November 17, 2013

At our Stake Conference today all of the talks were given by teenagers or young adults. Each had 10 minutes and were assigned a basic gospel principle to teach and testify about. It was pretty amazing,  but did not start out so well for me. I knew each speaker was only supposed to take 10 minutes. The first young man was super nervous,understandably, and rambling on and on. He was not following the -how we give talks in Mormon church cultural rules- and I started getting anxious. I admit that I started to judge him, thinking the whole meeting would be rushed now because he was taking WAY too long, why did they put him first, he was not being very clear, etc. etc.

But I really, really wanted/needed to have a spiritually nourishing experience at Conference today so I got my thoughts in order, and started to listen with my heart. Somewhere in his talk on the Book of Mormon the Spirit taught me a powerful personal message that I needed to hear on prayer. Makes me feel so humbled and grateful to a loving Father in Heaven and Savior who mercifully forgive me so often. Also later in his talk this 17 year old boy shared some of his experiences and I realized his life has been far less then ideal, and I asked the Lord for forgiveness again for judging him.

I have been struggling with prayer lately. It seems the Lord is far away. Some of this has to do with depression and the horrible veil it seems to put up between myself and the spirit. I was running on Saturday morning through a heavy mist. It was fairly warm, but the water kept condensing on my eyelashes fogging my vision. The world around me would blur out of focus. That is how it feels to me sometimes dealing with my brain recently. I just can't get the world in focus,or get the right focus. If you saw my kitchen counter right now you would know exactly how I have been feeling. It's a great barometer for my mental health ;)

During Stake Conference I felt the Spirit prompt me to ask myself what has been guiding me lately, what has my Liahona been? I thought and couldn't really come up with an answer, unless anxiety and depression are answers, which is just...depressing.  I then had Alma 37 come to mind, when Helaman is teaching his sons about the Liahona.

40 And it did work form them according to their faith in God; therefore, if they had faith to believe that God could cause that those spindles should point the way they should go, behold, it was done; therefore they had this miracle, and also many other miracles wrought by the power of God, day by day.
41 Nevertheless, because those miracles were worked by small means it did show unto them marvelous works. They were slothful, and forgot to exercise their faith and diligence and then those marvelous works ceased, and they did not progress in their journey.

The Spirit gently taught me how much I could improve my prayers and communication with the Lord by having faith in Him and His power in my life. My last post was all about small miracles, I think they have been all around me lately, but I have not seen them. So that is my goal right now, to progress in my journey by exercising faith in the Lord and to ask for help seeing His hand in all the miracles of my life.

PS - please don't be worried. I am no more depressed then usual.  Just trying to be more honest and open about it.

PPS - The Deseret News published an amazing story about the typhoon in Tacloban and how some sister missionaries survived. Here is a link if you are interested...may want some tissues close by.
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865590735/Surviving-the-typhoon-A-story-of-fear-faith-and-what-it-means-to-be-prepared.html