So here's a funny little story;
Throughout the mainstream covid years (2020-early 2022) I suffered from mental, emotional, and spiritual burnout, and turned to some... not great things in an attempt to retain my happiness and sanity.
I thought it was working.
It wasn't.
I commited some very agregious sins, and over the past few months, all the lessons in Priests Quorom and Sunday School have been about repentance. I don't think it was a coincedence.
And I was in Priests Quorom just this past sunday, and the bishop (i love my bishop he is so cool) was giving a brilliant lesson on, you guessed it, repentance.
And, I guess it finally clicked for me, everything I was doing wrong, and I decided right then and there, that it. Would. Stop.
So that night, I went into my closet, knelt down, and spoke to my Heavenly Father for the first time in 2 years. I spoke to him as if he were in the room with me, and I was just... talking to him. Not using prayer-speak, just... talking.
I asked Him for guidance. I asked Him for help. I asked Him what I should do.
I didn't get a verbal response, but I did get a feeling. An overwhelming feeling of love, and of the Spirit.
I had forgotten what the Spirit had felt like, and I vowed then and there, that I would try as hard as I could to never lose it again.
It is now wednesday. I've prayed nightly to my Heavenly Father, and have felt His hand in my life already, even though it's been three days.
And I have a beautiful testimony that He is there, and that He listens, and that the Spirit can be felt, no matter what you've done. The Savior will take your sins upon him, and you will be made clean.
Isaiah 1:18 says it best; "Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool."
I love you all, and I urge you to pray to Heavenly Father whenever the need arises.