The Funk

About a month ago a really good friend of mine told me she has been planning her RS lesson for November. She picked a really good subject, and right now all I know is that she picked something to do with being in a funk and ways that you can return from that. She asked me if I would like to share a time in my life where I was in a funk/religious funk and what I did to overcome it.

I have been racking my brain for the past month. I know I am in a funk. Sundays come and I think to myself: do I really have to go to church today. I don't want to. I go even though I don't want to and I find my self sitting in Sacrament wishing that I would have stayed home. Sunday School is a complete waste of time. No one, and I am not exaggerating here, no one knows what the teacher is talking about. He can't complete a sentence and has extremely long pauses after every 5 words. Having my eyes dug out with a spoon would be more entertaining and less painful than Sunday School. RS is probably the best meeting of all of them.

So, anyway I have been asked to share an experience. I don't really live in the past. I don't hold a lot of grudges. I mean, I totally get angry and once I have resolved the issue it is over and done with and doesn't really find its way back to my plate, so to go back in my life and try to find when I was in a funk is like... trying to decipher hieroglyphs, just ain't going to happen.

The problem with using my funk right now, is, I haven't overcome it yet. So, inside this church how do you tell a not picture perfect story? Well, I decided that I wasn't supposed to because if I feel this way then certainly someone else does to.

So, here is the beginning of my story: (most of you readers know parts of it because I posted a lot online when I was going through it.)

My funk happened 6 weeks after I gave birth to my 3 son, 4th child. At six weeks I thought he was sick. He wasn't nursing and he was crying a lot and I just didn't know what to do with him anymore, so we went to the emergency room. After a urine test, and throat swab and some other poking and prodding the doctor came in and told me that nothing was wrong with him, or rather, he wasn't sick but she was going to diagnose him as a failure to thrive baby. Well, in my mind failure to thrive equaled I was starving my baby. It took every fiber of my being to hold in the sobs that were on the edge of overtaking my body. I had to keep my cool in that office. This doctor was not going to see me cry. The tears stung my eyes because in that moment the past 6 weeks were clear and all I could see was how I was starving my baby and I didn't even notice. I felt so guilty, so horribly utterly guilty. What would have happened had I not gone into the doctor? Did it harm my baby? I'm a horrible mother. How? How could I not know what was happening. I have 3 other kids.

As soon as I checked out of the hospital and got to my car I sobbed gut wrenching sobs. I was starving him and I, me, his mother, didn't even know. I'm not a bad person. Only silly stupid people do this... but me? Me? I would never do such mean and awful things to my baby. Never, but I did.

I had to take him to his real doctor on Monday and he told me after each nursing session I should follow with a bottle. Well, once that baby got the bottle he didn't want anything else. He completely rejected me and what I had to offer him, well, at least it felt that way. For the next 4 months I tried so hard to get that child to want to nurse. Some might think I'm crazy because we have bottles. Just let go already and give him a bottle, it's okay. I couldn't let it go. Nursing is the only time that my little ones really want and need me, you know, like really... they need my boob. Somehow I was getting everything mixed up in my head and I felt like such a failure at not being able to nurse. My other 3 were wonderful. Took right to it no problems whatsoever. Every time we were with my husbands family and I saw my sister in law nurse her daughter that is 2 months older than my son, my heart hurt that much more. A knife to the chest would have hurt less.

I tried so hard. I read my scriptures, I prayed, I had priesthood blessings, surely something in there would tell me what to do. Surely the Lord would just send me the message, "Sara, stop! You aren't a bad person, just let go". I know on some level that He was trying to tell me that during the blessings but I just couldn't hear it. I couldn't understand everything that was happening. All I kept thinking was, it's just not fair. Why? Why me? Why now? Why????

Then all of a sudden my baby was 6 months old. I was talking to a friend of mine and she asked me why I was still pumping and suggested that maybe it was time to let go. At that point I was so exhausted from everything I had been doing that I stopped, but I didn't just stop nursing. I stopped everything. I stopped eating well, stopped taking my vitamins, stopped caring about money, stopped really caring if I went to church or not, stopped treating myself well. I just gave up, which is really hard for me to admit to because I don't quit. There is a lot I have done in my life and quitting isn't something I've ever allowed myself to do, so when it happened I couldn't tell what was going on. I just knew that I didn't care anymore. Things didn't matter to me and I found myself loving Diet Mountain Dew.

Now, if you were to ask me a year ago to drink it I would have told you that it was created by Satan in a means to drag you down to hell, or at least make you really sick. I don't drink pop. I don't, never really like it, but it made me feel better. It made my day go a little more smoothly and I starting wondering if I should do something about it. I tired to stop, but I couldn't. I wasn't ready to really deal with the pain. I tried to address it so I went through my normal emotions: Anger, anger I know. I wasn't angry. Sadness I know, I wasn't sad. Feeling not enough is something I know and I kind of felt that way but there was something more than just not enough and I couldn't put my finger on it until 1 week ago.

I was sitting in my bed reading the New Testament and all I could think of was how I needed to write down what I was going to say so that I had a good flow and so that it wouldn't seem like I was preaching. People don't need preaching, well, I don't need preaching. I need love, I need understanding, I need acceptance and not preaching so I started writing and all of a sudden, through the writing I finally pinpointed it. It took me long enough. I'm sure all of you can already see that I had given up, but to realize it, to accept is another thing completely.

Once I admitted it, I cried. Yes, finally I know what's wrong with me.

Then the questions started. How could I give up on everything? Why would I give up?

Well, because it was painful. It hurt so much that I found a special place in my heart to put the pain and then I closed the box, locked it and threw away the key vowing that that box would never be opened again because I was over it. I'm fine now, everything is fine. I didn't know what to do with this pain. I have never felt pain like this before and so, rather than deal with it I stored it away. Things really started to eat at me. I noticed how judgmental I was sitting in Sacrament listening to the same crap over and over again. You need to do this and your life will turn out perfectly. belch... total crap. I just thought I was having an off month. I tried to be all Christ like and just love them but that wasn't working either. I tried to read my scriptures but I really didn't care.

Not very many people understood what I was going through. Like a good normal Mormon woman is there were a lot of people that tried to cheer me up and give me advice, but it still hurt. I called my sister who has been trying for a child for 3 years. I sobbed and said if this is a sliver of the pain you feel in not having a child of your own I weep with you. It hurts to see others have what you so desperately want and no matter how hard, or how much you pray, or how righteous you are there is nothing you can do about it. Not a dang thing.

I have put myself through the wringer. I have looked back so many times and thought of all the things I could have done better, or right, or whatever and then the outcome would have been different. I could have tried longer, I could have called the nursing specialist at the hospital, I could have, could have could have... probably would have still turned out this way. I wish I would have had a crystal ball. Maybe that would have helped.

After my friend asked me to share my experience I thought I should at least try to find my way back, so I started reading the New Testament. In Matt there is, I think, 3 vs about the women who had the disease of the blood, and she new if she could just reach out and touch the Saviors robe that she would be healed. She just wanted to touch his robe. Sometimes its the robe that I grasp for. If I can just touch it... if I can just have the seam, or a piece of string then I can hold on, and.... that is what I'm doing. I'm holding on. I'm learning the importance of forgiveness from the Lord and mostly, forgiveness from myself. I have put myself through the wringer and it's time to forgive, time to love, and time to be ever so gentle. I know the Lord loves me. I have never doubted that, my way has just been a little clouded.