Lately I have been struggling with some heavy postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety and serious social anxiety. It is so crazy, it’s like my brain gets highjacked, and normal social things become massive obstacles. Often my brain is like a cassette tape that has irrational worry on a constant loop that I can’t “rationalize off” or turn the volume down. And it’s painful, and I feel silly and know it sounds silly that going to a family function, with my family who I see on a regular basis, has been causing me such distress.

And with all this going on, I have never been so grateful that Marc had a crazy bout of depression and anxiety at the very beginning of his mission. So much so, Marc almost came home from the Missionary Training Center before he ever made it to Mexico. That super hard experience for Marc gave him so much empathy, patience and love for me now. I know at the time he was praying his heart out asking “Why? Why? Why?? Why am I suffering so? Where did all this anxiety come from?” And for Marc, it was a scary, relentless, dark cloud that was with him and then one day it was gone, and he has never struggled with mental health like that since. But could you imagine that when he was nineteen years old praying about why, and if he had gotten the answer, “Because a decade from now, your wife will seriously struggle with anxiety and depression after having your third kid and this will give you experience and allow you to have more love for her.” But Marc didn’t get that answer, he just had to have faith in a loving Heavenly Father.

Tonight I was reading in Hebrews chapter two that reads, ” For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted.” I love this. I can only imagine, how that same love, empathy, and understanding the Savior has for me, because He has felt all my pain.

Now in my own personal struggles, I hope to try to keep a bigger perspective in them that I maybe able to help and lift the burden of someone else because I have suffered and now understand.