Trust - by Hannah LeBlanc, 410 alum and CRHS class of 2017!

​If you are anything like me when I was a junior, your year has consisted of countless nights spent studying until three am, monthly mental breakdowns because of the stress of all of your classes and extracurricular activities, and an intense longing for the terrible year to be over. Your faith is probably not something you are putting first and you may even wonder sometimes why you have been faced with so many obstacles. The truth is, you may never truly understand why God places hardships in your life, but at some point you have to learn that the only way to get through them is to trust in Him.
 
The second six weeks of my junior year, I came home to find my oldest brother having a manic episode. He was writing gibberish on his walls with black sharpie, running from his room to the garage and back again every minute, and yelling phrases that made no sense to me. Needless to say I was scared and in efforts to shield myself from his state of insanity I hid in my parents’ closet until my mom got home from work. My parents had me leave for the weekend so that they could figure things out and care for my brother. When he came back from the hospital on Sunday evening, he had a prescription for medication to help treat bipolar disorder. I tried to find comfort in the fact that he was provided some sort of treatment and I told myself that he would get better in no time, but I was wrong.
 
Weeks went by and my brother did not even begin to resemble the humorous, caring, older brother that I had known for sixteen years. When they realized they were no longer capable of giving him the care he needed, my parents made the decision to place my brother in a mental health center. For the week or so that he was there he did not allow me to visit him until the last day. When I finally saw him, he was drained of life and was not interested in seeing the people who put him in such a depressing place; he asked me how I could allow my parents to leave him there when I was supposed to love him. I again told myself that he would get better, that he would return from the center and transform into himself.
 
My brother continued to get worse as the doctors tried their best to find the right medication to treat the mental disease that was eating away at his mind. I watched my parents cry almost weekly and I saw them slowly tear themselves apart because they thought that somehow my brother’s situation was their fault. I lost relationships with some of my closest friends. My grades began to significantly drop as I was unable to focus on anything other than what was going on in my household. I had in my mind that if I was not helping my parents or caring for my brother I was being selfish, so I spent a lot of time berating myself for feeling like the situation was unfair for me. How did I have any right to complain about how much stress I was feeling or how low my grades had gotten when my brother was losing control of his mind and his life more and more each day? I recently asked my friends what the biggest change they saw in me last year was and they said the hardest thing to watch was how quickly they saw my positivity and passion for life fade. I was not in a good place and I had no idea how to shake the pain I felt for my family.
 
Throughout the year I remained consistent in prayer. One thing I never doubted was that God was watching over me. My problem was that I was not confident that he would provide for me and my family in our time of need. Thankfully, a few months before the school year ended, the annual mission trip dates were announced and I signed up immediately. As the trip approached, however, I was not as excited as I would typically be to serve the people of Laguna and share a week with amazing people from EYM. However, this quickly changed one night during an adoration mass. The song Oceans came on and the tiny church filled with more than twenty teens vibrated in song. It was then that I realized that the trip was God’s way of providing for me. I had a terrible year, I lost my joy and passion for life, but God reminded me of all that I had to be grateful and cheerful about.
 
My message to you is to let yourself trust in our amazing God. Before my junior year, faith was something that I had because I wanted it; I did not have a true understanding of God’s power and love. My faith really began with the journey that you are taking right now. God decided to test me in a way that I could have never imagined, but He also was the only one who could get me through it. Life is going to get hard sometimes, that is a guarantee, but it is up to you to trust that God is capable of getting you through the worst hardships that you face. He may not answer your prayers fast enough or how you want him to answer them, but there will always be an answer. So if you are struggling right now at home, at school, or in any aspect of your life remember the God who declared that He has “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jeremiah 29:11). God bless you on your journey towards Confirmation!

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