Julia
poetrysansonions.blogspot.com

Sorry to be catching old ones, the Topical Guide doesn’t have dates. Since I spend a lot of time laying on my back still, my iPhone and Keepa are keeping me busy.

(Totally off subject but I tried to do the donation thing, but it wouldn’t take it. It may be an iPhone thing. I will see if Scott can get it to work tomorrow.)

Julia
poetrysansonions.blogspot.com

I’m going to link to it in my sideblog, so that perhaps more people will read it than might find it as a comment on this aging post.

Julia
poetrysansonions.blogspot.com

After the baptism was done, the twin wanted to go play with a friend for a few hours, and then my son found a friend who had puppies at his home, and his mom was okay with him staying until I picked up the girls. It was the first Sunday of Spring Break, so playing with church friends until 9:00 pm seemed reasonable. Just as they were all getting ready to leave my son’s friend hollered, “Sister P******, what time is the picnic on Wednesday?”

The kids were getting all of their jackets sorted out when Nancy approached me. She said your, Julia P*******, right? I think you sent me a card. I said that I didn’t think so, although I had really enjoyed her baptism. My son said, “probably it was mom she writes lots of cards, even when my dad yells at here!” Thanks son. Nothing like kids for honesty.

Nancy went and picked up her purse and drew out an envelope. The kids recognized flower stickers that I still had at home, and it was my handwriting on the inscription. She was about to say more, but her brother was getting ready to leave and she went over to give him a hug. She handed me the envelope and card before giving hugs to a few other people. I looked at the card, and recognized it as one from a set of six I had made. I was still confused because I made them a long time ago, and had used the last one over a year before.

I looked at the envelope and realized that I had sent it thirty two months ago. Why had she kept the card so long? Nancy was still talking to other people, so I opened the card and started to read. I was flabbergasted. I had shared A LOT of personal details about my life, the sexual and rape, my teenage suicidal attempt, and even my struggle with understanding the Atonement. I was barely talking to my husband and mom about those issues, outside of therapy, in 2005. I really couldn’t imagine that I had written this many personal details with someone I didn’t know.

I was glad that the kids had already taken off. It gave me a few minutes to digest. Why had I shared those struggles with Nancy? Why did Nancy still have the card? Why was it in her purse? I didn’t have many answers, but I was breathing and able to smile when Nancy came to sit next to me.

She came back and gave me a big hug, and thanked me for coming. She then told me the story of the card, why it was in her purse, and how it had impacted every layer of her life. By ten minutes in, we were both in tears.

In August of 2005, Nancy had decided that she was done with life. Everything had built layer on layer of heartache, and by then, she had decided that she wanted out. She had planned carefully. Her parakeets were in a new home, the dog was visiting her brother and his partner and Nancy was sure they would keep him. She had taken three weeks of vacation and bought all of the supplies that she needed to end her life. She stopped by the bank and pulled almost all of her money our of her savings account. Her last stop on the Friday night was to pick up her mail.

She had dinner started when she sorted her mail. When she saw the envelope with the hand written address and stickers, it was out of place swimming in among the bills and junk mail. She didn’t recognize my name, and she wasn’t sure that she wanted to open it and be disappointed because it was just a card from the insurance company or someone asking for money. She decided to wait until after dinner to decide what to do.

Nancy had made the decision to end her life about two months before she started getting the supplies ready to do it. Through that time she did pray, figuring that she should let him know what she was planning on doing. She wasn’t positive that He was there, but her parents had believed, and talking to Him at least helped her become clear in her own mind about why and how she was going to commit suicide.

After she had showered and changed into pajamas, she checked all of the supplies that she was planning on using the next day, and then sat down on the couch with the card. She turned it over and over, and then got up the courage to slice through the card with her letter opener. Nancy read the card, tears running down her face. She never did make it to bed that night. The rest of the night she cried, read the card again, found her scriptures to look up the scripture reference on the back of the card.

That card became her lifeline. It was in her purse when she showed up to her first counseling appointment the next Monday. It was in her hand when she talked to the suicide crisis line on Saturday that set up Monday’s appointment. It was in her quad when she went to the last 15 minutes of Relief Society that Sunday.

Nancy kept the card with her through the funeral of her parents, her brother’s failed adoption of a son from Romania, and her best friend’s battle with cancer. She wondered about me, and who I was, but it seemed like an unsolvable mystery. By the time she thought to go to the address on the envelope, we had already moved. She checked an old stake directory, but didn’t see us in that either.

About fourteen months before that, she had decided that she wanted and needed to repent of some past sins. She was ready do whatever she needed to do, so that she could go to the temple. After submitting to the decision of the disciplinary council, Nancy had worked through issues with her bishop and had started to attend church regularly. She was singing in the church choir, and was helping transport the young women from a family who needed help. About six weeks before she was rebaptised, there was a ward boundary realignment.

For the last four or five months, Nancy had been praying to be able to find me, because she wanted to invite me to come to her baptism. Several family issues, besides the fighting, had come up over the last few months, so I had only been to church twice since the realignment. I was still getting used to the new ward. (We were one of about twenty families that had been moved from one ward to the other.) So, I was praying for guidance and Nancy was praying for me to be there, and we both got what we were asking for.

Nancy kept saying, “How did you know?” She had thought about me for over two years, and to be honest, as soon as the card was in the mail. I am not sure that I was even the one writing it, since I didn’t remember anything about it until I read the card that night. The scripture reference of the back of the card still spoke to me as loudly as it did to her, and I had my answer as to whether the Lord thought I was worthy to serve Him.

Back Side of the Card:
Mathew 25:40

And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

I think that I am nearing the end, of an I tense period of being at home (and in bed for most of it) with some very painful physical problems. During that time I have had almost a month where I could not read text from books (it was just too blurry) but I would read backlit text. That started me reading the scriptures online, and clicking on the links to footnotes and resources. I had the time, so following all of the references put together to create a correlated set of scriptures, was a pleasant way to take my mind off of the pain.

During those reading sessions (I read the Book of Mormon and almost all the links in about 40 days.) one thing kept coming to me. While it wasn’t said as often as, “And it came to pass,” the admonition to Remember is ubiquitous. I certainly have had the admonition to remember something in blessings, but in this reading it came to me that it is much easier for Heavenly Father and the Holy Ghost to help us remember, than it is to teach us something new.

If I have read the material for a test, asking for divine help to remember the things I have studied is reasonable. I have done the work to learn the material, and now I need to simply remember the answers. If I have not studied the materials, then there is not much of Them to work with. I think this is true for almost any gospel principle.

I find it relatively easy to distinguish promptings from my own thoughts, but that comes from years of following promptings, even if I don’t understand why the Lord needs it done right now. A friend asked me on time how I could be sure that something was a prompting when I didn’t have any idea of what the outcome would be. Simply saying that I know it is because it is like any other prompting I get is not very helpful if you aren’t me. I told her that if she followed the promptings that she thought were promptings, that she would see the rewards from doing that.

She still wasn’t convinced. She wanted to know how long she would have to wait to see results. I told her that I was pretty sure most of the results we won’t be sure of in this life, but on a day when I was questioning my eternal worth, I got a gift returned that had been sent out severals years before.

I often get the prompting to send someone cards. Sometimes I know the person, sometimes they are only a name in the ward or stake directory, or a name I run into while doing something else. I try to follow those promptings as they come, so that I don’t forget and lose out on an opportunity to serve. Since I seem to be one of the few people I know who finds hand writing and “snail mailing” to be soothing, I think that I am more likely to get these promptings than someone with terrible handwriting, or who has never owned stamps. I have a constant supply of store bought and handmade cards and a variety of stamps at any time.

So, on a random day sometime in 2005, I had a prompting to send a card to a woman whose name was in the ward list, but who I hadn’t met. I was calling the Webelos parents to make sure all the boys had hiking boots, when her name and address caught my attention and I had the “you need to send this person a card” prompting. I did the last phone call, pulled out the box of cards, and chose one that seemed “right.” I then said a prayer to know what to write, and started writing. When I was done I addressed the envelope, put a sticker on it and put it in the mail the next day. I didn’t think about it after it was in the mail box.

Over two years later I was having a tough month. It was about 13 months before I finally left my first husband, and we had been having screaming fights more than once a week. At the end of one of the fights my ex-husband yelled at me for having bought stamps that day. He said, “I have no idea why you send cards to anyone. No one ever sends one back, and they probably throw them away as soon as they see your name on it. Quit fooling yourself that the Holy Ghost has anything to do with it. If I can’t stand you then certainly Heavenly Father can’t.”

Every night as I was falling asleep, saying my prayers, I would hear the words of that fight echo in my ears. I started asking Heavenly Father if I was deluded, or if I was useful. For almost two weeks I didn’t really have an answer, I didn’t follow any of the “card promptings.” At RS the Sunday after I started crying myself to sleep, they encouraged everyone to come to the baptism of a former member who was being rebaptised. The name sounded vaguely familiar, but not enough that I could place it. I was desperate to feel the Spirit more, so I got the kids ready and took them with me to the baptism.

I’ve been reading some series on other sites recently on depression. Did anyone talk about the challenge of mental illness in the process of trying to receive revelation? I’ve been pondering this irony from my own life lately..that sometimes mental illness can get in the way of recognizing the Spirit.

But I’m in a place of clarity right now and one of the things that is amazing me is that my struggles with depression and other things like chronic illness — those things for which I have ached and yearned for a solution — have actually ended up opening up the blessing of having my testimony of personal revelation intensified and expanded. The revelation to which I refer has been more of an unfolding, sometimes over years and years… (even decades!) where layers have (sometimes very!) slowly been removed from my perspective, where people have come into my life (finally, after a lot of struggle) who have been instrumental in helping me start to see and hear and understand answers and recognize God’s hand and tender mercies. Where opportunities or challenges have come that have spurred some of the most intense asking…, etc. Decades of priesthood blessings have started to come together. I don’t like getting older physically, but whoa — seeing decades of struggle weave together and having answers distill and hints of solutions start to unfold. Wow.

I am learning that one of the things that has opened up revelation has been simply the act of not giving up. That sounds so grim sometimes, but really, it’s not nothing to endure. Sometimes answers have come simply by doing my best to stay on the path, with whatever measure of faith I have had.

Anyway, that’s been on my mind a lot as of late.