Someone Who Understands

Words cannot adequately describe the depth of emotional pain I feel right now as my heart bears the burden of a heavy, dark load.  Sometimes I have this burning, overwhelming desire for someone to understand what I am feeling.  Sometimes this desire becomes so great that I feel overcome with anxiety and fear, like I'm all alone in this world, like no one really understands, like my inadequate words will never be able to describe what I feel for anyone to understand.

I know it's not true.  I know I'm not alone.  Unfortunately, there are many others who know this same pain.  But in the safe walls of my own home, I cry alone.  I feel trapped in my own mind and my own body.  I long to let someone in, but I don't know how.  I'm so afraid of trying to describe the pain and feeling the frustration as I stumble over the lack of words, that I just want to be alone and wait for the depression to pass.  It WILL pass.  The light WILL come again.

Right now I find joy in knowing that the Savior really, truly, perfectly understands what I feel.  I don't even have to find the words to describe it, because He has felt it before.  He has felt the full burden of all the mental anguish this world has ever experienced.  He bore that burden by choice so that He can fully know and understand me, because I really believe this is something you have to experience to understand.

As I stumble through my own portion of Gethsemane, I feel the hope that by feeling the weight of these burdens, I can help someone else, someone who also feels alone, frustrated, and afraid.  We need each other!  We're given experiences like these that tear our hearts to pieces, so that we can find someone else with a shattered heart, and together we can work to put together those broken pieces.  Oh we need each other!  We're not meant to do this alone.

I've been thinking about the title of this blog: "That We Might Have Joy."  It's not "That I Might Have Joy," because I don't think we can fully find and experience joy alone.  Every time someone writes their story of how they've found joy through their trials, it brings me joy.  It fills me with joy, almost to the point of overflowing.  And it usually comes at the precise time when I am feeling the depth of despair.  Our stories and our trials might be different, but we need each other just the same.

We can have JOY together!