Today seemed like it would be a formula for having a very difficult day. It started with an early EMDR session (and exactly one year ago today was one of the worst days, for many reasons), after which I immediately left to attend a funeral. Not only was it my first LDS funeral since Kendall’s (I’m afraid I haven’t been able to muster up the courage before today to attend any others during the past year), but I showed up to discover that the funeral director was the exact same person whom I worked with at Berg Mortuary and who attended and oversaw and directed Kendall’s funeral. Even the hymn we sang was the same, and there were many, many other similarities.
So how am I smiling? Because I am, even with the emotionally laden and demanding events from my day. This picture was snapped earlier after I had just finished a speech therapy session. There have been some tears, sure, but I have been amazed at how well I have been doing with everything today.
I was able to make some breakthroughs in EMDR with looking back on memories as if I was a bystander instead of being stuck in the experiences themselves (it’s hard to accurately explain this, but trust me that it was a big deal). Still difficult, yes. Still emotional, yes. But helping me to re-categorize these memories from being stored as trauma ones to merely things that happened, that I can now acknowledge and learn from and yes, even appreciate. It has felt so empowering, to not constantly be at the mercy of continual trauma responses throughout the day.
I was also able to listen today to Jeffrey R. Holland’s talk, “Remember Lot’s Wife” (I believe it is also sometimes referred to as “The Best Is Yet to Come”). So many things from this talk resonated with me. He said, “I plead with you not to dwell on days long gone, nor to yearn vainly for yesterday, however good those yesterdays have been. THE PAST IS TO BE LEARNED FROM BUT NOT LIVED IN. We look back to claim the embers of glowing experiences, but not the ashes. And when we have learned what we need to learn and have brought with us the best that we experienced, then we look ahead; we remember that faith is always pointed toward the future. Faith always has to do with blessings and truths and events that will yet be efficacious in our lives.” I feel that I was able to do that, to separate myself enough from the horror of some of those experiences which then allowed me to recognize the blessings that were present, too. And that certainly makes me smile.
I can’t always control the way my brain chooses to respond to things or what things get called up, but I am (over time) learning how to better control the narrative and help healing to occur. Elder Holland went on further to say that, “To yearn to go back to a world that cannot be lived in now; to be perennially dissatisfied with present circumstances and have only dismal views of the future; to miss the here-and-now-and-tomorrow because we are so trapped in the there-and-then-and-yesterday” won’t help me to look forward with faith, to get to where I want to go.
Philippians 3:13-14 reminds us that, “This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”
I echo Elder Holland’s words that, “Faith is for the future. Faith builds on the past but never longs to stay there. Faith trusts that God has great things in store for each of us.” I do not doubt the Lord’s ability to give me something better. There are so many good things here, right now, and so very many in store. I love that. How can I help but be comforted and smile with those reminders?