30 Things: Day 6

 Hey everybody!  I realize that I have dropped off the map for almost a month.  So sorry about that!  I got busy doing things and once again forgot about writing my blog.  In the future I will try to do better.  At least this time it wasn't six months right?

So, on to today's topic of my challenge (although, it hasn't been 30 consecutive days, I am still planning on making it through all 30.)

Day 6: What is the hardest thing you have ever experienced?

Wow!  This is an incredibly loaded question.  There are many potential experiences in my life which could most assuredly be categorized as hard but there is one thing that probably trumps them all.  It spans almost 10 years of my life and is still continuing.

When I was in 8th grade, I started having a lot of health issues.  I lost a lot of weight, I was exhausted all the time, I had issues with my intestines, and I felt gross all the time.  As a 14 year old middle school girl, I started undergoing a plethora of tests to figure out what was going on with my body.  Finally, towards the end of my 8th grade year, I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease.  The short explanation of what exactly that means is that I have a disease of my intestines.  It makes them inflamed and my body thinks that something is invading so it attacks them.

I can't even begin to describe all of the hardships that came in relation to my disease.  I missed a lot of school because of issues, I had many embarrassing incidents in public, I could barely make it through every day because I was so tired all the time, and my body couldn't hold nutrients very well so I couldn't gain weight. (The only plus side of the whole thing....I was skinny. :) I was a 14 year old girl and instead of worrying about all of the typical things, I was forced to worry about my health, my abilities, and my future.  There is no cure currently and I wondered if this would be a lifelong problem.  I wondered if I could have kids, what would happen if I did, and whether or not anyone would want me anyway.

I began to see a pediatric specialist in Salt Lake and for the next 6-7 years we worked on finding a regime of medications that would help me to go into remission.  Many of the medications worked at first but then lost their effectiveness.  I am now seeing a doctor in Logan and am doing quite well on my medication.  

As I look back on those years now, I see that all of the physical stumbling stones were hard.....very hard.  However, I see now that the hardest thing about those years was losing the light of the gospel in my life.  Granted, I went to church and things but I did it because I had to.  I was angry and stopped praying and reading scriptures for a while and by the time I felt ready to come back, I had been out of the habit for so long, it has been an uphill climb to get back.  

So yes, this was and is the hardest thing I have ever experience in my life, but now, I have a way to cope and something to lift me in the hard times.  Now, the gospel is the greatest blessing in my life.  It is through the atonement of Jesus Christ that I can make it through my hard times.  I thank Heavenly Father every day for not giving up on me when I had given up on Him and myself.