Like an Empty Vessel

This past week was difficult.

Heads up, I'm about to talk about hormones.
YAY!

Over the past few months, I have discovered that what used to be PMS, has somehow morphed into PMDD. If you don't know what PMDD is, then imagine PMS with a chainsaw, a giant bag of peanut butter M&M's, and a thirst for revenge against my own personal happiness (I'm not really sure what my own personal happiness ever did to PMDD, but OH MAN, is it mad about it!! Whatever it was?). PMDD manifests itself in a variety of ways for every woman that has it, but the two that are most prevalent in me are exhaustion and apathy (and also the need for peanut butter candy, as I mentioned before).
It is like a guaranteed week of depression every month. EVERY. SINGLE. MONTH. Sometimes, when I'm feeling particularly overwhelmed by it, it's fun to think about how I lose one fourth of every month to this uncontrollable monster. And by fun, I mean it makes me more sad and overwhelmed. 
I guess the silver lining is that I can see it coming, and it doesn't take me by surprise? I put reminders in my phone to expect it, so it doesn't surprise me anymore. Because it did at first, and that was a real party, let me tell you. I've also learned that a habit of daily exercise lessens the effects of it. And I don't just mean while it's happening. Like, the more consistently I exercise throughout the entire month, the less terrible PMDD is. And then the real silver lining comes when my cycle starts over, and it's like I magically become myself again overnight. That's literally how it goes. One day, monster. The next, normal Sandi. It's weird. 
There's a point to this tangent about my hormones. 
I said it makes me apathetic, and unfortunately the thing it makes me most apathetic about is my relationship with the Lord. I have to make an extremely conscious effort, the whole week, to pray and read my scriptures every day. Full disclosure: they are not even close to the deepest prayers and studying I do throughout the month, but I maintain the habit, and that's all I shoot for during that time. Expecting any more than that would be too much of a struggle, mentally and emotionally. 

Which brings me to last week.
Oh, last week. You were a real jerk, dang it. 
I'm confident it was a combination of PMDD, moving to Colorado, Mike still not having a job but instead having extreme back pain (he's doing better now, thanks to a shot and muscle relaxers), and watching our bank accounts slooooowly go down in size. The exercising stopped, and my prayers became more gripe sessions than actual conversations. 
It all kind of came to a head on Friday, and after we'd turned off the light to go to sleep that night, I lay there, looking off into the dark, feeling utterly hopeless and empty. 

I recently had a conversation about faith, with a friend who is dealing with a terrible trial in her life. She told me about a talk she'd studied, given by Richard G. Scott in 2003 and entitled "The Sustaining Power of Faith in Times of Uncertainty and Testing."
In it, he says:
"Faith will forge strength of character available to you in times of urgent need. Such character is not developed in moments of great challenge or temptation. That is when it is used." 
As I lay in bed Friday night, I remembered that quote.
My next immediate thought was that I had no faith available to me. There was nothing left, all of it was gone. I'd used every bit of it up in my attempts to figure things out, and hold on as tightly as I could. If my faith was a gas tank, the needle would have been on E. If I were in the parable of the ten virgins, my lamp would have had no oil in it. Where there had been great reservoirs of faith to draw from in the past, I found only blank space.
(I'm done with the metaphors now)
Tears rolled down my face, onto my pillow, and I showed my emptiness to the Lord, as if to say "How can you possibly expect me to continue when I have nothing left? What am I supposed to do when I have no stable ground to stand on?"

I'm going to throw in a side blurb here, before I tell you how He responded. 
When I was in high school, I had a conversation with my dad about how we receive communication from the Lord. The truth is, it happens in a myriad of ways. It's probably impossible to label every way the Lord can/will communicate with us, but in this conversation, my dad taught me about how the Lord communicates with us through music. And not just "church" music. He told me a story about a friend he'd had who had been overwhelmed by something. The worry she felt was consuming every part of her life, so one day she pleaded with the Lord to know what He would have her do. In her mind, she suddenly heard Paul McCartney singing the chorus of "Let it Be." It wasn't her own subconscious conjuring it up. She was too wound up in figuring it out on her own for that to happen. The Lord, in His infinite wisdom, used a song that she loved to deliver a loving message to her. The issue didn't remove itself from her life, but the way she approached it changed, and that enabled her to keep going in a positive direction.
That story has always stayed with me, and I have had many moments of my own revelation where the Lord speaks to me in song lyrics, or the Spirit taps me on the shoulder and prompts me to really pay attention to what I'm listening to in the moment. 

With that potentially pointless side blurb aside, as I lay there crying and pleading with the Lord, feeling despair at the emptiness of my faith, the chorus of this song came to my mind:

"This very hour, call down Heaven's power and raise me from the dead.
I believe, help Thou my unbelief. 
Lay your hands on me."

And as soon as I heard those words in my mind, I remembered my favorite General Conference (a giant meeting my church holds twice a year) talk of all time. 
And here it is now!

I can't really encourage you enough to listen to the entire talk, it doesn't even matter if you're a Latter-day Saint or not. There is something powerful in that talk for anyone who loves the Lord. I can't tell you how many times I've listened to him give this talk. When I was pregnant with Erin, and terrified of the future, I listened to it on an almost daily basis. I had parts of it memorized, at one point. Just as with song lyrics, quotes from this talk have come to my mind as answers to many prayers. 

Anyway, there I was, crying, remembering that song, then remembering this talk, and all at once it was as if the needle on the gas tank of my faith was juuuuuust above the E. I had a direction to go in now. So, Saturday morning, I pulled up this talk and listened to Elder Holland as I followed along on my phone, highlighting parts that had never jumped out at me before, and, here's a huge shocker, I cried again. Like, a lot. 

This is the conclusion I came to. The emptiness of my faith boiled down to two things:

1. pride

2. unnecessary expectations

I mentioned that my prayers in the past week evolved into something like gripe sessions. Well, actually it was more like "YOU told us to come here and YOU told us to do this and things are not happening the way I want them to and I need YOU to fix this STAT because I'M GOING TO LOSE MY MIND." 

Raise your hand if counseling the Lord, about how YOU think things should go, has ever caused Him to say "Oh, you're totally right. I'm not as all knowing as I'm supposed to be. Let's do it your way, even though your perspective isn't as grand as mine." 
I'm going to hazard a guess that no one is raising their hand, because that never happens. It's so easy to let my pride get in the way. I'm scared of anything uncomfortable or unknown, so I allow my pride to become something like a protective shell. If I refuse to do it, then it won't happen, and I can stay in this safe bubble foreeeeeveeeeeer. I imagine ponies and rainbows dancing around inside this "safe" bubble with me, but in reality I'm just sitting in the bubble by myself, all grumpy like. When I approach a problem with an attitude of "I don't know what it is, so I'm not gonna do it," that doesn't leave much room for humility or allowing the Lord to help me grow and change into the person He sees me able to become. When I start trying to shove my will onto the Lord, it rarely ends well. I've sold myself short more than once because I didn't believe in myself as much as the Lord does. Isn't it crazy how pride, of all things, can cause us to feel less of ourselves? And that by turning to the Lord and saying "I'm not enough on my own, I need You" causes us to feel more of ourselves? What a beautifully weird concept!

Now. Can we talk about unnecessary expectations with our faith? As Elder Holland mentioned, all of us are imperfect, and the Lord is completely aware of that. He's more aware of it than we are. So why do we expect our faith to be perfect? He doesn't. I know He doesn't. It's impossible for us to have perfect faith at all times. AND THAT'S OKAY. In the past few months (it just occurred to me that this MAY have coincided with around the same time PMDD moved in...?), I've been learning more and more that the desires of our heart matter a lot to the Lord. Even in those moments of apathy, or when my faith reservoir is dry, deep down in my heart, I would never turn from the Lord. I have no desire to. I may not be doing my best to stay connected to Him at certain moments, but I want to be on His side, nonetheless. 
Imperfect faith, and resting on the laurels of the desires of our heart (as it were), doesn't mean that we get a free pass and should shoot for the lowest possible anything. It DOES mean we should allow ourselves some grace when we fall short, and pick ourselves up to keep going. Keep feeding that desire to stay close to the Lord, no matter how far away from Him you may feel. 
(okay but seriously, I've been learning a lot about the desires of our heart, in consequence with the Lord's judgment, and I could probably write another post just about that, but this isn't that kind of blog. Remember that one time I wrote about a towel I found in my backyard? That's more of my speed.)
Random aside: I think the Lord is constantly, and I mean CONSTANTLY, doling out grace to us, and we're not even aware of half of it. Let's cash in on the grace, people; really allow it in our lives. 

So there I was, yesterday morning, falling short, and looking for allllllllll of the grace.
I repented. I apologized to the Lord for being angry at Him that things weren't as easy as I want them to be, and for trying to force things a certain way, when it just kept leading to frustrating brick walls. I know He forgave me. I felt the Spirit wash over me, which is a surefire (no pun intended?) indication that repentance is accepted and you've done everything you can to fix what needed to be mended.
It's so funny the way we can find liberation from turmoil by turning everything over to the Lord, and simply saying "I'm sorry for this pride I've clung to. I'm done holding on to all of this, You're fully in charge now, and I'm going to wait until You tell me what to do next." 

And that's what I'm going to try to do. Emphasis on the 'try,' due to all those pesky imperfections. Good thing there's repentance, am I right?

I have no idea when Mike will get hired for a new job. I have no idea what specific area of Colorado we'll end up in. I have no idea if the bank accounts will run out of money before either of those things happen. 
But I will continue to believe in the Lord, and look to Him to help me in the moments where my unbelief feels stronger than my belief.

*I wasn't going to write any of this down. I thought about doing it yesterday, but it felt really personal, and more heavy on the spiritual than I usually write around here. But then I heard this song today, and the Spirit was like "type it out, lady," and I was like "fine, alright, I'm blogging it now."

So, whoever needed me to write this so they could read it, there you go.