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Every now and then you hear the story of an individual that is able to demonstrate incredible faith, and endurance, that is as uncommon as is their life experience. That is the case with Misty Nielson. Her story shows the importance of family, just perhaps not in the way you may think.
Misty Nielson is 34 years old and a Mother to 5. Married for 16 years, she is a convert to the church, and the only member in her family.
She grew up in an abusive home, and was abandoned by both biological parents, only to be adopted into a home that was also abusive. She moved out when I was 16, was legally emancipated and joined the church when she was 17. Following her baptism she used the last of her money to move out west to Utah.
After married her husband Andrew, they have since had 5 children -One of which died shortly after childbirth.
After the death of that child, Misty did not attend church for a period of time. During her absence from church, I was prompted to start a business, called Baby Boards – where she creates memorial pieces for other women who have lost children.
After years of not attending she decided to come back to full activity At the beginning of 2013, and received a temple recommend after being without one for 10 years.
Her husband now has schizophrenia and is unable to participate in church because church is a trigger for him. Misty considers Andrew’s continued support, in spite of this condition, to be a huge blessing – – he wants to be with them, but cannot.
If that were not enough struggle in her life, one of their children also has mental illness – an anxiety disorder and OCD. In all this, Misty and her family have drawn closer to the Lord with a greater appreciation of what it means to have a Christ centered family. Misty also is well acquainted with the challenges that face individuals who do not attend church for one reason or another as they seek to return back to activity in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Like Misty, I joined the Church when I was 17, and remain, to this day, the only member of my immediate family to be a member of the Church.
I married an active man in the Temple when I was 24, and we began planning for a family right away. The Lord asked us to wait 3 years, hard to do while attending a BYU married student ward. We were thrilled to “finally” get pregnant, and waited anxiously for the coming of a child into our lives.
Judith May Capps was stillborn, at the conclusion of a full-term pregnancy, on May 27, 1978. She is buried in the Provo City Cemetery’s Babyland, an area of the cemetery reserved for the the infant and young children of BYU students. What comforted me was that, when we buried her, the cemetery was beautifully alive with flowers placed on gravesites, and, when we walked around the Babyland area, we counted no fewer than five other infant children of former ward members. I left feeling not that she wasn’t alone there, but that I wasn’t alone in that experience.
I never left the Church after we lost her, but I really do feel like the Church left me. The problem was that, for a fairly long time – until it was made known that I was pregnant again – I was treated as a pariah, an unlucky person. The young sisters in our married student ward took care to avoid association with me, up to and including taking a seat next to me in meetings. It was a very, very lonely time. Two sisters, who lived in my apartment building, did come into our home and help my husband finish moving us into our apartment, opening boxes and finding a home for things I had been unable to before being put on bedrest the last two weeks before I delivered her. Meals came for about a week, then stopped, even though I went back into the hospital with a deep-vein blood clot in my leg, and was there for a week or ten days. But no one talked to me, I mean really talked as though they wanted to hear what was weighing on my heart. That, and the feeling like the Ward “bad luck charm,” made me feel as though the Church had abandoned me. I know if I had been living in the wards I have had the privilege of living in for the past 30 years, I would never have felt a pariah. These sisters here would have enveloped me with their love of me and the Savior, helping me heal, helping me through my grief.
Did those women in that BYU married student ward expect me to just suck it up and get on with life because of the doctrines of the Church which assure us an eternal reunion? Is that what they were hoping – that my faith would heal my hurt? If I have learned anything from her sudden, horrible, cataclysmic loss, it is that my faith was without effect until I processed my feelings of grief about her death. I had to go through the stages of grief. Without help, without someone who could teach me the language grief takes on when on is a member of this Church, I got stuck in denial – “I’m just fine. Really.” – for ten years. Right on through a miscarriage at twelve weeks and an ectopic pregnancy that almost took my life. Through it all, I bounced right back.
Thank goodness for keeping a journal. And, for a Bishop, out here in the wilds that is the East coast, who asked me to assist a young sister with the death of her son. He was her third child. She was bereft. He was at a complete loss as to what kind of information that might be helpful to her, so he asked me to sit in and offer her suggestions. The experience of helping her plan the funeral for her baby, a sweetnatured child who lived less than a year, began lancing the long-festering boil, deep in the vaults of my heart. It enabled me to make sure she knew what Church customs were when a child dies, that she made sure she included a blanket and one of his smaller, favorite toys with him in the casket. That she knew he could be dressed in white and that there were white burial clothes for children, available from the Church. No one had helped us with that kind of information when Judith died. I had never attended a funeral for a Church member whose body was laid out for viewing. We didn’t know and so we made choices I regret to this day. I was so grateful the Bishop allowed me the opportunity to help her. We attended the funeral and burial of the baby, and I gave her my number, if she wanted to talk. But, we never saw them in Church again, and they left the area not long after the funeral.
I stuffed my feelings about her death for about 10 years – even my husband processed her death very, very differently than I did. People wanted, even needed, me to get back to “normal,” whatever that was. I wanted to process all the feelings I was having, but I didn’t know how to start. Even my mother and mother-in-law – both of whom had experienced the stillbirth of a child – did not want to talk with me about what I was going through or what they felt about their losses. Neither my parents nor my husband’s parents came out to be with us for her burial.
However, I worked at the same hospital where I had delivered her, and I was very comforted by the number of women with whom I worked who had lost a child, either much sooner in their pregnancy, or like me, delivered a child stillborn or who died shortly after birth. They would start the conversation by saying, “I lost my — child/baby/pregnancy.” It meant a great deal to me that those women opened up their hearts as soon as they opened their mouths to offer comfort. But the interesting thing is, they didn’t want me to talk about my feelings as much as some wanted to tell me all about their feelings; I suspect there were some unresolved feelings for many of them, as well. What I learned in the days following her death was that, in losing my daughter, I joined a very large club.
The ironic thing? I had sought out help so I could go through labor using hypnosis as my anesthesia of choice. I worked with a BYU doctoral candidate in psychology. Once it was determined I was an excellent candidate for hypnosis, we met in weekly sessions, getting me ready. Nothing, however, could have prepared me for the exquisite, deeply horrible pain of pitusin-strengthened labor contractions. Hypnosis was impossible; I was unable to let go of the intensity of the pain long enough to relax into the process.
We met for a final time about six weeks after it was all over, to talk about what went wrong with the trial of hypnosis. Toward the end of our interview, he asked me about how I was doing. I assured him that I was okay and, “pretty much back to normal.”
The irony of that final reassurance to my counselor is not lost on me. I had started to internalize the needs of everyone around me to be what I was before I ever lost my first-born child without ever really taking apart those feelings of loss, betrayal, emptiness, and grief and thoroughly examining them. I needed to do that to heal, but it took me over ten years to begin talking about them, so thoroughly had I convinced myself I had gotten back to “normal.”
Thank you for your story. One of the things I liked about Misty’s story was that when the time came, she realized that it was honesty with her situation that helped her discover the strength to rely on the Lord in such a way that church was PART of the healing, but it was Jesus Christ and building her relationship with God that helped her heal, and helped her to return to actively participating in Church. I can sense some of that same thread in your experience.
Linnea,
I wanted to tell you how sorry I am for the loss of your sweet Judith May. Thank you so much for taking the time to share your story. As I read your account of your grief journey, my heart began to ache for you – and for me – – as I know how hard that is to be alone on that road. To feel as no one understands, or knows how to care. It’s so hard to be on that journey alone, trying to figure out your way back to “normal” (does that even exist?”). I thank you for your honesty and candor. Your story and the life of your sweet Judith has touched me today.
With Love,
Misty
Thank you for sharing your story Misty. It is not always easy to share something so personal. May God continue to be with you and your family.
Linnea,
Thank you for sharing your story. It was moving, sad, beautiful and inspiring and hopefully. It has helped my sense of compassion and empathy to deepen and to realize the importance of listening, truly listening and being ok with uncomfortable emotions and topics. I so wish you had had the comfort you needed at BYU but you may not have taken the deep lessons of compassion that you now have. Thank you for sharing such a personal and important topic.