I Need Thee Every Hour

So, quick personal experience lesson: That title? It’s not a joke!

Before I started coming back to church, I didn’t really have a good method of handling stress or insecurity. I’m that type of mid-level anxious person you hear about, where I entertain irrational assumptions and then fall for them like they’re real. After a couple of hours agonizing and panicking about it, I’ll realize a solution and doubly realize how much time I wasted crying about it. It’s very frustrating and it’s one of those things where before, I didn’t really have a good defense against it. It would kind of just take me for a ride for a few hours on any given day and then I’d spend the rest of the day embarrassed by my inability to just open my eyes.

Coming back to church has given me a great defense against this, particularly in regards to any negative thoughts I might have towards myself. All I really have to do is remember who I am. I remember that I am a daughter of a Father in Heaven, an heiress to great things, and that He cares about me, loves me, and even if I don’t know the plan, I can not only trust that He does, but also that whatever it entails, it is for my ultimate good. And then all of those little insecurities go away, like magic.

It's weird to say that the stress and depression I’ve been struggling with the last couple of weeks is a result of “forgetting who I am” but in the context I’ve already outlined, that’s what happened. It was like I was back in that spot that I’d been in before going back to church, just riding the irrational, emotional rollercoaster, until it would come to a stop.

Well, I really realized that something was not right when my aunt Wendy and I went to take the written driving test at the DMV(me for my learner’s permit and her to renew her license). After a little struggle in finding out what we needed to bring to confirm our residency, we took the test one at a time and we both passed. And yet, rather than celebrating about it, I was stuck in a slump, thinking how am I going to tackle the next thing on the list, which is, after I’ve practiced for a while, getting my license. But in order to drive my aunt and uncle’s car, I will need to be on their insurance. Yet I have no money for that because I have no job. And nobody will call me back for the places I’ve applied to.

It occurred to me, as my aunt Wendy was congratulating me on getting my permit, that this hollow feeling, my apathy in regards to her pride in me, her celebration for me…was not right. Why couldn’t I just let myself have this? Yes, there will be messy stuff to figure out in the near future but this step, this one right here? Hot dawg! I did it! I got it! I accomplished that sucker without breaking a sweat! Yahoo! Thank the Lord!

It was a big accomplishment to even realize in the midst of this haze that there was a problem, and you cannot tell me that the adversary doesn’t work very hard to tear us down when we’re filled with the most potential because it was extremely hard then to figure out the solution. And it was something that I should have been doing all along: keeping up with daily scripture study and prayer. Every day here in Idaho is full, sometimes I forget that we’ve only been here for a little over 2 weeks. It has been hard to dredge up the motivation and time to keep up with my personal relationship with the Spirit and Heavenly Father. Not to mention this last week in particular, it feels like I’ve been carrying a heavy, swampy monster on my back, unable to really think about myself. I remember one day, aunt Wendy was gone the whole day earlier this week and I wanted to draw, so, I drew a picture halfway and stopped. Because then I felt like maybe I wanted to read, so, I read a new book by Sheri Dew that I got. It was hard to focus on it, so, I stopped after a couple minutes and bought a YA novel on Kindle and read a couple pages of that and stopped because I really wanted to write. I cannot adequately describe the state of mind, except scattered, foggy, unhinged, and inexplicably melancholy. You can see my struggle to even come up with a coherent thought about what I was truly feeling and why I was feeling that way.

I tried to write update blog entries several times but they kept on getting filled with this negative, irrational garbage. But looking over my notes from Sunday sacrament meeting, I was curious about the note at the top of the page, something I’d written but forgot. “As I Search the Holy Scriptures – prompting during last verses.” I forgot what the last verses were, so, I looked them up and I’ll repost them here:

“As I search the holy scriptures, May thy mercy be revealed, soothe my troubled heart and spirit, may my unseen wounds be healed.

As I search the holy scriptures, Help me ponder and obey, in thy word is life eternal; may thy light show me the way.”

In the midst of this darkness, this unvoiced struggle, this struck me with a relevance that I didn’t really have a hold of at the time of writing it, but felt prompted to write down… Because someone knew I would need it and He knew that I would review my notes to write a blog entry about it. So, I read my scriptures along with Believing Christ by Stephen Robinson(I’ve been going through and reading and marking the scriptures he mentions, to help with my over all pondering on the Atonement of Jesus Christ). Guess who’s not inexplicably sad and beating herself up anymore? …Yeah, sure, probably her. But me too, I was talking about me.

I’m in the part in Believing Christ where Robinson talks about how those who make an either/or distinction between what the covenant requires for us to be party to, either faith or works, are misguided and misunderstand what it means to participate in the covenant. He takes the stance that faith itself is an action word, that even though we cannot save ourselves by our works it is enough of a token of good faith to establish the covenant with our Savior. He uses the analogy of two people on a tandem bicycle and how one person will always be doing more work than the other. But if the weaker person just pulled up their legs and rested them on the handlebars then “by definition the arrangement ceases to be a partnership and becomes exploitation.”

It made me realize that I haven’t been feeling close to my Heavenly Father and I haven’t been trying at all to make room for this relationship. It also clearly illustrated to me how dire this situation has become just from these couple of weeks not keeping up with it for my personal study and prayer. Here I was, blessed with great food, a wonderful house, surrounded by loving family, making reasonable strides on my goals and unable to celebrate, unable to see anything good in the future. How dark do the clouds overhead have to be to think “I’ll never make it” as you’re literally taking the steps towards doing it and accomplishing those steps one at a time?

I just want to bear my testimony that it is serious when people talk about building and maintaining a testimony and dialogue with the Spirit by reading scriptures, praying, and serving others. These things are not optional and you never know when you will find yourself susceptible to that loss of faith. Knowing what I know in my heart about the truth of this gospel, it did nothing to help me during this week in those times I felt like I was emotionally drowning. Because I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to do. I wasn’t doing what I needed to do in order to fortify myself against these moods.

I had the idea for the title of this entry last night when I went with my cousin, Macy, to work in the laundry room at the temple. There was another girl folding clothes in there with us, a vocal music major at BYU, and she hummed beautifully the song, “I Need Thee Every Hour.” So comforting and soothing in that environment as we folded the clothes and her voices lilting in perfect pitch, wordlessly the tune to that beautiful song. I went with Macy to the YSA ward that she goes to(not for much longer though, since she just got engaged last week!) and I felt an encouragement from the Spirit was we sang this song as the closing hymn for sacrament meeting. It seemed to highlight the exact realization I’d had: I need thee every hour, Jesus Christ. I cannot be without you for even a little bit.

I also had the prompting to write down: “How Great Thou Art – last 2 verses prompting.” I don’t know if this will have relevance for later but I couldn’t help visualizing the emotions associated with these verses.

And when I think of God,
His son not sparing,
Sent Him to die,
I scarce can take it in;
That on the cross, my burden
gladly bearing He bled and died
to take away my sin

I like that part where it says “I scarce can take it in” this amount of love that I’ve been shown by His sacrifice.

When Christ shall come
With shout of acclamation
And take me home
What joy shall fill my heart
Then I shall bow
With humble adoration
And then proclaim My God
How great Thou art

I love the jubilation at the end here, the sensation I can feel in my heart and the way my imagination takes hold of going home and Christ being so proud of me.

I leave these thoughts and testimonies with you, in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.