“Well, my dear sisters, the gospel is the good news that can free us from guilt. We know that Jesus experienced the totality of mortal existence in Gethsemane. It’s our faith that he experienced everything- absolutely everything. Sometimes we don’t think through the implications of that belief. We talk in great generalities about the sins of all humankind, about the suffering of the entire human family. But we don’t experience pain in generalities. We experience it individually. That means he knows what it felt like when your mother died of cancer- how it was for your mother, how it still is for you. He knows what it felt like to lose the student body election. He knows that moment when the brakes locked and the car started to skid. He experienced the slave ship sailing from Ghana toward Virginia. He experienced the gas chambers at Dachau. He experienced Napalm in Vietnam. He knows about drug addiction and alcoholism.  

Let me go further. There is nothing you have experienced as a woman that he does not also know and recognize. On a profound level, he understands the hunger to hold your baby that sustains you through pregnancy. He understands both the physical pain of giving birth and the immense joy. He knows about PMS and cramps and menopause. He understands about rape and infertility and abortion. His last recorded words to his disciples were, “And, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” (Matthew 28:20) He understands your mother-pain when your five-year-old leaves for kindergarten, when a bully picks on your fifth-grader, when your daughter calls to say that the new baby has Down syndrome. He knows your mother-rage when a trusted babysitter sexually abuses your two-year-old, when someone gives your thirteen-year-old drugs, when someone seduces your seventeen-year-old. He knows the pain you live with when you come home to a quiet apartment where the only children are visitors, when you hear that your former husband and his new wife were sealed in the temple last week, when your fiftieth wedding anniversary rolls around and your husband has been dead for two years. He knows all that. He’s been there. He’s been lower than all that. He’s not waiting for us to be perfect. Perfect people don’t need a Savior. He came to save his people in their imperfections. He is the Lord of the living, and the living make mistakes. He’s not embarrassed by us, angry at us, or shocked. He wants us in our brokenness, in our unhappiness, in our guilt and our grief. "--Chieko Okazaki (from her book, Lighten Up)

the best day

happy ho ho holidays

"In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it's wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices."
--Elizabeth Gilbert

an oldie but a goodie

hello world.

gah i used to be so good at this thing. i actually do like posting and writing things on the internet. i do. there, i said it. but i don't do it because i forget or maybe i feel like i don't have good things to say, or maybe my views have been heard a million times before. and also, i don't sit at a computer like i used to. i was at a computer all day most days and now in this new life, i forget about my computer, i forget about my phone, sometimes i forget to respond to texts. it is really weird. it is really weird to be living a whole new life.

i am in missouri. i am teaching yoga 4 times a week and working at a yoga studio two days a week. i help out at a local nursing home with activities and i work for a NGO. we bought a farm and are renovating the house. my life is filled with good things. i'm learning how to be a wife (which is not coming naturally to me like i thought it would) and  i am married to a kind, hard working man who is one of the goofiest people i've ever met and we laugh all of our days.

with that being said, life is not perfect. i am trying to figure out how to not live in suburbia but instead a little rural town. i still struggle with anxiety every now and then. i miss the comfort and familiarity my old life afforded me. but i am tough and some days are full of little victories and some days are full of big ones.

I've learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision. I've learned that even when I have pains, I don't have to be one. I've learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back. I've learned that I still have a lot to learn. I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

--Maya Angelou

happy halloweenie

just some thoughts

This summer has been such a journey. Lots of ups and downs, thought I'm happy to say that the ups are outnumbering the downs. It feels really good to be happy. Since coming off of that medication (see previous posts), I've really had to retrain my brain and relearn how to feel emotions. Imagine your feelings being magnified x100 after them being muted for so many years. It was a trip. I had to rebuild my brain muscles (brain exercises, everyday!) to react differently than they were used to. WOOOO. But let me tell you, life is way better on this side of things.

At testimony meeting a few weeks ago a lot of people bore their testimonies about imperfection. I've been praying to know how to be authentic and stop worrying about what people think of me. I put so much pressure on myself to be perfect and it gets so exhausting. I will never be perfect. And I am starting to realizing/remember/relearn that, I think I used to know that but then somehow things changed and I went through all of this hard messy stuff this year and I guess I forgot. And man it's so relieving when you realize you don't have to be perfect. And that you can't be. You can just be good, and love people, and make mistakes and then maybe learn from them. That's it. No perfection required. And that's actually really empowering.

Tibet and China trip summary

i met al last august on a rafting trip to jackson hole. we fell in love quickly but it just felt right and we were both in awe at how good we work together.

al and i "eloped" to the laie hawaii temple on march 28. i put "elope" in quotation marks because we told close family and friends but only invited our immediate families and a few best friends. everyone who could come did and we were just so glad they made it.

now we are settling in to being married and getting used to having someone around all the time. sometimes i still just look at al with wonder and think to myself, we're married forever? we get to do this forever?? how lucky are we?!

it's been almost two months and i'm just so glad we're here.

hello world.

i'm not sure if anyone reads this anymore. but if they do, i'm back.

i've been busy uprooting my life and figuring out how to be married. i've wanted to write and document and have a running commentary on all of these things but sometimes i'm not sure how to get all of the thoughts out of my head and onto paper/my little (tiny) corner of the internet.

so i will do my best to give you a peek into rural northwest missouri, all of the adventures we'll manage to find, and just life in general.

be better, not bitter

let's give ourselves a pat on the back for making it through january!

i feel like a lot of us are sifting through our lives trying to find and learn truth (political, life, spiritual, etc), but since it is FEBRUARY and the month of LOVE, i want to focus on loving others and loving myself  better. the past few months has been such a process of hurting and healing and learning and all of the -ings, but i can honestly say that as i continue to grow, i know healing is possible, with A LOT of work.

i promise that trusting God is the only way to get through it.

let's be BETTER!

"It may be a slow process, but giving up won't get you there any sooner. If we give up, then there won't be anything for Heavenly Father to help us with. Have faith in the future and have faith in your God. Have faith knowing that you are in the best hands. Have faith knowing that your struggles are leading you to better places and a better you. Let's all vow to quit questioning His plan for us and allow ourselves to LET him show us how great our God truly is.

Let's all just loosen up a bit and laugh a lot more and exercise faith in a perfect God who profoundly makes no mistakes. We may not have all the answers we want about our future, but we know enough. We are led by an all-powerful, all loving God. Our trials and our change of course will never alter the unchanging truth that He is taking care of us. 'Shall we not go on in so great a cause? Go forward, and not backward. Courage, brethren; and on, on to the victory!' (D&C 128:22)" --Al Carraway

My Bubba - Around

suckuary

january has a bad wrap, it's kind of the let down month after the holidays. the excitement from christmas is over and everyone is broke and everything slows down. i mean i guess it depends on your perspective because january can also be a time of optimism, fresh starts, and renewal since it's the beginning of a new year and a chance to change.

im having to retrain myself to handle the snow, my little car is doing a good job tackling the icy roads but that doesnt keep me from getting stuck. im having to retrain myself to see the winter as a good thing, a chance for things to rest and rejuvenate for the spring and regrowth. im having to retrain myself on a lot of things.

happy holidays

(via)

renovation

shortly after i wrote my post about coming off of cymbalta, i woke up out of the fog i had been in.

the physical withdrawals stopped, my brain fog was gone (i did not realize i was operating at 20% of my normal drea capacity) and i finally felt like myself again. i FEEL like myself again. i can cope.

the one thing that i've had the hardest time with is believing in my own power--that it's ok to feel anxious (which i felt plenty of times on medication and i don't know why i've forgotten that) and i am strong and brave and i can do this. that things take time. sometimes when i'm stuck in my head it's hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

and there is one at the end (improvement), but there's one right now too, a huge one. and that's God. i've forgotten Him. i lost sight of His light and it started trickling down into important relationships--with myself and with others.

i totally thought i could do this on my own. i imagine the apathy, the forgetting, happened for me kind of like you fall asleep--slowly, then all at once. turns out you don't get very far though, and even though it hurts and it took a kick in the pants to get remind me, i'm glad for the reminder to rein it in.

the c.s. lewis quote keeps coming in mind:

“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”

so i'm letting Him do that. it's hard though-the tight chest, the mental anguish, the resetting is not easy. i want the pain to be gone. and the medication never kept me from feeling these things either so i don't know why i let myself believe i was so reliant on it. i am a strong person, it's who i am, but i am nothing without God. He is my everything. my pride was getting the best of me but i'm letting Him come in and renovate.

I AM SO EXCITED FOR THE HOLIDAYS THIS YEAR

Sleeping at last - Touch (LYRICS video)

on surviving

for the past three weeks i've been in survival mode.

after a lot of thinking and praying and talking it out with loved ones, i decided to come off antidepressants i have been taking for 13 years. 13 years! that means i started it when i was 17, still a baby. so much has happened in my life since then, both trauma AND healing and even the physical make up of my brain has changed.

the medication i was on (i switched from paxil to cymbalta when i was 20) has only been on the market for 12 years so i am one of the people in the country that has been on it the longest. not only is it prescribed for depression, but also for nerve and back pain. the FDA doesn't have many studies done on the effect of the drug if you've been on it more than 2 years, because a 2-3 year study is their typical requirement. so needless to say, no one knows what could happen or how i could feel.

usually being on an antidepressant for more than two years at a time with out some kind of re-evaluation is bad practice. our brains don't always need that extra help all the time, just for major episodes of depression that occur, unless otherwise decided by a psychiatrist. some people genetically suffer from depression so being on this type of medication is essential. however, that is not me. at this point in my life, i really don't need it.

in my case, no one actually followed me on the medication, i guess i got lost in the system. i've had a few doctors and finally have a primary care doctor locked in and he continued to prescribe me the medication with no follow up. i don't fault him, because he didn't really know my whole history and i could've been more educated on this as well. it's just a lack of knowledge i suppose.

the withdrawals make me feel like a drug addict. dizziness, hot/cold flashes and chills and sweats (sometimes happening all at once), nausea, diarrhea, etc. the "restless legs" feeling that hits me is terrible. my sleep cycle has completely changed; i stay up late now and i have to fight myself to get up in the morning. i was used to going to sleep early and waking up early, i've always considered myself a morning person, but now i don't know.

then there's what's going on in my head: irritability, moments of extreme rage, very low lows, self deprecating thoughts. my highs are just my normal, happy self. i think i am a naturally happy person but now i have to work extra hard to be happy and that's probably the hardest part. hard days at work are the worst because when i get home i have nothing left in me to take care of myself--my head, my heart, my body. it's really hard going from really in tune with yourself to not knowing what to expect next.

because i started this medication when i was a teenager, i have no baseline as to what normal happy adult drea is. i try not to think about the what ifs...what if i had a doctor/psychiatrist/friend who could've brought this up earlier? i've spent so much time in my life telling myself that i wasn't crazy even though i had these "weird thoughts" (anger, anxious, etc), which have turned out to be a scientifically proven side effect of cymbalta. when friends in the medical field have found out i was taking cymbalta they've asked me how it made me feel--if i had these "weird thoughts".

vitamins and supplements have helped me get through this and thankfully i've already developed healthy habits and coping techniques. the times i experience feeling like my normal self give me hope, those happy moments assure me i won't feel so all over the place forever, but i know this will probably be a very long process. my brain is getting stronger and learning how to be independent, it's remapping itself and i think that's a good thing.

i wish i had some kind of timeline but i like to think i'm getting better every day, even if it's two steps forward and one step back. i know i will eventually come out of this and i will be just fine but for now it's survival mode as i try to sort this all out.

source

“But life isn’t something that should be edited. Life shouldn’t be cut. The only way you’ll ever discover what it truly means to be alive and human is by sharing the full experience of what it means to be human and each blemish and freckle that comes with it.” Iain Thomas

Mumford & Sons - Below My Feet - HQ Studio

love letter to utah

i've traveled a lot in my life and have lived in a few different cities. utah is my home now, i've lived here longer than anywhere else. it has treated me well throughout the years and every time i leave, though i love exploring wherever i go, i'm always happy to be back home.

i love the four seasons and the lack of bugs. the constant improvement and the kindness of the people. farmers markets and the hard working people that make those happen. farmers and fresh produce. the lakes and mountains. the list can go on and on and on.

lately i've met people who are appalled that i've lived in provo for so long. apparently it has this "peter pan" connotation---if you live here as a single adult, it means you don't want to grow up. i don't believe this is true because i feel like i am an adult. i have a job, a nice place to live. car and phone payments. i set goals for myself. these things happen in other cities across america so i'm not sure what the difference is.

i'm super grateful for the beauty that surrounds me, what God has created. the mountains supply me with hikes and runs and mountain biking. flora and fauna. adventures.

all in all, utah is a pretty great place and i'm so glad i live here.