My testimony is founded upon experimenting upon the words of the scriptures.
It started with reading this verse in Alma chapter 32: 27 —
But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than a desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words.
I made it a goal to experiment on the words of the scriptures many years ago, and that led me to a knowledge of the gospel and of God that I cannot deny. One so firm I could never turn my back on it even if I wanted to.
My faith has carried me as I have had a life long battle with depression and more recent struggles with anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder.
Despite thinking I had reached my darkest moment of depression in my youth, I recently admitted myself into a behavioral health unit at my local hospital to prevent my suicide. I felt out of control. It was terrifying. The idea that I was loved and important to my husband and 3 beautiful boys was not enough to feel in control but was enough for me to seek out help.
I know the devastation of suicide. Our family has experienced that heartache. Losing someone you love is hard enough, I couldn’t leave the ones I loved picking up the pieces and trying to understand what had happened (as was the case with the other losses we have experienced). I couldn’t leave my kids with the gaping hole of losing a mom and wondering if somehow they were the cause of my loss. That somehow their existence was the cause of my demise. Or my sweetheart with a hole in his heart so big and so deep that he may never recover.
Suicide has ripple effects that damage lives in ways that are seen and unseen. They ripple throughout the fabric of the lives of the ones we love. They aren’t the only ones affected, it impacts their children, their future, their sense of self. The impact of suicide transcends our human understanding as it impacts us in eternal ways as well.
Knowing all of this, it surprised me that I found myself back in that mindset and even worse than I had been before. I have always strived to be a good person and I knew that I was loved. This was proof to me that anyone could find themselves in the same shoes, absolutely anyone.
More than anything, I want to heal. Not for myself, but for the ones I love. I need to be whole so that my family has the best version of me helping them through the muddy river of life. I want for them to have the best chances of becoming what they need to be.
I was able to get lots of great guidance and counsel from the trained medical team at the hospital. They also equipped me with medication to help me while I navigate through this rough patch. I also have a therapist and doctor I see regularly to help me sift through my mental and emotional baggage and monitor and manage my medication.
Including God in this journey was the natural next step. Prayer and the ability to receive personal guidance from the Holy Ghost has given me further inspiration as to how I might move forward in the healing process. Something that has come up numerous times has been to follow the new for children and youth program that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has recently started.
Something I have discovered in several of the books I have listened to about mental health is that most of the categories in the For Children and Youth program seem to cover a lot of the things the professionals encourage for healing from depression, specifically if it is triggered by Post Traumatic Stress.
- Living true to your religious beliefs
- Regular physical exercise
- Having frequent positive social interactions
- Growing and achieving small attainable goals while working toward larger more difficult goals.
Goal setting has always been a struggle for me. I have a tendency to set huge unattainable goals for myself and then never achieve them. I have rarely experienced the joy of those small achievements along the way because I didn’t ever understand how to make my goals attainable. Having those small wins are so important in our personal growth. They give us confidence, purpose, and build our self-worth.
I really don’t know why I never realized that I was missing this simple understanding of the process of goal setting. I didn’t get the fact that you needed to take your larger goals and break them down into smaller bite-size goals.
So now, I have decided to take on this new experiment of setting goals within the quadrants set for the children and youth, and put them to work in my own life. This time with the hope that it will help me to heal and find deeper meaning and joy in my own life. I plan to write about it here to keep me in check with my goals, and so that I can share my progress with others who are interested.
I value the promptings I receive and look forward to what this new change will bring into my life. Hopefully, you will see a newer and happier version of me on the other side of all of this.
Come grow with me! Comment on the goals you are setting and achieving, I want to hear how these are helping you in your own lives! I hope to hear a lot of good things from all of you!
