Blessed

Life is hard right now.

Life is usually hard, but right now it's more forcefully hard than usual.

But I can tell you that every time something hard has happened to me, I have received blessings greater than my hardships.

My junior year of high school, I sank into a deep clinical depression. I felt very sad, and very lonely. The quality of everything I did took a nose dive. And when I say everything, I mean my schoolwork, too.

I would not be able to go to college without a scholarship; my parents couldn't afford to help me. Every day, every night, whenever I had a moment where I could feel something other than apathy of depression, I was anxious about my future. I wanted to go to college. Would I be able to go?

But blessings were given to me. More than blessings--miracles. Provisions had been and continued to be made for me in a most wondrous way.

A few months before I became depressed, I took the PSAT, or NMSQT, test. I scored in the 98th percentile, which qualified me as a contender to be a National Merit Scholar. And although my individual grades were slipping, my overall GPA remained healthy enough and my portfolio of activities was impressive enough that in spite of the Cs, I was chosen a year later. And because schools with National Merit Scholars receive extra funding, suddenly all these colleges basically offered me a degree for free. At Nameless Utah College, I paid for my books and fees, but I didn't pay a red cent of the actual tuition. My education was assured without me having to do much of anything.

That was one amazing blessing. Another one was that one day, for no reason in particular, I felt promoted to seek out Best Friend Boy. But at the time, he was only Friend Boy. We weren't super close. I liked him, and Etch-a-Sketch, and Shutterbug a lot, but I was sort of a free agent at school. I didn't really have a "group." I felt like I had enough close friends outside of school and I didn't need any more.

However, I decided to confide in Best Friend Boy some of the difficulties of my depression. I can only attribute this weird decision to divine intervention, and I have been grateful for said divine intervention every day since. There is no doubt in my mind that the love of Best Friend Boy, Etch-a-Sketch, and Shutterbug changed my life. Without that depression, though, I never would have been humble enough to accept that love and friendship.

Life was difficult, but what I needed was provided to me...even when I didn't know that I needed it.

A year and a half ago, some other issues of great personal import which I cannot share here arose. And on top of that, I was in my last semester of college, and the pressure was mounting to do all the necessary things that must be done in the last year of college, like find a real job that was in my field which I could support myself with. And on top of that, the interim job that I had decided to take was in a city an hour away. And on top of that, I was in the Relief Society presidency, devoting much of my free time to serving Heavenly Father. We would go visit women in our ward at least one day a week, among other duties. And I couldn't just show up for these visits; to be effective, I had to really be present. And on top of that, I became very sick for seven weeks. I was always sick to my stomach and had no appetite, and what I did eat did not stay put. I went to doctors and specialists, but they had no idea what was wrong. And on top of that, I became an insomniac, lying awake at night and wondering how I could possibly get through all of this.

The obvious blessing here is that I did get through it. I scarcely remember doing homework, but somehow it got done. And things got better. I received a blessing of healing from my father, and my illness went away. I graduated successfully and found a job in my field, which I wasn't expecting. Creative writers don't get creative writing jobs. They either get rich writing novels or are forced to work in another field or starve to death while trying to live on freelance work and particularly vivid descriptions of food. My insomnia ceased. And best of all, after everything cleared up, I was able to go to the temple to be endowed. This has been the greatest blessing of all.

I said in a previous post that I hadn't yet received many blessings out of my current trials. But what I guess I really meant was that I haven't received the type of blessings that would mean my current trials are coming to an end. Because I have been so blessed. I have a family that I love so much. I have the knowledge of the true gospel in the end of days. I have good friends, supportive roommates, a good job that gives me what I need and more, a healthy body, wonderful church callings, yellow shoes, all three seasons of Avatar the Last Airbender, and so much more. At the moment, I don't have everything that I hope for, but I have so much to thank God for every day. I know that He loves me, and I know that in time, the deepest desires of my heart will surely come my way.