LDS Podcast "Latter-Day Lights" - Inspirational LDS Stories

The Eternal Perspective of Loving Through Depression: Amanda Harms' Story - Latter-Day Lights

• Scott Brandley and Alisha Coakley

Share episode

When depression shapes the life of the person you love the most, will your faith hold—or begin to break under the pressure?

In this week’s episode of Latter-Day Lights, Scott and Emily sit down with Amanda Harms — a counselor, mother of six, and newly minted PhD in social psychology — to share her personal journey through supporting a spouse living with chronic depression.

With mental illness and frayed communication leading to years of financial hardship, cross-country moves, spiritual denial, and seasons of uncertainty in her marriage, Amanda reflects on how compassion, understanding, and Christlike love slowly transformed the way she perceived her husband and herself.

Through stories of resilience, motherhood, and the concept of “eternal perspective,” Amanda’s journey invites listeners to consider what long-term endurance really looks like — not as a single turning point, but as years of small choices to remain faithful, present, and compassionate. It’s a reminder that while answers don’t always come quickly, the Lord walks with us through the slow, sacred process of becoming.

*** Please SHARE Amanda's story and help us spread hope and light to others. ***

To WATCH this episode on YouTube, visit: https://youtu.be/GukEY_jB1-k 

-----

To READ Amanda's book, "Breaking Free from the Shame of Addiction," visit: https://a.co/d/jawXlJT

To READ Scott’s new book “Faith to Stay” for free, visit: https://www.faithtostay.com/

-----

Keep updated with us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/latter.day.lights/
Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/latterdaylights

Also, if you have a faith-promoting or inspiring story, or know someone who does, please let us know by going to https://www.latterdaylights.com and reaching out to us.

Scott Brandley:

Hey there, as Latter-Day Lights listener, I want to give you a very special gift today. My brand new book, Faith to Stay. This book is filled with inspiring stories, powerful discoveries, and even fresh insights to help strengthen your faith during the storms of life. So, if you're looking to be inspired, uplifted, and spiritually recharged, just visit faith2.com. Now, let's get back to the show. Hey everyone, I'm Scott Bradley.

Emily Hemmert:

And I'm Emily Hemert. Every member of the church has a story to share, one that can instill faith, invite growth, and inspire others.

Scott Brandley:

On today's episode, we're going to hear how one woman facing the challenges of a loved one's mental health discovered that no one is beyond hope or healing thanks to Jesus Christ and his boundless love. Welcome to Latter Day Lights. Hi, Amanda.

Amanda Harms:

Hi. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.

Scott Brandley:

Yeah, we're glad you're here with us. So something cool that just happened in your life. I'm sure you're going to tell us about it, but you just got your doctorate degree. Why don't you tell us a little bit about that?

Amanda Harms:

Um, so recently, yes, I just graduated with my PhD in social psychology. So I'm really excited about that to be done with school. It's almost five years of a lot of time and effort and money. So yeah, it's good to be done.

Scott Brandley:

Yeah, I graduated back in 2000 with my bachelor's, and I was done. I was done there. I like so that's the fact you got your master's and your doctorate, that's that's saying something for sure.

Amanda Harms:

Yeah, yeah. With six kids, and yeah.

Scott Brandley:

Did you say six kids?

Amanda Harms:

Yeah.

Scott Brandley:

Wow.

Amanda Harms:

Yeah. So yeah, we're busy. Yeah.

Scott Brandley:

Well, awesome. Um, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself, other than getting the degree?

Amanda Harms:

Yeah, so um I'm a counselor. I work at uh an actual place where I'm doing actual regular counseling, but I also work at an addiction treatment facility as a therapist there. So I'm pretty busy doing a lot of those helping people in those various capacities, but I do that, and I'm a mom, of course, of six kids. And um I'm a Sunday school teacher. That's what I've been doing for the last four years. It's been a while. I shouldn't say that out loud because now the Lord is gonna probably be like, oh, yep, four years. It's time to change because I really love what I do. Yeah. So yeah, it's a little bit about me.

Scott Brandley:

Awesome. Well, um, why don't we just jump right in and have you share your story? Tell us where it all begins.

Amanda Harms:

Okay, it all begins, I guess, when I decided. Well, when I met my husband, and it was really fun. We were okay. I graduated school early, high school. I graduated high school, I went on to college, I was 17 years old, and I was in a psychology class of all classes, and I met the man of my dreams, and um, we went on a date. He had asked me out, we went on a date, and found out I was only, well, at the time I was 17, and I was almost 18, and he didn't care. He said, Oh, nope, that's the girl I'm gonna marry. And of course, we did next the next year we got married, and I was 18 and quite young, and he was 20 almost 23, and he had just gotten off a mission. He went to Hawaii, how fun! And you know, life seemed pretty good. Everything, yeah, everything was great. We're um we ended up getting pregnant, we had a baby the next year, and and but being so young, you know, it it's hard to understand people and the way that they're acting and the way things happen and and everything. And so our marriage was just it was difficult for the first six years until I finally realized, like, until I realized that I needed to change myself and to start working on things and started trying to understand why he is the way he is. So let me just explain a little bit about hubby. He gave me permission to share about him. Hubby, he is the most kindest, gentlest, most amazing person in the world. He actually has a PhD too. I couldn't let him outbeat me, so that's why I went back to school. Um very smart, very, very thoughtful of other people. Um, but what it was throughout our marriage was this sense of I'm not good enough, I can't, I can't be as good as other people, type of thing. And I don't know if you know the opposite of a narcissist, which is very interesting. The opposite of a narcissist is called an echoist. And of course, if you're dealing with someone who's narcissistic, they are very, very, you know, like bottomless pits. You they you whatever you do, it doesn't matter. But if you swing the pendulum over to an echoist, it's almost like, no, you do matter, but I don't matter. That's how they that's the way they present themselves. You matter so much, and I'm gonna give, give, give, but I don't matter. Almost type of that type of thing. And they go into depression and they feel like they're just being bothersome type of person. Um, now, obviously with narcissists and echoists and people, there's this, what do you call it, this spectrum? Um, and some people can be very echoistic where they just don't want to be a bother to anybody to um just having slight tendencies. Anyway, hubby, I would say, was kind of in the middle. He wasn't super echoistic, but it was just difficult to understand how someone could be so I don't know, he just I always described it to him as like there's no fire in your belly, you don't want to get out and get things done and to do things, and so I'm just setting this up for kind of what I'm gonna talk about and how our marriage was fun and crazy and hard all at the same time. Um, so over time, while we're kind of dealing with this and not understanding why he won't just get up and let's get things done, which he eventually did. And I always told him, I said, honey, you are like patient to it to a fault. Like you're so patient, it's causing us problems, type of thing. And so over the years, we had children, he went to school. It took him a long time to decide what do I want to do for school? What do I want to do for this? What do I and just the and I was a stay-at-home mom for all those years, and him just kind of working and not working, and so of course, we got into a lot of school debt, a lot of debt, because I just wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. And he wasn't quite the worker because he would get in depressive modes and things like that. Anyway, albeit I was not the best person in the world, and I had I probably caused a lot of his grief as well. So we we kind of grew together in this in this journey. And so as time went on, and I'm gonna get to the part where it became really the most difficult, and I hope I don't cry during it. I feel like I've worked through it, but uh we had the opportunity for his PhD to go and live in New Zealand for three years. Three years. Uh, that was really, really hard and really fun at the same time. A lot of great stories, such as the principal breaking my son's arm. Believe it or not, that was a really fun story. So, but New Zealand was great. Except that, you know, hubby just went to school. We had a lot of bills. Uh, we lived in these houses that were. I don't know if you've ever heard of people living in New Zealand, but it was the houses are not the great the greatest. So um, like the floorboards had nothing underneath, it was just a wooden floor, and then you there's holes in it all the way to the ground. So it was just it was very cold, and it was just so much fun. But by then we had five children, so we brought all of our kids to New Zealand. Um, fun fact, we lived in a branch, and part of our branch was where they filmed the Hobbit. So at the time, so they were filming the Hobbit when we were there. That was about 2011, 2012, and they wanted to have um extras. They uh they called for extras in the movie, and I'm like, oh, I give me an extra, it's like 30 minutes away or the drive. And no, I was just they wanted women who were five foot two or shorter, and I only missed it by like nine inches, but that's okay. Um, but I could have been in the Hobbit movie, it would have been really cool. Um, anyway, so living there was was great. We it was hard financially, it was a big struggle. Hubby actually became the branch president, and that was really hard because before then we were getting help with the food because we needed food. And but then as branch president, we're like, how do we still do this? And I don't know, it was just this is a point where I just became very, very frustrated. I started going back to school. I started doing working on my my bachelor's degree there online, taking care of the five children, trying to trying to figure out how do I feed my family because it we he's not working, I'm not working, we're trying to make ends meet. This is like really, really tough. And then he was the branch president and he was he would go to work every day, but he wasn't getting paid. We'll just say that. He's uh he's a cultural environmental anthropologist, and so he was studying how the the Maori and the Pakeha, the white people, work together to conserve the environment, which was really, really cool. There's a mountain there, they call it Mount Sanctuary. Um I'm gonna botch this, but the the Maori people call it um Mount Mongatautri. I hope I said that right. Mongatautri. Um, which is a really cool mountain because around the mountain, they have a big um, they put a huge fence all around this entire mountain. And so the fence is buried deep below, so that no it's a press pest proof fence. So the pests can't get in or out of this fence, which which is pretty cool. Um, they can get out. I lied, they can get out, but they can't get in. And so they tried to reinduce, reintroduce kiwi birds there and things like that. So hubby would go and work on the mountain to try to catch mice and pests to get them off this mountain so that it can become a sanctuary preserve for the birds to be more like it was in the olden days. So it was a really neat project, and my husband got to work on that and work with people and and things like that. And I think that made him very, very happy. Um, he he was actually doing really well, and even though it was still tough and we were struggling, he was doing well. And the three years went by and we had to leave. Um, by then I had had our sixth child in New Zealand. We had our child and we had to leave. And that probably had to be one of the hardest years of my life. So we left New Zealand. We had no job, no prospect, no home because we didn't have a home when we left. We had a left a car there. Oh, that's a long story. We brought a car with us, but we couldn't take it with us because it cost too much money to send back. So we had to sell that car, move back to America, Arizona. We're from Arizona. I don't live in Arizona, I live in Colorado now. But um, but back then we lived in Arizona. And my we had to live with my husband's parents, and his parents are absolutely amazing people, just not amazing to live with. And I'm sure that it wasn't amazing for us to live with them with six children and no car to take our whole family anywhere. So we just this was probably the lowest point in our lives. And I was just trying to make it work, right? I had I had a little baby, I just graduated with my my bachelor's, so I'm like, well, I could get a job, but I was still nursing. And I said, honey, I need you to, you need to get a job. We gotta get going, we gotta work, we gotta do stuff. And he just he went into this huge depression, huge, and he'd been depressed off and on throughout our in our marriage, and he went into this huge depression. And it was it was just I didn't know what to do. I couldn't leave the house. I was stuck because I didn't really have a car to take all my children. And and after that, I just I don't know, it was really rough. I ended up yelling at my mother-in-law, and I felt so bad for doing that because she didn't deserve that because they were so kind to let all of us live there, eight of us live in this house. Um, so I took three, four of the children. I took the younger four children. My dad let me borrow my mom's, my mom, meanwhile, I didn't say my mom had passed away while I was in New while we lived in New Zealand. So that was really hard. But he let me borrow her car and take it. So I was able to take my kids up to my dad's cabin up north, and I lived there for five months while I left my two older kids and my husband with his parents, and the older kids went to school there, and then my other kids went to school up north in uh Strawberry, Arizona, and I lived there for five months, being kind of a single mom and just being so angry and so frustrated at husband at hubby, and it was just a really, really dark time. It was really, really hard. And so we lived apart for those five months, and I decided, well, I need to go back, we gotta figure things out, and we went back and um I stayed a week at my in-laws and decided, nope, this isn't for me. And I was so angry with with my hubby, his name's Matthew. I was so angry with Matthew, and I told him, I said, I said, you need to just go get a job. And he was looking for jobs and he had actually found a teaching job online. Um, he but all the while he hadn't finished his PhD, so he was still having to work on his dissertation and he was still having to do all those things. Um, it by the way, it took him nine years from start to finish to finish his dissertation, and uh from starting school to finishing his dissertation, nine years drove me insane. Uh anyway, so he got a teaching job, and and I was I'm like, but that's not going to support us, you know, that won't support us as a as a family. It's where there's eight of us, we need a home, and uh we were gonna have to rent because we had too much school debt, there was no way we could buy or anything like that. And he just it just he wouldn't get things together, and I got so mad at him. And I remember standing in my in-laws' kitchen just being so angry and so upset, and the spirit came to me to comfort me and I said, Go away, I don't want you. I'm so angry and I'm so upset. Like, how could you even do this to me? I have no home, I have no money, I have no um car that can see all my family. I you it's like the Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away. But I didn't look at the blessed be the name of the Lord part, you know, of how amazing of all the things that he was teaching me through this whole experience. So it kind of got a little bit worse after that, since I said, No, go away, don't talk to me, don't comfort me. And I told him, I said, I'm just gonna go be homeless. Now, albeit I have family that lives in Arizona, but um, it was really hard to live with my dad because it was just difficult. He's my dad's a good man, but he's kind of a difficult person to live with too. Maybe I'm the difficult person to live with, but okay, whatever. And so I took three of my kids, yeah, and we we went and it's June in Arizona, and we went and just slept in the car that night because I didn't I didn't know where to go, I didn't know what to do. And we slept in the car, and the kids they did a pretty good job, surprisingly. And that next I didn't sleep a wink. I was so hot and it was just so miserable, and I was crying the whole night. And I remember going to this park. Well, we ended up going to um the grocery store, and I let them go to the bathroom and brush their teeth and everything like that. And um we went to a park, and some guy I remember saying, Oh, are you homeless? And it was so embarrassing that he would say that to me, like, oh, you're homeless. There, I know some places you could go, and this like that. And I'm thinking, no, I'm a member of the church, I'm not homeless. I have so many people who love me and care about me. But I was just so angry. I was so angry. And after that, we went to the library and I told hubby, I said, I can't do this. I'm gonna have to put this on our credit card. I'm gonna stay in the motel. So then that began our summer of homelessness. And if you ask my my fourth child, he was there with me the whole time. He said that was the best summer ever. I'm like, wow, perspective, right? Uh it was really difficult for me. We yeah, we spent a week. Um, we spent a week in a in a moat, in a, I call it the cockroach motel. It really was. It was that bad. We did that. We ended up spending um a week at my brother's. He came up and picked us all up, and we went to Yuma because he lives in Yuma, or used to, and we spent a week at another motel, and then we spent a week house sitting, and we spent a week, so we spent like this the summer of homelessness, and finally my dad said, Okay, come live with us. And so we ended up living with my dad for the rest of the summer, and by then Hubby had gotten a job and stuff. So this was like he got a job, but it wasn't the greatest because two months later they ended up um laying him off because it's a mortgage business type of thing, and so but we did end up getting in a house on uh June, is it June July 24th? I remember because it was Pioneer Day, and just thinking, oh, the Lord is good, I have this house, and that was the house where we raised teenagers, so our kids became teenagers, and this at this point, yeah, we've gotten a lot of debt, we were in so much debt, we had to have you know be on Medicaid and everything like that. It was just and food stamps and and everything, and I thought, okay, it's time to go back to get my masters. Now, let me rewind. Um, I was actually in New Zealand. One of the things I can't remember what it was called, but I would listen to these um, I don't think they were really called podcasts then. Was that did they have that back then? I don't know. Um, but I listened to these the stories, all different people's stories. It was kind of like this um people's stories. And it was uh Dr. Black, she was, I forget her first name, but she had gotten her PhD and had shared her story of how she got her PhD. And the spirit whispered to me and said, You're gonna get it your PhD, you need to do that. And I was like, I don't know, I'm not even done with my bachelor's degree. But I, well, I guess I did it. But I decided when we moved into this house, I decided, okay, I'm gonna go back and get my master's because someone needs to work around here. So because hubby was still working on his dissertation, he lost his job. You know, I it was rough. He ended up getting a part-time job somewhere else and started working on his dissertation, but it still took him forever. Now, albeit it's a it's a lot much longer dissertation than the one I wrote because he's an anthropologist, but still nine years was a long time. So we ended up, I ended up going back to school, got my uh education in a master's in counseling, and started my first job in 2015, uh doing uh counseling for $17 an hour, believe it or not, with a master's degree. That was kind of crazy. But meanwhile, this this tension between hubby and I just started to grow, and his depression became more and more. And I just wanted to understand I couldn't understand it. It just it got so bad, and I would get so angry at him because I didn't understand how to understand depression and what that entails and what that means. I mean, it got really bad to the point, it's a couple times, it's gotten really bad to the point where he just didn't want to be here anymore. And I felt like I was a huge cause of that, which really was very um, it was hard. I I can't even put it into words, it was very, very difficult. And so, and I thought, okay, being a counselor, I finally graduated, still dealing with six children who are trying to live, you know, become teenagers and do all the teenager things, and and I just felt like I couldn't really be there for them because I was having to work full-time and take care of a hubby who was depressed and trying to deal with everything. It was just a huge struggle, and then the financial situation just never seemed to improve or get better or anything like that, and so um I don't know. It so moving on, we ended up hubby ended hubby, Matthew, whatever I keep calling him hubby, but anyway, he he ended up getting a job in Colorado at uh Pikes Peak Community College in in Colorado Springs, and he started working there, he started working at UCCS because he finally got his PhD, which was really exciting. And so he started working at these the university, he was doing well, but they don't pay very well here in Colorado when it comes to teachers, so I feel really bad for the teachers here. Um yeah, it wasn't he was working full-time and we figured out he was making about five bucks an hour based on how much he was working, so it really wasn't conducive to our financial well-being. But anyway, the point is he in 2020, when things just kind of went south, they didn't need him anymore. He didn't get the the job, he applied for a full, not full professor, but like an instructor position there. Um, and that didn't work out, and then he really went into a huge depression. That was the worst ever. That was really, really hard. And that, of course, 2020, 2021, it was just a really difficult, those were the difficult years of this depressive state, and the spirit kept telling me, like, you need talk to him because I was just getting mad at him. Okay, I want to rewind a little bit. Let me rewind. There did come a point when we lived uh in that previous house where I realized that he is just not capable, he's literally not capable of going and getting a job and doing those things. He's not capable. And when I realized that, I it really helped me. I think the Lord helped me realize no, it's just not time, he's not capable. And it helped me to have a lot more compassion for him, a lot more understanding. And I don't know why I couldn't have understood that like many years before. Um how many years were we married? Probably like 18, 20, 18, 18 years when I finally realized that. And and so now, fast forward, I'm still having a little bit of struggle. I know that he's having issues with the depression, and I'm struggling with it because I'm like, I'm the mom, I'm the one who's going to work and I'm taking care of all the kids, and I'm doing everything, and you're not doing anything, but just laying around. But now I know I'm a I'm a counselor, I've been a counselor a while, I understand. But I still didn't quite understand how to help him because he wouldn't talk to me about it, and that was the thing. He just he didn't want to bother me, he wouldn't talk to me. And then the spirit said, You need to go talk to him, and so I did, and I went and talked to him, and I'm like, What's going on? This is you're just not doing what needs to be done, and and everything. And of course, he was unemployed and really struggling, and and this was a point in his life where he just didn't want to be here anymore, and that was really hard for me because I felt like maybe I pushed him to that, and I here I'm a counselor and I should be better, and I so I'm definitely struggling with all these feelings and emotions, and I don't know. It I think what really helps men is knowing that they have a job and that they're providing for their family. It absolutely a job is almost like their identity, and I couldn't ever see that, and so for him it was a huge blessing after a year. He was uh able to um, after a year, he was able to get a job that he's been working at since. But this job has been amazing because what is done, he's been this job has allowed him. Now he's not teaching in anthropology, but he is teaching soft skills at uh a credit union. So he's doing a lot of teaching and building classes, and he's amazing at it. He does a good job, but this job has allowed him to read books, right? I've also I've also made him go to counseling. Um, and he reads a lot of a lot of self-help books in this job, which has definitely improved himself. I went back to school for social psychology, and I started learning new things and understanding new things, and and realizing, wow, knowledge is power. It really is. Being able to talk to him in a different way, being able to say, hey, let's communicate better, let's discuss things. So when I would try to talk to him about things, he would always shut down. That was his go-to. Why looking back, his mother had borderline personality disorder. If anybody knows what that is, then you'll understand. He had to be this type of, I gotta be passive, I can't, you know, I can't rock the boat type of thing. And so he would shut down and I tell him, hey, honey, no, no, you've got to talk to me. You've got to say, hey, I'm gonna, I'm going to think about this for a little while, and and I'll get back to you. Or at least something like that. At least something like that. And he he started doing it, he started working on it, and he's really improved and he's gotten a lot better. I've gotten a lot better financially. We're still working on things, but um I think just being able to um just being able to go to school, going back to work. So I took a year off, went to school, and then I decided to start working again as a counselor, which is a job I'm still doing on the side. And and then I work at a ditch, I worked, I used to work in an addiction treatment facility here in um in Colorado, and that's where the spirit told me, hey, you need to write a book. And so I did, and I wrote a book on addiction. And I think even though depression is a little bit different, but depression, we tend let's just say many of us whole have addictions, many of us have addictions, but we tend to mask over our depression and our anger and our anxiety and everything with addictions that we have, whether it's food, pornography, gam gambling, right, gaming, um, drugs, alcohol, all that. We mask it over. And I don't think hubby masked it over. I oh, well, a lot of men have pornography, which was I think an issue for him a long while ago, but that was a way that we would mask he would mask it over. And I'm sure many men are like that or have had those those issues, but we tend to mask over with those things, and so I was inspired to write a book. It's called Breaking Free from the Shame of Addiction, and I wrote that actually in 2020, when our our treatment facility for addiction shut down, and the Lord said, You're not going back. And I was like, What? Because I really liked it there, and they said, No, you need to write a book. So I did. So I wrote this book, and it took me a while to get it published, but I finally ended up getting it published. So it is out there on on Amazon or Cedar Fort. But I talk a lot about um addiction, how we can get away from addiction, how to really be with ourselves, how to, and I'm writing a new book, FYI. I'm writing a new book. Um, it's gonna be on self-compassion. Uh, because I've taken a lot of research and I've put together this self-compassion piece that, and I talk a little bit about self-compassion in the breaking free from the shame of addiction, but this uh this new self-compassion piece is even better, and I do this pretty much daily. I get myself compassion daily, so it's it's absolutely amazing. I've talked to hubby about it, he gives himself compassion, and it's become this whole thing that's just been wonderful. But the point is, addiction is really, really, really not addiction. I'm so sorry. Depression is really, really hard, especially when you're dealing with people's depression in your life. You have to understand that they of course they don't want to be depressed, they just literally can't do the things that normal people do because of depression. So um, yeah, that's that's basically my story. That was my long story about things. But now hubby and I have been married 28 years. We're we're doing well and um still going strong. We have those six beautiful children, have four adult kids, and still two teenagers at home. So it's uh it's a lot of fun. But we're getting there.

Scott Brandley:

Yeah, that's sounds kind of like kind of my like my situation. I've got two kids married, two kids still at home. And ironically, my wife deals with depression. And for many years of our marriage, I had a similar circumstances where I was super frustrated because I'm like, why don't you just do the things that you should do? You know, like why don't you take better care of the kids? Why don't you clean the house, right? Like, and she just couldn't do it. And she did mask, like you were saying, with masking, she she would mask with games and and different like watching things on her phone and and just things to to escape from that that depression somehow, try to try to get out of that reality that she was in. I can relate to a lot of what your husband went through and what you went through.

Emily Hemmert:

Yeah, my husband's a therapist too, and something he said about depression that's helped me understand it is like that it robs you of motivation. And I think that's like from when you're you know working with someone who's depressed or in your family or whatever, right? It's like you can't see why they couldn't just do the things they need to do, right? But it really is that missing motivational piece to like do whatever they need to do.

Amanda Harms:

Yeah, definitely, definitely. Depression is really hard.

Emily Hemmert:

But I want to hear how your kid ended up with a broken arm from the principal.

Amanda Harms:

Yes, yes, he was uh so it was actually really fun. So in New Zealand, they play bull rush. So bull rush is kind of a little bit like football in a way, because they do a lot of they do tackle. And in New Zealand, you're allowed to play tackle sports without all the padding and everything like that. And so uh because my son's a big kid, he's I'm because I'm 5'11, I got some pretty big boys. Um he was playing and the principal was playing with the with the boys, and the boys couldn't get him down. So the principal went to get him down and of course broke his arm. And I didn't know that until we were at the hospital and they were doing some surgery. They did surgery on him, and and then the principal showed up. And now to go to the hospital, it's like a 30-minute drive from where we lived. And the principal showed up and he said, Oh, how are you doing? Good, good. He left, and I told my son, I said, Wow, that was really nice of him to come. And then he looked at me, he said, Mom, he broke my arm. And I'm like, Oh, okay. So, and it was funny that he never even mentioned that. So it's kind of a fun story, yeah. That's funny.

Emily Hemmert:

Um, one question that I just was thinking is like I feel like I've I have friends who've been in in situation in marriages that in my opinion, I'm like, you know, well, maybe have you considered leaving, right? Like, did you have defining moments that that helped you recognize like that it was all gonna work out or that it was gonna be worth it, or that like where did your conviction come from to like see it through? Does that make sense?

Amanda Harms:

Yeah, yeah, for sure. For me, I mean, there were times when I'm just like, I just want to divorce him. I just want to divorce him. I can't take this anymore. And I don't, I don't know if any major defining moments, but other than just really trying to keep keep the commandments, right? Go to the temple. Um have your daily scripture study, say your our family prayers and keep on doing those things that would kept me going, okay, now I'm gonna stick this out. I made covenants with with him and with the Lord. Um and I don't want to be that statistic. That's kind of how I felt at the time. But I didn't want to I wanted to have this this this not a perfect family but this good family that to help us continue to raise these kiddos. So no major defining moments but other than just I just know that the Lord helped me to understand and see things from more of his point of view I guess. And to help me just realize you know he this man has potential. I mean the only reason why I didn't divorce him is because he was just he treats me like a queen and he's so kind and he's so loving. And I'm like and he's just so smart. So I'm like well I'm not gonna divorce him but yeah that's a good question. Thank you.

Scott Brandley:

So um a kind of my follow-up question to that is you know I I think one of the blessings of being in the church is to have that eternal perspective even when things are really hard right um how did having an eternal perspective and and you mentioned you know have like Christ's love for us um how do you how did that play a role in getting to where you are now and maybe overcoming some of the more difficult parts of the journey oh I guess that was the only thing that really ever got me through is being able to feel his love for me and to know that I could I could get through it with him.

Amanda Harms:

Um I mean he's definitely guided me in so many ways I mean I didn't even share the part where um we had this feeling that we were gonna go to Colorado and and I just felt like I needed to go there and look for a job and so I did and I went to Colorado and I I had no idea what what I was going to do.

Emily Hemmert:

Like I just knew I needed to I applied for some jobs I actually had a couple job interviews I had no idea what I was going to do and I stayed in a hotel and then I went to church the next day and I asked well I was kind of guided to this ward and I went to the ward and I'm like I don't I said to the ward um I need I need a place to stay and there was this lovely elderly couple that said you can come stay with us they let me stay for a whole month in their house while I looked for a job and then after that nothing came of it there was nothing and then the spirit said okay time to go home and I'm like but what was the whole point of this like my other job uh my other job at in Arizona had fizzled out I came to Colorado nothing happened I go back home now what and I was just so kind of upset with the Lord a little bit I'm like what's going on but I said nope I'm just gonna do whatever the Lord tells me to do I'm just gonna keep going end up getting a job there and then five months later that's when hubby his uh they called him he knew the gal who works at Pikes Peak it's called state Pikes Peak State College now he knew the gal who worked there and she called him she's like hey we need a teacher could you come teach and so he needed to be there in two weeks so it's like whoa well where does he stay oh I know some people and so he stayed with that elderly couple for three months he stayed with them and yeah it just it just that's how it worked out because I don't know and then I was able to get um get all the kids and get everything packed up and I got I ended up getting a job from Arizona here happened to be one of the best jobs I've had I loved it and and we packed up and we just moved out here that elderly couple let us all stay there in their house for a few days until we got a place to rent and and it all worked out because Henry Father knew he knows he knows and I just have decided for my whole life I have decided I'm just gonna keep listening to the Lord I'm just gonna keep doing what he tells me to do and even if I don't like it I'm just gonna do it because I know it's gonna work out I think this message will can really resonate with a lot of people but especially anyone like that's in the trenches of like motherhood you know or like Scott said it's I think it's common to mental health issues are common right and so I think this message is very inspiring and hopeful of like there's light at the end of the tunnel or things can get better and you know it's not it doesn't have to be this way for forever like you guys went through those hard times and managed to come out the other side of it. So that's a that's really inspiring. Absolutely thank you.

Scott Brandley:

Yeah and I would say um I I've had hard times with you know in my marriage but there have been good times too right and those good times make it make the bad times not so bad right I'm sure you've had lots of good times in your marriage too yes for sure well Amanda we really appreciate appreciate your thoughts and and sharing some of your experiences with us today do you have any final thoughts you'd like to share before we kind of wrap things up yes so I was just thinking today about how in my 40 plus years of life and I tell this to my clients all the time when we always try to just do our best and in this sense here when we try to listen to the Lord and we do our best it always works out.

Amanda Harms:

Not the way you want it to work out but it does always work out and and we just gotta have faith and keep going and just trust in the Lord that it will be for our good and so far it has and I know for me that I'm gonna have to continue to do that um because my life isn't over yet knock on wood. And so yeah just keep doing your best do your best. Awesome good advice and what's the timeline for your new book to come out oh well I just started writing it so I'm hoping I know I've just been so busy working two jobs and everything but I I I started it and I have the outline written so I'm really really excited about it. But yeah so look out for that one. Um I have one I so if you go on Amazon you can see the breaking free from the shame of diction that's definitely geared towards um members of the church um and uh I also have another one out there it's a fictional book just for fun that I wrote when I was like 24 years old and I finally put it out so but but yeah look for my other one that's I think the other one that's gonna be called Send It Love because that's what I always tell my clients and my clients are like that will come to me and they're like I said do you do your homework and they said oh Manda I'll be going through something all of a sudden I hear your voice and it says send it love so that's gonna be the the name of my new book. Yeah that's awesome.

Scott Brandley:

Cool yeah we'll definitely put put your the the links to your um addiction book um in into in the footnotes um so we really appreciate you being on the show again and if anybody's watching and you have a story that you'd like to share with us go to latterdaylights.com or email us at latterdaylights at gmail dot com and please do your five second missionary work go hit that share button so we can get Amanda's story out there for those that need to hear it because I think a lot of people do struggle with depression and you know it's good to hear that you know there's other people like you out there that that have those same battles right so awesome well thanks again for being on the show and thanks everyone for tuning in and we will talk to you next week with another episode of Latter day lights. Till then take care bye bye

Head Shot

Scott Brandley

Host
Head Shot

Alisha Coakley

Co-host