Fight Fire with Fire!

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!