Woes & Wonders of Writing: The Price of Self–Knowledge

Recently, I've been working on a personal essay for my English course. I'm only on the second draft, so it's still pretty rough in places, but I felt like I should share it. 

The Price of Self–Knowledge

While serving a proselyting mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter–day Saints I learned a lot about God and Christ, which makes sense. I was expecting to learn, but definitely not the lessons they had in store for me.  It was supposed to be one of the most satisfying times of my life.  At least, that’s what I’d been told.  Ironically, it was one of the most terrifying I have known.  I knew it would be hard, nothing good comes without honest work, but the satisfaction of a job well done would eclipse that.  I love God; I love Christ.  I love the scriptures.  I love The Book of Mormon and know its truthfulness, and I have never been a quitter.  I believed that surely, those things would carry me through the hardships that would come.  Maybe that was stubborn pride on my part.  I am certainly stubborn.  I remember remarking to my first companion that no matter what I was going to serve the full eighteen months, as I was expected to. 

            I’d always wanted to serve a mission, so the decision was in no way forced on me.  My mother and father both served, and while my parents never pressured me one way or the other on the subject it just seemed natural for me to go.  I’ve always loved the Gospel and helping others.  A mission was supposed to be the perfect combination of both.  My mission certainly did give me opportunities to serve, and it helped me uncover new dimensions of the Gospel, but it also taught me how easy it is to lie to yourself.

 As a missionary you spend your days serving, studying, and praying.  You wake up exhausted and you go to sleep the same.  But there’s an insidious twisting of truth that I fear many missionaries believe: that if you are not happy as a missionary it is because you’re doing something wrong, or you haven’t fully repented.  Certainly, that may often be the case, but it isn’t always so.  Still, the deception persists and so missionaries like myself, smile and talk and do their best to function while trying to keep their souls from caving in.  It was hard; even now I can’t point to anything in my circumstances that I can blame for my feelings.  With the exception of one, all of my companions and I got along wonderfully, and while the numbers of our key indicators were usually low we did our best.  Still, despite that and the love I have for the people I served, I was miserable.  

I knew it was my depression, but I was on medication.  Surely, God would help me control it so I could serve.  Wasn’t that a righteous desire?  Wasn’t it fair, justified even, for me to expect that?  I was a good person: the most rebellious I had ever been was skipping church from time to time when I was eleven because I disliked my Sunday school teacher.  Why wouldn’t God give me what I wanted?  Why did I have to suffer through clinical depression?  Was I somehow broken?  Why wouldn’t He answer me?  I had been struggling with my depression for over two years prior to my mission, and looking back, I think part of the reason I went was because I felt God would listen to my pleas more if I was a missionary.  Turns out, I was the one refusing to listen.  Since I had been diagnosed with clinical depression I had fought it.  I fought admitting that something was wrong, that I couldn’t do it on my own, that I needed help.  I fought being weak, being broken.  Somehow I was going to prove that I was in control. 

I controlled nothing.  Ten months into my mission I was forced to realize how completely out of control I was. My companion and I were coming back from visiting one of the smaller towns in our large, sparsely populated area.  We did so regularly.  We were on the interstate, driving north through the rolling hills of eastern South Dakota.  I was behind the wheel, my companion in the passenger seat.  About halfway home we went over a particularly steep hill where there was no guardrail and I can still recall with perfect clarity thinking that if I swerved off the road and down that hill I could finally end my misery.  Almost, immediately I decided my luck would result in severe disability and excruciating pain, not death.  But really, the thing that kept me from truly considering it was my companion sitting next to me.  I couldn’t do that to her.  It wasn’t the first time I’d had such thoughts, but they’d crept into my mind so gradually that I hadn’t realized until that moment how very powerful they’d become.  To this day, if my companion hadn’t been in the car I don’t know what I would have decided.  

It scared me.  I was terrified of myself.  Just thinking of that time still frightens me.  I never wanted to end my life, even then.  I just wanted to end the misery and I didn’t know how!  God had finally brought me to a place were I had to listen.  I had to admit I was weak and scared, that I needed help.  I called my mission president.  I told him I needed professional help with my depression.  I needed to go home.  And I did.  I was able to get the help I needed.

Still, the lessons didn’t end with just my being humbled.  Going home to my family and to the congregation that I’d grown up in taught me so much more about God’s love and acceptance.  I’d been scared of being judged; I’d judged others in the past for leaving the mission field early, and while I’d never shared my opinions, it would have been perfectly just for me to receive similar condemnation.  Instead, I was encircled by love and understanding.  The Sunday between my deciding to go home and my arrival there had been Fast Sunday, and my wonderful mother, in a fit of inspiration that I am eternally grateful to have missed, went up and explained briefly that I would be coming home and why.  When I returned, multiple members expressed their empathy and shared parts of their own struggles with depression.  I didn’t have to explain or make excuses.  They simply wanted the best for me.  The same way my Heavenly Father does.

My mission taught me so much, and while I am eternally grateful for all that I had the opportunity to learn while I served, I feel it is the lessons I received after I came home that have most impacted who I am and who I will become.  I pray that others will be able to learn these same lessons, hopefully without quite as much stubbornness as I displayed.  I pray also, that I will never again be so hard-hearted to the lessons that God wants and needs me to learn, and that I will always remember the love and mercy He extends to me as I continue to serve Him.