Daily Scriptures Giving Me Daily Lessons

 
Obviously I didn't post a whole lot about it, but I have been doing better with my daily spiritual check-ins. I decided in the rush of my world right now, checking in with my Lord is the best way for me to fit that spirituality into my every day. So whenever I think of it and make the time (usually sometime in the morning after my older kids are at school) I read the Book of Mormon and continue my study. Once a week I've started into the "ponderize" challenge and hang a new scripture on the wall, which is selected at random, actually. I turn to a random page in my triple combination and read the page and choose a scripture. If I happen to randomly turn to the Topical Guide or some kind of reference page, I randomly place a finger somewhere and look up that reference. Doing this, I have been surprised at how much I see God's hand in the selections. I have been guided to the same page more than once and realized that another scripture on that page was what I should have selected in the first place. And I have been guided to a scripture along the same lessons of what I had been gaining from my scripture study. I love how God's hand is in everything when I'm trying my best to follow Him.

I've been gaining more self-acceptance lately through different things I have been doing. I'm dressing better, feeling better, and it's awesome. I'm embracing my strengths and letting myself feel what I feel and that's awesome too. But I've been struggling especially with media addiction lately. I cannot stay off Facebook and it's really started to bug me. I challenge myself to stay away and still have found myself there again. I haven't had the app on my phone forever, but I still go the long route to look it up on my internet app. It's better than what it could be, but I know I am not being present for my kids. But over the last couple weeks, in which I have been getting my ponderize scriptures about not laboring for things without worth and avoiding idleness, I've gotten more busy and that's helped me.

In 2 Nephi it describes the Nephites as being taught to work with their hands and value the joys of hard work and productivity. It contrasts with describing the Lamanites and an idle and lazy people. Then it says that the Nephites lived after the manner of happiness. It struck me that the manner of happiness in life is finding joy in hard work. I felt like the message was for me and that I need to really get off my duff in serving my family and doing things for my husband and stuff and then I will find the most happiness and joy. It's true to my nature to find joy in being busy with good things. I get depressed with I'm stuck in the rut of laziness.

Scripture study seriously helps me and I feel a big difference when I'm working to include that in my daily routine. But sometimes I miss out on that. But I don't get down about it. I'm getting it in more often than not and that's a good thing. I'll just keep trying my best to do what I can.

The other thing I'm doing to avoid idleness is going back to school in January. PHEW! Big step, but I feel right about seeking those last few steps to my degree and see where life takes me after that. Talk about getting more productive! Should be interesting but I'm determined.

On another note, my husband had been doing well but lost his recovery journal and then when I went out of town he had the biggest slip in a long time. I feel nothing but love and sorrow for him now and I'm so glad I can separate my happiness from his challenges. I truly know he can pull up from this one because I know he can.

The Days After a Slip

You know the scene: My husband was moody and I was wondered what was wrong.  It was a slip. I'm in a good place of honesty with my husband. I know not everyone has that, but I also know with recovery efforts on both sides it can happen.

The familiar scene with dishonesty is pain and hurt because of secrecy. Arfter discovery it's more pain and hurt because of the lack of trust and the objectification felt when a spouse takes the addicted's behavior personally (which is understandable! But not helpful.). When honesty is present, that familiar scene before recovery is often tearful, still filled with pain because of helplessness and mistrust. It drives a wedge between the spouses felt by both sides.

Recovery has been a growth process for us but I feel a big difference in the scenario.

This time when he told me he slipped I felt no personal pain. Instead I felt compassion for him because I knew he was feeling guilty and dirty and experiencing backlash and after pains, being haunted by fresh memories and fighting the craving to refresh those memories. I felt pain FOR him.

I was also a bit angry at Satan using the internet once again as his tool of destruction. My anger was aimed at the correct place. Instead of at my husband, a good man struggling, I was maddened by the source of all pain and sin, the devil and His temptations.

I held my husband a while, telling him I was sorry for what he was going through. Then I felt the Lord guide me with His love to use the right words.

I reminded him not to give up. He'd already fallen two days in a row before telling me, and that told me he was losing faith. I reminded him that he is better than that, and not to give up. I also reminded him that the next couple days would be harder, maybe even the next couple weeks. Temptations are worse when the memories are fresh. The brain goes through stronger withdrawals as the images in the memory begin to fade. When images are fresh, the brain begins to hunger for more but the longer you abstain, the weaker the cravings and the stronger your spiritual strength.

Then you watch out for triggers. He had slipped because of a trigger. I hope he can turn to me when he is triggered so I can be more helpful.

It felt so good to have a moment of complete and loving support for each other without the pain. This is being brought together instead of torn apart! Satan will not succeed in tearing us apart through his evil ways. I'm remaining by the side of this good man and we will make it together.

Separating Righteous Intimacy from Addiction

This post is along the same lines as my last one in the way that it pertains to both someone with an addiction, and a spouse of an addicted loved one.

Early one recent morning I awoke from a dream I was having with my heart pounding in anger. I looked over at my sleeping husband and vividly felt the angry feelings subside as I realized what had happened in the dream hadn't happened in real life. However, I do know that dreams have a way of working out subconscious emotions. I reviewed the dream in my head and came up with an interesting conclusion. My anger at my husband came because he had been acting exactly like me!

I'll give a bit of a warning before you read about my dream because it is a personal dream. However, I'm an open person and this blog is anonymous. I will attempt to write in the most tactical way so as not to trigger anybody.

In the beginning of the dream I was feeling devotion and affection for my husband and was trying to pull him closer to me. He was laying down, faced away from me and as I prodded him and tried to show him my interest, he did not respond. I even got a physical response from him, but he wasn't acknowledging it. I hope that makes sense without me having to go into any greater detail.

I started feeling sad then, and asked him what was the matter and why he wouldn't face me. He finally looked at me with a blank and withdrawn expression and said, "The only reason you want to be with me is because you've been looking at naked pictures online." I immediately objected. I told him I promised I hadn't at all that day and that I hadn't in a long time. I wracked my brain for when I had but he turned away and I knew he wouldn't believe me anyway. I was hurt, and then I was mad.

"How dare you!" I thought. "How could you use that against me when you know how much it hurts me. How could you even think my feelings for you have anything to do with that filth! How could you even suppose that I was that heartless!"

I cried. I ended up sitting on the floor on the other side of the bed crying. But then I got so angry at him, I threw myself back onto the bed to start striking him on the shoulder and scream at him that he was so mean!

That's when I woke up.

The feelings were so real because they are honest and true. My addiction has nothing to do with the way I feel about my husband.

And then the light came on at that thought. His feelings about me have nothing to do with his addiction either.

For so long I had felt hurt because his actions from his addiction were somehow connected to his feelings for me. I'm not saying they aren't to the spouse or loved one. To someone without a sexual addiction, physical intimacy is ONLY about love. Addiction is not about love at all. It's corrupt and is completely separate from love.

Now in my last post I addressed the myth that physical intimacy can help ease temptations from addiction. That is not true. Temptations will still exist, and could come on just as strong even after being intimate in a healthy relationship.  However I will add this. Having a truly loving relationship with someone still helps emotionally and spiritually.  Being intimate with my spouse helps me to appreciate the beauty in the act of a healthy spiritual, emotion, and physical experience with someone I have covenanted to love and care for. It's in complete contrast from addictive behaviors, which drag one down into shame and sorrow. Instead, a healthy experience with my loved one who I have covenanted to cherish for eternity uplifts my soul and brightens my spirit.

I'll add this experience doesn't always feel that way. I want to acknowledge those who still feel filthy during intimacy with their spouse. It's a very sad but true reality that sometimes even with a spouse we can feel like a tool or the outlet for addiction. This is when we are completely justified and right in saying, not tonight, dear.

The spirit is not here.

But as we pray together and work to have that spiritual presence with us, the experience can become healthy and beautiful again. I testify that it has worked for my relationship and has helped us both as we fight off our temptations and cleave to each other.

I hope sharing this will help somebody out there.

Stop Dragging Him and Let Him Walk

 

I was just thinking to myself about when I was engaged and there was a point when we almost had to postpone our marriage. I remember thinking if we postponed it I wouldn't go through with it at all. I could already sense the hardships awaiting me in this marriage and I was not sure I trusted what I was getting myself into. But I prayed and made a deal with God. He had told me everything was going to be fine and to marry this man. I told God that if our wedding was postponed I would take that as His sign to call it off. But if we didn't postpone I would take that as His answer and the wedding was on.

You see, I am a romantic. But only in my dreams in my head at that point. I didn't believe romance was real. It was too good to be true. So because I didn't believe in it, I thought I wouldn't ever get romance in real life so why try for it? I dated with my head in the clouds and didn't pay attention very well. But I'm lucky I leaned on the Lord because he knew what I needed.

So as you can guess, our wedding wasn't postponed and I married him.

End of story. Happily ever after.
But happily ever after doesn't exist.

I was miserable. There were times I regretted the deal. There were times I second guessed myself.

But just now as I was thinking back at this experience, I was greeted with a very pleasant feeling.
RELIEF!

I no longer feel regret, I feel relief.  Because instead of thinking, oh, if the wedding had been postponed, I wouldn't have married him, I am thinking... IF THE WEDDING HAD BEEN POSTPONED, I WOULDN'T HAVE MARRIED HIM!

I have taken for granted so many blessings.

I have been ungrateful, critical, and emotionally unfaithful. So much time wasted in negativity. I envisioned him as a dead weight that I had to drag along behind me. I came up with the metaphor when we were engaged and first married. Somewhere in Courtship and Marriage class at the LDS Institute someone said that when we are looking to get married we look for someone we can walk hand in hand with into Heaven.

I thought to myself after I got married...well, that's a great thought while we are dating but now that I'm married I'm DRAGGING him if I have to! I even wrote that on the board in the Institute building. Silly me.

 That metaphor stayed with me. I continued to be self-righteous. I continued to focus my energy on the things he wasn't doing perfectly. I expected too much from him and not enough from myself. As I envisioned him weighing me down, in actually I was kicking him down and then dragging him across the floor before he had any time to get up.  I never allowed him to stand so he could walk, I just continued dragging him and both of us were tired of it.

 

If only I would just let go he would stand and walk on his own, progress, and take my hand so we could walk together.

He is his own person after all. I certainly wouldn't grow well by being pulled on so much.

Now I am looking at our marriage and am amazed he's stuck with me so long without giving up and looking elsewhere for someone who would just love him. I'm so glad I'm not too late to be that someone.  I'm going to let go and just love him.  I'm going to trust God can teach him and guide him far better then I can.

After all, that's the way I grow. I can allow him to do the same.

Lowering Expectations in Love

I was gifted a book by Melody Beattie, The Language of Letting Go, which gives a thought to contemplate for each day of the year and so I've been following it and I've gained great perspectives.  Some days are better then others but today it prompted me to reflect on a concept that seems to be returning to my mind again and again lately.

Lately I have been striving to be more positive with my spouse and cease criticism of all kinds.  I've been striving to keep my thoughts more positive as well and stop my negativity or my wishful dreaming of "if only"s or "why not"s away so I can welcome in more contentment.  After all, Marjorie Pay Hinckley said more then once that to have a happy marriage, "lower your expectations" but as simple as it sounds, that's hard!  It was until today's thoughts that I was more deeply able to understand what she meant.

I've never really thought of myself as a perfectionist, but I'm discovering that this is exactly what I have been doing to my husband.  I think whenever anyone gets married they have some expectation about the way they assume marriage will be.  It's not really something we can discuss beforehand very well because we honestly believe what we expect is a typical common sense way to envision of marriage.  Then after married, we suddenly realize our spouse doesn't fit those expectations and also has his or her own that we don't fit perfectly into either.

There are things I always dreamed someone who "really loved me" would do without even trying - things I have desired so desperately and seem so simple to me, but don't come naturally to my own husband at all.  Some of these expectations are so deeply desired that it's painful to let them go.  I felt like my expectations should be easy and that I was entitled to want something from my husband like...simple courteous thoughtfulness.  But I was wrong.  Expressing how much I wish he would do these things doesn't seem to help either.  It only enforced his feelings of inadequacy in our marriage as he continues to try so hard to please me in his own way.

In Beattie's book it says "expecting others to be perfect" is "destructive; it makes others feel ashamed and may interfere with their growth."  (Emphasis added.)  By expecting my husband to be great at these things that don't come naturally to him, I am actually making it harder for him to do those very things.  Beattie goes on, "People are human and vulnerable, and that is wonderful.  We can accept and cherish that idea.  Expecting others to be perfect puts us in that codependent state of moral superiority."  Of course we shouldn't tolerate anything abusive or destructive, "We can still expect appropriate responsible behavior..." but we must loosen up and let go of the expectations that we already know are causing unnecessary pain on both sides.

Further it read that "when we stop expecting others to be perfect, we may discover that they're doing much better than we thought."  I have noticed as I strive to stop being so critical of my husband, and (painfully) let go of my (deeply) desired expectations, he has been able to progress and my eyes have been opened to see his progress.  It feels so much better to let go of the negativity that has been a dead weight, bringing us both down.

My husband is a sweet man who loves me his way.  His thought process doesn't dwell on sentimentality, the way mine does.  There is both good and bad in my way too!  And that's ok!  We are both human and vulnerable and that is beautiful!  So, I must let go of my expectation that my husband will be something he is not right now.  I married him because of who he is, not who he isn't.

AND according to Donald L. Hallstrom's great talk in the Priesthood session last weekend entitled "What Manner of Men?", "Who we are is NOT who we can become!"

For some reason sometimes we feel like we aren't entitled to feel happy, like we have no right to happiness.  But we are that we might have joy!  We exist so we can choose happiness and let go of pain and sorrow from failed expectations, pride, or sin.  Christ has allowed us to let all of that go and be joyful!

I must love and accept my husband just the way he is now and so he can become better, through Christ.  I must believe he will, but allow myself right not to be content and happy, waiting upon the Lord, and loving a good man.