a new me.

I haven't written My Story yet. And the truth is, it's just too exhausting to think of doing it.

I've told "my story" to maybe ten different doctors and nurses, etc., over the last month, and I'm just so tired. I think it's important. But I just can't do it right now.

Right now is an interesting time. It's like before six months ago, there was the "normal" Candice. The things I felt. The thoughts I had. The tasks in my mind. Then these last six months she's been gone. So strange. So sub reality. Dark. Cloudy. Confusing.

Mostly confusing.

I feel so confused about where I am. I feel so out of touch. Where once my soul and body and spirit and mind were in touch and in sync, now they are all separate entities pulling for attention.

But I feel them all trying to pull themselves back together now at times.

Last night, as I sat in a room with people of the world that seemed to have no purpose to life. And thus no joy. I pondered, analyzed, escudrinar-ed (spanish word that is exactly what I want to say) life, and people in the world, and God's purpose, and us being His children, and my place in His plan, and how I can help.

That was me. That was Candice. That is how my mind is normally thinking most hours of the day.

Wow. Me. I was back.

I went to church today. I felt so disoriented. "I" have been gone so long. So confused.

As I sat and started to feel how amazed I am by the wonderful people I have met in this ward in Boise and how amazing they are and how much they inspire me, my heart was filled with gratitude for God giving me the opportunity to meet and be around them, where not having moved here I would not have had that chance. And that feeling felt foreign. Cause I hadn't had that "Candice" feeling for so long. It wasn't that I felt the opposite, or had any different feelings for the wonderful people around me. It was that I'd had no thought at all. I'd been gone. And so in this moment, that gratitude I felt last summer, that God-like feeling of gratitude, was again permeating my soul. And my mind wandered and realized the last time I felt those feelings was last summer. That's how long it's been since I've felt out of touch.

Cause the last six months I've just had such a clouded and non-Candice mind.

And I realized in that moment, Oh wow. It's me. I'm back in this moment. It's me.

Yet at the same time I realize, I don't think I am suppose to be trying to put the pieces back just the way they were. Some of the good pieces will come back, but a lot of me has been shaped and changed and converted and realigned. Perspectives and situations have changed. A lot has happened. So I shouldn't clamor so badly to "put the pieces back together" cause I don't think that is what God has in mind.

I think He actually wants me to build a new me…

…so I'm at a loss. I've never seen this new me. I'm not sure what exactly the pieces of my puzzle entail. I'm not sure exactly how those pieces fit together. I don't know what the finished product looks like.

I'm not gonna be the old me. So I can't simply reverse the process of "falling apart". But I have to create a new me.

Is it a puzzle? Is it a sculpture? Is it a maze? Is it flat? 3-dimensional? Or something I can't even fathom with my human mind to analogize to?

So it's confusing.

It's like a blank sheet of paper as to who I will be, yet that blank sheet of paper is in a dark room. Cause there is still darkness. There are still shadows. There is still a lot of confusion.

But what I do know is that as I continue to move forward, and continue to try to "become" whatever this "Candice" is to be, that with each effort I put forth, He will light the way.

He will tell me if I should pick up a paintbrush and paint "quiet" into my being. He won't light up the room, but He'll light up that paintbrush.

He will tell me if I should take clay and mold meekness. He won't open the room to the shutters just yet, not until I have submitted the sufficient amount of of faith to Him in this trial. He will light where the clay is, then He will light how to start molding it.

He will tell me if I should grab just the outline of what Candice used to be, all the light I had and the talents I had developed in my spirit up to that point, and then help me fill in the rest of what is to be the new me.

And I just don't know what it looks like. And I just don't know how to put me back together...together for the first time.

Cause it's supposed to be a new me.

Before this trial, I feel like the lights were all on in that room, in that self-molding art studio. I knew who I was, what my goal was in this life, and the direction God wanted me to go. And I was trying with the capacity I had at the time to shape, the best I knew how, me.

But during this trial, the room has been dark. So dark. At times, even pitch black. So pitch black where you can't even see your hand in front of your face. So dark. So lost. So completely lost.

But today, right now, that room is just dim. There is not enough light provided to cast shadows, but just enough light that I know and am aware that I am in that room again. And in that room, I feel like He is showing me a flashlight. Certain points in the room where He has placed some tools. Just enough light to show me where to use that tool on my being and how to start working it.

I believe one day, a day sooner than it is later, He will not only turn the old lights in the studio back on, but that he's punched out some space in the ceilings for some new skylights, He's revealed that there are windows on each side and He will open the blinds, He's replacing my incandescent light bulbs with bright, clear fluorescent ones, and He will give me some magnifying lenses so I know exactly what He wants me to do to shape me, Candice, Candice Theresa, Candice Theresa Calder Andrus, His daughter.

It's not that when this trial is "over" I will have arrived or be where I want to be, but I believe I'll have the light back that will allow me to continue shaping myself, molding, creating, and becoming. It will require work, and inspiration. But the lights, more lights, will be on than ever before.

And today, it's not today, that He has turned on and revealed all those sources of light. But there is the flashlight. And I know that day is coming.

At times it's been hard for me to feel the Spirit when I am depressed. The depression is the pavilion that covers His hiding place, only I don't alway have the capacity to remove it. That's been hard for me. I know He's there, I just can't feel Him. And I normally significantly can.

But today felt good. I was listening to a conference talk, sitting, being still, and my Sprit started to smile again.

He's back. The Spirit is coming back.

peace.

The sun came out today. It beamed through my front windows and across the hard wood floors like it was stretching as far as it ever had.

My favorite tunes were on surround sound. I was making dinner for my family. The kids were running and jumping and laughing, all three of them, in the living room in my peripheral.

I opened the cupboard door to get out the ground mustard. And I smiled.

I smiled.

Somehow the air was clear around me. I wasn't bitter about the need to make dinner when all of my other To Dos weren't done. I wasn't procrastinating and waiting so it had to be a freezer meal again. Somehow I was feeling that feeling. Oh what is it? Fulfillment. And it almost seemed foreign it had been so long.

As I turned in the kitchen, pivoting with each progression of my meal, I felt light. Somehow I wasn't carrying the rock of Atlas on my shoulders. Somehow my world wasn't crashing in on me because of the dirt spots on the ground and the crumb in the toaster drawer. Somehow it was all going to be okay to have those imperfections under my watch care.

...

A friend told me recently, one of the few I talk to, that she started to celebrate when she was able to let imperfections go. Instead of trying and forcing to let go of the imperfect things around her, she would praise herself. "I'm so proud of you that you were able to walk away from the kitchen, knowing it wasn't in perfect condition before you left. Good job, self. Way to go. You can do it."

I worry now as I write my journal. I worry about the people that are reading and judging me and don't know what it's like to have Clinical Perfectionism like I do. I wonder about those people that just want so bad for me to "let it go" and "don't sweat the small stuff". The people that don't get it.

Oh how I wish I could.

When I'm sick, everywhere I look is a reminder that I'm a failure. The dust on the entertainment center, even though I dusted it yesterday. That dust tells me that not only is my entertainment center dusty, but what else in my life isn't in order. I'm also not cleaning the bathrooms and haven't for four weeks. I never make dinner. I haven't been out for a walk and to see the sun with the kids in several days but have kept them cooped up inside. One small imperfection is a downward spiral of failures because it's just not one failure to me, but it means my whole life is out of control.

My last therapy session, we talked about redefining failure. My therapist talked to me about how my life is really about choices since there are so many things I could do with my time. He asked me, when I see the dust, instead of seeing that as a failure, why not see it as a choice.

"Look at that dust. That dust means that I chose, with my time, to play with my kids and do puzzles with them today over dusting, even though the dusting hasn't been done in five weeks. That dust means I made a choice to choose best over good. Good job. Good choice."

We know from Sister Julie B. Beck that each day we are faced with too many opportunities to do good than there is time for. So about four years ago a switch went off and I made over my life and truly, madly, deeply, reordered my life into essential, necessary, and nice to do, and I have stuck to that gospel truth almost completely consistently since then. It clicked. And it made over my life.

So now, with my illness, I use that conviction from my life makeover to reward myself when I see the little failures. That is not a failure, but a choice I made to do something better with my life.

It seems like child's play, a no brainer, for probably most of the population. But for people like me, it's not that we don't want to do the more important or fun or meaningful things before the menial. It's just that our minds tell us life is out of control until we can get everything in control. And it becomes debilitating. And when we are so debilitated that we have gotten to the point of non-functional, we breakdown.

Retraining your thoughts is sometimes impossible. And I mean Not. Possible. Not! possible! I'm not saying this to be cliché. I'm saying this to try to emphasize that clinically, within my mind, to let go of things and force myself to not act on an impulse, is most of the time not possible. It's like this floating ball above my head that won't let me rest until I act on it.

If I have a question I want to ask someone and I've forgotten what it is, that ball floats above my head until I ask it and get an answer. If I have something I want to do but don't have a paper or my planner to write it down in, that ball floats above my head until I do, even if I forget what it was. That empty, floating, yet heavy ball of the unknown, floats above my head until I can get it in control. If I have an untidy house or an enormous To Do list, I can't relax, I can't feel peace, until it is all done.

And it is never going to be all done.

And if I forget what the balls are that are floating above my head, they don't just go away. They still float. All ten of them, then fifty, then one hundred, until I remember them and put them on a to do list or take care of them.

As so I am a collector. A collector of lists. A collector of impossible lists.

And those balls. One hundred balls. One hundred lists. They get heavy.

Probably it doesn't make sense. "Well just stop making lists. What's the worst that could happen? Is there an impending catastrophe if you don't take care of those balls?"

Yes. For me there is. It is called a mental breakdown.

…

Sunshine. Sunshine beaming in through my windows. And peace. Peace with the imperfections. Clarity. And a shield from the demons.

Happiness. Peace. I hadn't felt those in so long. And at the hardest hour of the day. 4 pm.

I danced with the kids. We laughed. They giggled. I swung them as we danced. I looked in Ainsley's eyes. I clapped and snapped and swayed. And when I returned to the kitchen, I was still smiling.

Somehow those beams of sunshine were just for me. Those beams stretching from the entry way and all the way back to our dance party. Those beams of sunshine that just got brighter and brighter. Those beams through my window were just for me.

I hadn't felt that feeling since last August.

the law of compensation.

Yesterday I wrote this post about the law of compensation and about the feeling of bitterness, and this post is in continuation of that.

…

So I've been thinking lots about the law of compensation. Relying on it in these last few weeks. I haven't had postpartum depression with this baby, and haven't experienced the dark and awful guilt-enducing feelings I experienced with my second child, but I have felt like I've missed out on the last five months of life.

I know life is about trials, but the last five months of my normal, mothering, giving attention to friends, neighbors, my ward, my family, and especially my husband and kids. I feel I have been gone for five months and I've turned around and 5/8ths of Ainsley's life have gone. And I missed it. I wasn't here. The real me was floating around somewhere up in the atmosphere. And I missed it.

And it doesn't seem fair. And I have always liked things to be fair. I'm an oldest child ya know.

And I'll never get those five months back.

Yes I know. The things I'll gain because of those five months are worth infinitely more than having my "normal" and less-spiritual-gift-enhancing-and-developing-trial five months. I know that already it.

But I'm still human.

So here I am like, ugh, this isn't fair, those five months, gone.

Then the immediate next thought, the law of compensation.

So I've been thinking about the law of compensation. And about some possibilities Heavenly Father might give me as a compensation for this hard time. And I've been thinking about how those five physical months of my girls' lives will never happen again.

And I know I'll be able, if I'm worthy, to have infinite numbers of children for the rest of eternity.

Then I thought, "But things will be different. I may be having more solely-spirit children in that day. And I won't perhaps have the physical children that I need to hold, console, give medicine, feed, rock. And I will have still missed out on that time with my physical children…"

Then I think, "Hmmmm…It's so fulfilling as a mother to nurture and meet the needs of our children. And in that day, when I have infinite numbers of spirit children, perhaps I won't be physically nurturing them. I will be spiritually nurturing. And I will have missed out."

Wait. Spiritual nurturing. Yes I feel good when I nurse my baby, change her, dress her, clean her up and make her smell good. Yes I feel good when I do Hadley's hair, take Trent to gymnastics, and cuddle with them to a movie. I love to physically rock my Ainsley and read all of them stories and console them when they cry. But seriously, I don't love to cook dinner and brush their teeth. I love it in the way that I love them. But I don't actually love, love, love those acts. But there is still a sense of fulfillment to them. There is still joy in them.

But what do I love, love, love? I love to teach my children. I love to tell my son, Trent, that that was the Spirit that spoke to his heart when he knew he could say a special prayer when he was locked in the garage by himself. I love to teach Him that that was Heavenly Father that answered Hhs prayers and sent his Dad to the garage and found him there. I love to tell my Hadley how smart she is and how good of a mama she is. I love to bear my testimony to my newborn as I listen to the voices of the Apostles in general conference talks. As my eyes well up with tears because the church is so true and I have that church for them! I, as their mother, have that church to offer and teach them and testify of to them. "It's true, my son. It's true. Your mama knows this man talks to God."

I love to spiritually nurture. Spiritual nurture is infinitely joyous and fulfilling to me. Even several times more joyous than the joys of physical nurture!

Spiritually nurturing, if that is what I will be compensated with for the time I was not able to physically nurture, well wow. Spiritually nurturing. I love spiritually nurturing my children.

Is that one way the law of compensation might work in my life in regards to this trial? That in the eternities, when I am bearing infinite numbers of spiritual children, I will be given the gift of the opportunity to never stop spiritual nurturing and teaching them? How joyous is that? How unspeakable joyous is that.

What are the other ways the law of compensation may work in other areas of struggle and trial in my life? If His plan is that much more joyous than anything I might think I'm missing out on, then stop. Just stop. Never, never doubt his plan.

And what are the other ways that the law of compensation might work in behalf of those I love and for whom I feel their life has seemed "unfair"?

Wow. And wow again.

Sacrifice? No. Not really a sacrifice. Not really a sacrifice.

He's got a much bigger plan for us. His plan, His plan of happiness, is worth infinitely more than any plan we could ever, ever come up with for ourselves.

His plan of happiness is worth infinitely more.

He loves us. He loves us. He loves us infinitely.

I'll leave you with a few words from Elder Henry B. Eyring that have been on my mind since my hospital stay and on my mind as I have wondered how long this trial will go and what God's timing is:

“For there is a time appointed for every man, according as his works shall be.”⁵

We remove the pavilion [that keeps us from God] when we feel and pray, “Thy will be done” and “in Thine own time.” His time should be soon enough for us since we know that He wants only what is best.

His time should be soon enough for us since we know that He wants only what is best.

He loves us.

He loves us.

honesty.

Honesty is refreshing, right?

It's refreshing to write it. 

It's refreshing to read it I think.

(I just have to say this after posting the booger post.)

boogers.

You know your kids are on the right path to humanity when you start finding dry boogers on the walls.

Parenthood success.

ha!

This is what I look like as I'm writing this post. Dang Photo Booth had to be turned on.

…and it made me laugh that this is what I look like...

 

Thumbs up.

beds.

This is kind of a weird post.

Oh I am so thankful I have a good mattress.

Timothy and I have been through the ringer when it comes to mattresses. We have been through three sets in our seven years of marriage. Tossing. Turning. Just no bueno.

Several months ago we weren't willing to make another mattress mistake. We sold the farm to get the right one, for reals.

Now instead of getting one amazing night's sleep about once a month. I get an amazing night sleep nearly every single night. The only nights I don't it is because it is due to insomnia from the meds or a racing mind, but usually, and before this last rough month, I got an amazing night sleep every. single. night. Good, deep, meaningful sleep. I never had to wonder if my emotions were due to lack of sleep, and that was really nice. One thing checked off the trigger list. I never had one single regret about this bed and still don't.

We got the Latex Bliss pure natural Beautiful mattress. Something like that. And we splurged and got the adjustable frame. The mattress was the essential part. But man, that adjustable frame is sweet. We lift our head a little bit, our feet a little bit. Once you sleep that way you can never go back. If you don't want to get caught in an adjustable frame trap, never let a salesman demo it for you. hahaha

Anyway, I'm just so grateful to be getting good, meaningful sleep nearly every night. I'm so thankful to have had the means to get a good mattress and to have made it a financial priority. I know it is a great blessing.

"the mom stays in the pictures".

Another link that was very meaningful to me.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/allison-tate/mom-pictures-with-kids_b_1926073.html

Why moms should take pictures with themselves in them.

link.

I'm adding this article to the "links worth my five minutes" list.

https://www.lds.org/youth/video/things-as-they-really-are?lang=eng

This is Elder Bednar, an apostle of Jesus Christ in my beliefs, sharing about virtual relationships v. real relationships.

It had a huge impact on me a few years ago when I read it. So if you haven't taken the time, it's worth five minutes in my book. (I spent more than five minutes on this one.)

A message a friend sent to me, and what she says to one I believe she says to all:

"We are pioneers paving the way for generations to wade through the emotional battles of our day. God has chosen the strongest to battle the worst. Always remember that!"

Ya know what? I do feel like a pioneer.

Am I paving the way for generations so they will know better how to wage this war, one of the wars of the last days, the emotional war?

Wow. Maybe I am.

Maybe we are.

links worth my five minutes.

Time is precious. These ones were worth my time.

• Brené Brown on Vulnerability

• How Much Does God Love Us?; Elder Holland, The Grandeur of God

• Drops of Awesome

• How To Miss a Childhood

• A Little Celine Dion, Anybody? Greatest Love of All

• I Love Being a Mom More Than Ruling the World, my personal mommy boost

my quick "happify"-ers

A list of things I can turn to when I need a boost. And fast.

• Do pedicures with Hadley while watching Sofia the First

• Use my mood light while I read

• Put on makeup for no reason, or curl hair

• Watch a few songs on my Celine Dion or John Mayer or Faith Hill or James Taylor concert DVDs

• Force myself to take a walk outside

• Watch something funny online for five minutes

• Watch an old favorite! Finally!

• Power nap. Only 15 minutes.

• Take a tubby! (hot, soothing bath)

• Serve someone who has mental illness. Go to the hospital psych unit with homemade cookies.

• Take a drive alone in my car and crank up my favorite tunes and sing as loud as I can

• Get to Hot Yoga

• Play the piano and sing my testimony

• See the sun. Turn OFF phone. Just be.

• Journal

• Look at picture of the Savior and meditate on Him. And on my relationship with Him and my Heavenly Father.

• Look at a random slideshow of images on my computer set to random music. Don't think about it. Just push play.

• Have a Dance Party with myself or the kids in my living room, be free

• Jump on the tramp. Even in the snow.

• Do something fun with my kids that they've been asking to do for too long

• Go on a self date out for cheesecake or a pina colada

• Do something fun for me. Forget the To Do list for one hour.

• Edit a fun photo, not a deadline photo

• Chocolate

• Count my blessings. Name them one by one.

• Be still and be prayerful in my heart, even if I can't speak

• Call and thank somebody in my life. Cry to them if I want. But mostly thank them.

bitter.

Bitterness.

Any tinge of bitterness I start to smell coming around in my heart, I stomp it out. I just can't feel that way.

And it's true. That's how I feel, that I just cannot feel bitter. I should not feel bitter.

1) Because I believe my Heavenly Father loves me and knows what's best for me and that there this unspeakable joy in this trial that I would not be able to receive any other way.

and 2) Because I believe in the law of compensation. Especially that,

“All that is unfair about life can be made right through the Atonement of Jesus Christ.”



I have pondered this often.

I have pondered this when I feel for people I love that have "unfair" things in their life. "They don't deserve this." That is when I mostly ponder it.

But this has been meaningful to me in mental illness.

When my daughter Hadley was born, I suffered a very painful period of postpartum depression for five months. Even now, even in this journal, I don't want to talk about the feelings I felt.

I'll mention a few. I had no connection to my daughter. I didn't feel she was mine. The guilt for not feeling connection and ownership magnified the loss to depression.

This was a very painful time in my life.

I remember sitting on the floor sometimes, not being able to lift my arms, just sitting there. Can't move a muscle. Just sitting there.

I remember acute pain that I didn't feel she was mine.



I went through postpartum depression for five months. That felt like two years. And when I came out of it, and I was finally looking back and saying it was something that "happened" instead of something that was "happening", I had an immense connection to my daughter. I was insanely in love with her.



And then the talk of bitterness.

I was kind of considering that bitter feeling to become a part of my heart. The first five months of my daughter's life. Her most precious months. Five months as a newborn which I would never have back in all of eternity. Those five months were spent without connection or joy.

I held her. I fed her through the night. I took care of her. But no joy. No connection. No sense of her being mine.

Those five months. Gone.

It was like she didn't become my daughter until she was five months old. Like our bond, our relationship, didn't form until five months. And I was hurt.

Why? Why did I not get my newborn? Why did I "adopt" her at the age of five months and miss out on all that precious, sweet, straight from heaven, tiny stage of loving and rejoicing?

I will never get those five months with her again.

It is extremely painful for me to remember this reality, these feelings, and admit to them. I think that is why postpartum is so painfully suffered in silence. The feelings a mother should not be having are felt. And to admit them is self-suicide. It destroys your self-image of the meaning of the word "mother", it hurts to voice feelings you have tried not to feel and realize that means your admitting to their reality, and it sounds so bad once those feelings come out of your mouth or onto paper that you compound the depression cause now others can judge you.

Postpartum depression. A silent and acute pain.

At least that's how I felt.

So I'm kind of forcing myself to write this post, for all those reasons in the above paragraph I mentioned, cause I don't want to remember these feelings were real. I don't want to feel that pain again. And I'm opening a box of pain.

Forcing myself…Forcing.

So all I had to go on, in the middle, the deep middle, of the feeling called Bitterness that was trying to become a part of the makeup of my heart, was, "Hey. Stop. The law of compensation."

"Everything that is unfair about life can and will be made right." And I know that. It not only will be made right, but God is an overly-generous paymaster. Overly-generous is an even insulting word to put to that. He compensates then adds to to the extent there are no words that can come from my mouth for what He has done for me.

Haha. It makes me laugh to think I thought when I left for my mission that I was "sacrificing". Not a good laugh. But a, "wow. that was pathetic I even though I might be sacrificing." laugh.

Sacrifice? SACRIFICE?

There are no words.

I have stood to bear my testimony about my mission, only delving into the challenge of speaking the unspeakable gratitude I feel for my mission a few select times, when I've felt inspired to take on that challenge, and there I stand. Tears welling up in my eyes. Welling up and welling up. Then welling up again. My throat is caught. There is nothing I can say.

So I stutter.

"There are no words." And I swipe my hand across the air in front of my body like I'm smoothing out a tablecloth with excessive force…"No words to describe what my mission did for me…I thought I was sacrificing?"…more tears…more cat's got my tongue and my throat is suffocating…"Everything I thought I was sacrificing, my Heavenly Father gave it back to me and more when I returned from my mission."

And those blessings just continue to get bigger and bigger and more meaningful and more crucial to my spiritual existence in this world, and as a mother in Zion and as a wife.

No words.

And so here comes Bitterness and I say, "No. Yes I didn't get to be 'here' for the first five months of my sweet eternal daughter's life, but there is a law of compensation. What I think I've "sacrificed" will one day appear to me as nothing compared to the eternal compensation that awaits me. I know that. I've lived it. No Bitter."

And here I am again. The first three months of my sweet baby Ainsley's life were amazing. Heaven. AMAZING. And then the next five? To this day?

Where have I been. Where is Candice. She is only here 20% of the time.

I've turned around and seen my daughter. She jumped from three-months old to eight-months old in a day. She is threatening to crawl. And 5/8ths of her life I have spent…sick.

Bitterness. It tries to creep up. Then I beat it back.

THE LAW OF COMPENSATION.

poop.

I'm up at 4 am.

Well, I was up at 2…and now it's 4…and I just can't sleep.

I guess I'm gonna get up, eat a cupcake, and journal.

…

What?! What is this amazingness!! A treasure trove of…TREASURES… in every one of these cupcakes.

Amazing.

Um!?!! What is that chocolate chip?!! It's like a ganache chocolate chip! What?!!

I'm serious. I need to start a business with that cupcake sweetheart friend of mine, Savvy. Like for reals.

She bakes. I eats. And we're in business.

…

So I'm up. And I'm a vision of beauty. A vision of someone that's not sleep deprived and didn't just find out she has a Corneal Ulcer!?!!

For reals?!!

My eye hurt so bad I was moaning. I think I've maxed out on my priesthood blessing requests like…well…I guess you can't. But help me. Help.

My sweet Hadley girl woke me up at 2 am cause she lost her blankie. And boy do I have sympathy for a girl who loses her blankie!

We couldn't find it, so I got her a substitute. And as I walked out the door…"I love you, Mommy."

Deep sigh. Wow.

…

But then I couldn't get back to sleep cause I'm constipated.

TMI.

But I guess if you're poisoning your body with meds trying to get stuff figured out well then, there's gonna be some fall out.

I need another bite of cupcake.

…

I will fight obesity for the rest of my life because I have become friends with this cupcake girl.

I haven't read the Book of Mormon for a few days.

BAD timing.

I *need* that book.

I guess this trial just hasn't gotten bad enough. I guess I just haven't seen enough, been in the depths of darkness long enough, experienced enough, felt enough pain and confusion to be able to sufficiently check this feeling off my bucket list of things I may be able to empathize with one day. Cause it's just not relenting.

Still in it.

brain.

Sometimes I feel like maybe my brain is too big for my head so it explodes out into ADD and OCD. Like my intelligence is undercapacitated so it's unproductive, traffic jammed, and explosive.

That's what it feels like up there. 

ponderings.

Romans 8:24-39

24 For we are saved by ^ahope: but hope that is ^bseen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?

 25 But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.

 26 Likewise the Spirit also ^ahelpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should ^bpray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh ^cintercession for us with ^dgroanings which cannot be uttered.

 27 And he that ^asearcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh ^bintercession for the saints according to the will of God.

 28 And we know that all things work together for ^agood to them that love God, to them who are the called according to hispurpose.

 29 ^aFor whom he did ^bforeknow, he also ^cdid predestinate ^dto beconformed to the ^eimage of his Son, that he might be the^ffirstborn among many brethren.

 30 Moreover whom he ^adid predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.

 31 What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, whocan ^abe against us?

 32 He that spared not his own ^aSon, but ^bdelivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us ^call things?

 33 Who shall ^alay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It isGod that justifieth.

 34 Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh ^aintercession for us.

 35 Who shall separate us from the ^alove of Christ? shall^btribulation, or distress, or ^cpersecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

 36 As it is written, For thy sake we are ^akilled all the day long; we are accounted as ^bsheep for the slaughter.

 37 Nay, in all these things we are ^amore than ^bconquerorsthrough him that loved us.

 38 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,

 39 Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to^aseparate us from the ^blove of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

frazzled.

Man, I feel so broken.

It's like I'm an experiment. Well I am.

Try this med. Nope. Try that med. Nope.

This med: $180 down the drain. Put me into deep depression I'm still recovering from.

This med: $150 down the drain. Don't try it because of what the other one did, but I had already filled it.

This med: Try it. We'll see.

This med: Try it to stabilize your mood: I'm in depressive phase, brain fog, body aches, super sleepy.



AGH!!!!!!!!



And people are talking to me like I'm crazy. I guess I am.

I'm not suppose to be so agitated about this. I'm not suppose to be so worried about that. I'm not suppose to be so depressed about this. I'm not suppose to be so nervous about that.



I was normal like the rest of them at one point, right?

church.

I can't wait to go to church tomorrow.

Sigh.

I can't wait.

the shift.

I knelt in sincere prayer, kneeling, speaking out loud, in private, without distraction, even in a psych unit of a hospital where my three roommates were not around me. A singular moment. I just knew this prayer had to be out loud.

"I am so thankful that I know that my Savior has been here before. That I am not alone. That He has felt this, perfectly. Thy son."

It is not possible to put into words, so I feel frustrated.

I have a son.

My Father gave His son to feel this.

But it's okay.

The feelings I was having were feelings of not being able to fathom giving my son to feel pain for others.

Pondering that.

Not fathoming that.

And then…the shift.

I don't want, anymore, that my Savior had to feel this. It's okay, Heavenly Father. It's okay if I had to feel this alone. It's okay if I am the only one that knows this perfectly. It's okay. I don't want that Christ had to feel this.

It was already done. And it would be done regardless of any spiritual progress I would one day make. And it's not that I was in the lowest of any low of anyone else on earth, it's just that of course, with our own backgrounds, experiences, gifts, weaknesses, etc., no one understands perfectly but Him.

But the shift. It was a shift for me. I hadn't ever before, or at least not long enough to remember, felt so much love and willingness towards my Heavenly Father, and love for my Savior, that it was okay. It was okay if He didn't feel this. It was okay if I was to be the only one that felt this exactly. I love Him too much. Please don't make Him feel my things too.

Maybe we all get to this feeling a few times in our lives, where we are sincerely trying so hard to apply the atonement, be enabled, be cleansed, that we understand just a minute bit more about the atonement. And we cry out, "it's okay", "I don't need this too", "I don't want that He had to feel my sins. I love Him and Thee too much."

I felt it. Just one tiny drop of it.

And it felt like a shift. A shift in my way of feeling about the atonement.

love.

I have never felt so much love coming from so many directions. Wow.

I think this new life of vulnerability is going to be very…full.

unfair.

It's not really fair.

It's not really fair that I'm receiving so much love.

I feel a little guilty.

Since I have shared the struggles I am going through, I have received and been overwhelmed with love and kind, sincere messages from people I admire and revere. I have felt so buoyed up and motivated to continue in my way back to health and live to help anyone else that I can.

But my hubby.

The truth is, this trial is just as hard for him as it is for me.

No it's not his brain that's been effected. It's not his health that isn't functioning mentally. But, I don't even need to explain it. How every many pounds of difficulty this trial is worth, it is worth an equal amount of pounds for him. It effects him just as much.

I guess this is a gift to realize. I guess, because I am realizing this, I can have more compassion and better support the spouses of those who have trials. Trials of any kind.

A gift. Another thing I hope I learn.

Another thing I hope I learn and keep and it stays part of my eternal being, forever.

Something I should probably start practicing now so that I can really hammer that lesson in.

insane.

Literally, things have gotten "insane." And because they have, it kind of makes me mad I have used that work so casually until now. "Crazy." "Insane." I kind of need those words now.

The overuse of those words in society has put me at a loss of words, cause it's more intense than the watered down versions.

I can't believe what has happened to me over the last 24 hours. I can't believe it.

One day I'm happy, fine, and I think the worst is behind me and I'm on the up. The next day I'm on the couch again, barely able to lift my arms. That's what happens when I get major depression. And I sit there and think, "What? No! I thought I was on the up!"

Since I went off the ADD drug, my life has been up and in the dumps, up and in the dumps, up and in the dumps, and one of the in the dump days was the day I finally allowed myself to go into the hospital for help.

I still need to write out my whole story.

But two night ago, it was like an out of body experience. An out of body, cause I felt the shell of my body was here, but my spirit, the soul of Candice, was somewhere floating in the sky. And not in a good way! 

Where am I? Who is this person? I feel someone else has taken control of my mind.

I think one of the hardest things that happens during a depression episode, I'll call it, is that it's so easy to forget that I wasn't always like this. That this isn't the real me. That one day I will come back.

When I had postpartum depression, I really had a hard time grasping that life with depression wasn't my new life. I had forgotten that I had ever been anything different than depressed. And I needed constant help to have hope that one day the depression would be over. It was so hard to believe. Where did I go? I just want to be back!

My friend, Nina we'll say, always shared with me her story of postpartum depression. I called and relied on her, because one day in passing, just like with my other tender mercy friend, she had mentioned something about postpartum depression. Of course, at the time I needed it, I thought of her and called her way too often to ask for help and thoughts, and to basically tell me that I wasn't crazy.

She constantly reminded me that this would end and that this wasn't  the real or new me. That I would be back.

So hard to realize when it's happening.

And now I am trying to tell myself, "This will end too…Just like with the postpartum, one day you will be looking back on this and not in it."

But after saying to myself so many times, "I think the worst is behind me." It is getting really hard.

The very, very worst happened two nights ago.

Everything was fine and happy, and two hours later, suicidal.

What?!!!???!!!

Being suicidal? Never. That is against all of my core beliefs and every ounce of who I am.

But there I was, two hours later, on a down again. But this time, the worst down ever.

"Tim would be better off without me…I am ruining everyone's life…I can't even take care of my kids…I don't offer any value to Tim anymore…Maybe he wants to leave me…"Do you want me to die?"…I could do this and just be done with life...

What!?!?!!!?!?!!!

I have never, and I mean, never thought I could EVER have those thoughts. I have never even come close to those thoughts. Not even close!

I value my life. I have a wonderful life. I am so blessed and I adore living! I LOVE life. What is happening to me?!! Where did I go?!!

I balled like a baby.

More than anything I was just confused! This is against everything in me! Where did I go? What is happening? Where is my Heavenly Father?

It is so hard to feel the Spirit when you're in a down spiral.

It felt like some sort of sub reality, but what's a better word? It felt crazy.

I woke up the next morning, suicidal still. Where did my real spirit go?  Am I going bipolar?!! This can't be happening!

And there I was in a deep depression again. Hard to lift my arms. Tears streaming down my face without relenting.

I had a psychiatrist appointment in an hour. I drove to the appointment, but realized it wasn't really safe for me to be driving while someone else felt to be controlling my brain!

…

When I had postpartum depression, it was so very difficult for me. It was so hard to find purpose in it. It was so hard for me to understand spiritually why that would be a trial available to us in this life. If we came to earth to prove ourselves, that we would keep the commandments of God, how in the world were we suppose to be capable of keeping the commandments when our mental capacities were out of whack? I was so confused by the whole thing and just couldn't seem to get a handle on the answer. How am I suppose to be patient and long-suffering when my mind is so intensely anxious and my heart down in the dumps that all I can do is cry or yell? I couldn't understand it, and I just wanted an answer.

After that trial and as it came to a close, all I could come up with was, opposition.

2 Nephi 2:11

11 For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my first-born in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility.

Just like when I have been physically sick, I then finally realize how amazing it is that 90% of the time my body is functioning wonderfully. Just like I finally pray to ask for health when I am sick, but usually all of the other times would forget to thank my Father all the other days that I wasn't sick. Just like we don't realize what we have until it's gone, here I was with mental health issues. And here I am again. 

Opposition. 

How could I appreciate the brain and heart and soul Heavenly Father had given me, my mental health, without an opportunity to be without it? How could I have joy in feeling in control if I didn't know the difference?

Or maybe more powerfully, how could I ever have compassion for those with mental health struggles if I had never had a taste.

My postpartum depression made me grow in compassion much more quickly than I would have. Maybe five years worth in five months. And I was so grateful for that gift.

So what gifts will come because of this trial. What compassion will I gain. What joy will I have now when my mental health is again well knowing what it is like to not feel in control. And which hands that hang down will I be able to lift and tell them, "This too shall pass. One day you will be looking back."

Opposition in all things makes joy in mental health and all things, for the first time, possible.

Still, it's something I want to understand more about when I meet my Maker.

And I know His Son suffered all. Even this.

…

I got to the doctor's. I had also had a panic/anxiety attach in the middle of the night. My medication makes me shaky. I was shaking, my heart was pounding so hard it woke me up, then I broke into a sweat so powerful it soaked my underwear.

What is happening? Not only am I getting worse, but now I feel like my spirit is gone, my brain can't connect the dots, this has to be a sub reality cause I feel literally crazy. 

When I met with the doctor, and told her my theory of this feeling of bipolar the last few weeks, I felt so good to get some sort of an answer.

Doesn't it feel amazing to get answers? Even one you just hope is an answer?

Perhaps the ADD meds messed with my neurotransmitters. And even though I went off it two weeks ago, I am still up and down and up and down because the neurotransmitters are trying to get inline again.

Of course I don't understand all the science, but I felt she was accurate and I had some sort of explanation.

And lots of comfort comes to me with a "sort of" explanation.

Of course I was sitting there just the saddest I have ever been. Down down low in the dumps and arriving suicidal. What? Is Candice Andrus really saying this? 

The psych even recommended I go into the hospital again. 

What?

"Do you want to go into the hospital again?"

"No."

"Well, if you can stay at home, and your family can hide the pills, and you can be watched, then you can have the hospital at your home."

Oh my. This can't be happening. Candice Andrus is just out of the psych unit and has now had suicidal thoughts. She's been recommended to go back in. And she's being told the family needs to hide the pills. 

This can't be happening.

I don't even know how to explain this. My brain is in a fog. The medication is doing some sort of firework parade up there in my brain and trying to eventually come out with a positive result. 

But the meantime while I wait for that result, what? 

Confusion. 

Things are dark.

When will I come back?

She gave me a mood stabilizer while the ADD med works its way out of my system and the cells repair themselves. And I'm continuing on the SSRI med.

I had my friend come get me at the doctor's so I would be safe getting home. 

The hope is stability. And now by two doctors I've been told that this "bipolar" feeling will end.

Oh. Hope. Hope is so hard to have sometimes.

But I haven't lost it yet. I'm still hanging on for dear life.

...

[For those of you who are reading this journal entry, please don't worry about the thoughts I had. I recognized they were not rational and nothing that I would be feeling if I were healthy, and I got the help I needed I was at home and driving in a car. I hope to NEVER have thoughts like that again, and never had before. And when I did, it was a signal to me that I need to get professional help cause that isn't me, that's not Candice. And I've reached out for that help when that happens. xoxo…If you have had thoughts like that yourself, I encourage you to recognize them as irrational and a signal to you that you should seek immediate help and support. Immediately. I am not a doctor or a person of authority in this, I just know that help is available and no one should be having those thoughts. Life is always of value.]