Just not that Crazy.

Oh boy, have I ever got a story. So. apparently my life was turned upside down by the weirdest of circumstances. I have been having trouble sleeping and my Dr. prescribed a sleeping pill that she said would help. It was a generic drug and when i started taking it the feeling was so bizarre. I googled the name of the drug and was shocked to know that it was the same drug that she had prescribed for me to combat depression when I was sick and that had taken me nearly a year to get off of. I was livid! It also cause major weight gain and it took me nearly a year to lose the weight.

I was so confused. I went to a health food store and they set me up with melatonin. It's healthy right?! Well, one of the side effects is depression even though you have great night sleep. These past few weeks I've been completely kerfluffled trying to figure out why I was in such a BLUE state when everything is so great in my life.

Now, a cleanse is in the works and I am going to take this living to a whole new way of healthy living. Just as a thought, google anything you ingest cus YOU NEVER KNOW! I sure wished I would have looked it up sooner!

Let the world know you as you are!

All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naïve. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: that I am nobody but myself. ~Ralph Ellison, "Battle Royal"

I feel like a broken record or a rewind of a very old and horribly ridiculous song replaying and replaying incessantly because it’s just so bad nobody can believe it. Crazy, I know, but all in all very enlightening.

Lot’s has happened and it has been such an internal struggle that oozed it’s way out which, for a long time, I have been able to get control of fairly easily. This time, however, it spilled through the cracks and now, as I look back, it was probably for the best.

To say that life should always be easy would be a naïve and hopelessly redundant way of looking at it. What should be easy are the repeats of living and yet, until you master those obstacles they replay over and over until you have a grasp on them. The conundrum for me was that I thought I had it under control but alas, I didn’t. It bit me, right in the arse and now, I am working extra hard to just put these puppies to rest, yet again.

Who I am is so self described and understanding that principle moves mountains in emotions. Letting go of that process and allowing others inside to scramble your thinking is a recipe for steeping backwards in any healing what so ever. That’s what I did and the kicker is; this person didn’t even ask to get in. It’s a shame on me for letting it happen in the first place.

So, what am I on about?

The details are unimportant, the circumstances even more so but because the result is so predictable it’s blog worthy. I let the thoughts and actions of others move into my psyche and move what I know to be true in my heart out of place. What gives there? As much as I know my strength is improving the crack let the adversary in and my thoughts tarnished in a way I hadn’t let them for a very long time. Lesson learned.

I know myself and I know my weaknesses. Addressing abuse survival and understanding personal weaknesses’ because of it can help and even make drastic change in the self esteem long sought for and won. I am not what others deem me to be, I am what I choose to be. Remembering that helps me avoid the pitfalls and brings remembrance to my own divinity and divine qualities that shields an attack on personal self esteem and self worth.

My Achilles heal is ever believing that justice is ever part of the equation. It will never be a part of it, it doesn’t belong in my hands, and its God’s alone. Note to self, remember that then disappointment won’t happen.

The old adage of a testimony never being stagnant is my nemesis as well. I let slip my conviction to understanding the atonement on all levels and by doing so I allowed the perceived feelings and thoughts of others control my decisions and actions. I must remain vigilant in my understanding that what others do, what others think, what others are is not my concern and what I may think others think of me is as equally unimportant. When I live authentically to my own beliefs and morals and when the disappointment of others actions no longer weigh on my soul, true happiness is made available.

There is no way to avoid the old wounds from being laid bare. The process is necessary to move forward for W and I. The fault lies in reliving the old stigmas and in rehashing the past. There will always be people who believe and who will place you in a position they deem you to be in. We are all guilty of pigeon holing each other. It’s when we “fit the bill” against our very judgment that we fail ourselves. The past is a history best left there.

I failed myself this last little while and by doing so I have failed those around me. Today, at lunch, I stood up to it. A woman I know sometimes will bully me and in my weakness I let her do it. I was speaking of a conversation I had with another engineer in the company and was explaining a situation he had described to me. She called me a liar. Now normally I would cower and try desperately to defend myself. Today, however, was different. I simply turned to her and asked to what benefit lying would be to me? Don’t think it was that easy. She pushed even harder and I remained calm and yet assertive. I asked if she had ever spoken to the gentleman and she responded no. I asked if she was familiar in anyway with the situation I was describing and again she confirmed she wasn’t. I then repeated, to what benefit would liyng be to me and why would I mislead anyone there. She backed down and then apologized. I was stunned.

Weakness, in the natural kingdom can be accessed and then taken advantage of. People are no different. Bullies are bullies. Gossip is gossip. I am no angel but I am not going to be a wimp either. I don’t have to rehash all the reasons why I am broken, the plate has cracks but the super bond is in place and the healing well on its way to completion.

I see it as two choices. Let it all matter and spend the rest of my life being what everyone else thinks I should be or just be as God had always intended. I chose the latter thank you.

Fanny Brice says it best – “Let the world know you as you are, not as you think you should be, because sooner or later, if you are posing, you will forget the pose, and then where are you?”

Dignity

"One's dignity may be assaulted, vandalized and cruelly mocked, but cannot be taken away unless it is surrendered."
~ Michael J. Fox

So, a bit of an absence, I know. Processing a very heavy situation and still very much in the midst of it. I never realized that there was so much more to go through for a cancellation of sealing over a clearance. They are indeed two very different things and being in the very center of the more emotional of the two I have to say, almost, uncle!

At the best of times, what happened is over and done with. At the worst, it has to be all dredged up again and then, you feel like the wound is cast open and bleeding and you have to heal all over again. I am doing all that I can to not open it too far but hey, what can you do. I want so much to have an eternity with this amazing new man of mine. He has changed so much of my outlook and my kids as well. There is great hope in our lives now and yet, somehow, I feel at the mercy of some who have, in a sense, already let me and my kids down.

It’s been a rough few months. I have gotten to a level of forgiveness I never thought possible and a very unique understanding to forgiving the sin and being reticent to the sinner. As I penned yet another letter having full faith and trust in my Bishop I knew that his words – “to keep it simple”; were much harder than he could have ever imagined.

How do you sum up the end of a 25 year marriage simply? I still have no answer to that.

Here’s another thought. M will be asked the question; is he current in his support of his children? Well, when a man takes you to court to sever his legal obligations then the answer is yes but what if as a family you have struggled for the last 2 ½ years alone as the financial debt was yours alone to carry and you chose not to fight it because you just wanted peace and knew that the battle would never end otherwise. What if he refuses to help with either school or mission in any way? What if he argues he overpaid when you can prove that prior to his severing the support he in fact was well under the child support outline costs the government set. Oh, wait, he didn’t have to pay for his daughter once she finished high school because she was an adult it’s just a shame she was disabled from anorexia and needed clinical care which took three months to get his financial help with and even then he fell fall short of what the government expected him to pay for that as well. None of this is ever addressed because the question only asks for a yes or no answer and all the unfairness comes back and tries as your might to not feel dismissed or discouraged, in the end, it really does hurt and you very much do.

A letter can’t sum up all the pain, it can’t bring back the innocence of abused kids and even though, for the most part, it is over, it feels as if by choice we have opened up all the hurt that was never acknowledged by M. The temple for me is such a difficult place to go as an ex in-law temple worker continues to speak ill of me there. I know; the Lord’s house and yet even there it isn’t safe. Church is still hard as those he spoke to and professed my faults and harm to believe unequivocally in his words because he was once their Bishop, he couldn’t lie. There is times when one can be so weary of the uphill battle that rolling right back down seems a softer and more viable option.

So here’s where my heart comes into play. I love W so much, he is the answer to all the questions I ever asked about hope and truth and safety. We have come so far and sacrificed so much I must find and hold to the faith that those working with us will speak for the unfairness and that, with faith, a cancellation will be granted and W and I can move forward to our new life together.

There have been times when this journey has been extremely hard. There have been times when giving up seemed reasonable but I always had faith that things would get better. Well, those dreams have, for the most part, all come true. There isn’t a moment where I am not ecstatic about my life with W. There is never any doubt that this love we have was the way it should have always been and the way, with effort and strength it will remain for the rest of our lives and with hope, throughout our eternity together. This time, however, its so friggin hard I can’t even tell you. Pray for us please. I would never be so bold as to say I know how things will turn out but what I do know is that this process is hard for a reason. I just wish and pray that those with the authority will know that walking away was never an easy escape or excuse but was a choice to live and love and be happy as the Lord intended this journey to be. After every prospect of that a kind and fulfilling life with the ex was exhausted, after it was clear that they was never going to be a change from him with regards to his feelings of my spirituality and his abusive control using the priesthood as his excuse to exercise it, we set forth towards a fundamental and growing change for the rest of the family by letting go and in deed letting God.

Now, in the most real way of all, this is in God’s hands. I know he knows my heart; my hope is that those making the decision can feel of my heart as well.