Sleepless in West Virginia

 

So… you want to hear a story, ehhh?

Well, if it’s a story you want, then it’s a story you will get. This week’s adventure was one of terror: adulthood. Living through this nightmare that is growing up can have some major side effects. Major cases of cold sweats due to being jumpscared by having to do your taxes, finding health insurance because your old one no longer covers you, or not being able to bribe your landlord with pizza instead of money for rent. These are the things that may keep people who are adulting up at night. So even while sleep deprived, you still need to carry on.

This only hit me because this past Wednesday I was reminded that in 2018 I came home early from my mission. When I got a notification from my mom with a picture, it all came flooding back.

The sleepless nights, the long days, the prodding and poking from doctors with bewildering intensity who looked at me as a new species. This did not even include the opinions of members or companions who had all of a sudden been blessed with foresight on how my life should go before I even knew. It just felt like I was being pulled in every direction. “I wasn’t good enough,” said one companion. “It’s all in my head,” said another. “You are hurting the mission with your burden,” said my trainer. I did have some amazing companions who were very supportive, but even with someone there 24/7, I had never felt so alone. Most people have not even gone one day without sleep, let alone 6–7 as I had, or when you do try to sleep and have night terrors so terrible you wake up not able to breathe. Doctors and professionals told me to remedy this with pills and alcohol, as that’s what the world does. Nothing was wrong other than that I was too stressed, even though I did not feel it.

As my first film, Sleepless in West Virginia, continued to rage on, I realized my mission would be very different from what I expected and worked toward. I thought it was about me doing it all on my own and pushing myself past whatever this was, and I was dead wrong. My mission was about survival and relying on God to learn how. In a world that told me that I am not enough, He provided me the opportunity to work with Someone who could show me just the opposite.

As these memories came back, I realized I had fallen from what I had learned in those hills of Appalachia. No, it wasn’t the best place to hunt squirrels or to produce chemical material for consumption with a bald chemistry teacher (but if you know one 😉). It was the fact that I was reliant on Heavenly Father every day to get by, one step after the other on a sleepless, foggy road.

I tease my wife for standing on the counter to get something off the top shelf when she has a slightly above-average height husband to reach. However, I do the same thing. I stand on a chair to reach for a tall order at work with crazy deadlines without asking Him who could help me reach. I pull my hair out trying to come up with the next best thing when He who invented all my ideas in the first place is there waiting for my call. And I work extra hours to prove my worth to those who wouldn’t give me a chance, to show them they were wrong, when the right answer is to call for peace and focus more on my family rather than my worth in others’ eyes.

So what does this have to do with adulthood? It’s the fact that no one knows what they are doing, but we know Someone who does. We don’t need to walk aimlessly alone or care what others think, because the only opinion that should matter is that of our family and our Heavenly homes.

Regardless of what happens as we grow up, we don’t need to do it alone. Listen to the voice that is truly for your good, and you never have to be alone. Now I need to get some sleep so I can bribe Jared to do my taxes for me. Have a good week.