Late one evening on December
12, 1998, our family that consisted of my husband, my two month old baby boy,
my 20 month old little girl and my husband’s twelve year old half sister that
was living with us at the time, set off to our Church’s Christmas party. My husband’s half sister was supposed to
be the angel and our two month old was supposed to be baby Jesus in the
Nativity play. Well, needless to say, we did not make it that night.
We were in a terrible car
accident that almost took the life of my husband’s half sister. We were in a Dodge minivan that we just
purchased two months prior to the accident. While at a stop light turning left, a man in a large
econoline van ran a red light and t-bone hit us on the passenger side. He hit part of my door, knocking me
unconscious, and he hit the side door where my two month old was in his car
seat. In the very back of the van,
on the same side that we were hit, sat my husband’s half sister. She had to be air lifted to the nearest
hospital and had lacerations from the glass cutting her cheek, and she had
swelling of the brain. She almost
didn’t make it. It was a very
traumatizing time for our family.
I remember that night coming
home sore and wondering “Why?”, and “How come?” As soon as we walked into our apartment we hit the floor onto
our knees, thanking God for our protection and safety and prayers of safety and
peace for Sloane’s half sister. I remember while we were still on our knees we
kept getting calls from the hospital and with each call the reports on our
sister kept getting worse and worse.
We got a final call that if we hadn’t have been close to the Spirit would
have thrown us for a loop: we had
to give permission (because we were her legal guardians) to have a bolt screwed
into the top of her skull to help release pressure to her brain and to monitor
the pressure as well. It was the worst phone call we have ever received.
Our days and nights following
were in the hospital and it was hard.
Weeks later she started to recover and get better, and then it was time
for her to come home. She still
acted like a little child because of the bruising of the brain, so we had to
sleep in the living room so she wouldn’t wander out the front door, etc. We had
to thicken all her liquids because her brain wouldn’t allow her body to swallow
thin liquids yet. Then there were all the therapies we needed to take her to; it
was a very new and trying time for all of us.
One day months after the accident, I was driving in the
middle lane and a didn’t notice a very large truck coming towards me that
almost hit me. In an instant,
shock came back and ran through my entire body and I was instantly thrown back
into the original accident all over again. I had a panic attack and had a
really hard time driving home after that.
I started noticing that my panic attacks became worse and worse each
time that I got back into the car, and one day I let go of the steering wheel
which scared me more then ever.
I told a few people what I
was going through and I had more than one person tell me that I had post
traumatic stress and that I needed to go see a physiatrist for it. We couldn’t
afford it, so I started to pray every time I had to get into the car to drive
anywhere - the store, etc. I would even find myself praying continuously the
whole time during the course of my driving. I did this for months, and as I did
this I let go of the fear more and more, until finally I noticed that the only
time that I had a fear of driving was when I had to go on the freeway. I lived
in Olympia, WA at the time and had to go to Tacoma often because of family,
etc., so it was super hard for me. The more I prayed and the more I let go of
the fear, the more confident I became in driving, and I even noticed that my
driving had improved. The more we let go of fear and try what we feel we are
not good at, or are even afraid of trying, the more God gives us the strength to
do these things.
In the Book of Mormon, in the
book of Ether, chapter 27 it states, “And if men come unto me I will show unto
them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my
grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they
humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things
become strong unto them.”
I had another experience in
my life that taught me this same lesson in a powerful way.
I have never thought of
myself as being able to run well, or
being strong in the way of sports, etc. However, I have always enjoyed
running, and I ran track in high school, but because of fears, I never pushed
myself to the point of seeing how good I could become. This frame of mind kept me from seeing
that my faith needed to be stronger.
One night after having my
ninth child, I had a dream that I was running, and I was super happy and loving
every minute of it. It felt really
good!
I had an impression soon
after that dream that I needed to run a half marathon. I laughed out loud at the impression
because I was looking at my life and saying, “How could I possibly do that?” I just had my ninth baby, I was SUPER
out of shape, and I was getting little to no sleep at night being up with the
baby and all. So the thought came
to me - just start little and work your way up - so I did. I started walking, and then when I felt
I could push myself a little more I started jogging.
About that time, I just happened
to mention to a cute gal from my ward that I wanted to run a half marathon. I explained that I didn’t know how to
even go about doing that and I didn’t know where to start. She showed up at my
house with a plan that she wrote up herself, one that would give me some extra
weeks so I don’t get injured and that’s when it all began.
I kept telling myself, though, that if it got too hard, then
I would just give up. I soon found
out that this was a thought pattern that I needed to get rid of, always giving
myself an out whenever things got tough. When I changed that thought pattern, I noticed God’s hand in preparing
for the half-marathon even more. I
noticed that some days, when I got little to no sleep, but needed to run my
long run and didn’t know how I was even going to accomplish this, I would
dedicate my run to the Lord and it was better than the long run when I had
sleep the week before. I started noticing tender mercies in my life, and the
biggest one was my friend running with me. Even though she was an advanced runner, she would run at my
pace. I even had my husband run
with me, which made our relationship stronger and more bonded because we were taken
out of our “norm” of hanging out together and we were able to see different
sides to one another. God truly
knows us and knows what we need too, because the day of the race my friend ran
with me the whole time and the weather was perfect and I accomplished something
that I never thought possible. Truly, when we have faith in ourselves as well
as in God, we can become strong where we feel that we are the weakest.
The biggest obstacle we have
in overcoming our weakness is Ego. Ego is a false
sense of one’s self fed by pride. When
someone is more worried about what others think than what God thinks, they are
operating more on false sense of self.
Ego feeds the fake side of our natural abilities (as seen from the
world’s view) and then creates a fake sense of who we really should be and
become in our lives. It draws on what we feel is the innermost part of who we
are, but it’s actually a nasty trick of the adversary, who deceives us into
believing that this is who we are and who we should be. It’s drawn in from the
world’s view and feeds our minds with this false sense of security. Because of this false sense of security,
we use our ego to build up walls, so that we won’t be hurt (or hurt more than
we already have been). These walls keep everyone who can help, or wants to help,
out. Then we use these walls as
our protection and security, instead of having God be our Protector, our
Peacemaker, the one on which we are grounded. Our ego keeps us from having that
natural relationship with ourselves and with others, because we’re constantly
trying to protect ourselves instead of changing and progressing. This is a tool of the adversary.
You can’t fully get rid of
ego. You have to watch it, and
keep it down. If you were to
muscle test, it would need to stay at 40%, because ego never truly dies or goes
away. By watching, it keeps it
low, and keeps you from using the world’s sense of who you are. Instead, you use God’s view of you and
who you are. Not having a good
sense of oneself or others can affect us physically through our thyroid. This
is where most, if not all, of our thyroid issues comes from.
In addition to Ego, there are
spiritual addictions that keep us from overcoming our weakness. These spiritual addictions are like physical
ones. The ones that I have noticed with myself, and in working with others, are
spiritual thought patterns that keep us in what we think is a “safe” place.
It’s what we are use to and it is where we go back to when we start to have
doubts and fears about certain things in our lives. We turn our habits into
addictive thought patterns. It could be thinking that someone’s going to die in
your family. I know I have thought
this, and others have thought this way at some point in their lives. Or, it
could be a thought and fear that someone in our lives is going to hurt us in
some way again; a thought and fear that we won’t be able to break the
generational cycle so we just keep passing it down; a thought and fear that at
some point in our lives everything might go bad, so we live in this constant
foreboding feeling that something is going to go wrong; going to that dark
place where we feel we cannot get out of ourselves and try new things and
stretch ourselves.
In order to find ourselves we
have to loose ourselves, or in others words, we have to loose that thought
pattern that “this is comfortable and this is where I am meant to stay”. It’s not until we are forced out of that
comfortable thought pattern that we see new insights into who we are and what
we are really capable of. The
joy that is talked about in the scriptures, “Men are then they might have Joy!”,
comes from us stretching ourselves and trying new things, doing things that we
are inspired to do, but never thought possible, and learning and FINDING joy
along the way.
Instead of choosing to keep
ourselves in that place where no growth can take place, we have to let
ourselves soar! It doesn’t matter
what our circumstances are, what type of person we are married to, or what we
think we are limited to. If we have the faith to stretch, then we will soar to
new and greater heights and we will find JOY, the truest joy that can never be
obtained by someone else doing it for us or watching someone else do it. We
have to move out of our comfort zone and do it ourselves. Fight! Fight for what’s naturally yours. You can do it - I have faith in you!
