Life has been pretty difficult the last two weeks. People have passed away, been diagnosed with terminal cancer, and gotten severely injured in car accidents. All of that on top of everything else that has become the normal craziness of my life and sometimes I feel like I just can't take one more piece of bad news.
I don't like to throw pity parties, especially on the blog, so trust me, that's not what I am trying to do here. I just need it to be said because I don't really know how else to express myself. I've never done well with bad news, I don't know what to do for people, I don't know what to say. I know how I feel and I'm used to bottling it up or doing whatever I can to ignore it. This is how I deal with things and honestly, I don't see anything wrong with it. When someone passes away, I have my testimony in the gospel and where we go after this life. I think a lot of my sadness is intitally thinking of what they will miss out on, because to me that's all I see sometimes...this life. But just as birth brings us to this stage of our existence, death carries us to the next. That's something I need to remember, it's just hard when people actually make that "transition".
This morning, I found out that one of my best friends got a job offer in Florida. He's been interviewing with so many different places that when the interviews with this place kept going well, I didn't think much of it. I was certain he wouldn't be going anywhere. I told him once that he was sent to Virginia to take care of me, because he moved here at a time when I needed someone the most and at a time when I felt that I was all alone. He helped me to heal from heartache and he helped me to move past the insecurities that are the scar tissue of heartache. We had talked a few weeks ago about how he couldn't figure out why he was in VA and I reminded him that it was for me and he said, "tell the Lord you're fixed and it's time for me to find a purpose" (that sounds harsher than it is - but it was not). I am happy for him, I'm just tired of losing people.
Two weeks ago there was a ward activity. I was having a really rough morning (I can't even remember why) and I was debating not going to the activity but some friends talked me in to going and I figured it was worth a shot. Almost instantly I was put in a better mood by the girl who sat in the back seat with me as we rode to the river. I was able to spend time with some friends I haven't really been able to sit down and talk with for a while and that evening, as we were driving back, I received a random text from one of my boys just telling me how great he thought I was (which made me cry because I needed something like that at that time). Even with all of this though, I ended the night feeling just as strange and out of place as before and I cried a lot because even though I couldn't put my finger on it, I knew I was sad about something. I learned something that day though that I wrote in my actual journal, it was that even on days when we don't think we could possibly see the Lord's hand in our Life, it is there. The Lord is there even on the bad days though it is harder to see Him. There's a quote from Maxwell that I like, "Selfish people are forever taking their own temperature, asking themselves, "Am I happy?" Our eternal happiness is insured, if we keep the commandments." We will not always be happy, fun and fancy free, there will be times when we are sad, when we feel lonely, when things just don't go as we would like them - that's mortality. But our eternal happiness is insured, we just need to hang on.
Little did I know that by realizing this, it was also the Lord's hand to prepare me for the two weeks that followed. Life has been emotionally, mentally, and physically draining since then but I have continued to see the good that there is. Not in the instant I receive the bad news, but I am getting quicker about stopping and thinking where the Lord is. Whether it's to remind me not to have hurt feelings, or that death is not an end, or that letting someone go doesn't mean giving up love but making room for more.
I'm still sad and crying, but I know deep down that things are going to be okay. No matter how dark or lonely things get, they always end up being ok so I have no reason to doubt.
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| Do not let the shadows convince you there is no light. |
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magnolia
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