Divine Purpose of Afflictions: A Personal Journey

I have been asked what my trials and health issues are that I sometimes allude to. I would like to share just some of my recent life experience in hopes that by my openness it may possibly console someone else that may be afflicted with some similar trials and give them hope and peace knowing that the Lord is with us and never forsakes us.

My husband and I got married and within two months of our wedding I went from a healthy strong woman to a bedridden invalid that can no longer even take care of myself. This is such a great change for me because I am used to taking care of others. I was the only care giver to my ailing mother. I was able to take care of her, take her to all her medical appointments and work 10-12 hours a day 5-6 days a week and still had the strength to do the everyday things of life, including meeting and dating my husband. When my health went dramatically downhill , my mother’s health deteriorated and she needed to be hospitalized. There was no connection between the two, except that if I had been better at the time I may have been able to prevent some of the bad care she received at a medical center that started her downward spiral. I know at the time I did all that I could humanly do, I just wish my illness and hers had not occurred at the same time. This left me helpless and at the mercy of the medical establishment to take care of my mother, which they did a very poor job of.

I lost my Mother who was my lifelong best friend about two years ago, to a heart-wrenching year-long hospital stay. She was back and forth in critical condition and then in rehab, home with me for one week then to back to critical condition. She finally succumbed to a super bug she caught during her stay in the hospital. I lived in a constant state of crisis during this time. I practically lived, ate and slept at the hospital that whole year. I was on 24 hour call. Regardless of the time of day, I would be called to come back because of my mother’s emotional and physical needs. I was in charge of all the decisions regarding her medical needs. I would either get a ride to the hospital or if not I would drive and the valets would park my car and wheel me up to my mother’s room in a wheel chair.

My mother was a very brilliant independent woman and it was heartbreaking to watch her health slowly disintegrate in front of my eyes. It was a very trying and difficult time, as anyone knows that has gone though being a caregiver of a loved one as they die. Unfortunately during this time and after I found that I had a “Fairweather” family, from whom I was unable to receive any true help or emotional support. I am so thankful that I had my husband during this time of great stress and loss. Our whole first year of marriage was spent at the hospital. Due to the disinterest and lack empathy and support from my extended family, the only family member I now have contact with is my beloved father who lives across the US from me, to whom I wish I lived much closer, for he is aging and soon will need assistance . He has always been a loving supportive father and I wish I could be of aid to him as I was to my mother. Although he is still able to take care of himself at this time, I am concerned about the future.

I did not realize how corrupt the medical profession has become until having to deal with them in regards to my mother’s illness. I had to fight medical personnel attempting to euthanize my mother on various occasions against her will. They tried to force her to go off of dialysis and even came to the point they refused to give it to her even though she directly told them she wanted the life saving procedure. I had to fire her doctor and hire another one who was able to not only give her dialysis but get her off of it completely. I will be posting a more detailed story of my mother and the corruption of the medical profession.

The last three years have been extremely difficult. Outside of my health issues and the loss of my mother, I had other very close family and friends die young. I lost five loved ones in four short years.

Due to the economy my husband has been laid off multiple times in the last three years. It seems every time we built up our savings and got out of debt we would be completely wiped out. We have been blessed with the ability to barely survive but that is all and unfortunately in the process we have accumulated huge medical debt. We have had to move 3 times in less than 4 years, not by choice, but by circumstances out of our control. One house we lived in had one of the worst cases of toxic mold. This is the home in which I became extremely ill. After moving I have improved, but have not regained anything near normal strength and still suffer with the same symptoms, just not as severely.

As for my health, I have some kind of health condition that none of the doctors so far have been able to diagnose. I spend most of my time bedridden. I use a wheel chair if and when I get out of the house at all, for I do not have the strength to walk even short distances. At home I have to limit how far I walk or how long I stand. I need to use a cane or walker in some cases just to get around my home. I feel sorry for my family because there are just three of us. I cannot cook, do laundry or any kind of cleaning and housekeeping. It all has to be done by my overworked husband and child.

My daily weakness is indescribable. It ranges from, at best, feeling as you do when you’ve just overcome the flu and you are very weak from it and still unable to do things without at least some assistance. Then on the bad days it is like the feeling that someone has unplugged your entire source of energy, as if you were merely a machine receiving no electrical current anymore. It feels as though the very core of your being drains all the energy needed from your body, just leaving enough to stay alive. At times it feels that breathing is using too much energy and that even it might stop functioning. It feels like my very life-force is being sucked out of me and I am left with barely enough to keep the normal organs working, but nothing left over to have the strength to even sit up, eat, drink or do anything else. It is a very humbling experience to have to be hand fed by the man you just married. I’ve gone from being the person that takes care of everyone around me to a person that is incapable of taking care even of my own basic needs for survival without the assistance of others.

I have been sent to at least six specialists, none of which could give me any real answers. I have been told that my symptoms appear to be Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, though they still wonder if it is MS. No doctor has been willing to give it a title for it does not fit anything perfectly. All of these specialists told me the same thing. “Sorry, I do not know for sure what it is or how to help you”.

It has been an emotional struggle. Luckily, I have not suffered from clinical depression. I admit though it is very difficult not to slip into that. The loss of my mother and others dear to me was very hard to bear. I tried through all of this to keep an eternal perspective. I feel that this is a test and a refiner’s fire from the Lord for His greater purpose. I am trying my best to endure to the end, even if that means I am to live out my life in this condition. I feel deeply sorry for my husband because he married a vibrant self-sufficient woman and has found himself married to only the remnants of her. He is a good man and has stood by me patiently and lovingly through all of this. Not many men would. I am so blessed to have found such a man that loves the soul of his wife more than what is manifested in this material world.

After the onslaught of my illness and after the death of my mother, I felt a strong need to try to do something. I needed to do something to feel that I still could do some kind of good in the world. I had done 25 years of research with the intent to someday put it all together in written form, but I was not a writer and really had no idea where to begin. For many years I felt such a deep need to share with others the dangers of the new age spirituality that I was seeing engulfing us from every side. I prayed for understanding and to know what the Lord wanted me to do. I felt prompted to start blogging even though at the time I really did not know what blogging was. I just knew I had to put to words all the research and knowledge the Lord had shown me. I started with the a free blog service having absolutely no idea what I was doing. This experience gave me a foundation on which to build a website. Luckily I have a friend who understands websites and forums and a husband who is a quick learner and had created prior websites. I know now, if it hadn’t been for my illness and death the death of my mother, this website would never had existed. If I had not prayed and asked the Lord what I could do for Him in the limited condition in which I was, I would not have created this site. When one door closes another one opens as long as we are willing to be stay receptive to the promptings and the will of the Lord. There are reasons that we go through the things we do. That does not mean that we will always know the “whys” in this life, but there are reasons that serve a higher purpose, reasons we many not grasp at the time of our great trials and afflictions.

I always knew that my research would be controversial to non-LDS that believe in the New Age Movement. I was caught off guard by how much hate my website created from LDS that want to embrace New Age ideas. The most hateful, mean-spirited and cruel e-mails I receive are not from new agers. They are from fellow LDS members. It has truly has been an awakening for me to realize how many members of The Church Jesus Christ Latter-day Saints at this time embrace New-Age teachings and are willing to attack me in order to defend these ideas. It has saddened me to hear of the many stories of families being torn apart because one of the members has decided to embrace New-Age teachings and has rejected teachings of the Church. I have heard of so many heartbreaking situations where the mother in the family started down the new age path of enlightenment and broke up their eternal family. There are other stories where huge portions of wards have embraced these teaching and started leaving the Church. Stories of Mormon moms healing their children with wands or going to energy healers instead of going to the Priesthood for blessings. There are other stories of members coming to the belief that all their blessings come from themselves and that they no longer need God or the Temple. Many feel that the LDS Church was merely a stepping stone to true enlightenment and an awareness of their true Godhood and divine nature and these have now fully embraced the new age spirituality. So many souls are being lost and so many families destroyed by this counterfeit gospel. We all at some point have to choose for ourselves if we are willing to submit our will to Father or not, and at some point we all will have to choose between the Church of the Lamb and the Great Abominable Church of the Devil.

Many of the people that have lost their way have done so because they were searching for some kind of relief from their suffering or a means of somehow improving their life. We need to keep in mind what our priorities should be and remember that whatever we focus on the most is what we worship. If we focus our intention on things, money, success, health, power, mans admiration or even ourselves, then that is what we worship. There is a balance of do things in this material world that sustain us to be able to do the Lord’s work, but we should be focusing on the Lord’s work and not the things of the world. They are intended only as a means to help us build Zion. The gaining of wealth should be used to further the building of the Kingdom of God. Our health should be used enable us to serve others. All of our gifts and blessings are given to us to be used in the service of the Lord. They are not just for us to enjoy. I have found that is also true with our trials. They are given to us as opportunities for others to give us service and for us to learn to humbly and gratefully receive it, for if no one was afflicted there would be no one to serve. I found great blessings in serving my mother during her final years. My depth of love, empathy and understanding where magnified to a level I could never have reached without that experience. I have also learned the hard lesson of being the one who needs assistance and the humbling factor that brings. It is not easy for me to need help, or ask for help. It was easier to be the one helping, but through this process I have learned to accept assistance, as hard as it is for me to do that. I now realize that receiving service is actually blessing someone else and giving them the opportunity just as I was blessed by serving my mother. I have found that in whatever situation we find ourselves, we can turn it into a blessing and use it to build the Kingdom of God upon this earth.

The Lord gives us each our own unique experiences to refine us and sculpt us into what he knows we can become. Sometimes the trials of life seems so overwhelming that it is hard to believe that we can get through them to the next day. If anyone is suffering with such feelings, know the Lord is with you. He never leaves you. He completely understands what you’re going through. He will never leave you alone. He will never leave you without comfort. If we continually reach out to Him humbly, truly submitting our will to Him, He will help us endure the trials of our lives and the tests of our faith regardless of how difficult and overwhelming they may appear. Never give up. Never give in. Never stop believing and never lose your faith.

I feel that we all will be tested with an Abrahamic test, wherein we must choose to sacrifice something that is so special to us, that it will take great pain to submit it Fathers will. Choosing the right path does not mean it’s the easy path, but it is the right path and the only path that truly leads to joy. Sometimes Abrahamic moments are for us to give up something we love, forsake a sin, experience pain, or be asked to endure trials, but regardless of exactly what it is, it is designed so that we are given the opportunity to really choose to submit to the Lord’s will or not, even if it is just enduring patiently nad faithfully through these trials until the end.

We were all sent here at just this time to fulfill a mission. The adversary does not want us to do that which we were sent here to do. He will make every attempt to thwart us in any manner he can. He is always waiting in the wings, waiting for that very moment, when we are at our weakest, when he can prey upon our greatest fears, our greatest hurts, our greatest weaknesses. It is in those moments that we must turn to the Lord. We cannot let doubt, fear, pain or any suffering turn us away from God, for in that moment Lucifer can step in and take what is a bad situation and turn it into our worst nightmare. The Lord may not take away all of our suffering, all of our pain, all of sorrow, because some of it serves a greater purpose, but He will lighten our burdens. If we try to carry these burdens on our own, we are playing into adversary’s hands, for he wants us to give up, give in and succumb to him. We cannot carry these heavy burdens by ourselves. To get through these trials of life we must have a will to go forward that is beyond that of our own. That added strength can only come from one source, our faith in God and willingness to submit to Him. The Lord is our only source of strength that can fortify us through the difficult trials of this life. There is no escape from these trials, but there is a place of respite from their pain. May the Lord be with you, strengthening you, protecting you and guiding you through these difficult trials of life. Never forget He is there, and He loves you, for He loves each and every one of us more than we can ever comprehend. At times it may feel falsely that we are left abandoned in our misery, but that is not true. Remember it is we who shut Him out and not the other way around. He is always there for us if we merely go to Him in humility and full submission to His will. He will strengthen us in our darkest hour and give us the peace that we desperately need, peace that can only come from Him and Him alone. We all search for peace in this life, for we know it is missing, because we lived with Him before embraced in His love and peace. This longing is our call to come back to Him. If we did not have it, we would not desire or remember our Heavenly home. The trials of our life are a catalyst that help us feel a hunger to return to our previous home and seek the respite we desperately need. If we never experience suffering we would not long for home and would not turn to Father for relief. This true relief and peace can only come from the Lord. There is nothing on earth that can give us what we truly need besides the Lord. We can have everything the world offers yet still feel the void and emptiness arising from our unconscious longing for our Heavenly home. If we could but see the eternal perspective all would be clear and we would be at peace. If we turn our wills over to the Father and give our lives to Him, He well bless us with a glimpse if of the eternal perspective and envelope us with His love. This will bring us the peace and comfort to endure this life and endure it well.

May God be with you.

Rosabella