Delicate Post 3

Today I've been crying.  I watched a video on Facebook and bawled my eyes out.  Then I started prepping my mp3 player with Christmas songs and I heard Silent Night.  And the tears started AGAIN!  I don't like to cry.  I spent way too much time as a teenager and in my twenties crying.  I cried over everything.  Commercials.  Happy days. Sad days.  Everytime I had to speak in public (yes, that includes school presentations). At parties.  By myself.  At church.  At home.  At grandparents houses.  I just cried.  It's amazing, actually, that my skin didn't mold.  I guess that is why tears are salty - it lessens the chance of mildew growth on pillows, friends shoulders, faces, etc.

Then, when I was about twenty seven, I discovered these magical things called anti-depressant meds.  And the tears stopped.  Completely. For a while, I couldn't cry at funerals, at sad movies, any where or for any reason.  I stopped getting chills during a spiritual talk.  I literally stopped feeling.  I was numb.  I don't think my spirit was numb - there was just a problem with the relay system between my brain and my spirit and my heart.

Although I didn't miss being a soggy mess all the time and having to wear waterproof mascara every single day, I did miss feeling emotion.  I felt I was becoming hardened.

In a way, I am still somewhat numb.  I've been on the meds for over ten years now.  And by far, the benefits have outweighed the side effects.  I am not a completely crazy mom who is an emotional wreck all the time.  I can speak in public (and have discovered that I LOVE it).  I can go outside in the summer without being completely terrified that a grasshopper will land on me. I can go to the grocery store (or anywhere) without someone else. The medicine has allowed me to be who I always wanted to be without the paralyzing anxiety and depression.

The key now is for me to balance my somewhat "toughened" emotional state with the "delicate" spiritual state that I need to be in.  And so, I embrace the days that I cry at videos, when Silent Night seems to penetrate my very being, and when I shed tears for the pain of a friend.  That means that there is still a delicate part of my spirit.  I don't want to become the emotional mess that I was - I can do without that.  I long for there to be a balance.  I can't do it by myself (another thing I am learning during this process) - I will need to ask Heavenly Father to help me.  I want to fit the description in the Book of Mormon when Jacob is teaching his people (Jacob 2:7 - 9) where it says: "before your wives and children, many of whose feelings are exceedingly tender and chaste and delicate before God, which thing is pleasing unto God..."