By Lisa J Fisher, April 23, 2022
*Warning: This story contains some potentially triggering content. Read with care.
This is not a story of “overcoming” or “strength in the face of adversity,” nor “how to become a stronger saint.”
No, my story is one of bitter disappointment, prayers spoken in a sailor’s language, and the challenge of seeing life through a broken lens.
I am not sure when my story began; it certainly hasn’t ended yet.
Four sons–I have four sons! I dreamed of how they would serve the Lord and maybe even serve their country.
Up to date, not one of these four sons is active in the church nor has any one of them served in the military.
Over ten years ago my then husband left me and my boys on a piece of property in Northern California where we had established an “off-grid” lifestyle. We were living in a pole barn building with a house across the way.
The boys would play in the streams, and we would spend hours at the lakes and mountains in the area. Summers were spent camping at the coast. My life was not an easy one, but it could be fun. I pushed forward in faith and believed through hard work all could be well.
It was then that my husband stated, “I can’t do this anymore. I’m sorry but I am going to leave you, and I am going to leave you with my mom and the barn.”
Wha?!
So, two weeks later, he left.
My cousin, Sue Henry, had invited us out to Minnesota to see if we might want to establish ourselves here, so we came to check things out. My boys fell in love with Minnesota right away. Kwik Trip was the best thing they had ever seen. They had no intention of ever going back to California.
I flew back, packed up our lives in my old Dodge van, stuffed way beyond capacity, said a prayer, took a breath and didn’t look back. I still have no Idea how the four boxes of model trains and a box of Godzilla toys made it here.
My mother followed us a few months later and we purchased a nice home in the best neighborhood ever. One of my stipulations in purchasing a home was that it was close to the church. The church/gospel is what our lives revolved around. Our new home was within walking distance of the chapel. Yaa!
I never resented the Lord for my husband leaving and in truth, felt it ended up being a blessing. I had confidence in the Lord, His plan and His ability to care for us.
My faith was strong, and I did all I could to help at church and help my boys be successful. Years of scouting and encouragement.
However, one by one, my boys stopped attending church. Their diligent and caring leaders came up with all sorts of creative ways to encourage the boys to come to activities, which they did at times but for the most part they fell off that narrow path. They are good boys, law-abiding, contributing to community, just plain good people. However, deep down, that ole saying, “No success can compensate for failure in the home,” pricked at my heart and reverberated in my soul.
Where did I go wrong? Was I not strong enough? Faithful enough? Did I not have enough Family Home Evening, did I not love them enough?
What, what did I do wrong?
After prayer and fasting and a few meetings with the Bishop, I realized that my boys had the freedom to choose, and that the Lord would not force them, and neither should I.
As the boys graduated one by one, I began to realize they would all be gone in a few years, and it would just be me and my mom. I mourned this idea for three years. I didn’t know who I was if I wasn’t their mom checking on them and helping them.
So, I began to come up with a plan. I would attend nursing school and get my updated degree that would allow me to take care of myself as well as my family.
I started to get excited at the thought of “travel nursing.” I could get PAID to do something I love! Well, get paid to not just be a nurse but a TRAVEL NURSE!
So, with prerequisites in hand I started the nursing program at our local college.
IT WAS TOUGH!
I loved to learn and would prefer to be a lifetime university student if I could.
Nursing school took a room of “A” students and tore at their GPA. People started dropping like stones into mist.
I had plenty of faith I could do this with the Lord’s help.
I have always believed that if one person can do something, I can do it.
My patriarchal blessing stated that I would be successful in my educational goals.
I had this!
I was making it. Then COVID hit. In two weeks, we went from practicing on dummies, and each other, to trying to get a computer program to help our AI patient.
It was a disaster for me. I was not technically inclined. I had to withdraw before I flunked out.
I didn’t understand. Why, HOW was I not successful?
I decided I would take 6 months and go at it again. I would know what I was going to experience and was convinced I would do well.
I had prepped my home life so I could just study. My family was in support of me, and my mom became a full-time taxi driver.
Second week of school I was in the hospital with pneumonia. Nursing school doesn’t accept excuses or pneumonia.
Because I had studied before school started, I was able to bounce through the next week. I studied all but a few waking hours. I did the computer programs, took the extra tests, spent extra time in the lab.
I had a reaction to the COVID shot.
I then pulled muscles in my thigh.
Time after time, illness after injury, I was getting pummeled.
I thought, “Okay, I am just not trying hard enough.” I got less sleep and got sicker.
I began to have a difficult time staying awake in class and struggled more and more.
Then, I fell asleep at a clinical.
I knew I was in deep trouble.
I didn’t know why I couldn’t stay awake. I thought, “I’m just not trying hard enough.” Certainly, the Lord wants me to be successful and take care of myself and my family.
That’s a good goal, that’s a righteous endeavor.
I soon fell farther and farther behind. I could no longer recall the medications and their specific amounts, I was having difficulty setting up for my class, and I was no longer physically strong enough or mentally capable enough to be a nurse.
There, I said it. That revelation hit me so hard I had to hold the wall and breathe.
I am not going to be a nurse, ever.
I had never had a goal, where if I worked hard enough, long enough, sacrificed enough, that I couldn’t accomplish my goal.
I had spent hours in supplication to the Lord to “please” let me do well.
I was not going to be a nurse, ever.
For the first time, I realized, maybe the Lord didn’t want me to be a nurse.
But why? It marked all the boxes. Righteous goal, worthy goal, educational, better yourself, provide-for-your-family kinda goal.
Why, why, how, why on earth would the Lord not want me to become a nurse?
I was a failure…
I had to withdraw from nursing and return to work, humbled, shamed, sadden, carrying a very heavy load of bitter disappointment and grief. Yes, grief.
I was mourning for a life that I had created in my mind–a life that I was never promised. I wanted to go on missions, work the surgery ships of charities. I wanted to work at orphanages around the world. I wanted to LIVE life.
Work didn’t last long as I developed tremors. My limbs, hands most intensely, had begun to shake. It became difficult to type, to punch in numbers, to hang on to a plate. I thought, “O crap!” I have a neurological problem.
No, what I had was anxiety. What? Yes, anxiety.
The doctor suggested I stay off work for two weeks and see if the tremors got better. I have not been back…
I began to fall apart. Falling apart like an old-fashioned doll whose limbs lay disjointed on the attic’s floor owing to a child’s curiosity.
That is the kind of “falling apart” I’m speaking of.
I began to mourn a life I would never have, and I had absolutely no idea why the Lord would deny me of such a goal.
I just didn’t try hard enough.
What had I done wrong?
How could the Lord deny me of something so good? Why would He deny me the ability to care for myself and my family?
What happened?
The lens through which I viewed life cracked. It distorted my view and contaminated the truth.
I was broken.
I continued to question what happened, looking for logic where there was none. I became more embittered, more angry, more hardhearted. I began to eat my hatred for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, decrying the unfairness of not being able to support myself and my family, and truth be told, I wanted to travel!
I was angry…
I was angry at everyone, everything, and especially life!
I sought help from my antidepressants, and self-isolation, self-loathing, self-harming, self-pity, self, self, self.
I was alone. Not because the Lord had left me alone but because I had left Him.
However, I continued to pray and try to keep the self-undermined communication open with the Lord.
I gradually spent more and more time in my own head, validating my distorted view of life with my twisted feelings of anger, hatred, resentment, and more anger.
My friends and family became concerned with my worsening behavior.
I finally let loose on the edge of sanity and swirled down the rabbit hole into oblivion.
Consumed with an unknown, unnamed hatred, I went into psychiatric care. I was on the verge of taking my own life. I felt I was a failure at everything important in my life. Motherhood, first and foremost, at least motherhood in the church. School, school, and school. I was a bad daughter, I wasn’t a good friend, I couldn’t hold down a job, I was a bad person, I wasn’t worth anything. I was a failure in the most important parts of life to the most mundane.
I seethed in anger–writing, drawing, painting my pain and anguish in monochromatic shades of gray. On the edge of a very deep, dark, murky well.
Wondering why the Lord had left me. Why wasn’t he carrying me through the sand? Where were His footprints when I needed a lift?
I blamed the Lord for all my pain. Why did He want me to be weak, sick, and unhappy? Why did He not like me anymore?
I prayed long prayers full of anger and dark language, pleading to know why I was not good enough. Why do I have to live a mundane life? I had a great plan! Why weren’t you on board with the life I had planned? Ouch!
Though still full of anger, I began to question the possibility that perhaps there was something more in life I was to do.
Boy, did I not like that thought. It was different from the other thoughts that ran in a well-worn loop in my brain. But that thought cracked open a window enough to let a sliver of light in.
I started searching for a cure for a cureless disease. I thought maybe I won’t be able to be cured but maybe I could live a better life. Maybe, just maybe, there might be hope. I pushed against this thought, thinking of the countless tries and failures I had endured to “get better” with no improvements for the effort.
With COVID’S rage on a downslide, we were able to return to church. Even at church I was wrestling with anger, and it seeped out multiple times in multiple ways. My anger was justified, I repeatedly told myself.
However, my anger was not justified, just Satan’s way of convincing me that I had the right to be angry and could stay angry for my whole life if I wanted. That fractured lens was filled with splintered distortions that ran the full length of my vision.
I needed help. I wanted things to be logical, I wanted to understand why my life had this awful down curve?
“Lean not unto thy own understanding,” echoed in my mind.
I wanted to understand.
I started researching alternative treatments. Among many I tried holistic, acupuncture, scraping, and even Chinese medicine. I just was not getting any better and my frustration increased.
I wanted to understand!
“Lean not unto thy own understanding,” whispered in my soul.
I can’t accept that; why can’t I know?
After diligently searching, trying, and failing again, I ended up at Mayo Clinic’s Pain Rehab. I had seen testimonials of people who had gained much of their life back. In a last-ditch effort, I requested this rehab and two days later I was in.
This was a miracle considering this rehab has a worldwide waiting list.
The first day I was angry. I know, no big surprise. They were going to offer me hope. How dare they give me hope. Not only that, but they were also telling me I was going to get better doing the things that have made me ill, injured, and in bed ridden for years. Were they crazy?!
My dear friends convinced me to “trust the process and follow the program.”
This became my mantra for the next three weeks. Every day “just follow the program” played on a new loop in my mind. I refused to believe and have hope, but I worked the program.
Through hours of physical therapy, movement, and classes on changing the way I think, a small change began to move over my mind and soul. Gradually I became physically stronger. I was walking into HyVee and realized that 2 weeks ago I had hobbled in with a cane to the shopping motor cart to do my shopping. I was now walking into HyVee on my own feet, no hobble, no cane, no cart. Things were changing, the program was working.
I gained understanding of the invisible pain roadway that had taken over my brain; however, I still wanted everything to be logical and understandable, and it wasn’t. I needed to do that proverbial “Leap of Faith.” I just couldn’t do it, yet.
That first week of rehab I felt like Gandalf fighting that monster of fire and hell, falling while wrestling in a great dark void. The battle was real, vicious, and painful. I would be successful at this rehab, or I will be back for another vacation in the psychiatric hospital. That was the precipice I was battling on.
During this raging battle at rehab, I was attending a church fireside. The brother giving that talk mentioned how he “just sat quietly and observed in order to figure out an issue. Not understand it but just accept it as is.”
This spoke to my mind and soul. I had let my guard down and the Lord had slipped in a whispering of the spirit through one of his angels. That whisper, that light, cracked the solid wall of anger and resentment that I had spent long hours building.
I gave away my need to “understand,” to have everything that happened “make sense.” I just sat, listened, and accepted. So many of those angry, bitter feelings slid away from me like a sumo wrestler suit being taken off a skinny kid.
That tiny sliver of light reflecting on my fractured lens of life provided enough light for me to consider the possibility that my life was meant to be different. That tiny sliver of hope provided a point of reference that maybe I wasn’t broken, but damaged. Damaged in a way that I could be fixed. Maybe things will be different but that doesn’t mean things will be bad and unfulfilling.
I leapt. I stepped into the darkness of the unknown and stepped into the light of the Lord. It was hard. It was painful. It was one of the hardest steps I have ever made. I was now on a path back to the Lord.
My life is still not what I would have planned. I am still on disability, and I still get angry now and then.
However, I have found some peace. I know the Lord was with me when I was lost in the dark, but I was angry at Him and didn’t want to admit it. I have a long path to walk, not an exciting hike as I would have wanted. But maybe this path will have some shade and some beautiful views.
Oh, I have a new lens, it was a gift. Purchased with blood, thousands of years ago by a Brother that loves me…and you.