Healing Some.

{Ucluelet 2016}

I sat in a pew on Sunday and for the first time in months I didn't want to run for my life...
Stay with me here.

Up until August I gave everything I had as I served in a calling I never thought once I was capable of doing, but I gave my all. I loved my sisters deeply, prayed for them continually and wanted nothing more than for them to understand just how much their heavenly father loved them. While I served some very traumatic things happened and I paid a high price both emotionally and mentally from those events.


Up until April we had spent the last eight years fighting Grant's illness. We had managed to keep him from being suicidal. In April, that changed overnight. Beginning the worst six months we have ever experienced with his illness. Home life was a firestorm of unpredictability and chaos.

The Sunday I was released felt like I was hit with a tsunami of emotions. Relief, frustration, fear, wondering, grief, gratitude..... no one knew or understood what I had been through. Why did I have to experience such difficult things in the middle of some of my most sacred experiences?

Home was no sanctuary either. Grant's illness robbed him of his ability to show empathy or understanding. The more grief and upset  I showed the more unstable his illness became.

God where are you? Nothing.... Chaos collided.

I had never felt so alone and unloved in my life.

I was trying to keep Grant alive and out of psychosis.

Church felt like torture. Going alone a reminder of all the blessings that seemed to be slipping away.
I felt ignored entirely or deeply wounded by senseless platitudes and assumptions. Many Sundays I sobbed in the pew.

What's the point, all my years of trying seemed absolutely pointless. I was ready to run.

A friend has dragged me to Sacrament meeting for months. Most Sundays I just felt like a wounded animal slowly dying unnoticed. There out of duty and my slight fear of my mother haunting me.

I went through the motions...

Sunday something happened...I had begged my Heavenly Father for relief the night before. But instead of asking for him to help others understand us and stop hurting us...I asked him to help me heal and find peace.

As I sat in the pew on Sunday and listened to the introduction of  my favourite Christmas hymn being played. The thought came:

 " No one here knows what you've been through or are going through, but I do, Robin."

For the first time in months I felt the burden of grief lighten and my Heavenly Fathers love.

My heart is healing some. There is still much of the journey ahead. I'm just grateful I didn't run.