a little nonsense

artwork credit: Mary Southard, Great Solstice Moon

I owe the world an apology.  It's been a long time coming.  However, I couldn't write about it until I met some kind of resolve, found some amount of strength that I hadn't yet possessed to overcome my self-induced-emotional disability.

Its funny when we are asked to serve, when we are asked to extend ourselves for the sake of others, the awareness of our own lack of wholeness and well-being is sharpened.  In my recent case, it has cut me sufficiently deep that I could no longer refrain from looking at myself honestly in the mirror.

At the beginning of this year, I was asked to serve as the president of the Young Women's organization in my local church group (ward).  Although taken back, I whole heartedly accepted the call and looked forward to it with eagerness.

However, in the weeks since then I've experienced frequent anxiety - a feeling that is uncommon to me by nature.  Tonight, after our young women's youth group met for our weekday activity, I came home and found again this new familiar feeling of anxiety starting to build.  After unsuccessfully trying to distract my mind, before going to bed, I asked Mark if we could have a prayer to help ease my mind.

Now there are prayers and then there are PRAYERS.  I cannot tell you for how long I've avoided the latter.  I've intentionally avoided them.  I haven't been willing to open up the chambers of my heart to my Heavenly Father.  Not because I was hiding them from Him, but because I was hiding them from myself.   I was not willing to confront the pain of what I knew it would mean to have a personal heart to heart with my Maker.  Prayers with family at meal times - sure.  Prayers at night time with both Eden and Mark - sure.  Prayers of all sorts - sure! -as long as I could leave shut those few paddle locked chambers of my heart that kept at bay negative emotions.

So tonight, when I started the prayer with the overall intention to alleviate my mind of its anxiety and lay my worries down before the Lord - expressing my righteous desires in behalf of these girls - all of a sudden without being prepared, I had to go there - to those rooms I've avoided for oh so long.  I could not pray for these girls without the awareness that I also needed healing.  I cried and Mark held me - his warm hand cradling my face giving me silent encouragement and support.  I ended the prayer realizing something had changed within me.  For years, I haven't known how, but tonight I finally gave myself permission to let go of the snowball of hurt, disappointment, and pain that have diseased my heart and mind for too long.

So while I set off on a journey to extend to these girls all the love that I have and help them learn greater to trust their Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, I also set off on a journey to increase my faith in the Savior and the facets of the Atonement that would return me to wholeness.

In days too far past, I was a different person than who I've allowed myself to become.  Not knowing how to face and bounce back from rejection, I've slowly allowed my optimism, cheerfulness, resiliency, and fearlessness to be transformed into the antonyms of these traits.  And for this, I apologize to you, my loved ones, that have encountered in me a stranger filled with cynicism, ingratitude, and condemnation of those around me.  But no longer will I allow myself to degenerate from the much more pleasant version of myself that Heavenly Father created me to be.  I am thankful for the ambiguous effect of my desires for these girls and the miracle it has produced in my own heart.

And perhaps that is one reason the Lord called me, that He knew my inevitable prayers for the girls would be the vehicle needed to start my own healing.  And for this, I thank Him and the girls whom I've been called to serve.