Hope

Sorry for the downer of the last post, but if I'm going to do this properly I need to include everything. To balance each depressing post I'll try to include a positive one. You certainly get a sense of the kind of the smothering hopelessness I experience. Also it comes and goes, at times I'm fine, and then others (usually at night, waiting to fall asleep) it all floods back and I'm overwhelmed, then the future seems dark and without hope.

But there was and is hope.

The first glimmer came to me from my best friend. At the time I had lost everything, my home, job, family and religion. I had nothing; she gave me a place to stay and well, was just my friend.

Listened to me and gave me some good straight up advice (speaking to the bishop for example). She was a really awesome friend, and my time around her did nothing but make me want to better myself. I don't know if she's ever realized how close I came to just giving up on church, life, everything.

Then came the time after excommunication. First week or so was pretty depressing, it was hard to get over the fact that I wasn't a member anymore. The church had been at what I had built my life on, my principles, sense of what was right or wrong and what I thought success was. This, this meant that I was a failure. OK I won't keep droning on about those feelings because they get obsessive.

A week later I went to church, and things didn't get any worse. So I started praying and reading scriptures (which is something I hadn't really done in years). And since I was near the temple I started to go and look. You see I've never been to a temple, and until late last year I had never even seen any temple in person. So I finally got to see, and it felt really good.

Seemed kind of ironic though, this place that I've always wanted to go, this is the closest I've been and yet at the same time never in my life was I further away from being able to go in.

Anyway, things didn't seem some completely bleak then. Although looking back I can't see much, I remember having hope. Maybe it was the feeling of having even a little after losing it all. The simple fact that things had stopped getting worse, gave me reason enough to hope.

The level and I guess kind of hope I've had over the last year has changed. At first it was the hope that maybe the world as I knew it wasn't going to end; followed by the thought that maybe I really could change the person I was (I'd made some major breakthroughs at that time kicking some habits). Next was that given by enlightenment of the meaning of godly sorrow; having read that it was needed for true repentance (I'd started to freak out, what if I never got it?).

The most recent hope that I've been given was the last time I spoke with my bishop, in July. He told me in a few months time a year will have passed, and we could start thinking about getting baptised, and then visiting the temple. To finally go to the temple (not for my endowment of course), I almost cried when he told me that.

A good friend, hope (just a little), and a goal makes a huge difference. After having something of a relapse the last few months (moving multiple times, job insecurities etc.) I'm starting to pick up again, bad habits are being kicked and I might even get around to reading and praying tomorrow.