About me

Here I will share a little of my history.

I was an extremely joyful child. I loved life and people. I even bounced when I walked because I was so happy. I felt close to and loved Heavily Father and Jesus from a young age. When I was 10 years old, I became very ill with mono and was down in bed feeling horrible for an entire month. During this time, I first really wanted to just die. After a month, I felt somewhat better and went back to school, but I never fully recovered. I continued to have large amounts of fatigue, sore throats, swollen lymph nodes, headaches, body aches, and low-grade fever off and on for years. I missed a day of school each week to stay home and sleep most of the day. 

All of this triggered my genetic predisposition for depression. I was exhausted, miserable, frustrated, and extremely discouraged. When I was 12, I seriously considered ending my own life. I decided that was not what my Heavenly Father wanted me to do. I was able to care more about what He wanted than about what I wanted because I loved Him so much. I told my mom how I was feeling and went to see my family doctor. He recommened I start with therapy. I worked hard at this, but it did not help much at all, so I started on antidepressants. Some of these helped for a few months to a year over the ensuing years. 

I continued to struggle to function through high school. I have a gift and love for learning, and was able to achieve good grades in high school despite often feeling horrible. After high school, I attended a trade school to earn my Medical Assistant certificate. While attending, I started dating and married my dearly beloved husband (which is a sweet, fun story I will probably share later). I gave birth to our first daughter 11 months later. I was too sickly to care for her on my own, and we moved in with my parents for help. We decided it was making my depression worse for me to be home with my daughter full-time, as I had always planned on.  So, I started working two days a week as a Medical Assistant. It was very challenging at first while I learned, but it was rewarding. It helped me immensely to be somewhat forced to get up, get dressed, and function. Also, being around other people really lifts me up. Being social is mana for my soul. 

I was feeling somewhat better, and we moved back to our own home. I did not want my daughter to be an only child, so after putting it off for a while, our 2nd daughter was born almost 3 years after my first. At this point, I began to really struggle with anxiety. I was stressed about being able to care for my children adequately. I loved them dearly and wanted the best for them, but it was so difficult to get myself to move and function. It broke my heart when I could not meet their wants and needs. Through the grace of God and great determination, I was able to care for them well enough to keep custody of them and keep them safe and healthy. However, my house was a mess, and I always felt behind on everything that needs to be done to run a household. 

I did not intend to have more children unless I started feeling and doing better. I knew that it didn’t make sense to have more children that I could not care for very well. When my second daughter was about 4, I began to have strong promptings to get pregnant again. I was terrified. It felt as scary as jumping off a cliff and trusting that God would catch me. I resisted for a while, but one day, while standing in my kitchen, I had the impression of an angel with a drawn sword, commanding me to obey. I chose to have faith, and my first son was born five and a half years after my second daughter. Following his birth was the happiest period of my life. I was so filled with love for him and joy. I had more energy, and life seemed relatively easy. I felt that two more spirits were asking to be part of my family, and I felt well enough. So, I got pregnant again and had another son 22 months after my first. This pregnancy, however, was the hardest part of my whole life. I don’t know how much of it was hormones or spiritual attack, but I felt so miserable and depressed my whole pregnancy. The only thing that kept me alive was caring about not harming the other life that was within me. It seemed to last forever. I felt like I had always been pregnant and always would be, that it would never end. It did end, however, and I went back to my normal level of depression and fatigue following the birth of our second son.

My girls were older by this time, and they were so helpful. I have often said that they did half of the work of raising their younger brothers. Things were still extremely difficult, but we got along all right through the wonderful blessings from Heavenly Father. I know that He strengthened me beyond my own abilities. I would often pray for help with doing some small, simple task that was simply beyond my capabilities at that moment, and He would bless me to be able to do it.

I still felt there was one more spirit asking to be part of our home. Although I knew that it would cause me immense pain and suffering, I chose to have one more child. Heavenly Father, in all of His goodness, blessed me with an angel. I had felt certain that my last child would be a girl, and I had chosen the name, Clara Rose. When I found out that I was having a boy, I had no name for him and struggled to come up with one. One day, while we were at church, singing one of the hymns that says “azure sky”, I felt it through every fiber of my being that Azure should be his name. When we got home, we were looking up names online and researching the meanings of all my kids’ names. I found a Hebrew name, spelled AZUR, which means one who assists. I also felt strongly that this should be his name. So we named him Azure but spelled it AZUR. There was another Hebrew name, spelled ORI, which means my light which stood out to me, and that is what we used as his middle name. He has truly turned out to be ‘one who assists’ and ‘my light’. He helps me so much and so cheerfully and is so close to me and dear to my heart.

I struggle to function and am not able to perform all of my responsibilities as a mother, such as completing housework, providing food, managing finances, and so forth. It breaks my heart when I am unable to do these things. I want to organize and delegate these tasks, but I don’t succeed in doing that well or following through and being consistent. It is distressing and miserable for me to do things. It is also distressing and upsetting for me to leave things undone.

I strive to do my best each day. Having faith and reflecting on the things that I learn from ketamine treatments really helps. I also go to therapy regularly and take multiple medications to treat depression. Sometimes I am okay, and sometimes I am just miserable. I know that my life is worth living, though, and that all the suffering I experience makes me better and serves others also.