We pray for each of you daily. We hope that this ministering message finds each of you filled with love and hope. Do we not all need to feel loved? Is it hard to love others who do not return that love? Does the Lord give you impressions to love others, even your perceived enemies? What is Christ? He is Love.
Have you ever had to let go of the perfect life you’d imagined? Holly was a nurse, and she was married with one child. She was living the life she’d imagined. Suddenly, after her second child was born, Holly learned her newborn baby had a serious health concern. Doctors told Holly her daughter’s life would be short.
It was hard for her to believe that her life was going to be different than she had imagined. She thought, “Why me? How could God do this to me?”
When Holly was pregnant with her third child, she took a class about adversity. She learned that grief and love are intimately connected. It was okay for her to grieve over her special needs child. It was normal! Many people struggle. Even Christ himself asked His Father to remove the bitter cup from Him.
One evening Holly and her husband were watching a news report on orphanages in Romania. Their eyes were opened, and their hearts overflowed with love for those children. Holly and her husband knew they needed to go to Romania and adopt a child. It was the hardest and scariest thing she’d ever done.
It wasn’t easy. They ended up adopting more than one child, and three of those five children had special needs. Holly was in sheer survival mode for the first year. They continued to adopt, and today they are proud parents of 25 children from eight different countries. Their ages range from four to thirty-one years old.
Does that sound overwhelming? Holly admits that it is overwhelming! Not everyone can adopt 20 children, but everyone can serve. What you do every day to help others matters.
Holly never regretted following her prompting to love. She learned that when she lightened loads of others, her own load was lifted. The answer to her many questions was to love deeply and love broadly.
Holly Richardson
Along with showing and feeling loved. What do we do when we just feel broken. Especially with the stresses of daily life. Do we feel like just giving up? Have we experienced some sort of mental illness depression, anxiety feeling like no one cares about us? There is hope. His name is Jesus Christ.
One in four people in the world will be affected by mental illness at some point in their lives. More than 16 million U.S. adults had at least one major depressive episode in the past year.
In 2013, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland offered his empathy and advice to those facing mental illness. Years ago, when his stress was high and his energy was low, Elder Holland says he “took a psychic blow that was as unanticipated as it was real.” He and others have found that spiritual healing and medical healing work together to form the key to lasting happiness.
“We do the best we can and we manage the situation. But when we’ve done all we can do, we endure. Hang in there and count on light at the end of the tunnel,” he says.
Have you or a loved one endured mental illness? How do you maintain faith in God’s love and Elder Holland’s message of hope?
For personal accounts of living with mental illness, answers to common questions, and other resources, visit http://mentalhealth.lds.org
We testify that He has descended below all things. He has full empathy for you, he has experienced personally your thoughts and feelings of each of us. He has experienced the pain and suffering and the turmoil that you feel and have felt and will yet feel. Because of this, He knows how to heal your heart and your mind. But, He rarely will do this immediately. He wants us to learn patience and to develop our ability to” Hear Him” provide guidance to us. Listen with faith. Pray, read scriptures, serve others especially when you feel the need to be served and helped yourself.
He lives! He loves you! He knows everything about you! Let Him help you! He waits with open arms. He is the Christ! This we do testify. In His Holy name even Jesus Christ, amen.
We love each of you and pray this message might be of worth to you.
Steve and Debbie Larsen