putting themselves in danger for the rest of us, celebratory parades, virtual baby showers and wedding receptions, virtual game nights, businesses doing a lot of extra things to help make sure that people can still do what they need to do as much as possible while still being safe, heck, even silly app games trying to make quarantine just a little more enjoyable.

Times like these bring out both the worst and the best in people. It's important not to get too caught up in one or the other. If we focus on the bad, it is easy to feel angry and alone, but also at times prideful as we see ourselves as superior to those who do or think things differently than us. If we focus only on the good, we miss important lessons that come from observing the bad. It's important to look on the bright side, but not so much that we're blinded to reality.

Lehi tells his son that there is "opposition in all things." And there is meant to be. As he says;

If not so,... righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility.

The bad times help us appreciate the good. The bad people help us recognize the good ones. Sickness helps us appreciate our health, social distancing helps us appreciate our friends, arguments help us appreciate civil, respectful discussion, corrupt cops help us appreciate the truly good cops, riots help us appreciate peaceful protest, and hurricanes and wildfires help us appreciate helping hands from strangers.

The bad also reminds us of the work that we still need to do. It reminds us that infrastructures need to be examined and improved, individual emergency preparedness needs to be worked on (toilet paperpocalypse anyone?), basic hygiene practices still need to be normalized (proper hand washing), factual researching needs to be learned, and racism still needs to be squashed.

We are in the middle of a refiner's fire. We can come out of this gleaming and beautiful; having become more helpful, understanding, compassionate, hardworking people. Or we can come out of this as a mottled lump of unusable metal; disgruntled, judgmental, self-righteous, and combative.

What we become depends entirely on how we perceive all that is happening around us. Is evil on the rise? Harmony? Maybe a little bit of both? How we react to the trials set before us will determine which wins out in the end. One can overtake the other. Which will we choose?

It is completely okay to feel overwhelmed, sad, afraid, and even angry about the circumstances that the world is in right now. But it is also very much okay to feel grateful, hopeful, relaxed, and happy. It's great to enjoy the time that we are being given to spend at home. To spend time on ourselves, our families, and our homes. To take the time to renovate, rejuvenate, and reconnect. But it's also okay if you are instead just trying to make it through all of this.

Remember that we'll all be out in the world someday and we will get to choose what things "going back to normal" looks like. It can include prioritizing relationships a little bit more. It can include continuing to work on new or old talents or hobbies. It can include better discussions about things that we disagree with or simply do not understand. It can include change in how we view and treat those who are different from us. All of those things are completely up to us.

Let us recognize both the good and the bad that is on the rise today. But let us let the bad help us to appreciate the good and also fight just that much harder for the good. Let it bring us closer to one another as fellow human beings. We're all just doing the best that we can here.

What do you feel is on the rise in your life? If it's not what you want, then maybe a shift in perspective is all you need to help you support the rise of what is good and right instead.

Life isn't all black or all white. It's a myriad of colors that all flow together to help us to learn and grow. Don't be afraid to acknowledge both the good and the bad in the world. Don't be afraid to recognize the evils in this world. But also don't be afraid to recognize the blessings that come from the trials.

Let us take this opportunity to learn how to allow light to rise up in our lives, communities, and nations. Let us learn to snuff out the darkness around us by our actions and reactions.

Ultimately, we choose what is on the rise.

PS- Before the lyrics to My Eyes, I wanted to share some of the things that have been going on this year. Most will have heard about the bad things, so I'm not going to put links on all of them. There are a couple that have had very mixed reactions as well that I'm going to list. Please feel free to do your own research on them! I am going to link some of the good that has been seen in the midst of it all though. There are many good stories out there, but I am especially interested in the ones that directly correlate with the bad (as you will see below).

If you know of more good stories related to the bad happening around us, please share them in the comments either on Facebook or on this blog post.

Some bad:

Coronavirus
Police corruption in cases such as Breonna Taylor and George Floyd
Murder of five year old Cannon Hinnant
Firefighter's wallet stolen while he was working on fighting a fire
Property damage and looting during rioting
Wild fires
Hurricane Laura
Explosion in Beirut
Poisoning of candidate opposing Putin in the Russian presidential election

Some mixed reaction:
Kyle Rittenhouse
Jacob Blake

Some good:
Couple serves their cancelled wedding reception food at a homeless shelter
Pets are reunited with their owners after the Beirut explosion
Teachers turn their students' desks into Jeeps to make the glass and distancing less weird
Some instances of good cops helping PoC


PPS- Lyrics to My Eyes:

HORRIBLE
Any dolt with half a brain
Can see that humankind has gone insane
To the point where I don’t know
If I’ll upset the status quo
If I throw poison in the water main

Listen close to everybody’s heart
And hear that breaking sound
Hopes and dreams are shattering apart
And crashing to the ground

I cannot believe my eyes
How the world’s filled with filth and lies
But it’s plain to see
Evil inside of me is on the rise

PENNY
Look around
We’re living with the lost and found
Just when you feel you’ve almost drowned
You find yourself on solid ground

And you believe
There’s good in everybody’s heart
Keep it safe and sound
With hope, you can do your part
To turn a life around

I cannot believe my eyes
Is the world finally growing wise
‘Cause it seems to me
Some kind of harmony
Is on the rise

HORRIBLE (overlapping with Penny below)
Anyone with half a brain
Could spend their whole life howling in pain
‘Cause the dark is everywhere
And Penny doesn’t seem to care
That soon the dark in me is all that will remain

Listen close to everybody’s heart
And hear that breaking sound
Hopes and dreams are shattering apart
And crashing to the ground

I cannot believe my eyes
How the world’s filled with filth and lies
But it’s plain to see
Evil inside of me is on the rise

PENNY
Take it slow
He looks at me and seems to know
The things that I’m afraid to show
And suddenly I feel this glow

And I believe
There’s good in everybody’s heart
Keep it safe and sound
With hope, you can do your part
To turn a life around

I cannot believe my eyes
How the world’s finally growing wise
And it’s plain to see
Rapture inside of me is on the rise

"To Be Human"

"Because to be human means to be capable of feeling more than one thing at one time."
-"A Take On Perspective"

These past few weeks I've been quietly watching the world argue about George Floyd, riots, protests, Black Lives Matter, All Lives Matter, etc. and have kind of been afraid to say anything because I really don't need arguments on my page right now. But I have also really WANTED to say something because I deeply hate racism and keeping quiet doesn't help anything.

I don't pretend to know everything about everything.

I don't know how much of the police system is corrupt. But I do know that there are a lot of wonderful police officers who are doing their best to make the world around them a safer and better place. I also know that there absolutely are officers that abuse their power and use it to hurt others.

I don't know much about racism. I know that there is a lot more of it out there than a lot of people want to believe. I know that black people deal with a wide range of responses to the color of their skin. I also know that black people are just as much people as anyone else.

I know that Black Lives Matter doesn't mean that lives of other races don't matter or don't matter as much. It means that Black Lives Matter too. It means that Black Lives have suffered a great deal in ways that other lives haven't and that that needs to change. It doesn't mean that white lives, Asian lives, Hispanic lives, and all other race, color, and religion's lives don't also have suffering in them. But that right now, Black Lives are lives that we do need to work on improving.

I grew up half in Maryland and half in Pennsylvania. In MD, I lived in an area that was a huge melting pot. I had friends/went to school with kids that were black, white, Chinese, Korean, Pakistani, Hispanic, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and more. And in my mind, they were all the same. I was aware of the differences and aware of the discrimination that many of them faced, but to ME, they were all just people. My best friends were white-Uruguayan, and Filipino. I liked learning about their cultures and trying the yummy foods that their parents made. I liked hearing the different languages that were sometimes spoken.

I also spent a lot of time at my neighbor's house where everyone was black. I never felt like I was in danger or that I was different than them inside. I did notice that they took care of their hair very differently, but that was about it. And I thought that it was really neat to see how they did.

However, there were also neighborhoods that were predominantly black that I knew were dangerous. Places that (if they had been close enough for me to go to on my own) I would never walk around on my own. I never thought that they were dangerous because of the skin color of the people that lived there, but because of the type of people that they were. The way that they personally acted.

When we moved to PA, I was extremely uncomfortable with my new environment of 99% white. Even though I'm white. I hated a lot of things about living in an (almost) all white community. I hate that people would say things like "I'm not racist, but I could never marry a black man" or "I just don't see how people find black men attractive!" I hated that everyone ate the same few foods all the time and that my friend wouldn't even try curry when my parents made it when they came to my house. Not all of the white people were the same of course, but the overall majority did have very similar views and tastes when it came to diversity.

I am so incredibly grateful that I lived in Maryland first. That my most formative years were spent learning to see people for who they are on the inside. What they think and believe and how they act. Learning that color does matter to a lot of people, but that it shouldn't.

What happened to George Floyd is abominable. It is a very clear example of a lack of respect for human life as well as the corruption that can be found within positions of authority. It is a blatant example of racism and needs to be addressed accordingly.

I don't agree with rioting, but I can understand why riots happen. Sometimes people see it as the only way to be heard after seeing so many peaceful protests not only ignored, but railed against. Sometimes riots don't begin as riots, but as peaceful protest. But then are escalated either by opposers fighting against the protesters, or opposers infiltrating the protest and instigating violence from the inside. I don't know which instance has happened which times. The issue remains the same though. If racism was properly addressed in both governments and individual lives and communities, then riots would cease to happen.

I don't know as much about racism as I should in order to help things. But I do know that it is real and that the best way to stop it is to stop arguing and take a second to just learn.

The quote that I put at the top hit me hard and helped me to find the courage to post. I highly recommend reading the article that it came from.

It is possible to feel sorrow for George Floyd, frustration, fear, and confusion about the riots, pride at the protests, and simple uncertainty about the situation as a whole.

I don't support rioting, but I do support those who are fighting for rights that should have been wholly available to all long before now. I don't support police shaming, but I do support those who have seen and experienced police corruption. I believe that ALL lives matter, but I will never respond to Black Lives Matter with All Lives Matter because of course they do. But Black Lives are what we're addressing at the moment.

And I'm sure that there is corruption within the Black Lives Matter movement just as there is in the police system. But that doesn't invalidate the entire movement just as the corrupt cops don't invalidate the efforts of cops that bust their butts to keep communities safe.

It's okay to feel conflicting emotions about what is going on. In fact, it's completely natural. And not only that, it shows that you are honestly trying to consider and understand all sides of the situation. And that is how it should be! Situations like this remind me that there is a lot that I have to learn about not only how to treat people personally, but how to understand them and where they come from and where they stand. It's a reminder that there is a lot that I don't know, but that that can change.

I hope that I have been able to accurately express how I have been feeling.

It needs to be acknowledged that while not all cops are corrupt, many are. And that needs to be fought against. It needs to be acknowledged that while all lives matter, Black Lives are repeatedly treated as if they don't, or that they matter less. And that needs to be fought against. It needs to be acknowledged that we can't acknowledge every issue all at the same time. It's okay to focus on one at a time. Acknowledging one issue (like discrimination against black people) doesn't mean that you don't also acknowledge another (like discrimination against Jews). Black Lives Matter doesn't mean that the lives of unborn children don't also matter, or the lives of Asians, or Muslims, or people with mental or physical disabilities. But what we are currently talking about is black lives.

Lastly, it needs to be acknowledged that it's okay to not know exactly where you stand or what to believe. There are infinite sides to every story and we shouldn't be expected to know every single one. But it IS important to always be looking to learn more.

Of course all lives matter. But Black Lives Matter too. And that's what we're talking about right now.

The Blessings and Dangers of Potential

In the past week I've found myself discussing a certain General Conference quote with two different people in two different situations. You may have guessed that it's the one above.

I love this quote!

I also really, really hate it.

I'm going to go off of that for a bit, but I promise I'll get back to the quote.

Dating in the church can be super confusing I think. On the one hand, we see examples of amazing couples in the apostles and their spouses. We listen to talks where people praise their eternal companions and talk about how God brought them together in a specific way. We start to feel like there is one single person that is right for us and that we need to know by revelation that we've found them. And then we expect everything to be wonderful.

On the other hand, we also hear things like "any good man and any good woman can have happiness and a successful marriage" which gives the idea that maybe we need to stop being so picky and just choose someone to love and stick with them.

Both of these ideas have value. I definitely believe that God should be included in your decision of who to marry and that He can help you to find a good spouse. I don't think that He wants you to "settle" any more than you do. I also believe, though, that there is so much more to finding a spouse than falling in love, praying about it, and getting married and living happily ever after.

I felt really good about marrying my ex fiance. I loved him deeply, was willing to work through any hardship, and prayed fervently to know that he was the right choice. In moments of doubt, I was reassured by the Spirit that he was the right choice for me. I was fully expecting my happily ever after.

That didn't happen. And I don't think that it didn't happen because it couldn't have been good. As expressed in my most popular post, I really do think that things could have worked out for us. We wouldn't have had a perfect marriage, but we could have worked through anything together with the Lord.

It didn't happen because he made decisions that made it wrong. And once he used his agency to do that and rejected every opportunity to improve (and he definitely had the opportunity, trust me), then it was made clear by his arrest that he was not the right one for me after all.

I am now married to a wonderful man who I love dearly. And we were definitely brought together in an unusual way that was highly influenced by the Holy Ghost.

When I met Jonathan, I had no desire to date him. For one, I simply wasn't interested in him, but more than that, I was simply terrified of dating at the time. Plus he was someone new and that was especially scary. Even when I did kind of start to like him, and even once we actually started dating, I was constantly contemplating an out. I didn't want to hurt like I had (and still was) again. And he was going to be leaving at the end of the semester and long distance had been hard enough when my life was going well. There was NO WAY that I could handle it with my life in shambles. So while I liked him a lot, I figured we'd break up at the end of the semester. If we got back together when he got back in five months, great! If not, that was fine too. I just couldn't handle any more stress and pain.

Over the five weeks that we dated before he left for Ohio, I had a realization that I wanted to keep dating him. I really, really didn't want to do that because of the aforementioned long distance, but I also really, really did. I didn't even totally know why I did. It simply felt like the right thing to do.

And then Heavenly Father made it clear that I was going to marry this guy. Again, I wanted to marry him, but I also wanted to take alllllllllll of the time to do it. I had been engaged before, been so close to having everything that I had ever wanted (or so I thought), and I did NOT want to put myself back in that position only to have my heart ripped to shreds a second time. No, I was more than happy to do the dreaded long distance thing again, then date Jonathan some more when he got back. And THEN, and only then, could we get engaged.

But God had other plans and let me know very clearly that that wasn't what He had in mind for us. And so we got engaged before he left for Ohio and got married before summer ended.

Now let me tell you something:

Marriage is HARD. And getting married so fast has made it even harder. We didn't get the time that I wanted to get to know each other better, see each other in every situation, and make sure that we really were compatible. We didn't get the time to see if we were really capable of helping each other get what we each want to out of life.

Our long distance relationship was made even more difficult by the fact that due to Jonathan's summer job, we literally had hardly any time at all to talk. So we didn't have all of the conversations that I would have liked to have had.

Our wedding day really was one of the happiest days of my entire life, but I really was marrying a virtual stranger.

We've been married for a year and a half now and in some ways, it's been the hardest year and a half of my life. Which is saying something considering all that I've been through.

But let me get back to that quote.

I didn't marry the perfect person for me. I married someone with the potential to be the perfect person for me.

Jonathan and I both have many, many things that we need to work on both individually and as a couple. But what's important is that we both desperately want to be the best person for each other. We both recognize that we have faults, have made mistakes, have our own brands of brokeness, and that we've got a long way to go. And we're willing to take the time to work on all of those things.

I don't expect Jonathan to be perfect right now, but I do see so, so much potential in him. And in the meantime, he's a dang good husband in SO many ways.

Potential, mixed with a sincere desire to reach said potential, is a wonderful, powerful thing!

The problem is that as we are looking for a spouse, it can be only too easy to focus a little bit too much on the potential and not enough on what is currently in front of us. We're not going to find a finished product, but there are varying degrees of being a "work in progress" and they matter.

My ex had, and still has, amazing potential! And this was a really tricky case because it really did seem like he was working hard to reach it. But in all reality, all of those efforts were a facade hiding all of the horrible things that he was actually doing.

Much of the time though, there really doesn't seem to be much effort going into becoming a better person, but we still hyper-focus on the potential that we saw when we first fell in love with them. We tell ourselves that it's unreasonable to expect perfection right away, which is true, but then we get into the dangerous territory of potential. It is good to see potential in others, but at the same time, it's not good to go into a relationship- or stay in a relationship -expecting the other person to change in a big way.

There were so, so many red flags with my ex. But I sincerely believed in his potential and that things would get better as time went on. That he would change.

What happened instead is that he manipulated me into compromising to accommodate the red flags. He gas lighted me over time and broke me down so much that I went along with whatever he wanted. All while still telling myself that the potential that I had seen was still there and that he could still reach it if I was just patient and loving enough.

And that is the danger of potential.

You should never marry someone expecting them to change. Or worse, expecting to change or "fix" them.

Not that you should expect everything to be perfect right off the bat or not believe that they have the potential to be better, but that just because someone could be great doesn't mean that they are going to be.

There's a balance that needs to be met; potential and a desire and willingness to improve. And I'll be honest, in abusive relationships, it's really easy for the other person to convince you that they really are trying. It's easy because you want so badly for it to be true. But then there's just this vicious cycle of being convinced that things will get better, then things getting way worse again, then them convincing you again that they love you and will be better. So this balance is easy to talk about and extremely difficult to actually identify at times.

My point is, we absolutely do marry potential. But we need to be so aware that potential isn't everything. Compatibility, intent, and a sincere willingness to work through any hardship together, still need to be in the equation.

Can any good man and any good woman make it work? I guess so. But are we really expected to just find someone to love and then stick with them no matter the cost? Not exactly. Not if you are not both putting in the work. And that's exactly what tends to be missing from the "any good man" quote when people talk about it. I've heard it referenced many times, but writing this post is the first time that I actually looked it up myself. This is the whole quote:

“Soul mates” are fiction and an illusion; and while every young man and young woman will seek with all diligence and prayerfulness to find a mate with whom life can be most compatible and beautiful, yet it is certain that almost any good man and any good woman can have happiness and a successful marriage if both are willing to pay the price.

There are some really, really important parts left out when we talk about that quote. It's not just "any", it's "almost any". And it's only if both people are willing to put in the work.

I was more than willing to put in the work with my ex. And I did. I put in all of the work. But that's not enough. He needed to meet me halfway and he didn't.

This whole potential thing only works when each person recognizes not only the potential in the other person, but also the potential in themselves. When we choose to work on reaching our own potentials as well as supporting and encouraging the other person to reach their's.

I was talking to a friend recently who is a recovering addict and has been doing really well for a while now. I asked him what the best thing that his wife has done that has helped him in his recovery and his answer really stuck with me. He told me that what helped him the most is when she started to work on her own recovery. Not that she was an addict, but she suffered from the effects of being married to one and that requires it's own recovery process.

He had started going through the motions of recovery previously, but it wasn't until he saw her putting in the work on herself that he was really spurred into working on his recovery with real intent.

In order for a marriage to work, it's important to recognize that no, your spouse is not perfect; but neither are you. Then once you've acknowledged that, get to work. Work on yourself and becoming the best you that you can be. And support and encourage your spouse to work hard and become the best person that they can be. Some goals can be worked on as a team, but some will need to be worked on individually. What's important is that you are BOTH putting in the work.

Every marriage has the potential to be amazing if a good man and a good woman love each other, and themselves, enough to work hard to make it amazing.

So yeah, you don't marry perfection and you should definitely not expect to, even with all of the revelation in the world telling you that that person is a good fit. I was definitely strongly guided to marry my Jonathan. Not because he's perfect and has been exactly what I've needed at every juncture, but because we have the potential to make a great life together.

Absolutely marry potential, but absolutely be ready to work hard on your own potential and make dang certain that the other person is ready to work on their's too. Neither of you are going to reach those potentials right away. So don't expect that. But expect constant effort from both. It's going to be trial and error, success and failure, but with time, and with the Atonement of Jesus Christ, you really can reach perfection someday. Not in this life, but in the next. But only if you work with your spouse, they work with you, and you both work with God.

Potential is a really beautiful thing. It's the knowledge that no one is stuck the way that they are; that we all have the opportunity to be better than what we are today. And I am so grateful that the Atonement of Jesus Christ gives us that opportunity to improve. Just remember that while everyone has the opportunity, they also have the choice whether or not to take it.

Be willing to take it and then find someone who is also willing to take it.

The rest of the paragraph from which the infamous "potential" quote comes says it all:

That said, none of us marry perfection; we marry potential. The right marriage is not only about what I want; it’s also about what she—who’s going to be my companion—wants and needs me to be.

If you find someone that you love, who loves you, who you are willing to strive be the best for, and who is willing to strive to be the best for you, marry them. That's the kind of potential that we're looking for here. You're not going to find someone that is perfect. And heck, you're not perfect, so why should you expect to marry someone that is?

No, you're going to marry someone that has the potential to progress towards perfection as you do the same. And if you find that person, life is going to be challenging, but it will also be wonderful. Reaching our full potentials is an arduous effort, but it is worth it. And when you do it together with someone you love, it is a beautiful thing.


Ps- The talks that I referenced in this post are Meetings the Challenges Today's World and Oneness in Marriage

Three Years Later

Guys, I look back at my past posts and see so much hope and determination in them. Yes, I talk about my struggles. Yes, I talk about just how difficult things were for me. But I was always able to end with the belief and knowledge that things would get better. That I would get better.

It's been three years since my ex-fiance was arrested and to be honest, I'm still not okay. Not even close.

And I look back at those posts and read about cutting myself slack, not putting a timeline on healing, trusting in the Lord and His will and timing, etc. and they're so true!!! But man oh man, those things are becoming harder and harder to implement as time goes on. And I really struggle to cut myself slack. And I really struggle to understand why Heavenly Father is allowing this healing process to drag on and on. And I really struggle to not constantly ask myself what I'm doing wrong.

Okay pause.

I wrote those first three paragraphs on a night that I was really, REALLY struggling. And every word is true and I feel/think those things on a regular basis. But I stopped writing there and I've been thinking a lot about the past three years and where I was and where I am now.

And yeah, I get extremely frustrated when I think of who I was before my ex's arrest vs. who I am now. I often still feel very broken and confused. I wonder why I can't seem to heal, why I still haven't been able to hold a job or get back into schooling. I beat myself up because I know things that would help me (eating better, exercising, getting on a sleep schedule, etc), but I can't seem to get myself to do them.

BUT.

I also have been thinking a lot and trying to see the ways that I HAVE made progress. And sometimes those things are really hard to see. But I think especially about how I was when Jonathan and I first got married vs. how I am now and I really can see so much progress!

When we first got married, panic attacks were a very regular occurrence. I was easily set off by triggers like school buses, police cars, or physical intimacy, but also by simply being startled or something small going wrong in my day.

I struggled to disassociate my ex from love in general. When I thought the words "I love you," his name followed after those words in my head automatically.

I still struggle with plenty of anxiety and depression. I still get triggered occasionally. I still very much struggle with the abuse mindset. But it's better than it was.

Let me say it again.

IT'S BETTER THAN IT WAS.

And that's what I have to hold on to.

Because it's so easy to get overwhelmed when I get triggered when it hasn't happened in a long time. It's so easy to see all of the things that I still can't do. It's so, SO easy to feel like I'm not getting anywhere at all and like I'm stuck in limbo. But it's not true. All of my baby steps have amounted to something. I am a little bit better at the end of year three than I was at the end of year two, or year one.

In year one, it was a literal miracle that I was able to date one of my best friends, even if it was for only a short while. In year two I got engaged and married! And in year three I'm going to bear a child.

I still have so, so very far to go. And yeah, I'm still going to get frustrated and feel stuck, and get in my own way at times; but I am getting better. And no, it's not nearly as quickly as I'd like and there is still so much fear and uncertainty and bitterness at times. But I'm getting there and I will continue to make progress because I refuse to let my experiences with my ex keep me down.

I wish that I could say that in a year I overcame all. But I can't. I can't even say that it happened in three years. I'm likely going to be fighting aspects of these demons for many years to come. And that doesn't sound very hopeful and it does sound pretty discouraging but it's true. The important thing isn't how long I fight though. It's that I keep fighting and never, ever back down.

If I can do that, then next year I'll be better than I was. And the year after that I'll be even better. And even more so the year after that. And that's what this life is all about. We're not expected to be perfect right away. We're expected to try our best and keep trying our best until the very end. And then guess what? We're STILL not going to be perfect! Because we can't be on our own. We're expected to live our lives the best way that we can and then give the rest up to the Lord. HE is the one who will make me whole again. I just have to keep pushing forward until that day comes.

Three years later, I'm still pretty much a hot mess. But I'm better than I was and that is something to be proud of.

What Am I More Afraid Of?

I was talking to a friend today about recovery, whether that be recovery from addiction, recovery from trauma, etc. and I realized something about myself;

The biggest reason that it's being so hard for me to recover is because I am just as afraid of recovery as I am of not recovering.

Let me see if I can explain.

I don't know exactly how to heal, but I do know a lot of things that would help. Eating better, getting on a decent sleep schedule, exercise, doing a hobby, working with a therapist, bettering my personal study and prayer habits, etc. And I think that I've talked before about how the things that will help the most are the things that PTSD and chronic illness make most difficult to do, but I want to delve a little bit deeper into that idea.

Recovering is really hard. It takes a lot of hard work and it takes a lot of pain.

I have had a handful of people suggest that I try the therapy method called EMDR. The gist of what that does (as explained to me by my EMDR-trained therapist) is that it is moving traumatic memories from the emotional side of the brain to the logical side of the brain. I won't try to explain how they do that because I only kind of understand, but I have talked to people that have been majorly helped by it! However, one of my friends that suggested it did say that going through that process made for a very difficult and painful few months. Nevertheless, I did seek out a therapist that could do EMDR with me because I do so badly want to recover and get into a better mental/emotional state of mind.

I absolutely LOVE the therapist that I worked with in Ohio, but I only ended up doing EMDR a couple of times. We did it two sessions in a row and then we weren't able to do it for various reasons for a few weeks. And then I just never picked back up on it because life was really, really hard last year and I was struggling enough with the NOW issues and couldn't bear to try to handle the THEN issues on top of it.

And that's when my fear of recovery took over.

I knew that continuing EMDR would likely be very helpful for me, but I was terrified of the pain I also knew would accompany it.

Honestly, even just starting up therapy again is super daunting for me, because when I had to start over in Ohio, it brought back anxiety and triggers that I hadn't been facing in a while. Clearly I hadn't healed of those things or else they wouldn't have come back with so much force when I had to start therapy from scratch. Just talking about my life without EMDR was enough to send me reeling emotionally. So then when things got so hard in my life after I finally DID start EMDR, I felt that there was no way that I could possibly handle the additional pain and suffering that EMDR would bring. But that also meant that I wasn't going to be achieving the healing that I have so desperately wanted and needed.

We just moved back across the country and I'm going to have to start all over again. And life hasn't stopped being really difficult in the here and now. And starting over is going to be that much harder as I go through these last few months of pregnancy and then onto motherhood with Liam outside the womb. But as terrified as I am of the pain of the recovery process, I am equally (if not more) terrified of not recovering.

I have been in recovery from abuse and trauma for just about three years now and I feel like I'm no closer to my goals of getting back to school and finishing my degree or being able to hold a regular job again. Some progress has been made in some areas of my recovery, but many others have been left untouched because of fear and the feeling that I simply can't handle the hard work that it takes to recover.

But I don't want to keep feeling broken. I don't want to keep feeling weaker and weaker. I don't want Liam to be raised by a broken mother. I want to be better for him. I want to be better for my husband. I want to be better for me. I've felt so, so tired of being broken for so long, but I have been unwilling to re-break so that things can be set properly (think of a broken bone that has set incorrectly and has to be re-broken in order to be put into the optimal healing position).

Guys, I'm terrified. I'm terrified of starting over. I'm terrified of adding more stress and pain and exhaustion (both mental and physical) to my already stressful and painful and exhausting life. But I'm MORE terrified of not moving forward. I'm more terrified of remaining stagnant, which is to say, regressing.

Recovery from anything is not ever going to be an easy road. Recovery from addiction is going to involve withdrawal, retraining your mind, breaking down barriers, etc. Recovery from a wound may require the sting of antiseptic, the excruciating pain of physical therapy to break down scar tissue or injured muscles in order to strengthen them back up correctly. Recovery from trauma is going to include facing painful memories, increased depression/anxiety, the return or triggers and nightmares, the complete debilitating exhaustion that it all brings. But the healing is worth it. I have to keep telling myself that. Being able to be a better wife to Jonathan, mother to Liam, and daughter of God are all worth it. All of it. Every single moment of distress. Every single terrifying moment. And I need to remember that as terrifying as recovery is, NOT recovering leaves me in a horrible place while recovery will, in time, lead me to a much, much better one.

The only person that can dictate my recovery is me. No one else can make me recover. No one else can force me to do the hard things. No one can face these fears for me. I have to decide that not recovering is scarier than the difficulty of recovery.

And I'm trying guys. And I've been trying for three years. But I haven't been trying hard enough. I've been trying my very best, but I haven't been trying hard enough. I need to bite the bullet and do every single thing that it takes to heal. I deserve to heal.

And so do you.

No one can recover for you, but you are also not alone in this.

My friend that I was talking to said something to the effect of "recovery requires connection." Not that someone else is responsible for your recovery, but that we need other people in order to make it. People to love us, people to support us, people to be accountable to.

We are not in this alone. We were never meant to be.

Heavenly Father sent His Only Begotten Son down to earth for this exact reason; so we would never, ever go through tribulation alone. Because we can't.

I can't do this alone. I can't heal all by myself. The responsibility for my recovery rests on my shoulders, but I have a God who has sent people into my life, Christ being one of them, to not carry the burden for me completely, but to lighten the load. Christ is here to be equally yoked with us, taking our pains and our struggles and our fears and shouldering some of the weight of it all. He can't take it away completely until we let Him. But that takes difficult, painful, terrifying work.

And He is there for every moment of it.

PS- This is the same quote as the picture up top. It's been the background of my laptop for as long as I've had a laptop and I love it, but I feel like it looked a little bit too cheerful for the message of recovery being excruciating, so I found a different one. But I wanted to share this one too because recovery is also what gets us to a higher, holier, happier state of being.

PPS- It was actually seeing this on Facebook that spurred me writing this post right now: