Goodbye to 2013 - and good riddance too!

Fitting that today it's been a full YEAR since I last posted.

Oops.

I really didn't realize that until I was halfway done writing this post.  I've been meaning to write it for a few weeks now.  For some reason it just felt like today was the right day to do it.  Or maybe I just didn't want to study.  In any case, here goes.

Let me just say that 2013 was hands down the hardest year of my life.  Pretty sure it will hold that title for years to come as well.  I sure hope so anyway because it was ROUGH.  I've toyed with the idea of blogging about what I have been through...what I'm still going through... but I don't feel like that's right yet.  Maybe someday.
For now I'll say that I have passed through what I hope proves to be the darkest parts of a major crisis.  A crisis of identity, of personality, of flaws, of faith, of....almost everything.  It shook me to my very core and then took that core and blew it to smithereens and left me with all these confusing pieces that needed to be put back together.  But first all of these pieces had to be discovered and gathered one by one.  And they needed to be studied, understood, worked on, reshaped, fixed and then reassembled.  But it wasn't like putting back together a puzzle that a 2 year old tore asunder.  All the shapes of all the pieces had to be changed - and I couldn't tell how they were supposed to go back together.  And it was hard and frustrating and scary and tense and INtense and dark and ugly and mortifying and horrifying and depressing - like REALLY I-can't-get-out-of-bed depressing - and uncomfortable and revealing - of a lot of things I really didn't like finding - and often full of more questions than answers and it was exasperating and expensive and emotional and exhausting and messy and slow and painful and challenging and almost unbearable at times, and it often left me reeling and made me feel totally stuck and deflated and dejected and broken and worthless and totally lost and confused and unstable and unsettled and and like a failure and like every step forward only came with two steps back and...and...and...

And it was lonely - SO lonely!  Because for years I was too afraid to talk about my problems.

But it was also liberating and grounding and anchoring and healing and faith-building and rewarding and SO relieving and soothing and...and...and... and hopefully lots more things.... but quite frankly, the sting of it all is still pretty fresh.  Hopefully down the road I will be able to look back at this time of my life and be grateful I passed through it.  I think as time passes I'll be able to add a lot more to the list of good things that came out of the mess I went through.  That I am still going through.

A few little gems that I am most grateful for thus far:

First, I'm grateful for my counselor.  News flash folks:  COUNSELING ISN'T JUST FOR CRAZY PEOPLE.  Or is it that we're secretly ALL a little bit crazy underneath and therefore it IS for crazy people but that includes everyone?  The point is, a good counselor is invaluable.  I'm so glad I found mine.  I have no idea how he has the emotional strength does what he does, but I'm glad he's so good at it.  I was totally and completely stuck and had NO idea how to get unstuck.  Without professional help I never would have gotten unstuck.  And I could see a major breakdown coming if I had remained stuck for much longer.  If you're feeling stuck seek out a counselor.  It will likely be hard, but oh my goodness it is so worth it.  I have been working with one who shares my faith.  Can't imagine working with anyone else.

Second, I'm grateful the loneliness part is over.  It took about 3 or 4 months of intense emotional work with my counselor to get over the fear I had of being rejected by EVERYONE if they only knew what I was hiding under the surface.  Over the years I got REALLY good at hiding, and that contributed more than anything else to the thick fog of loneliness I was living in.  The constant fear and the paranoia it produced was awful, and it was definitely the hardest thing to let go of.  It's crazy how isolated I felt - for years - even though for most of my life I've been surrounded by good good people.  I isolated myself out of fear.  What a terrible thing.  Opening up has been SCARY.  It takes a HUGE amount of vulnerability.  I like to think it's getting easier, but I'm not so sure.  I'll tell you what though, it's been worth it.  Breaking out of the loneliness has been the best thing for me!  It has brought about deep and meaningful connections with everyone I've talked to so far - which is something I desperately needed after being so lonely for so long.  I'm thankful that, so far, everyone has responded with concern, love and support.  Even though it's scary at first I have really come to enjoy talking about my experiences.  But, like I said above, I'm not ready to tell the masses just yet.  I'm still REALLY careful about who I talk to and when I talk to them.  I hope this doesn't cause hard feelings.  God has had a hand in letting me know who to tell - and when to tell them.  It's the funniest thing and it often doesn't make sense...until it does.  And then it's just beautiful how orchestrated it all is.  I definitely trust His judgement, after all He's pretty good at knowing how to do things the right way.  If you want to talk then mention reading this post.  If God says it's ok then we'll talk.  If He says nope then we won't.  Simple as that.  And you're not allowed to be upset if God or I say nope.  :-)  The longer we've known each other and closer we are the more likely it is that I'll get the go ahead from God - and from myself.  haha!  I'm most comfortable talking with people who are related to me, but I've told a few close friends too.  Put some serious thought into it before you ask.  Pray about it.  I will on my end too.

Third, I'm grateful for the ability I have to feel the Spirit.  It's a beautiful, wonderful, priceless gift.  It's something I have come to cherish more than anything else.  It is and has been a beacon of light and comfort, warmth and love that has pierced through EVERY dark thing I have ever passed through.  The Spirit has always been able to break through to me, even when I believed I literally was not worth God's love - or ANYONE's love for that matter.  Even when I have been unworthy - when I have felt like I'd rather cease to exist than face God.  Even when I have felt like God isn't there.  Even when I've been really mad at God.  Even when I've felt like God didn't want to touch me with a 10 foot pole.  No matter what my relationship with God is like the sweet and comforting feelings of His Spirit have been there through it all.  ALL of it.  Including that huge list of horrible things listed above.  The only reason I am standing where I am today is because of the gentle prodding and encouragement and LOVE I feel as the Spirit works on my heart and tells me to push on.  I feel so lucky that I was blessed with a keen ability to feel it - and to WANT to feel it.  It has made making some extremely difficult decisions really easy to make.

Fourth.  It's amazing to me how God intertwines our lives.  People have been placed in my path because I NEEDED them.  I think lots of the LDS students out at school with me - and their spouses - wonder why their route to becoming a doctor brought them way out to the middle of the Caribbean.  All of them seem to figure out their own reasons why God wanted them here, but I secretly think they're here because I needed them here.  That's all.  God made sure I had a great group of supporting friends and saints to help me through the darkest days of my life.  And there were several key players who unknowingly played MONUMENTALLY pivotal roles in my life.  You know who you are.  You were some of the first people I started talking to because I was so grateful for the help you unknowingly gave me.  It's a deeply and profoundly beautiful thing to me.  To think that YEARS ago God started orchestrating who would be here, and when they would be here, and why they would be here.  It blows my mind.

...

I have no idea how to gracefully close this post.  Haha!  Am I where I want to be?  Not yet, but I'm headed in the right direction.  And I'm sure glad I'm not where I was a year ago.  I don't ever want to go back to that.  There's more work to do, but I'm confident I'll get there.  Is my relationship with God where I want it to be?  Not yet.  It's funny.  At times I've been really frustrated with Him.  I've felt ignored by Him.  I've felt like He has left me to do a lot of the work on my own - kind of like He has taken more of a backseat role when I wanted Him to play more of a starring / leading role.  I've felt alone and upset because I haven't felt the Atonement of Christ reshaping my soul as much as I have wanted to feel it.  I've felt extremely let down after PLEADING with God to save me from falling when I was totally powerless, and then feeling nothing.

NOTHING!

Nothing?  

This made me feel... humiliated?  Strung along?  Duped?  More than anything I was just really mad at Him for a quite a while.  I felt like His promises were crap.  Despite that, I could still feel the Spirit encouraging me to keep going, but that's not what I wanted.  I wanted to feel the hands of the Savior working on my heart.  Instead I distinctly felt like He was holding back.
It wasn't until I forced myself to take a step back and look at how far I've come that my relationship with God started getting better.  It was a quiet moment of retrospection that let God and I resolve our differences - and by that I clearly mean that's what it took for me to resolve my differences with Him.  He knew what He was doing the whole time.  Duh.  Once I was able to clear my vision, once I stopped being mad that God wasn't healing me how I wanted Him to heal me, guess what I was able to see.

MOUNTAINS

HAVE

BEEN

MOVED

That's what.  And, yeah, a lot of it has been my own work.  But a lot of it has been His work too.  I think He's just trying to help me see that I'm a lot stronger than I think I am.  He's gotten me this far and I'm confident that He can take me the rest of the way there, however far that proves to be.  I sure as heck can't take myself there.  That's kinda the point, isn't it?  It's a beautiful thing.