Suffering for Our Sake

Some trials have come recently, and I've had cause to ponder some of the difficulties that come from our mortal existence.  Something I've been thinking about lately is why I continue to suffer with the particular trials of mental illness that have been such a bother for most of my life.  The answer seems to have come from some more trials. I'm grateful for a Heavenly Father who uses many different ways to teach us, His children.  I'm also very grateful for the Holy Ghost that can help comfort during trials and help us learn from even the most distressing circumstances.

Two weeks ago Friday, my grandfather that I lived with for 7 years passed away.  It was a shock to everyone, and difficult to really comprehend for all of us (I'm having some trouble even really understand that he truly has passed away even now).  While I do have the comfort to know that he's not forever lost because he'll be resurrected and because he is even now in the spirit world (probably telling a good story or a joke), it has been hard to deal with for all of us.

In the midst of these trials, I have been isolated from friends and from the comfort and support they could offer by my anxiety disorder, that has caused such trouble lately that I struggle feeling confident and safe with anyone besides Brooke and Tommy.  It has been a sore thing to try to bear this burden of grief alone, and yet I had the opportunity to help share  and help my family as we had the viewing and funeral.  It's been so neat to see how Heavenly Father has helped me find opportunities to help my family during this hard time, even if it has been limited.

It made me think of how great it is that Heavenly Father gives us the chance to act as the Savior did, in helping to bear the burdens others are struggling with, even as the Savior bore the weight of our sin, our grief, our pain and sorrow.  And even as the Savior learned by very personal experience in Gethsemane what we would suffer through. We get to suffer to learn not only our own personal lessons of life, but also get to go through the suffering that someone else may have to face, and we get to know better how to comfort, strengthen and administer to them in their trials and struggles.

I'm so grateful for a loving Father in Heaven who gives the great blessings of trials and allows us the chance to suffer for other's benefit.

It is good to hope and quietly wait . . .

It's been a bit since I've posted anything here. Many lessons learned as a new father (many of which have to do with patience), and have also learned about how limited time can become. I did want to take some time to talk about some thoughts I had in sacrament meeting today and some in the temple yesterday.
As Brooke and I went and did some temple work, I was impressed thinking about how past generations had gone through the trials of raising kids, building lives and families, and just generally living life. I realized that I've been focused on getting everything "right" as a husband and a dad that I've forgotten that life is about growing, not being perfect right away. We are 'perfected' through Christ as we strive to come to Him and as we do our best, whatever that is best is. And through Him, our best is better than we could ever have done on our own.
It's been a struggle to work all day and be away from my wife and boy, to strive to figure out how best to earn money for our family, how to earn money for my boss's business, and how to help make sure my students are growing and learning most effectively. Yet, I don't have to do it all at once, and I've seen-the more I have asked Heavenly Father for His guidance in these things-how God has helped inspire me to make one decision over another to the benefit of my students, my boss, and my family.
Through it all, though, I have continued to struggle with the depression and anxiety. At times it has been frustrating to have to figure all of the things out and to be doing well, only to have bouts with severe depression and terrifying anxiety that feel as if they may overwhelm me.  That reassurance this weekend, that I don't have to be perfect right now, has helped with this as well.
One of the hardest things I have dealt with with these difficulties is that I received the comfort and promises from the Lord in a very personal way that I would one day be free from these struggles.
Just as the promised blessings of a wife and family did not come as quickly as I'd hoped, this promised blessing has not yet been given.  I had begun to lose hope that I'd ever be free in this life from these struggles (and that may yet be the case).
After realizing my own lost sense of faith in these blessings and hope in a mental-illness free future, my faith and hope in general began to wain.  I'm grateful for such a spiritual and loving wife, who has and continues to help when I struggle with my bouts, and who helps to keep me on track spiritually. We've started feeling the Spirit a little more in our home and are getting through this spiritual rough patch we've been in. And, very gratefully, we never strayed very far and have just needed some changes to help bring our focus more on Christ and the Gospel.
Thinking about the difficult times we've been facing, and most especially the struggles with mental-illness, I remembered a scripture from Lamentations: "The Lord is good unto them that wait for Him, to the soul that seekers. It is good that a man shoul both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord." (Lamentations 3:25-26) This reminded me again that there are many promised blessings of the Lord that we do have to wait for, and this may be one for me.
Whether in this life, or the next, I will see the "salvation of the Lord" in this thing.

Who do I serve?

My wife and I have been reading the Alvin Maker series by Orson Scott Card.  In this series, the boy Alvin Maker is born to become one who lifts, who builds things and others up.  Their is another entity, the Unmaker, constantly striving to tear things down, and who is the enemy of Alvin and all that seek to build.  One of the characters, Taleswapper, mentions that to serve the Unmaker is to unmake.

This series and this thought were with me as a friend at work was unkind to another friend, a coworker.  These two have butted heads a little, and I saw how when the they were unkind to each other, neither one of them was as happy afterwords, and it made me think back to this thought:  when we serve the unmaker, we unmake things.  This also made me think of the Savior who said:  "No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon." (Matthew 6:24)  When we serve God, we uplift others and strengthen them,  And when we serve Satan, we tear them down and make their lives more difficult.


This raises the important question:  who am I serving?  Am I lifting and serving others by serving God?  Am I inspiring and strengthening others, helping them feel the love of God and encouraging them to live more righteously?  Or am I tearing them down, making their lives more difficult then they were before I was there?

I have seen the effects that serving God can have on others, and it is marvelous to see the difference it can make.  Likewise - both from my own poor choices and in my struggle with anxiety - I have seen how treating others poorly can make things harder for others, and it is painful to think about.  I have struggled through severe anxiety attacks on occasion because others were not quite so kind as they could have been and made me feel worth less than I am.

Let's remember that serving Satan will always cause suffering, even if it is no one but yourself.  And that serving God, doing good to all men, will always help others, even if they cannot or will not accept that help.

Love you, my dear friends!

My Story: Part 1 - Early Childhood

As mentioned in my post yesterday, I'm going to start talking a little bit about my struggles from the past and most especially how Christ has helped me overcome them.  I'm not sure yet how I'm going to work the "My Story" segments, but I figured it would be good to start out chronological and talk about the the struggles in my early childhood.

Looking back, it's easier to see that I had some struggles during my childhood years that most other children didn't.  My mother labeled me as having a "soft heart," which is her way of describing how easily I got upset at the smallest things.  This difficulty with emotion, with help of different counselors, therapists, clinicians, etc. are easier to recognize as early signs of struggles with anxiety and depression.

For example, when I was in Kindergarten I wanted to keep some popsicle sticks from popsicles we had had a moment before so that I could use them for crafts or - with a rubber band at home - a ninja throwing star.  The teacher noticed I had kept them instead of throwing them away and asked me to throw them in the trash.  I went to the trash, crying as I did so.  My teacher, with undoubtedly some guidance from the Spirit, allowed me to keep them if I did not play with them.
For me, it was not the loss of my toy (or eventual toy) that caused such distress, but the fact that the teacher may have been upset with me.  This was something I couldn't bear, that I had made a mistake and that perhaps this teacher would be forever upset at me.

This was the beginning of my battle with anxiety, though I didn't know it at the time.  This need to please others, brought on by a fear of what would happen otherwise, persisted through my childhood and is still a part of my personality even today, though understanding what's going on has helped me keep better track of what I'm feeling, why, and how to overcome those emotions when the cost of making someone else happy is at the expense of my own welfare.

The first real understanding of this fear has, interestingly, only come recently.  It seems that I worked my way from the most immediate struggles backwards to find the root cause of it all.  In most of my struggles later on, with Obsessive Compulsive Tendencies, with Self-Mutilation, and with Anorexia and Bulimia, the root cause has been this struggle with Anxiety.

The anxiety started out in Kindergarten (and maybe earlier) and continued to grow year by year until it reached the beginning of its worst upswing in 6th grade.  Having done some reading on anxiety, this seems to be the case for those who struggle with a hereditary form of the disorder, and it would make sense:  the teenage years and puberty are some of the most strenuous and emotionally difficult for most everyone and the most stressful.  Stress is quite a trigger for anxiety, and it was also around this same time that I began to feel the stress of my parents' going through a divorce.

From all of these stressors, I began to feel a desire to end my life.  With a few only half-hearted attempts I began to develop self-mutilation patterns.  What I didn't understand at the time was that cutting myself was a way of coping with my stress by punishing myself for misdeeds and in my mind making myself "acceptable" to others ("I did something bad, but I punished myself, so it's all right" is kind of the subconscious reasoning behind this).  It was also a self-medicating stress-reliever.  When someone gets cut, after the initial pain the body releases endorphins to lessen the pain and make it easier to bear.  Because of this, cutting became an addictive way of relieving some of the stress that I felt.  It eventually got to the point where I would begin to feel anxious, uncomfortable, or other unpleasant emotions (embarrassment, fear, anger, loneliness, etc.) and I would almost automatically cut myself.

While at the time, I only understood that I felt better after hurting myself, what I didn't understand was the mental and emotional scarring that began to take place from this negative coping skill.  It helped relieve stress, yes, but it didn't help me resolve the causes of the stress and created more stress itself.  It left me feeling terrible about who I was, and it became as real an addiction as any drug.

(Continued in "My Story:  Part 2, soon to come)

My Story: Introduction

Thinking about the struggles of my life and the difficulties I've faced and still face, I've decided I would like to start sharing more about where I've been, and how far I've come.  I don't always recognize myself how far I've come, and I know that when I do it helps encourage me to keep moving forward even if things are difficult right now.  You can start to look for this coming soon.

Love you all, my friends!

Little Boy!

Our little boy came 3 weeks ago, and it has been awesome being a parent!  So much to learn about, but I am excited to do so!  :)

Good Things To Come

Just got home yesterday afternoon with our new little baby boy, Thomas Michael Rohwer.  Neat experiences from the past week, and our little boy, not yet a week old, is teaching his mom and me lots of important lessons.
Tommy was born last week after Brooke was induced Wednesday evening.  Our little boy was born 4 lbs. and 6 oz, 18 1/2 inches long.  Because of some complications, even though he was born almost full-term, he is very underweight, and my wife and I have been struggling with the nurses and doctors to get this guy to eat enough to put on the weight he needs.  What is amazing is to watch little Thomas struggle to do all the things we're asking of him:  we try and feed him more and more all of the time, and he does his best to eat everything we give to him.  When we had to limit our time with our little guy to only about a half hour at every feeding to help him keep his strength and energy, he'd do his best to eat quickly so we could cuddle with him in whatever remaining time we had left in that half an hour.  In fact, I think he eats so quick sometimes that he gives himself the hiccups, cute little guy.  He's a trooper!  We can definitely already see what kind of a man he's going to be.
I'm sure grateful for the support of friends and family, and most especially a loving Heavenly Father.  He helped me to get through the stress and trials of lack of good sleep and nutrition and excess of stress and strain with minimal anxiousness.  I've especially been grateful to be able to support my wife so she can be ready to take or our little man when I go back to work.

As I woke this morning after a long and hard night trying to care of our little Tommy Boy, I started watching Mormon Messages, and came across this one from Elder Holland:



This was definitely an answer to my prayers, as I was very anxious for the future.  How will little Thomas do in the future? How will I be able to take care of my growing family?  How can I make sure my wife has the help and support she needs?  How can I take care of myself so that I do not have a breakdown?  I realized that, like Elder Holland, I had a long road ahead with Thomas, but I can trust in an all-knowing and a loving Father in Heaven who will be the best tutor to fatherhood I can ever have.

Love you all, my dear friends!