Chapter 24: Focusing Less on Outcomes (part 2)

            I attended the luncheon afterward to help serve dessert. While I was there, I met Dee’s sister-in-law and sat at a table with one of Janell’s nieces and her family. That helped me feel more connected to Janell. As I mentioned earlier, I met Janell’s half-sister on the day we found out about her death in April. Over the months that followed, we kept in touch by text and email. I also treated her to lunch and I appreciated the opportunity to talk with her again in person. She reminded me that Janell talked about our walks often. She felt that no one did more to help Janell be happy than I did before she died. I was so thankful for that privilege and opportunity that God gave me! About two weeks after our lunch, Janell’s husband died suddenly in mid-August 2014. I don’t think the timing of our lunch was a coincidence. Because we were now friends, I stood by her and her family at Dee’s graveside service. His ashes were placed in the grave with their daughter and Janell’s ashes had previously been placed in the grave with their son. After the service, I talked with the daughter of Janell’s half-sister and her two children. I don’t think that as a coincidence either.

            I ended up visiting Janell’s half-sister and niece several times in Saratoga Springs. I also met Janell’s niece for lunch a few times. They had returned to Utah from Seattle within that past year and, while they were up there, they became active in the church again because of the kindness of missionaries and several members of their ward. God obviously knew they would need to continue to feel His love after they returned to Utah, so I think that was also part of the reason I was supposed to knock on Janell’s door. Otherwise, I probably would have never met them, since they live 30 minutes away from me. My friendship with Janell’s niece continued and we met at the temple several times. This strengthened her to deal with some difficult circumstances in her life and it was also good preparation for when we did Janell’s temple work on May 12, 2015. I was so grateful for the privilege of being with Janell’s niece when she did the initiatory and endowment for her aunt that I loved. At one point, I just held Janell’s temple card to my heart and hugged it because I loved and missed her so much. That day was filled with feelings of great joy. The Lord had clearly been orchestrating this whole situation from the beginning. There is more to this story, but I will continue telling it in a future chapter.

 ***

            Meanwhile, I continued to visit women in our stake. I visited one woman on May 7, 2014 (which was 15 days after Janell passed away). During our visit, she asked me to try to help her daughter, who had also struggled with serious depression for over 20 years. I knocked on her daughter’s door each of the following days and she finally opened the door four days later on May 12th (which was exactly one year prior to the day that Janell’s niece and I completed her temple work). She invited me in and we quickly became friends. She was extremely overweight and deeply depressed, so we started walking together when she returned home from work on most days. Janell and I had walked in the afternoons as well, so each walk helped to heal my heart. Most of the time, this friend picked me up after she decompressed from work and we usually drove up the canyon to walk by the river. That beautiful, relaxing atmosphere was the perfect venue for gradual changes in her life

            I learned more about her life each time we walked and talked. She self-harmed by cutting her arms for several years and both arms were covered with scars. She was the middle daughter in a family of nine children and felt neglected on several levels. She had been in a relationship with a verbally abusive boyfriend for a few years and didn’t stand up for herself because she felt that she didn’t deserve to be treated any differently. She stayed in the relationship because her boyfriend had MS and his health was progressively deteriorating, so it gave her life some purpose to help take care of him. When they started dating, he asked her to stop cutting and she did, so she also felt indebted to him for that. She was actually diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, in addition to depression, and that manifested itself in several other ways. She constantly dyed her hair different colors and would often wear different styles of wigs over her hair as well. She eventually shaved her hair completely and continued to just wear wigs instead. As I observed this over several months, I realized that it was probably because her hair was one of the only things about her life she had any control over. She also had limited money management skills and spent most of her paychecks on clothes, purses, and eating out. She often let her mail pile up and wouldn’t open her bills, so she was sent to collections several times, along with some of her wages being garnished.

            I tried to help her through some of those difficult circumstances with varying degrees of success over the following 2 ½ years. After knowing her for a couple of weeks, I felt prompted to suggest that if she stopped eating out for most of her meals, she would have enough money to pay all her bills, she could start paying tithing if she wanted to, and would probably lose some weight as well. I’m normally not quite that bold! She actually listened to me, even though she could have easily chosen to be very offended. As a result, she lost 70 pounds during the next year and felt better emotionally because of our regular walking. She sometimes forgot to fill her prescriptions, so I always offered to go with her to make sure she picked them up, since it was very important for her mental stability. I often walked over to her basement apartment to visit her and helped her redecorate in August 2015. She chose some of her favorite patterns from my scrapbook paper and I cut out large letters to make an uplifting saying for her bedroom wall, at her request. The phrase she chose was, “When you learn you grow. When you grow you change.”

            She was stable enough to have the same full-time job for several years, which was a huge accomplishment. However, she constantly struggled with her finances. After about a year of watching her flounder, I asked if she would like some help, since I have a talent of keeping track of our finances. I helped her make a budget, but she struggled to follow it. I showed her how she could pay off some of her credit cards and even went with her to the bank, but she always maxed out the balances again. After a few weeks, we decided to add her accounts on my Quicken program, so I could help her track her spending. She made progress for a few days and then she would blow all her money on wigs or purses. This pattern occurred frequently and it was frustrating for me, but I continued to try to help her. I discovered during this time that she always remembered to pay her car payment. I asked her why that was different and she explained that the title was in her boyfriend’s name, since she couldn’t qualify for a loan, and she didn’t want to ruin his credit. I realized that the car was another way he could control her. So we worked on several different plans for her to pay off the loan and then she could arrange to have the title transferred to her name. During this same time, I tried to build up her confidence even more than I had in the past and tried to convince her that she deserved to be treated well. She started to believe me, but  never felt like she could break up with her boyfriend because that would include returning the car and she had no way to pay for one herself. Each time she would return from spending the weekend with him, it took me days to build her back up again. That became more and more difficult the longer it went on.  

            In August 2015, I felt strongly that I needed to help her in a way I hadn’t before. I made a few judgement calls to help her pay off and close some of her credit cards, so she could pay down the car loan faster. Then we made a simple plan for her to consistently pay me back over the coming months as well. It worked for about five paychecks and then she found ways to start blowing her money again. The more I tried to help her, the more things spiraled. By October 2015, it looked like I would never get the remaining $1,500 back and that really discouraged me because I thought I had followed promptings. I was also sad because she gained back most of the weight she lost over the previous year. I returned to college that semester, so I didn’t have as much time to spend and she pulled back as well. She rented from a family member and they decided to move, so that meant she had to find a new place to live also. I helped her declutter, clean, and pack up her apartment in late spring 2016 and then helped her move into another small basement apartment in June 2016. I visited her a couple of times to help her get organized, but I didn’t find her home much after that. One time, I did find her home and I spontaneously took her out to dinner at her favorite restaurant. We talked about how she was feeling in the relationship with her boyfriend and she had finally decided to break up with him. She was scared about the retaliation, though, so we discussed a few different scenarios. I didn’t see her much during fall 2016 and I worried about her, but couldn’t force her to communicate with me.

            During that time, she started dating another guy. He encouraged her to grow her hair back out and to stop hiding behind wigs. He also helped her return the car to her ex-boyfriend late one night with an apology note that she wasn’t able to continue paying on the loan. He comforted her through her episodes of depression and encouraged her in other ways as well. They found an inexpensive car to share and she ended up moving out in January 2017. She texted to ask me for money, but I had to tell her no, which I felt bad about. I just couldn’t afford to lose more than I already had. They rented a small house in a poor, kind of scary, neighborhood in Salt Lake county and began living together from then on. I drove up to treat her to a birthday lunch in December 2017 and she still seemed to be doing okay. She surprised me by sending a wedding announcement in August 2018. I helped served lunch at the church, attended the wedding in her parents’ back yard, and stayed to help with refreshments during the reception that evening. That was the last time I saw her and I hope she’s doing well, since she doesn’t respond to my texts. I sometimes think back to the early days of our friendship when she told people that “God dropped me on her doorstep.” I do believe I was in her life to help her in the ways I could and I’m grateful for the time we shared together.

***

            During my visiting journey, I met three other women who struggled deeply with depression and needed a significant amount of support. Two of them were single and both of their moms passed away during the time I was trying to help them. I stood and sat by one of them at the viewing, funeral, graveside service, and luncheon to try to be supportive. Both were borderline hoarders and I spent several months during summer and fall 2017 helping one of them organize the basement of her parents’ house where she still lived. However, every time I went back over, the progress from the previous time had disappeared. It drained my energy and was very discouraging, so I eventually had to take a step back from helping her in that way. However, I did help her move all her preschool equipment twice, which took several days each time. I also helped the other woman move into an apartment in Provo. I walked and talked with them as much as they would allow me to and that seemed to help their emotional state. One of them earned her master’s degree online during those years and is now employed part-time as a therapist. I earned my associate degree during that same time frame, so we encouraged each other through the almost constant stress we both felt. These two women still struggle and have ongoing challenges, but I was grateful for the opportunity to help in whatever way I could over several years.

            The third woman moved from our ward after she and her husband retired. While she still lived in our neighborhood, she struggled with depression and debilitating anxiety for many years. She had complications from a hip surgery that made it difficult for her to walk and also suffered from congestive heart disease. After they moved to a retirement community in Pleasant Grove, her anxiety and depression became even more difficult for her to bear. One day in 2015, I was driving to the Mt. Timpanogos Temple and felt prompted to text her. I stopped by the next time I was in her area and that began the extensive amount of time I spent in her home trying to uplift and comfort her. She often texted me in between the visits and I tried to give her hope until the next visit. She was too anxious to drive very far and feeling trapped at home was part of her struggle. Sometimes her husband dropped her off at a hair salon and I would sit with her to keep her company. Then I would drive her back home. I encouraged her to drive when I was there and just tried to keep her calm from the passenger seat. Often, we would drive to Subway or Purple Turtle for lunch that way. Two other times, I attended an appointment with her psychiatrist and also with her cardiologist to provide moral support.

            After three years, nothing I did or said seemed to help for more than a couple hours. I felt exhausted trying to balance my visits with her, helping two of the women I wrote about previously, keeping up with my college classes, attending the temple regularly, and trying to still have time for my family. Finally, I made the difficult decision to stop visiting her, but we still texted back and forth quite a bit for 1 ½ more years. She sent me a text on the night our grandson was born in January 2020 to tell me she was having heart bypass surgery the next day. I had a strong feeling that she wouldn’t survive the surgery, so I texted back that I would pray for her, told her again how much I loved her, and that I was grateful for our friendship. She passed away from complications later that week. I attended her funeral and couldn’t help but be grateful, even though I was sad, that she was finally free of the mental and physical challenges that had plagued her for so many years.

            My time with each of these women helped me to understand that it’s important to try not to worry about the results when you reach out to others. Kindness or service to others doesn’t need to end in a certain result for the kindness or service to matter. I believe that my kindness mattered to Janell even though that situation didn’t end at all like I hoped it would. I believe it mattered to the others also, even though I wasn’t able to do as much as I wanted to for them. In another type of service, missionaries spend most of their time planting seeds. The changes in people’s lives usually take a long time. I continue to remind myself to not be overly concerned with the outcome of my efforts.

Chapter 24: Focusing Less on Outcomes (part 1)

* I woke up in the middle of the night with heartburn, which rarely happens anymore. So I got up and worked on this part of the story between 4:30am and 6:30am this morning. I still have more to write, but I will post this and come back to finish it soon.

            The main way the Spirit works in my life is that it prompts me to some kind of action. There are countless experiences I could share about this, but the one I want to focus on is how I met Janell. At the end of January 2014 (almost five months after my original prompting), the sister missionaries asked if they could stop by. I agreed and they showed us a video about doing missionary work in our everyday life. That prompted me to put several names on the temple prayer roll the next time I was there and Janell was one of them. Since I was out visiting people on most days, my hope was that the Lord would cross my path with hers. A couple weeks later in mid-February, I walked to the retirement community near our home, which was something I did regularly. I was helping a friend with several of her temple names and I tried to return the completed card each time. My friend wasn’t home that day, which was unusual, because her husband suffered from the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s disease. As I left her driveway, I was strongly prompted to knock on Janell’s door. She lived next door to this friend, but I never knocked on her door before because a few people in our ward had advised me to not attempt to visit her, since she was no longer interested in attending church.

            She answered the door and I had a brief conversation with her. I explained in my typical animated way that I was enjoying getting to know many of her neighbors to help overcome the social anxiety I had experienced for several years. I asked if I could call her to set up a time to come back and visit her also, since she didn’t have much time that day. She agreed, but I think it was mostly because she didn’t want to reject me entirely, since I explained my desire to visit her in such an enthusiastic way. I called her a few hours later and reminded her who I was. During the beginning of that call, she said (and I quote), “I am a psych nurse. Are you sure you’re not having a manic episode?” Even though she said it rather rudely, I just tried to laugh it off and explained again that I just wanted to get to know more people. I sincerely emphasized that “I used to think people were the problem and now I know people are the answer for me.” She wasn’t completely convinced, so I asked if I could call her back again sometime. I was feeling a sense of urgency, so I called her back two more times over the next few days. She was difficult to talk to at first, but I felt some hope because she continued to answer the phone and I’m fairly certain she had caller ID.

            During those conversations, I learned she was a convert to the church, but hadn’t attended in years. I promised her that I wasn’t trying to visit her because of a calling or church assignment, I just sincerely wanted to know her better. On the third call, I let her know that I wouldn’t keep bothering her if she wasn’t interested in developing a friendship. However, she genuinely surprised me by calling back a couple days later. We talked for almost 45 minutes about some really important and difficult things in both of our lives. For example, she shared that her only daughter had taken her own life in 1992 when she was 16 years old and that her only son had died in their bathtub from a drug overdose in 2007 when he was 25 years old. I think she thought telling me those sad experiences would scare me away, but I listened carefully and expressed as much empathy as I could for those deeply tragic losses. At the end of the call, I asked her if I could come over and visit her in the next few minutes and she agreed. I was so grateful for the trust that showed.

            I immediately walked over to her house after that phone call. Instead of being hesitant that time, she opened the door wide, smiled at me, and gave me a hug. I had quickly printed out a list of things that helped me overcome the debilitating depression I had experienced. I gave her that paper, along with a favorite kind of protein bar, since we had discussed a couple of simple physical fitness ideas during our phone call. I asked her if she would ever be interested in walking with me because I wanted more than anything to do something to help people who had experienced depression like I had. To my surprise, she said she would like to try that. So we decided right then that we would start walking together on weekday afternoons. It became very clear to me during our first walk that she was extremely depressed, so I didn’t know how much I could actually do to change her situation. However, as I discussed at the beginning of chapter 19, I learned from John Lund that all I needed to do was “love much and do what I can do.” The two things I could try to do were to walk with Janell as often as she would let me on weekday afternoons and try to bring joy and cheer into that small time I spent with her. I didn’t know how I could really make a difference for her, but I was willing to try to help in my small and simple way.

            My love for Janell grew quickly during the handful of walks we went on, even though we had very little in common. As we were walking back to her house one day, we talked with the woman who lived next door to her on the other side. She explained that she was planning to have those same sister missionaries over for dinner later that week and invited both of us to join them. I don’t think Janell would have agreed under any other circumstance, but I had already explained that I believed their message was the reason I was brave enough to knock on her door in the first place. Later that week, I returned to her home about a half hour before that dinner was supposed to happen. She invited me in to keep her company while she finished getting ready. Her husband, Dee, had started calling me “Wendy bird” (a reference to the Disney animated movie, Peter Pan) when he opened the door before some of our walks. Janell officially introduced me to him. Then I followed her back to their bedroom where I sat (and bounced a little) on her tall, comfy bed and talked with her while she finished getting ready for the dinner. I was a little nervous too, since I had rarely been to dinner at other people’s houses before. Most of those dinners had been when I was serving as a full-time missionary and they often made me feel anxious back then also. It ended up being an enjoyable dinner, though. One of the missionaries was very casual and fun. I remembered that from when they visited my house. She helped us both feel much more comfortable than we would have been otherwise, since we found out that the husband of the woman who had invited us had served as a full-time mission president several years earlier. I walked her home after dinner and gave her a hug.

            I think Janell and I walked a few more times after that and I was planning to walk with her for as long as she would let me. Unfortunately, she also took her own life over Easter weekend in mid-April 2014 (after we had only been walking together for just under two months). I called on the Monday after Easter to see when Janell would like to walk that afternoon. Dee was hesitant when I asked to talk with her and then, after a long pause, Janell’s half-sister picked up the phone. She felt sad about being the one to break the news to me and I remember just crumpling to my knees with tears streaming down my cheeks as she explained the few details she knew about what had happened that weekend. After we both cried as we talked for those minutes, I asked if she would allow me to come over and give her a hug in person. She agreed and I continued to cry as I told my husband.

            I then walked, with tears still streaming down my face, over to my good friend’s house who was serving as the Relief Society president. She was as shocked at hearing the news as I was, since I had talked to her about my happiness over the  progress I was making with Janell during our morning walks with the other women in the ward. She asked if she could call the bishop to tell him and I said that would probably be okay. Then she agreed to walk over to Janell’s house with me and I was so grateful for her support. The bishop drove over before we arrived to ask if the ward could help with a funeral. Dee agreed to a luncheon for the extended family after the graveside service, since Janell would be cremated. Our visit was more casual than that one and it was a comfort to Dee and Janell’s half-sister. My friend’s dad had taken his own life years earlier, so she expressed sincere empathy to them. Janell’s half-sister told me again that Janell had talked with her several times about the walks she had been on with me. She told me that she didn’t believe anyone else could have coaxed Janell out of her dark house and into the sunlight. I was so sad, but also very grateful for that confirmation of Janell’s friendship with me. She hugged me and then my friend and I slowly walked back home. Since my friend was the Relief Society president, she had asked for a rough estimate of how many would be attending the luncheon. So she was able to start planning for that with several other women in the ward after she walked me to my doorstep. I was grateful for her love and support, since I felt like I was still in shock over the situation. She gave me a long hug and then left.

            I attended the graveside service a few days later and took the opportunity to share a few thoughts at the microphone. When I found out what happened that Monday afternoon, I was devastated. I seriously wondered what all that time spent with Janell had been for because I really thought I was in her life to help save her life. However, God helped me know unmistakably that it was because He loves Janell and her family. Looking back, I was able to have a “goodbye” talk with her on one of our walks shortly before she died. I asked her what she thought of me when I first knocked on her door a couple of months earlier. She confirmed that she thought I was kind of crazy and we both laughed. (That seemed to be the consensus with most women I visited. Most of them thought I was trying to sell them something at first. They always seemed pleasantly surprised at the end of our visit that it actually was only about building a friendship.) Then I asked her what she thought that day as we were on that walk. She said something similar to her half-sister. There was no one else who could have convinced her to leave her dark house and walk out in the sunshine. I reminded her that I knocked on her door because God loves her and He wanted her to feel His love through me. Just simple, little me. I could tell that she was softening toward the gospel as we talked and walked and I believe she definitely left this life going in the right direction. I have always appreciated a quote by Neal A. Maxwell that says “Eternal things are always done in the process of time…. Direction is initially more important than speed”  (Relief Society Personal Study Guide 2: Learn of Me, “Love Within the Family,” p. 95).

Chapter 12: Dealing with Disappointment

* I wrote these experiences down without much proof-reading. I will revisit this post tomorrow. (I made a few corrections and added a quote in the middle on July 23, 2020.)

            Most healthy marriages have some good times and some bad times, some happiness and some heartache, some adventure and some disappointment. I will always be grateful to my husband, John, for choosing me to be his wife in the first place and for continuing to see the good in me 25 years later. He has been consistently patient, loving, kind, and empathetic through all my years of struggle with mental illness and other health challenges. I will be forever grateful that I made the decision to marry him also. I have tried to be as patient and loving toward him as he has been with me, but I still have a long way to go and I learn a lot from him as we continue our life together.

            I will briefly share our story again with a few extra details. We met in 1993, while serving as full-time missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Pennsylvania Philadelphia Mission. We discovered that our parents live about five blocks away from each other in Orem, but we never met each other prior to my first area in the mission field. We served in some of the same areas and knew many of the same missionaries and members, but we never actually served near each other during our missions. He was the assistant to the mission president during the final two months of our mission in 1994 and discreetly arranged to have our seats assigned next to each other on the flight back to Utah, since we went home on the same transfer. We even have pictures where we are hugging our individual families in the background of each other’s pictures at the airport. We started dating soon after returning home and ended up getting married in the Bountiful Utah Temple almost exactly a year later in 1995.

            John was very busy working full-time and attending school full-time at Utah Valley State College for the first three years of our marriage. I stopped working a few months after we were married because I had “all day” sickness during my pregnancy with our daughter. She was born nine months and six days after our wedding in 1996. Our son arrived a little less than three years later in 1999. Those were busy years for us and, occasionally, I noticed that John and I weren’t praying, reading the scriptures, or attending the temple together very often. I rationalized that it was just because he was so busy and I assumed he was praying and studying on his own, just like I had been. However, there were nagging doubts about that through the years that followed. My depression and anxiety became much more serious after our son was born and dealing with those complicated circumstances consumed most of our extra attention during the years between 1999 and 2010. During that time, I retreated to our bedroom much more often and John began to shoulder more of the household responsibilities. He also chose to start another company so that he could work from home and be more involved with raising the children.

            By fall 2010, I had completely withdrawn from life. My social anxiety had become so distressing that I rarely left the house and I didn’t even attend church, although I wished I could. John tried hard to be a loving and understanding father and husband through all of this and always took the children to church because he knew it would ease my feelings of guilt. During 2011 and 2012, we decided to change the type of anti-depressant I was taking one more time and then, later, increased the dosage as well. That change helped me to redevelop the habits of attending church and the temple, reading the scriptures, and contributing more to the care of our home and family.

            Unfortunately, in March 2012, my right hip, leg, and foot became inexplicably numb and tingly, so I had several MRIs and other procedures to figure out what was causing it. In addition, John finally told me in August 2012 that he didn’t believe in God or anything related to Him in our religion. He continued to attend church with the family, but it caused me a great deal of distress. However, I felt like he had been loyal to me during my difficult years of depression, so I was going to stay loyal to him with this new situation in our marriage. In January 2013, I was officially diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis after it was confirmed with a spinal tap. That was disappointing and unsettling news, but we were grateful to finally know what we were dealing with. John was very supportive and helped me with some of my Copaxone injections at home for the three years following my diagnosis.

            Those two life-changing events could have sent me spiraling back into my deep depression. However, I worked hard to be diligent with walking and continuing the other habits I had practiced in the previous two years. They became my anchor as I slowly grew more devastated about John’s unbelief in everything I held most sacred. Then, in September 2013, I had a strong impression that I needed to know more people in my ward (church congregation) and neighborhood. So I gradually started visiting women close to our home and then, as I gained more confidence, I gradually visited women in other congregations and neighborhoods also. I have now visited approximately 500 women and it has changed my life forever. I visited women on all parts of the faith spectrum, was able to help several other women who were suffering from depression, and developed some very close friendships. Through that process, I was gradually able to stop mourning about John’s change in beliefs and developed even more respect for the good person he still is. 

            Dieter F. Uchtdorf spoke in the April 2015 General Conference and his words resonated with me. “Being grateful in our circumstances is an act of faith in God. It requires that we trust God and hope for things we may not see but which are true…. True gratitude is an expression of hope and testimony. It comes from acknowledging that we do not always understand the trials of life but trusting that one day we will. In any circumstance, our sense of gratitude is nourished by the many and sacred truths we do know: that our Father has given His children the great plan of happiness; that through the Atonement of His Son, Jesus Christ, we can live forever with our loved ones; that in the end, we will have glorious, perfect, and immortal bodies, unburdened by sickness or disability; and that our tears of sadness and loss will be replaced with an abundance of happiness and joy, ‘good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over.’… How blessed we are if we recognize God’s handiwork in the marvelous tapestry of life. Gratitude to our Father in Heaven broadens our perception and clears our vision. It inspires humility and fosters empathy toward our fellowmen and all of God’s creation.” (“Gratitude in Any Circumstances,” Ensign, May 2015).

            In fall 2015, I decided to go back to college when our daughter started attending UVU after her high school graduation. Then, in fall 2016, we decided to build a home with main-level living across town, since my MS symptoms were making it difficult for me to climb the stairs several times each day in our current home, which had a four-level-split floor plan. Making all those construction decisions, combined with the financial stress of having a mortgage again, brought more tension back into our marriage. Things improved once we moved into our new home in March 2017, but we started to grow apart again later that year. My schooling, combined with a few visits I still tried to make each week, kept me a little too busy. John has always been a very hard worker and sometimes his work schedule kept him extremely busy as well. I made the decision to withdraw from school in fall 2017, so that I could try to start writing this book. We also decided that marriage therapy was something we would finally be willing to try, since nothing else seemed to be working. Neither of us wanted to separate, but the silence and distance growing between us often made life feel very lonely for each of us, even though we were both still in the marriage.

            After ten therapy visits, we were feeling much closer. We started walking together while holding hands and occasionally went on other dates as well. Meanwhile, I was working on gathering information for my personal history, since writing this book quickly became a daunting task. That gradually turned into family history, which gradually increased my time in the temple exponentially. I also decided to go back to UVU in summer 2018 to finish my associate degree in behavioral science. In addition, I decided to attend a few classes at the UVU institute of religion to earn my diploma for that as well. The combination of all those activities gradually caused distance to creep in again. This time, there were more conflicted feelings surfacing within me because I was more invested in religious learning and worship than I had ever been before.

            Both of our adult children stopped believing in a similar way as their dad and that had been particularly difficult for me through the previous five years. Around the same time in 2018, our daughter started dating someone more seriously. Her dad allowed them to sleep together in her bedroom, but that was extremely difficult for me. I felt that he hadn’t given me a choice when he stopped believing, since he had already decided by the time he told me. I also didn’t feel like I was given a say in the matter with our daughter and her boyfriend. I understood that he was trying to do what was best for everyone involved, but it just triggered a lot of my previous conflicted feelings. That was a very low point in our marriage.

            In 2019, our daughter and her boyfriend told us on mother’s day that she was pregnant. I tried to be supportive, but knew we needed some more marriage therapy. This time, I asked John to choose the therapist and he decided on one who specialized in betrayal trauma. He hadn’t purposely betrayed me and I knew that, but on some level it still felt like a betrayal. Our daughter’s pregnancy added an additional dimension to that complicated swirl of emotion.

            I graduated with an associate degree in November 2019 and continued to immerse myself in family history and temple work. I felt a lot of peace when I was in the temple and I needed that with everything that was happening with our daughter. We continued marriage therapy and our daughter gave birth to a healthy baby boy in January 2020. She had an unforeseen c-section, which caused her to not be able to return immediately to college like she had planned. So we have spent the past seven months together with her sweet baby and it has been such a healing time. The pandemic ended up closing the temples and churches, which brought my full focus back home. Our marriage gradually began to heal again.  

            As I look back, our patterns have been very cyclical and I shoulder my share of the blame. I’m grateful that I have gradually become less rigid in general and have finally realized that I can’t micro-manage or manipulate John with my faith (even though that wasn’t my conscious intention). I’ve learned that we are each only in charge of ourselves and we can only improve or change in the ways that we are currently able to. We also share a great desire to make a positive difference in the lives of people around us and that is very fulfilling. So I now focus on that, instead of our differences in religious belief.  Life will always still be a mix of happiness and disappointment, but we have made it 25 years and that is a huge accomplishment. I’m planning for at least 25 more.