Choosing to See

What I Had to do Before I Could See Christ in My Troubled Past   


Since the family pictures have fled with all their cheer and beauty to Instagram lately, this blog has experienced a bit of an existential crisis.  Why did I write here and why did you read here?  Do I continue my ruminations on what pain means to a woman of faith?  I guess part of the reason I've been silent lately is because my story has expanded from the lonely battle of depression to the wider war of family dysfunction--and I don't know how much of that you need or even want to know.

But I'm still here and the major theme of pain through the lense of faith persists in my life.  I assume it persists in yours as well, or you would not be brave enough to keep coming back.

And so as long as this soapbox of mine continues to bear my weight, you will still see me here, whining just as little as I can, but mostly sharing my hope of a better world to come.  This blog is a love song to my perfect Savior, and so...I write.

.     .     .

If you've missed the basic outline of my last eighteen months, and just so you can have some context, here it is.  My brother admitted to a major pornography addiction, left his wife, and left the church. My parents separated, then divorced.  My dysfunctional relationship with Dad has painfully exploded into complete rupture.  The counseling I've resorted to in order to help me cope has sometimes been a cocoon of validation and support, but more frequently a brutally painful opening and scrubbing of old wounds so that they can heal properly.  And the past year has been very physically painful as I've battled chronic pain and tension in my neck and shoulders, which no amount of medication, yoga, exercise, massage, chiropractic care, or physical therapy seems able to touch.

There is a lot of good news, though.  I've won a lot of battles with anxiety and depression this year because of all the great therapy, medication, and especially love and support from family and friends. My kids have thrived in their new Montessori School, alleviating my responsibility to home school them and also the guilt that I would have struggled with if they didn't love their school.  My relationships with TJ, the kids, my mom and my siblings have grown in intimacy and joy--more, I think, than they ever could have without these struggles to pull us together.  I spend hours and hours every week connecting with my loved ones as we do everything from Muppet movies to serious discussions about our feelings and our lives.  The adults in my family have given me the most important validation, counsel, feedback, and support, despite my excellent professional counselor.  And I'm learning to make friends for the first time since college, fighting my way out of the self-imposed isolation and loneliness depression often brings.  Girl friends!  Thanks for loving me even though I have no social skills.

.     .     .

I suppose the best news of all is what you hoped it would be.  My testimony of Jesus Christ becomes brighter and more hopeful as time passes and I learn more fully what he has done and continues to do for me.

As I said, I've had to revisit some very painful facts about my childhood, and there have been some very dark times when I've wondered where God was when I was suffering so much.  Those who enjoyed relatively healthy childhoods will struggle to understand this, but examining my past has brought home the painful reality that I'm not sure God loves me--and the closer my therapist has helped/forced me to look at the painful circumstances of my childhood, the more this wound has hurt. It's not the age-old philosophic debate, if God existed he would not allow so much pain in this world. It's worse than that: He does exist and He is full of love, but he doesn't love me--or I would have felt his love during that dark time.  

One of the most painful and lingering effects of childhood abuse is that it can be difficult and even impossible to believe in a loving Heavenly Father.  Feeling unloved and unlovable is also a classic symptom of depression.  And this can rec havoc on our faith.  It's a pretty awful irony--those of us who feel unloved by parents will also struggle to feel God's love.

I listened to a podcast recently featuring Deborah Pegues, who wrote "Forgive, Let Go, and Live," and identified so much with her story.  My heart especially resonated with what she said about facing the fact that God has allowed our suffering.

"First of all, you understand that everything that has happened in your life--this is a hard one--God saw it before it happened.  He saw it before it happened and He saw it while it was happening.  And He could've stopped it.  That has been a big pill to swallow.  God saw that.  He could've stopped it.  So it must gonna be something that's gonna work together for my good ultimately...I'm gonna grow.  Something good is gonna happen.  If you don't take a divine perspective towards that kind of pain, you're gonna get stuck in it. You're gonna say, "It shouldn't have happened."  And it probably "shouldn't have happened," but in His divine providence, God knows..."All the days ordained for me were already written in His book."  Not the good days, the bad days, too.  And so, yes, I can relax.  So I'm gonna choose how I remember this...When you walk by faith, at some point, you gotta start abandoning the "why" and just say, "it did and that I'm gonna trust God."
I like what Joseph said when his brothers came to him.  And you know the story, how he was sold into slavery and they came and they knew they were mean to him and they said, "Forgive us, we're sorry."  And he said, "Listen, you meant it for bad, but God meant it for good."  

I've been grieving this year, hard.  I have been shedding a lifetime of bottled up tears.  I have been kneading and beating on my grief like a big wad of bread dough, trying to pound out my anger and expel my pain.  It's been necessary, completely awful emotional work to say goodbye to the blessings denied me over all these years of  life.  And even through this latest installment of pain, I've asked Him, "where were you all those years?  and where are you now?"

I planned on wearing this t-shirt for a picture in a canyon
just for you guys.  I didn't plan on waking up feeling alone
and unloved on the day of the trip--and I almost didn't go.
Yet the combination of a favorite t-shirt and God's glorious
creation tuned me right in to his love.  Not always that simple,
sadly.  But sometimes it is.  

So this painful, painful year has been very much about forcing me to face The Big Question: does my painful past prove that He doesn't love me, or is it just the opposite? Emotionally this year would look like a V on a bar graph, with my grieving over all I've lost, feeling abandoned and forgotten, and generally unloading a lifetime of repressed sorrow.  Down toward the bottom of the V, I was still hanging on to some kind of hope that Heavenly Father loved me, but it was very academic at that point.  My whole life is based on the assumption, the trust, that it's true, but I needed to know.  And so God has been teaching me in real time that the hardest trials are proof of his love, because this, the hardest of years, has taken me to the nadir that I needed to reach in order to be ready to believe.  I had to climb to the bottom of the canyon before I could ascend the mountain on the other side.  And God let me do it, because it was part of his plan for me to feel the joy that can only come when we're willing to face our fears down.

I reached the bottom of that canyon, and I'm climbing up the other side now.  The height of the mountain will crown me with sure knowledge of my Father in Heaven's love, but for now it's just wonderful to take step after step up into the sunshine.

My sense of how much Heavenly Father loves me has deepened as I have looked back over my troubled past and have seen the multitude of tender mercies He gave to me.  My vision has cleared , and now when I look back on the pain of my past, I see that Father in Heaven tempered my troubles. He cleared dangerous obstacles out of my path and saved me from many snares.  He sent care packages, always at the right time: teachers, friends, mentors, siblings, great books and beautiful music--to inspire me, give me hope and joy, and to teach me about a beautiful life just out of reach but worth hoping for.

But the most important thing he did was to provide a Savior.  My Savior redeemed me from my many follies and mistakes, making me worthy through his grace of the Comforter.  He gave me hope for a bright future in the company of the most loving Father a girl could have.  And at great personal cost, Heavenly Father allowed his precious son to suffer with me.  

I have come to know that I never cried alone.  That sad little girl who has always lived in my memory as very alone and unloved--had her Savior beside her, helping her bear her burden, comforting her, protecting her from trauma that would have undone her, and this is the most important part, crying with her.

Elder Merrill J. Bateman's words on the Atonement have helped me come to this new understanding of my painful past.  He said,

For many years I thought of the Savior's experience in the garden and on the cross as places where a large mass of sin was heaped upon Him.  Through the words of Alma, Abinidi, Isaiah, and other prophets, however, my view has changed.  Instead of an impersonal mass of sin, there was a long line of people, as Jesus felt "our infirmities" (Heb. 4:15), "[bore] our griefs,...carried our sorrows,,,[and] was bruised for our iniquities."  (Isa. 53:4-5).

The memories have gone from bitter to semi-sweet, because that image has changed.  I wasn't alone. He literally shared my pain, felt it in its entirety for as long as I was feeling it.  He experienced the full magnitude of it not only so he could help me heal, but really for the same reason my earthly angels do--because He loves me.  He loves me enough to suffer with me.

My trials will continue to refine me, and I will still struggle to feel loved sometimes, but I'm climbing up into a safer and surer knowledge that feeling alone is not the same as being alone.  My Heavenly Father and my Savior lavish me with more love every day than I can even conceive.  Especially when I'm in pain.  

For Mom

Do you know the lady in this picture?  If you don't, you really should.  This lady is one of my heroes. And she's just as sparkly in person.

My mom and I wouldn't appear to have a ton in common.  She's a brunette and I'm blonde (ish.)  She loves rock concerts, and I'm a card-carrying choir nerd.  She is a classic extrovert, absolutely the life of every party, and I would much rather be home where people can't look at me and talk to me. She has an encyclopedic memory of grammar classes she took forty years ago, and I have trouble remembering even the last concept she herself tried to teach me.  She doesn't sweat the small stuff, and I sweat everything. 

And here's a big one: Mom's a convert and I'm a life-long member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  But here the dissimilarities begin to unravel, because Mom's faith formed my faith in its own image.  Her stories of answered prayers, tender mercies, and gospel principles in action were some of the first things I learned in this world.  She read scriptures and prayed with me.  She set an example of courage and commitment over and over again when her marriage was hard, or when finances were tight, or when she had hard pregnancies and miserable babies.  (No one's naming names here...Nikki.) When I was difficult as a teen, she forgave and loved me.  When I was difficult as an adult, she forgave and loved me again (last week.)

Funny that I learned most from her when she was having a hard time, but I guess that's good news to every parent who's struggling.  She's just as important to me now that I'm grown as she ever was back then.   She believes in me and is proud of me.  She comes to my rescue when I'm in over my head. She loves each one of my children and is genuinely interested in their lives.   And she makes me laugh so hard my forehead vein pops out.  I usually destroy the evidence, so there aren't many pictures, but you get the point:

Sometimes I show hope of becoming like my mom.  I'm learning to put the financial needs of the family ahead of my own selfish desires.  And although I'll never catch up with Mom's reading--she's read more classics than many Doctors of English Literature--I do love great books because of her.  I definitely got the writing bug from her, along with every single one of her eight kids.  And I do love to laugh, just like her.  As a kid, I once heard a friend repeat her mom's criticism of mine: "she laughs too much."  I remember thinking, "is there such a thing as laughing too much?"  Mom laughs not because her life is perfect, but because she knows the power of a cheerful heart to make life better. She's certainly made my life better.

So though I know we have both asked ourselves at some point whether I was switched at birth, in my heart I know the truth.  I am absolutely Cathy Monnett's daughter.  And glad of it.  Thank you Mom, for everything. 

Happy Mother's Day!

Book of Mormon Week--Day Eight

At this point I'm sure you're all wondering what kind of education my poor home-schooled children are getting, if their mom doesn't even know how many days there are in a week.  I just had to find a way to squeeze TJ's testimony in.  He truly is the spiritual leader of this family and I'm so grateful he took the time to share.  His account of how the Book of Mormon helped him in our early years of marriage is totally  new to me, so that makes me really glad I asked!

Because I teach scripture to teenagers for a job, (I’m an LDS seminary teacher) I’m in the scriptures for hours every day.  You might think that the scriptures would get tiresome, but after 5 years of teaching I’ve found it to be just the opposite.  You also might think that I would get my fill of them at work and would not want or need to study them personally at home each day, but I’ve also found that to be untrue.  In my personal life I RELY on studying the scriptures each day, and especially the Book of Mormon.  Why especially the Book of Mormon?  It is hard to quantify, but I can answer by simply stating that it just works best.  This doesn’t surprise me considering what Joseph Smith boldly declared, “a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than any other book.” I have many theories as to why living the precepts of this book in particular works best.  

Perhaps, most importantly is the frequency, depth, and clarity with which it testifies of my Savior Jesus Christ.  Its central purpose is clearly and explicitly to bring me to Him.  Its success in doing so is demonstrated in my feeling about my favorite scripture.  Yes, I do have a favorite, a one and only favorite that will be so forever!  2^nd Nephi 26:24 states: “He (Christ) doeth not anything save it be for the benefit of the world; for he loveth the world, even that he layeth down his own life that he may draw all men unto him.”   This one simple phrase, this beautiful doctrine revealed in the Book of Mormon, that he doesn’t do, or in effect say, feel or even think, for that matter, ANYTHING except its express purpose is to benefit me and mankind brings such astounding clarity to the character of God as to motivate me to complete devotion to Him.  The realization that he does NOTHING unless it is to help us startles me with wonder into a deep sense of gratitude and desire to please him.  I am inspired to love him with all my heart, might, mind and strength as I learn of his infinite love for me in the Book of Mormon.  Because of what I’ve learned in the Book of Mormon I dedicate my entire life to His service.  What else could bring me closer to God than such a desire?

The Book of Mormon also works for me by solving my daily dilemmas; over and over I receive inspiration that is exactly what I needed with my struggles.  I can think of many examples.  One of my favorites is when Kari and I were engaged we had decided to have children right away, even though I was scared out of my mind about providing financially for a family.  We both only had two years of college completed.  We did have some money saved, but between the two of us we had only one part-time job because we were moving to Provo as soon as we got married.  My worst fears about money and providing were realized day three of marriage; on our honeymoon our car broke down and was totaled.  We had to spend almost all our savings on a new car.  Now our resolve to have children right away was really put to the test.  We felt strongly that God did not want us to delay having children and so we took a big leap of faith.  The first months of marriage were scary for me as I worried about the future.  I had 3 years of school left before my career as a teacher began, so I was going to school full-time and could barely work at all, and once a baby came Kari would have to quit her new job and then it would all hit the fan.  How was this going to work? I will never forget the answer I found in Mosiah, chapter four, where King Benjamin promises that if we are faithful, “ye will not suffer your children that they go hungry, or naked.”  I couldn’t believe it.  God was answering my prayers, telling me that He would make sure I could provide for my family if I moved forward in faith.  As I pondered over this promise my fears about the future were swept away.  I knew the future was bright.  We successfully had 2 children before I graduated, and I consider it a miracle that we now have 5 children, a big beautiful home in our dream town, and no student loan debt, all on a teacher’s salary and without Kari having to work a day outside the home since our first baby.  The promises in the Book of Mormon really work.

Another example is that recently I’ve been feeling like I don’t have the time to complete all that I need to do.  I’ve been stressed as I try to balance the many demands on my time.  It doesn’t help that I’m a perfectionist.  I often fret and worry about how my efforts don’t provide the outcome I’m looking for.  Once again, my problem was solved in the Book of Mormon.  Moroni 7:33: “And Christ hath said: If ye will have faith in me ye shall have power to do whatsoever is expedient in me.”  This came as a revelation to me.  Yes, through faith in Christ I will be made equal to any task, but I learned that I am only made equal to the tasks that God deems expedient.  I learned that if I fail at something or if things don’t turn out like I had hoped, it just wasn’t expedient.  In other words it didn’t really matter in the big picture of my eternal progression.  This principle brings tremendous comfort to me as I continually battle my fallen hopes. 

Just this week I’ve been struggling again with the same issue and found another scripture that deepens my comfort when things go awry.  2 Nephi 32:9 “…pray unto the Father in the name of Christ, that he will consecrate thy performance unto thee, that thy performance may be for the welfare of thy soul.”  With this promise in mind, I can’t lose!  No matter what the results of my efforts, if I will be prayerful then God will turn it for my good!  I am now constantly reminded of God’s infinite wisdom, concern, and help in my behalf.  I feel like He’s always there with a big safety net ready to catch me.  Even though I fall, and--I do fall--He is there to catch me and ensure that everything will be okay in the end. 

Wow!  God is so good to me!  I feel like much of what I know about Him comes from the Book of Mormon.  I rely on this book to bring me closer to my Savior Jesus Christ.  It works and I love the results!

Day of Rest

For the past three weeks, I've enjoyed the Sabbath day more, and have felt more rested, uplifted and inspired than I have for years.  That's because I haven't been going to church.

Ostensibly, I've been staying home to heal and rest, and to protect the health of Isaiah, whose immune system still needs a little while to boot up before he meets a chapel full of fans. 


But a girl sure could get used to this.  After all, what am I missing?  The sacrament is delivered to me here, so I can still renew my covenants.  Instead of hearing talks from ward members, I get to hear general conference talks online.  And although I'm not serving in Primary, I get to serve this sweet baby boy--which yields way more warm fuzzies per hour, anyway.  Instead of the weekly "be reverent" wresling match our family hosts during sacrament meeting, I'm at home enjoying personal scripture study, prayer, reflection, and journaling--all things that, admittedly, I don't take advantage of enough.  Three golden hours of silence in my own home have turned out to be a spiritual boon for me.

I'll be back to church in a week or two, however--and although I'll miss the peace and quiet of a solitary Sunday afternoon, I'll be glad to be back.  After all, I wouldn't have a testimony of this gospel if my parents hadn't braved the toils of church worship as they did just about every week of my upbringing.  We go to church first because our parents take us.  Then, because we hunger and thirst after the word of God.  Finally, we go so that we can pass the torch of testimony to the next generation.  It's worth it, too.  They're worth it.