When I was young I often imagined what my future would be like. In my imagination, I would live in a cottage in the mountains. It would be surrounded by lovely flower gardens, and I would have many rosy cheeked children playing around it. I would spend my time joyfully taking care of my home and happy children. I would of course, have a handsome husband, who loved me dearly and who provided for us and kept us secure and safe.
As I got older, my plan became more practical, and at the same time more detailed. I would marry an educated, ambitious man, who was active in the church, loved me dearly, and who supported my desire to be a wife and mother full time. He would work and I would take care of our family and home. We would be active in the church and serve in many callings. While the children were in school I would do volunteer work with the PTA, and in my spare time, I would be a writer.
When I met Kirby and we shared the vision of our future together--our dreams were in sync. He was the perfect man of my dreams, down to the color of his eyes and the spread of his shoulders. He was intelligent, hard working, a returned missionary worthy to take me to the temple, and ambitious with a life plan. He treated me like I was the rarest treasure, and he made me feel safe and loved.
After our temple sealing, (1983) we embarked on our new life together with optimism and an enthusiasm for life. We loved each other, and we were excited to start our family together. We happily welcomed children into our lives. Kirby was a Korean linguist for the US Army, so we went wherever the Army sent us, striving to be together as much as we could, and writing long letters when we were apart. I wasn’t living in a cottage in the woods, but rather, in an apartment in San Francisco, or in a hooch in Korea, or in Army housing in Maryland, but it didn’t matter where we lived, because each place we occupied, in whatever location we were in, we were filled with our love for each other, and our optimism for our future, and our joy in our beautiful, growing family.
About two years into our marriage, Kirby’s bipolar disorder started to manifest itself. Of course, I had no idea what was happening when my protector and the love of my life suddenly stopped on the side of a freeway between North Carolina and Maryland, got out and started walking down the road. There I sat with a toddler in the backseat and a pregnant baby belly. I was being a bit obsessive about the carpet requirements in our new housing unit at the time--stressing about the expense of the requirements, and Kirby told me to stop talking about it. Of course, after a brief silence, I had one more thing to say, so immediately thereafter Kirby pulled off the road, got out of the car, and started walking down the side of the freeway. I thought I saw him climb into a semi truck that stopped for him, and I was completely devastated. I had no idea where I was, where I was going, or how to reach anyone I knew. I had no money with me. My parents, who had helped us move, were en route back to Utah. I didn’t know my way back to my brother’s house in North Carolina, or my way to our new place at Fort Meade, Maryland. Finally, after several minutes of breaking down and then collecting my shattered self, I started driving down the freeway again, thinking I would pull off at the next exit and try to call my brother. That’s when I saw Kirby walking along the side of the road and I pulled over to pick him up. He was surprised that I had taken so long to pick him up. I completely lost it at that point, and when I stopped sobbing, Kirby apologized for upsetting me, and promised never to do that to me again.
Unfortunately, that was just the beginning of a long journey through repeated episodes with a similar dynamic. We mended the rift after each episode, and we loved each other harder and more desperately, but the smooth ice of our life together had been cracked, and the seams left us more vulnerable and less secure with each passing year.
In the years that followed, each time there was a crisis, Kirby would leave me again, physically or emotionally. After the anger and crisis were over, I would pick Kirby up, proverbially, by the side of the road, where I had been left lost and stranded, and where he was walking powerless and solitary. Each time he would get back in the car that was our life, and retake his place in the driver’s seat and we would continue going down the road, which was our life together—Again and again this happened, until finally, we were just surviving the cycle. We were each so beaten down by the disease that was bipolar disorder, that we didn’t know how to do anything but keep playing the part we had given ourselves to play—that of driver and passenger in a car that never seemed to have the capacity to fully make it to its destination—our happy ending.
Finally, life intervened with a war (2003). Kirby deployed with the Army National Guard, and I stayed home with a house full of kids and a full-time job. I wondered what had happened to my life’s happy ending. I wondered what would become of my marriage, my family, my life in the future. I was broken, Kirby was broken, but we were still playing the parts we had given ourselves to play. I didn’t know how to get from the survival mode I was living in, to a place where I could truly feel hope, joy, and happiness again, but the desire to find a way kept me acting my part from day to day for many years.
That was the condition I was in, not so many years ago.
That is not where I am today.
Today I live in a beautiful home, with flowers growing around it. My children and grandchildren are in and out—each one beautiful and active. Each one fills me with hope and joy. My husband, Kirby, provides for me. He is handsome, hard working, loyal and generous. He treats me like a queen and a treasure. I no longer work outside of my home. I take care of my family and my home, and sometimes I volunteer, and sometimes I write. Somehow I was transported out of my despair and back into my happy ending. How did that even happen?
You know, when I was younger, I used to wonder how God could expect us to love him more than anyone else. How could I love Him more than the wonderful parents that raised me, or more than my husband and children that I had loved and sacrificed for for many years? I couldn’t even remember Him, or see Him. Well, that is no longer a question for me. I love God above all, because he rescued me. He rescued my husband, and he can rescue each of you. At some place along the road I was traveling, I finally surrendered the wheel of that car, which represents my life, to God; and Kirby and I got into the back seat of that car and we let God drive the car.
I finally learned to trust God, my Heavenly Father, and His son Jesus Christ, my Redeemer, and to believe that they know where we are supposed to go, and that they can and will take us to a place where we will find peace, love, and joy. I stopped being afraid. I started having faith. I started applying the atonement in my life until I was finally able to let go of past pain and allow myself to be healed. My life changed—not all at once, but as I could understand and accept the changes--they occurred. The cracks in the ice of my relationships were healed over and eliminated, and I was left whole and intact.
Today, I love God and trust Him above all because of the transformation that occurred in my own life. Each day I seek to be worthy to feel His Holy Spirit. I seek the Spirit through study, prayer, and obedience; because having The Spirit with me takes away my fear. He teaches me to trust, and to love, and to forgive, and He allows me to live with joy.
I hope that each of you can learn to trust God; that you will seek him by study, and also by faith and obedience. I testify that They (the Godhead) will be there when you do. God the Father, who waits on you to come home, Christ the Savior, who can heal your heart, The Holy Spirit guide, who will be in your heart. You will have times when you will sense the holy angels ‘round about you who are bearing you up in your trials. This is my witness, my experience, and the evidence of my life, which I offer to you humbly, and in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen
