Meeting with my SP, Part I: And so my needs are great

About a month ago, I started feeling that it is time for me to start gearing myself up to do Step 4 (Personal Inventory). This step has always scared me. But for the past month or so I've had experiences where I have been surprised to find myself wanting to do it and feeling the need to do it. Although I haven't started the formal work (the fact that I don't have a sponsor is adding to my reluctance to get started), I've been spending more and more time thinking about who I am and, as mentioned in my So Much post, facing my feelings about myself hasn't been fun or easy. Lots of fear, insecurity, shame, and uncertainty. 

One of the parts of myself I have been facing has been my social/emotional neediness. Last weekend I attended the adult session of Stake Conference Saturday night and the general session Sunday morning. During both meetings, I found myself wishing that the Stake President would reach out to me personally, just to check up on me. I knew he was aware of my situation through one of his counselors (I met with him because he was in my ward the day after D-day this summer) and  mybishop. I haven't reached out to him because I've felt like my bishop and home teacher have taken good care of me. But this weekend, I felt needy. I wanted support from my Stake President. Because I'm so much more aware of inner self right now, I felt extra guilty about this desire: he has so many demands on his time, and really I'm doing ok. Why do I need so much attention and reassurance? But despite my guilt, I still felt a little sorry for myself when I left Stake Conference on Sunday.

An hour and a half after Stake Conference ended, my Stake President called me. I missed the call because I was putting my daughter down for a nap, but he left me a voicemail saying he wanted to check in with me and he was hoping to meet with me in the next few days. I was surprised and not surprised at the same time. As the prophet Zenos said (recorded in Alma 33: 9):

Yea, O God, thou hast been merciful unto me, 

and heard my cries in the midst of thy congregations.

God heard my prayer. I knew he could. I just didn't know that he would. Could my desire have been righteous? Or was God just indulging me out of pity? I was able to schedule a meeting with my Stake President for tonight (Tuesday night) before flying out to Utah tomorrow for The Togetherness Project. I was so grateful that it worked out to meet with him before I went out of town, but as I drove to the meetinghouse, I felt more guilt. Why should the Stake President have to stay later, leaving his wife and 6 children at home without him, to meet with me when I'm doing ok? I've had experiences that have shown me that God is caring for me (including this morning when after praying, the Lord helped me overcome some pressing feelings of insecurity and inadequacy), and I'm just about to go out of state for a week to see friends and soak up support. Why do I need so much reassurance? Am I just broken? How did I get that way?

Softly and without fanfare, a few of the words to the song I had sung to my daughter before bed tonight came to mind:

I am a child of God 

and so my needs are great.

I can't say that this completely resolved my guilt, but it did assuage some of it. I have great needs not in spite of being a child of God but because I am a child of God. I am So Much. I will someday be So Much More. And so my needs are great. No need to feel sorry for that.