God — Relationship Refinery

I have been having this feeling in my heart lately… almost a warming where I had been chilled into complacency or apathy for too long. I’m trying to identify if it’s empathy, in an expanded sense that I haven’t before experienced. As if I’m finally mature enough to have earned it. Or mature enough to have nurtured it. It’s not an entirely comfortable feeling. It’s an ache, but a loving ache. It’s different than sadness or anger at a tragedy. It’s different from compassion. It feels divine, like it’s coming from another place, a most true and real place.

The only clues I have as to what it is are in the moments in which it appears. They are moments of heartbreak, but not mine: only heartbreak in the lives of others.

I think it started in moments of heartbreak for those close to me, but quickly began showing up while reading fundraising requests on Facebook, until it greatly piqued my interest when it fluttered through while I watched the news. I have always felt so distant from those scenes, or so bombarded by their frequency that I failed to see them any longer.

Perhaps I have been exposed to this sensation before, and quickly stifled it because I was not yet comfortable with the vulnerability required to feel the longing helplessness by which I identify the onset of this feeling.

Even now, the feeling is fleeting. Encouraging it to stay is a most delicate effort; I must be unafraid of the feeling's power. Although it seems light at the onset, I can sense that the feeling has deep roots, capable of turning my life in all new directions.

It’s somewhat strange, 31 years into life, to be experiencing what feels like a brand new emotion. I’m unfamiliar with how to sustain it, how to interpret it, what to do with it.

So for now I simply feel it. I like it, even with its tinge of discomfort. It makes me feel connected; human.

I can see why I shut it out. It isn’t pleasant to have to care about the news. If I care about that car accident, then what is going to hold me together when an entire busload of children are injured?

If I break the seal on my heart for the man shot in an everyday burglary, how will the contents of my soul spill over when 49 people are murdered in one night?

If I allow myself to shudder at the thought of the panhandling woman at the gas station going hungry that night, how will I ever be able to sleep with the awareness of the millions of starving children across the world?

It’s uncomfortable, all that caring. But somehow, without knowing what has changed, I have begun to creep past the discomfort into the gentle expansion of my soul that increasingly accompanies my awareness of these heartbreaks.

This feeling has given me a glimpse as to how there can be people in the world who give their whole lives to help others. Literally, give it all away: time, talents, resources. Who feel as deeply for the life of a stranger as they do their own brother or lover.

I guess I always thought this was a “type” of person, someone other than me, a “better” person, gifted in empathy and compassion and rescue.

I’m beginning to see how “that person” could eventually be found in me. But I’m also seeing how much heartbreak and feeling and pain it will require. It feels daunting to take that all in, to ask myself in every situation,

“Can you imagine?”

The infrequency with which I ask myself this is enough to expose just how afraid I am of the answer. Because each time I ask it of myself, regarding any person in any heartbreaking situation, I am brought down, through my imagination, to depths I have never personally had to endure.

Thank God, thank God, that my Savior has paid for it all, lest we all become paralyzed from the collective heartbreak of the world. Allowing me to be able to empathize, to feel on another's behalf, and know that somehow, somewhere, peace, mercy, and justice will prevail.

As I write here, the obviousness of this whole thing strikes me and I’m embarrassed that it took me this long to realize. The feeling I’m having when I see another suffer, and I choose not to look away but rather to imagine their heartbreak… to mourn with them and rest in their pain...

Is Love.

"But charity is the pure love of Christ, and it endureth forever; and whoso is found possessed of it at the last day, it shall be well with him." -Moroni 7:47

For Good Men Trying to be Better

To the good men reading: I love you. I really do. None of the men in my life deserve to be talked to like they’re a rapist or potential rapist. They are not responsible for the poor choices of another, and I don’t intend to treat them, or you, that way.

So please, stay with me guys. I’ve written this with my sons in mind and from a perspective built on years experiencing vastly different socio-political settings, seeing the virtues of both.

Girl, Get Your Testimony Back

Culturally, we have sent a message that a person is not of complete value until they are married. Which naturally leads to the belief that if one loses that value through loss of the marriage, they are less-than. They aren't a "full" member, and by extension, a “complete” daughter of God.

Should I Change For Love?

I would like to be able to say that I never again did something dumb to win another’s approval, but I can’t. What I’ve hopefully done is made it to a place where I am trying to win the right people’s approval, for the right reasons, and in the right ways.

What kind of Mormon are you? (And why that's a dumb question)

When I wrote “My Lifelong Wrestle With Mormonism,” up to that time I had been writing for an audience made up of my friends, my parents, and nine and a half “extended friends”, give or take.

How to Grow Your Perspective

How many times did you argue against the very side you are now on, swearing up and down that you would “never” think like “them”? “Them” being your parents, your teacher, your neighbor, your religious leader, your coach?

It's My Depression and I'll Write if I Want To

In college, I studied behavioral science which covers psychology as the central science. I could list the symptoms of depression off the top of my head.

And yet, the signs escaped me when they were mine.

No Offense: Why Meekness Matters

~~This one is for my baby son. He never meant us any harm~~I’ve allowed myself to be offended at every level, and from every level of intent from mistaken to purposeful...

To Those Who Wait

...it’s easy to feel like your worth as a person, male or female, is inextricably tied to your relationship status. It’s not. But marriage is something that a lot of us desire, since a large component of the Gospel is finding joy through family relationships. However...

I Dreamt You

I didn’t take my native culture to New York with me. I had always been dead-set on marrying later, having children later, and having them because I wanted them, not because of any social, religious, or cultural pressure. That’s how I went into it, but nothing could have prepared me for the depth of feeling I would develop for the children I lived with, loved, and nurtured over the next few years. It was as close to motherhood as I would come for almost a decade.

Valentine's Day Confessions

The truth is, I haven’t told a single soul this story, not in much detail anyway, and not ever free of half-truths. My closest friends don't know the truth; even my parents aren't aware of the saga. I'm sorry, everyone. My husband, on the other hand, has chuckled with friends about this now infamous night in our marriage because unlike me, he is comfortable making light of his follies.

Paying the Price

Today, my testimony is my most precious possession. I would not be living a wholehearted life without it, and things in the day-to-day would be incredibly different.

My testimony is only so valuable to me now because I earned it.

A Soft Place to Land

Just be kind.

I’ll probably lose some of you here. But that’s because it seems so obvious that it is brushed over almost chronically to the demise of many could-be-great relationships.