He Stands at the door and knocks.....

This week has been a struggle for me. And so I started looking back at some stuff I wrote awhile ago. I wrote the following in the early spring of 2007.

I wonder who will I open the door for today?



Monday, Monday……was an awful day. Nothing terrible happened, it was just one of those days when I didn’t get any housework done (and the house was in desperate need of it as we had weekend visitors that we had not yet recovered from), the kids and I had no structure and so just kind of did whatever we wanted (read books, watch a show, play trains, legos, Lincoln logs, etc). My motivation was low, I had errands to run but never put forth the energy to get done what needed to be done to herd the children into the car.


Okay, well that is the sugar coated, head in the sand version. Truly I was fighting a seemingly un-winnable battle with depression. I spent most of the day alternately sleeping or bawling in my bed. Leaving only to referee arguments between my 5 & 3 year old, slap peanut butter on bread for them for lunch, or to put in a new DVD for them to watch. The fear that this was the beginning of the seemingly unending depression that I suffered with the births of my first two boys was looming with palpable darkness over me.


There was nothing written on my calendar and yet I remembered at 4:30 that my Visiting Teachers had made an appointment to stop by around 5:30. So after spending half an hour deciding whether or not I really could just not open the door (I even called an out of state friend to get her to agree with me that I didn’t have to open the door if I didn’t feel like it.) …I started the mad dash to try and make the living room livable before they arrived. With the floor still un-vacuumed (and spotted with bread crumbs), toys still strewn around the corners, the stairs covered in tossed dirty laundry, shoes shoved under the sofas, and the piano piled high with papers the dreaded doorbell rang. I admit there was a moment of wondering where I could hide so that they would think no one was at home. Then I walked to the door and opened it anyway. There was nothing profound that happened in the visit, in fact I sat numbly just focusing on breathing for the entire time when I was not attempting to keep the boys from climbing all over them. This was a really big step for me as it has been my habit to hide from the world when I am struggling, other than posts to sisters far away on internet groups. When the sisters left I felt like I had not only opened the door to my Visiting teachers but I had also opened the door to my Father in Heaven inviting him in to help me in this battle with depression.


Elder Henry B. Eyring, May 2007 Ensign pg. 89-91 “In the hardest trials, as long as you have the power to pray, you can ask a loving God: “Please let me serve, this day. It doesn’t matter to me how few things I may be able to do. Just let me know what I can do. I will obey this day. I know that I can, with Thy help.” . . .Hard as things seem today, they will be better in the next day if you choose to serve the Lord this day with your whole heart. Your circumstances may not be improved in all the ways which you desire. But you will have been given new strength to carry your burdens and new confidence that when your burdens become too heavy, the Lord, whom you have served, will carry what you cannot. He knows how. He prepared long ago. He suffered your infirmities and your sorrows when He was in the flesh so that He would know how to succor him.”

Alma 7:11-12 And he shall go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind; and this that the word might be fulfilled which saith he will take upon him the pains and the sicknesses of his people. And he will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death which bind his people; and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities.