Serve To Heal A Broken Heart

A couple of years ago, I was going through a rough time. I’d recently gotten divorced and was still dealing with the crazy emotions from that. Anyone who has ever gotten divorced knows how traumatic it can be, no matter how civil it is. My divorce was pretty civil. We didn’t fight over assets or money or anything like that. We had everything separated and divided within a few days of deciding we were going to get a divorce.

The civility of a divorce does not determine the severity of the emotions you feel afterwards. My divorce was finalized in December 2009 and even now I still feel the after effects of it. They’re not as bad as they used to be, but they are still there.

In the months following my divorce, it was a roller coaster of feeling like a failure, that God was disappointed in me, that I was disappointed in myself, that I was a horrible person, that I would never be loved by anyone because the one person who had vowed to love me forever and for always couldn’t do it, that I could have fought harder or been a better wife, that I was unworthy of love and so many other feelings of depression and anger with myself.

The first six months after my divorce were the hardest. I didn’t feel like I could confide in anyone or let anyone know that I was struggling. I threw myself into my work and the gym. I lost a lot of weight and didn’t sleep much. I was so stressed and overwhelmed that I cried randomly and could barely leave the house most weekends. If I hadn’t had my job, I don’t think I would have left the house at all. There were mornings when I’d be doing my physical therapy exercises that I would just lay there on the floor and cry for an hour or so at a time.

I was a complete and total mess and didn’t know what to do. I kept myself well enough together when I was around other people, but when I was alone, all I could do was fall apart. I didn’t have anyone I could talk to about it and that made it so much worse. Most of the church friends I’d had before my divorce stopped talking to me during the divorce and after I moved. There were two girls at work that I talked to a bit, but I felt one was judging me and the other cancelled on me more than she hung out with me, so I eventually just quit sharing with both of them. The one friend who promised to always be there for me didn’t answer the phone most of the time and the times she did, she didn’t have time to talk. I felt so alone and isolated.

During that time, I had started going to a new ward and trying to get back into church. For several months after my divorce, I felt too ashamed to go to church. I hadn’t done anything wrong, but the fact that I’d gotten a divorce made me feel like God was disappointed in me. I felt ashamed that I had let God down.

The times I did go to church, I usually sat out in the foyer and left after first or second hour. I’ve never really liked Relief Society much, so I didn’t go. In Utah, everyone in Relief Society was so much older than me. In Virginia, I was in Young Women’s and Primary, so I didn’t have a chance to go. In Oklahoma, before my divorce, I was in Primary again, so I wasn’t able to go. When I moved after my divorce, I just didn’t want to go. The times I did go, the lessons were about being better mothers and wives and defending the home against pornography and other things that didn’t relate to me in any way shape or form. I’d decided to go to a family ward since I wasn’t ready to be around a bunch of single people who were looking to get married and that ended up being a factor in why I didn’t like Relief Society. It’s hard to be involved in something that is all about everything you’re not. And the Relief Society program there didn’t provide any venue for new people to get to know current members other than walking up to someone and saying hi, which is something I have never really been able to do, so I felt even more isolated and didn’t want to go.

Eventually, a lady started talking to me out in the foyer and every Sunday made a point to come out in the foyer just before the end of sacrament and would ask me to sit with her in second hour. Then, she would ask me to save her a seat in third hour or walk there with me. She was a few years older than me, her youngest son was on a mission. But I felt comfortable with her. I cried on her several times and she would just sit there and listen. She never judged and she always had a kind word to say.

With her help, I got more involved in church and started attending all my meetings. Eventually I was called as the Relief Society secretary. Even so, I still felt isolated. I never really felt like I belonged there. Most people were nice to me and the people who knew I was struggling financially made it a point to help me out at times. A lady in the ward adopted me into her family and invited me over almost every week for dinner. I loved spending time with her and her family.

Somewhere along the line, someone suggested I get into institute as a way to meet people my age and to not feel so alone. The bishop gave me the information about the classes and I started attending two nights a week. The first semester, I was the only student most nights. It was the summer semester, so that wasn’t too big of a surprise. But it was nice to have one-on-one discussions with the teacher.

The following four semesters I continued attending twice a week. The teachers for those four semesters were the best institute/seminary teachers I’ve ever had. Elder and Sister Enos were amazing. They really helped connect the lessons with real life and brought the teachings to a new level of understanding. I learned so much in those four semesters. One of those lessons really made a difference in my life and it had nothing to do with class.

During my second semester of institute, the first one with Elder Enos teaching, I was still struggling with my divorce. It was coming up on a year since I’d gotten divorced and I was still having a hard time. I left after class one night and sat out in my car for a minute. I’d wanted to ask for a blessing of comfort to help me get through that mess of crazy emotions, but anyone who knows me knows that asking for help is something I rarely do. I don’t know why, but I feel like I should be able to handle everything on my own and that I shouldn’t need help. I also feel like I can’t rely on other people because I’ve been let down so much.

But that night, I did. I went back inside and after asking Elder Enos if I could talk to him, I started bawling. He took me to his office and we sat and talked for over an hour, maybe two. He listened as I talked about my divorce and my life after the divorce and all the feelings I was dealing with. I told him how alone and lonely I felt and that I felt like I could just die or disappear and nobody would notice or care. I felt like such an idiot for sharing all those things, but he just sat there and listened to me and gave me lots of tissues. He was so kind.

After I finished talking and telling him how I felt and all the things I was dealing with, he gave me so much good advice. The first thing he told me, though, was that he loved me and that God loved me, no matter what. He explained so much about God’s love and that I would never be without it no matter what I did or what happened to me.  He told me God doesn’t give us more than we can handle and that I would get through this. Those are all things I KNOW, but they’re so easy to forget when you are struggling.

During the course of him telling me that I would feel better if I got more involved in church and made sure to keep coming to institute and get back into reading my scriptures and praying, he gave me some very good counsel. He told me that all of my feelings were real and valid and understandable and that the best way for me to work through those feelings and help them not be so overpowering would be to serve other people.

My first reaction to hearing that was that I could barely keep myself together, how was I going to be able to help someone else? I needed help. I needed someone to help me and be there for me and care for me. I wasn’t going to be able to help or serve anyone until I got myself put back together and there was no way I was going to be able to do that alone.

Elder Enos explained to me that when we serve other people, we lose focus of ourselves. When we put our minds to helping other people overcome their hurts and their pains and their difficulties, the pains we hold ourselves start to disappear. Serving others helps us feel connected and like we are useful. He told me that by serving others, we allow ourselves to focus on something other than the pain we feel inside.

That advice helped me out a lot. It took me a while to get to where I could fully implement it. I was so stuck in feeling useless and worthless. But every week I attended institute and felt the love from Elder and Sister Enos as well as the other class members, the more I felt that I really could help someone else. And the more those two ladies at church welcomed me and looked out for me, the more I understood the magnitude of small acts of service. I slowly started doing things for other people, small at first and then more as I felt more capable. Random opportunities came up for me to do small bits of service then moved up to more consistent and stable ways of helping people. I did what I could to help coworkers at work and people at church.

Everywhere I looked I saw small and simple ways to help other people and at times big ways presented themselves. Helping someone carry something, watching a child so a parent can have a break, smiling at someone, helping with someone’s workload, volunteering for a project when someone asks for help, listening to someone, clearing snow off sidewalks, giving someone a ride to church, giving what you have to those in need, making dinner for someone who is ill or going through something, reading a book to a child, inviting a single neighbor over for dinner or games, calling someone to see how they are doing. Those are all such simple ways that present themselves every day.

Over time, the despair and the sadness I felt started to go away. It happened in such a way that one day I realized that I had felt happy for several days in a row. I still had amounts of time when I felt sad and lonely, but the periods of time where I felt happy were longer than the times I felt sad. I no longer felt overwhelmed by grief and despair. Service had helped me conquer what I thought I could never overcome.

Over the years since then, I’ve learned to deal with my feelings of sadness. Serving others has definitely helped take my mind off my personal struggles and has helped me focus on the good I can do. I’m not going to say I never feel sad or depressed, but it’s a lot less than it used to be. Where it was all day every day before, it is usually only a couple of times a month now. And it’s nowhere near as intense as it used to be.

Lately, though, I find I’ve been struggling more often than before. Part of it is because I can’t go to the temple every week like I was in Oklahoma and part of it is because I spend most days by myself. Being alone is my own fault. I could be out doing things, but I haven’t been trying very hard to overcome my extreme desire to stay home every day. I’m fine going out places with Troy, but I still struggle going out by myself to places I’m unfamiliar with. Heck, I’m starting to be back to where I struggle getting myself to go places I’ve been several times before by myself. But I haven’t really been trying to overcome it.

Because of this, I’ve spent a lot of time focusing on the fact that I’m alone. The past few weeks have been a struggle dealing with the loneliness and feeling like I don’t belong. It doesn’t help that I know I can’t just call up one of the other wives and see if they want to hang out because they’ve already made it clear they don’t care for me much. The combination of me being alone all day mixed with knowing the only people I know around here don’t really want anything to do with me had brought back so many of those feelings I had right after my divorce. Those feelings are nowhere near as overwhelming as they were in the year after my divorce, but they’re still there. Some days it’s worse than others. Some days all I want to do is just sit on the couch and stare at the wall. I have to force myself to do anything on those days.

This morning, I decided to write myself a list of ways to help myself feel happier every day and put the list on my bathroom mirror. One of the items was: Do something nice for Troy every day. When I wrote that, it hit me that I’ve been so focused on the fact that I’m feeling super sad again that I’ve completely forgot that one of the most important parts of a relationship is serving the other person.

Now, I do all the laundry, make sure the house is clean, iron Troy’s pants, do most of the grocery shopping and wash the dishes, but it’s been a while since I’ve done anything special for Troy. I used to bake him bread or other treats a couple of times a month and I used to write him little notes and sneak them into his lunch bag or wallet. I used to buy him a special treat when I went to the store and have dinner either ready or just about ready when he got home. Somehow I got out of the habit of doing things to make him feel special. I realized this morning that it made me super happy to know he’d find a small note in his lunch bag later in the day and that it would make him smile. I would feel satisfied knowing that after a long day at work and a train ride he hates that dinner would be ready soon after he got home and a treat would be waiting in the fridge for him. I remember how great it felt to have a fresh loaf of regular bread or banana bread or cornbread waiting for him and how wonderful it felt to watch him inhaling it and enjoying it.

Even now, just sitting here and thinking about how those little things made him happy and in turn made me happy is making me feel better than I have the past few days. It’s such a great feeling to know that what you are doing is making someone else feel good and special and cared about.

And THAT is the purpose of service. When we serve other people, they feel cared about and happy and that, in turn, makes us feel happy and like we have made a difference. The feeling of fulfillment we get when we help and serve others far outshines the feelings of sadness and despair. Being able to do something that lifts someone else’s spirits and makes them feel happy is such a great feeling. How can you do something to help someone else and not feel like you have made a difference and that what you did mattered? That is what Elder Enos was trying to teach me. That when I do something kind for someone else or do something to lift someone else’s burdens, that I am doing something incredibly important, no matter how small or simple the act is. And by doing something that is important, we all feel like we matter. I learned it at the time, but in the years since, it has slipped to the wayside. Life got busy and I’m human. Up until I left Oklahoma, I was still serving other people, but not as much as I had been or could have been.

Thinking about all this, I feel a bit ashamed because I had big plans to volunteer places when I first moved here. I still think about it regularly, but I push it off because Troy and I are gone so much and it’s hard to commit to a volunteer schedule when you’re gone a couple of times a month. Plus, there is my trusty fear of going new places alone. I always seem to have an excuse to not go out and find somewhere around here that I can serve someone.

But, I want to get past that. I want to get over my crazy phobia of new places. There is a YMCA right around the corned from my apartment. Well, not around the corner, but down the street a few minutes and around that corner. I could walk there in about 10-15 minutes. That would be such a convenient place. They probably need volunteers. And, I bet that once I get started, my sadness will go away. Once I start focusing on the needs of others, my inner feelings won’t seem so bad. Because, really, they’re not. They just seem bad at times because I get so focused on them. Serving others is the best way I have of combating my inner demons.

Service is such an amazing thing. We don’t just have to be sad to feel the need to serve, we should always serve others. Aside from combating feelings of sadness and loneliness, it boosts our self-worth and confidence. Service is an answer to our own prayers as well as the prayers of others. By serving others we are acting as God’s hands here on the earth. We are doing what He would do if He were here and what He has asked us to do in His place. Service is one of the few things on this earth that benefit both the giver and the receiver. We learn to love others when we serve and those who receive service feel of our love and also of God’s love.

So, go out and serve. Heal your hurts and sadness and disappointments by finding ways to lift others. Your burden will be lightened and you will find you are better able to handle and deal with the situations you have been given. I thought I would never get over those feelings I had. They consumed and overwhelmed so much of me that I thought I was going to drown in them. But by following the advice of someone who loved me and wanted to help me, I was able to make it through one of the most difficult times in my life. Serving others saved me. It helped me find a reason to make it through the hard days and any time I need it, it will help me again. I promise that this will happen for you. Any one who dedicates time to helping others will find that the burdens they have are not as heavy as they once were. The pain that is felt will not be as sharp and the loneliness that is inside will not be as consuming. I promise you this. God promises you this. And it does work. I am living proof of it.