Struggling With My Faith

I didn't realize it had been so long since my last blog post.  Things have been really frustrating lately.  Externally, everything is fine.  School is coming along, slowly but surely.  Work is GREAT, and I love my managers and coworkers.  I've been steadily losing weight over the past year.  But I still have this "heaviness" and "darkness" that are making me feel like crap.  My therapist has a new theory as to what's causing it, so she has a new strategy we're going to be starting soon.  Truthfully, I'm pretty much willing to try just about anything.

Anyways, there's something else that's been on my mind- I've really been struggling with my faith recently.  My mind is kind of all over the place with this, so I just want to try to sort things out.  For awhile now, I have felt abandoned by Heavenly Father and my Savior.  I feel like all my prayers, my crying pleas, everything has gone unheard.  I was trying to do everything I'm "supposed" to be doing, but the heaviness and darkness doesn't go away.  I get that it's not something that is necessarily to get taken away from me, but all I need is just a little bit of comfort, and I don't even get that.  It's left me frustrated and angry, and slowly making choices that are pushing me farther from the church.  It's like it's 10-12 years ago all over again.

When I was at the branch, before I moved to the ward, I was feeling left out, uncomfortable, and unwelcome.  I started to feel like the ward was where I was supposed to be, so I moved. (I think I wrote about this in a previous blog post.)  But now, I don't know.  I knew going into the family ward, it was gonna be different- but I'm the ONLY one in my current situation.  Meaning I'm the only single there that I know of; everyone else is married, most have kids, or are elderly singe.  So I'm stuck feeling left out again.  Then, between me being new, and the ward boundaries changing, no one even knows, notices, or cares if I'm not around.  One of my hopes going into the family ward was that I would have home and visiting teachers that would at least make contact with me occasionally.  I don't even need formal visits, I just need someone who occasionally texts me or checks up on me.  I was worried about being assigned teachers that I don't know or am not comfortable with, and I had a short list of who I'd be okay with as my home teachers.  Truthfully, I'd rather have home teachers I don't know/not comfortable with, but who make contact, than have none at all.  However, several months in and I have no idea who my home teachers are, they've never made contact with me.  My visiting teachers reached out once in just a "we're your visiting teachers" kind of way.  Even if I needed something, I wouldn't feel okay trying to ask them for help; and even if I knew who my home teachers were, if they're not contacting me, I'm certainly not going to be contacting them if I need help.  Someone mentioned that I should talk to the Bishop and find out who my home teachers are, but what's the point.  If someone says something to them, then they're just doing their home teaching because they're being guilted into it, and that's almost worse. 

So no one notices or cares if I'm at church or not.  I feel abandoned by Heavenly Father, and I'm left feeling completely alone.  Slowly, I stopped making it to church.  Then I'm just sitting at home on Sunday's feeling like crap.  So I changed my work schedule and instead of working Saturday mornings (which recently has been a struggle for me for some reason), I will be working on Sunday mornings, and I feel good/excited about it.  I think it'll be easier for me to handle stress wise, and now I won't be sitting at home alone all day feeling like crap. 

There are other choices I've been making recently that are also pushing me a little farther from the church, but I'm not going to go into it right now.

I'm sure at some point in the future I'll sort things out, but right now, I'm just left feeling completely alone.  Not even in regards to just church, but in my personal life as well.  Just really struggling.  I've just started the process of getting a cat, so I really hope that helps my depression some.  *crosses fingers*