Post #1: The White Stocking, or Where It All Began

There's a tradition in my family on Christmas Eve. Up along the mantle with all our stockings, there was also always a white stocking. Someone gave it as a gift years ago, and it's meaning and activity have become a part of our holiday traditions.

 On Christmas Eve, after all our musical programs and nativity acting out, Mom would read the following:

It wasn't that anyone had really been forgotten. No children had been slighted or made unhappy and no adult had been left unremembered. The presents had all been distributed and all the stockings were beautifully filled--all except one; one stocking that had never been hung. It was the stocking intended for the child of Bethlehem. Of all the people belonging at the Christmas gathering, only He had been forgotten. Only He had been left out of all the festivities. This didn't seem quite right, inasmuch as it was His birthday that was being celebrated. 

We would then each write on a tiny piece of paper a goal for the following year that would draw us closer to Christ, and place it in the stocking. We would then pull out those papers next Christmas and see if we did what we set out to do.

The last time I was at my parents' house for Christmas was 2014. My goal was this:

I remember writing this, because I remember how I felt while I wrote it. It was a small, quick, vague way of me trying to tell myself that everything was going to be OK.

Now, 2014 was--on the outside--a joyous year for me and my family. We welcomed our little Lauren in February of that year. She was healthy, developing like she should, and we were doing everything that should bring us joy. And there were joyous times. Lauren brought a new love to our home we didn't know existed. Her spirit filled our hearts and our home.  So why was I struggling so much on the inside? Weren't things good?

 2015 was going to be a better year. An easier year. I was close--2 months away--from Lauren's first birthday. A major milestone. I would have survived the first year and looked back and thought "All right, it really wasn't that bad, was it?"

Yes. There was so much good. But there was also so much going on inside of me that left me feeling dark and alone.

See, I wrote this goal to have faith over fear because I was in a constant state of fear. For the past year and a half, I was in the throes of anxiety and postpartum anxiety.  And I didn't know it.

I've had bouts with anxiety before, mostly in college, but counseling helped and I thought I was all good. I thought I had learned what I needed and that it was just a fluke and I wasn't going to experience those feelings again. But as soon as I found out I was pregnant in the summer of 2013 (and it wasn't a surprise, we had talked about it), the thoughts came racing back.

All the time. Every day.

There was always something to worry about. To obsess over.

I don't know if I cooked my lunch meat long enough, am I going to miscarry? I forgot to take my pre-natal vitamin this morning. Is my baby going to have some weird birth defect because of it? I have a pain in my right side. Am I having an ectopic pregnancy? Should I go to the emergency room just to check? I feel nauseous all the time, will I be able to keep anything down? Will I starve myself and the baby? Will I end up in the hospital because I'm so dehydrated? Will I be sick the whole 9 months? Am I going to be able to make it to the bathroom in time to puke or will I puke all over my desk at work?

On and on they went.
All day. Every day.

Did anyone have any idea how consuming those thoughts were? No, not even Paul. He knew I was nervous, but I believed, just like everyone else did, that it was normal to be that stressed all the time. We were new to this parent thing, for crying out loud! We didn't know what we were doing!

I didn't realize there was a difference. That the tight feeling in my chest wasn't normal. That sleepless nights because of the thoughts wasn't normal. That I was showing all the signs of being in the middle of anxiety.

I was--and still am--, considered to be a person with high functioning anxiety. I didn't lock myself away in my room during my pregnancy. I went to work. I grocery shopped. I worked out. I socialized. I smiled. I laughed. I did everything normal people do, but inside I was drowning. I didn't "look" stressed (whatever that means), I was consumed by it, but kept it hidden, because I was sure if I told everyone all the thoughts that raced through my mind in a mere 10 minutes, I would be patted on the arm and told "There, there. It's just because you're new to this. It will all be fine. You'll see."

The problem with anxiety is that it robs me of faith. Anxiety grabs a hold of my brain and spits out all these scenarios that come to my mind over and over again and that somehow convince me they are very real and very probable. And the whole concept of faith becomes absurd.

Anxiety not only brings on the worst-case scenario thoughts, it also brings on a sense of doom. In my case (it may vary, I can only vouch for myself), I began to feel like Heavenly Father didn't care about what I wanted. He was going to do what He saw best. We are taught that, right? There is always a higher power. His thoughts are not our thoughts. His ways are not our ways. We need to trust Him, no matter what.

I began to believe that He would take away this pregnancy from me. I had friends who experienced miscarriages and still births. Why would I be saved from any of that heartache? Why did I deserve a healthy baby? I was no better than anyone else. My self-worth was at an all time low. I believed that Heavenly Father had His own agenda, and was going to do whatever He thought was best, and that I was sure it was going to be something tragic. Something that I should have prepared myself for. I should have considered the possibility that something bad could happen. I convinced myself that if I didn't expect the worst, I was being naive and deserved something bad because I needed to remember that life is about trials, not joy.

I really, honestly believed all of that. For a very long time.

So, that tiny piece of paper was written 10 months after Lauren was born. Did the anxiety stop once she was born? Heavens no. It then became postpartum anxiety, which I will cover another time (since this post is already so long, and I am actually quite drained writing it.)

But I want to end this post with this--though I felt overwhelmed, and forgotten, useless, and many more negative things, I still had a tiny bit of hope in me. I had hope because after Lauren's first eight months of life, I was starting to feel like myself again. I wasn't worrying as much. I was able to breathe a bit easier. I was able to sleep better. Feel more joy than fear. And because the anxiety was starting to fade, I had hope that I could feel connected to Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ again. Somehow, in the midst of all this new parenting stuff, I felt forgotten. I felt like I had to do everything on my own. I felt like it was expected of me. A requirement. I had forgotten what it means to really have Christ as a companion.

So I was going to make 2015 the year where I built my relationship with Christ again. I was going to ask Him to be a part of my life again. To help me feel like myself again. And I remember feeling in my heart as I wrote down my goal on that piece of paper and dropped it in the stocking, that He was aware of me. He was going to help me. I felt it so strongly. 2015 was going to bring me closer to Him, it was going to be a year of building.

When I look back on that pregnancy, I do remember the dark times, but I now also see how I mattered to Him. I've never not mattered to Him, even when I felt like I am a million miles away from Him. I guess that's what I really want someone to take away from this post. Hope. And the opportunity for you to remember that if you are in a dark place right now, or on the verge of one, or just coming out of one, or just wondering-

You. Matter. To. Him.