Drowning

Artist: Yongsung Kim. You may purchase this image here: http://www.goodsalt.com/search/Yongsung_Kim.html

This has been one of my favorite images of Christ for years. It is the one that I hope to get first when we truly start being able to decorate our home. 

This image has such a powerful meaning to me. For the last few years, I've been struggling a lot for various reasons. Not that I've really told anyone about it, because that's not what I do. But ever since I was pregnant was Emmett and was throwing up so often I'd rarely make it to church more than an hour (if even that) and it became really difficult to ever come back. With us having moved 6 times since we've been married, and knowing we'd never be in a real ward for very long, it just wasn't a priority to get to know people, or go to anything but sacrament meeting. And that's when it started. And it only got worse from there.

Ever since then, my focus in life has totally shifted and it has been so very difficult to come back. I would go months without praying, months without reading scriptures, went over a year without going to the temple.

You can go ahead and guess how well this has gone.

I've become bitter and jealous and judgmental. I've become spiritually dead. I've always had issues with depression and feelings of neglect and being hard on myself, but especially since I had Emmett, it has become tremendously worse. And for months and weeks and years I've wallowed. I've focused solely on how to get myself ahead with material things, and while that isn't inherently bad, that I was only focused on that is. I was so spiritually broken that when I found out I was pregnant, one of the only things I could think of was how this would affect my work. And that bothered me, because I felt trapped. Motherhood has never been something I was thrilled about it and it is especially difficult for me. You can imagine how that couples up with being hard on myself, more so than your average person. And it's been brutal.

I've been literally drowning in self-depreciation and volatile relationships. And I've had to cut ties with people, some of which I've been friends with a decade, to keep myself afloat, to rid myself of negativity and drama.

I've also had a lot of forgiving to do. Not just of myself, but of others. I can't decide which has been harder.

But I can tell you that God is good. I can tell you that in some of the most difficult ways possible at times, He makes a point of seeing you through. And it's at your darkest points, when you're drowning the most that He is always there, hand thrust into the water, ready to pull you to the air.

I'm not perfect by any means. I'm far from it. But I'm finding that as I come back to God,  my life has been made easier. The stress has been reduced.

His overwhelming peace has washed over me. And I cannot describe to you how awesome that feeling is to have again in my life.

I miss who I was in high school. I miss the amount of trust I had in God. I miss how spiritually oriented I was. And I'm making it a point to get her back because I need her back. And honestly, it's what my kids need too.

That's the mom they deserve.