Diana Leaney López Ruano

I've had a chronic cough since January 2018.  Sometimes my prayers go, "Heavenly Father, please help me breath.  Please, I just want to breath." The first six months of this were suffocating.  I couldn't speak full sentences. I was putting people on mute every few words during calls at work.  I couldn't breath.  I had just started to hear myself laugh and sing again, but breathing is the first step towards laughing and singing so those things stopped.    In Japan I couldn't walk without pain.  My knees would hurt intensely after just thirty seconds of standing so I hobbled through my mission with pain in every step.  When my mission president asked me to extend my mission an extra month I looked down at my knee-braces as I tightrope-walked the curb of the sidewalk and immediately said yes.  My prayers changed at that point.  Instead of asking Heavenly Father to heal me I said, "If Thou knowest that I can serve Thee without legs...

This is what I needed God to tell me today. This is happening so that you can learn that you are enough.  This time.  This place.  This moment.  It was all designed so that you can learn that you are everything you need to be right now.  Nothing more, nothing less. Progress can be measured in so many ways.  My Daughter, know that I am God and that I know you.  Know that this too will be only a short while.  Your tears are ever flowing, but you're being molded into a deep river of powerful current that will not be stopped.  You do not know my plan for you. You just don't.  You don't know the grandeur of my plan, you only see what is in front of you.  Have I not shown you my love on so many occasions?  Have I not protected you, helped you, and comforted you when you needed it? Don't you know that I am here?  Don't you know that I am God?  Don't you see, see the joy that is to come if you just hold on a little...

I hadn't written much over the past two years because I didn't want what I was living to be documented.  Or rather,  I could have documented it and gone to the police,  but I didn't.  I just left. A lot of you know what happened,  some through the grapevine and some from the original sources.  Basically,  I was in an abusive relationship and now I am in a happy one. August 2016.  An empty shell with long sleeves and a scarf to cover the bruises,  I walked into the University of Utah's Counseling Center.  I knew I needed to get help.  I was ready to end the pain at any cost,  so I filled out the questionnaire.  I was on the life or death end of severe situational depression.  She asked, "What reasons do you have to stay alive?"   I said, "Bella."   She asked, "Who can help you stay alive?"   I said, "Lauren."   She made me pinky promise that I wouldn't kill myself over the weekend and I held ...