“It’s all my fault,” I explained, tears running down my face.  I could hardly open my mouth.  It took too much effort.  Laying in bed, I couldn’t even wipe the tears from  my face as they dripped from my catatonic eyes to the pillow.  “I’ll never write on my blog again.  All I do is hurt people.  I’m broken.”  And I believed it.  I wouldn’t be able to care for my kids.  I wouldn’t be able to feed myself.  The world lay on top of my chest.

“That makes me so mad,” Ben said calmly.  He is always calm.  I love and hate that about him.  My mind is a tempest and his is a calm summer’s day.  I listened to him talk about the good I do and how beautiful I am.  It seemed as though he was talking about someone else.  “The Savior hurt people too,” he said.  “Yeah, but he was the Savior.  I’m just broken me,” I said despondently.  I thought for a few moments.  I am just broken me.  Am I better than he was?  Can I live my life without hurting anyone when even the Son of God could not?  He knows I am broken.  He knows my limitations.  He also knows that I’m not to blame for the problems of a fallen world.  The weight on my chest is not fair.  The words I speak are mine and I speak the truth.  If the truth hurts someone, I am not to blame.  And so I got out of bed.  I’m here to write again.  My truth and my testimony from my broken mouth.

Last night I said the words I thought I would never say.  “I think I need to go to the mental hospital.”  Suicidal thoughts were swirling in my brain like sharp razor blades in a clothes dryer.  For hours and hours I had batted them away, distracted myself, used self-care, and read uplifting material.  Nothing helped.  I knew if something didn’t change I would act on my thoughts.  I sat on the couch with hardly the energy to blink my eyes as I watched my Austin play happily with his brothers. I wrote a piece, but I haven’t posted it yet.  It is about what happens to children when they loose their mothers.  What would he do without me?  How could I do that to him, knowing what it would do to him?  And yet a person can only hold up under torture for so long.  Everyone has their limits.

Ben knew how bad it would have to be for me to be willing to go back to that place.  I wouldn’t go back to Sundance.  I would find a better place.  Maybe they could help me.  Maybe I wouldn’t feel this pain anymore.  Ben gave me a priesthood blessing.  He cast out Satan.  He did what I didn’t have the strength to do.  I have had such blessings many times before.  It is like waves of power, like a nuclear blast of light.  Satan was gone.  I was blessed to have the robe of peace around my shoulders, and I felt it warm around my frigid body.  I took a sedative and went to sleep.  Satan is gone, but his lies still have to be refuted.  No one can do that but me.  That’s why I’m here.

“You shouldn’t write these things.  They are sacred.  A blog is not the place for such things,” Satan whispers.  The day is coming when all blogs will be silent.  The day is not far distant when cell phones and google searches and Facebook posts will vanish away.  Until that day, I will testify to as many people as I can.  Satan is real. His power is real.  All is not well in Zion.  Our houses need to be set in order.  The prophecies of his holy prophets are coming to pass.  The sins we hide will not be hidden forever.  It is up to us to find the Savior. The sorrow I feel and the enemy I fight will be yours to fight before he comes.  Do you have what you need?  There is a time when sacred things must be shared.  We must help one another find the Master before it is too late.

The Master said, “Do men light a candle and put it under a bushel?  No, but on a candlestick that it giveth light to all that are in the house.”  Do I know that perhaps by putting these things on a public blog that I risk casting pearls before swine?  Yes. Even the Son of God was judged by men to “have a devil” which I take to mean a mental illness.  They judged his wisdom as foolishness and they tortured and murdered him.  God the Father still sent him.  Was he casting his pearl before the swine?  I do what I do and I say what I say because I am His handmaid.  He tells me to write and I will write.  He tells me to testify and I will testify.  I am not to blame for your pain at my words.  Learn from them.  Find the Savior, for he is Mighty to Save.