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.