Healing and Growing

The past 5 yrs. have been so rough for me, and I have had to endure and persevere through a lot of things, and I have had my ideas and ideals shaken and I have learned to stand up for myself and I have learned to not care about some things I used to think were important, and I have just plain learned and grown a lot through those years although it has been dang hard, when I tell people pieces of it, I jokingly will say, "but I've had enough, that's enough growing for me."  

I have had a really nice respite since we've been here and I have healed some.  Well, last week, unfortunately I ran into the same type of idiot authoritarian, snarky, mean attitude at church over what time we should have scouts.  But this time, my reservoir was not totally empty, and although I spent a couple of really difficult days, I really was able to deal with it much better.  I did realize that I was broken, it was the same as if I had been physically kicked and bleeding and I was down on the ground, my spiritual and emotional wounds from the hurt inflicted on me over time were still open and bleeding, but had started to heal some.  So when I got kicked again  I did what I have learned to do through every difficult time I have ever encountered and that was to pray openly and with sincerity and complete honesty about my situation.  

A friend of mine who had been in the process of moving and selling her house had told me how she had reached the end of her rope and asked the Lord if He would just grant her 3 specific things she asked for in regards to getting her house ready to put on the market and such, and she said, those 3 things happened almost immediately and she was so grateful and wondered if that was all she had to do was ask, but it increased her faith and it increased mine.  

So anyway, as I prayed, I told the Lord that I needed to be healed from this and the past and exactly how it felt and what it was.  Right after my prayer, I remembered how painful my parents' divorce had been and how angry I was and how sad I became, but how I wasn't sad or angry anymore, that I had healed from that, that I had accepted the situation as an experience and there were no longer those intense emotions associated with it anymore.  I have even learned from it and I am a better person because of it, much more compassionate and empathetic.  And I truly love my parents and appreciate their sacrifices and love for me, which I am only beginning to understand now that I have teens of my own.  So anyway, I felt that all was not lost that I was so broken, but that I would heal from the wounds I carried then.   Amazingly, it only took about 4 days after that, and I really felt healed from the pain I still carried from our previous ward, it doesn't anger me ao much any more as well as this more recent incident.

I also thought about our sweet little dog and her unconditional love for me even though I reprimanded her a lot and was exasperated and unkind to her at times, she still loved me and I wanted to have that same kind of love even for this new crazy lady in my life.  Of course, I will not put myself or my children in a position to be harmed by her or someone else like her, but I'm no longer powerless or angry, and that was a huge blessing.

So anyway, I'm learning a lot despite myself, because that's pretty much what life is-- learning.  Then I ran across this scripture in 2 Nephi 28:30 

 30 For behold, thus saith the Lord God: I will give unto the children of men line upon line, ^aprecept upon precept, here a little and there a little; and blessed are those who hearken unto my precepts, and lend an ear unto my counsel, for they shall learn ^bwisdom; for unto him that ^creceiveth I will give^dmore; and from them that shall say, We have enough, from them shall be taken away even that which they have.

So here's to learning and more growth! (Even though it's hard, this scripture encourages me to keep growing and learning and doing, no quitting)

Things I'm grateful for

I'm grateful to be a mother.  I especially love having my own sweet little baby.  I love it when they curl up in my arms and put their head on my chest or shoulder and just lie there.  I could just hold them forever.  From my first down to my last baby, I have tried to hold and cuddle them as much as they would let me, because I knew it would not last forever.  A bunch of them are well past that phase, I can hardly believe how big they all are, but I still give them hugs and thank them when they give me a hug.  It is so sweet to have those hugs and I always thank them and I always marvel at how willing they are to give them.  I am grateful for that.  I am also grateful that I was able to keep the kitchen pretty well cleaned this week.  That was nice.  I'm so glad to be able to do regular everyday things.  I am grateful for my body, and I will continue to take good care of it.  I have started to practice meditation and some mind body bridging techniques I learned from a friend, it has helped my anxiety and stress a ton along with exercising which I have just always loved to do and am so grateful that I can do it.  I'm grateful for my dear husband, he loves me a lot and accepts me how I am and he works so hard for us, and he has made me very happy and I love being with him and spending time with him.  I always wanted a good righteous happy family, where peace reigned, and I have it and I am very grateful.  It is probably my most prized possession.  Of course, not everything is perfect, but I am learning to appreciate the moment and to be more grateful and be fine living in uncertainty and be fine with not knowing the outcomes of everything.  I'm grateful for that too.

I am Grateful!

I am so full of GRATITUDE!!!  Every time I deal with anything that has to do with church these days, I feel good and happy!  There are so many quality good people I have met and we've only been here 2 months today!!  Everyone is so friendly and nice.  I misjudged a few of them because I thought they may act like what I was used to previously, but they have pretty much all proved me wrong. And they have given me space and patience.  I like them all, quarks, uniqueness, everything!  These are a different kind of people.  My girls went with the youth tonight to do baptisms for the dead, they came home happy.  When I took them to drop them off, I was welcomed and people talked to me and I was even asked why I wasn't coming since it was my daughter's first time.  I told them that it wasn't allowed in my previous ward and they just told me that in this ward, you just volunteer and go whenever you want.  I told some of the girls' it was my younger daughter's first time and they all said they would take care of her and show her the way, and they did.  

The YW president made sure she had my phone # if they should need it, and she apologized for not getting back to me on an email I sent.  The interaction was kind, caring and positive.  I told her it was fine she didn't get back to me, we worked it out.  The Relief Society president was there with her son and introduced me to her husband and we talked about him being a twin and me having twins.  There is such a nice spirit among the people of cooperation, caring, love and acceptance.  Wow!  I'm pretty much in awe of them.  I hope I can be like them.  This is a different church than what I experienced in Utah.  What we went through before this is totally foreign to them, some of the things I have mentioned that are different here, they just look at me weird and then shake it off and say, well, it's not like that here!  I'm so glad. 

The other thing that is a nice switch is that these people care about my kids and they want the same things for them that I do.  We actually have the same values!  And when they offer to help, they actually follow through and do help.  My oldest has been invited to accompany the ward choir and another lady who teaches piano talked to the school for me to see if they could use an accompanist there!  They also have the youth take turns playing the orgn in sacrament meeting.  There are a ton of other nice good things they do.  It is such a healthy environment and such a good way to be.  And very relieving as a parent especially of so many.  I'm so grateful that my kids now have a number of good role models to follow.

 It is also validating to find that I wasn't the crazy one!  It is reasonable for the YW organization to communicate with parents, email a calendar to both girls and parents and keep parents in the loop, and talk to parents.  It is such a relief!  This church is really, really good.  This is the church I would be willing to send my kids out as missionaries for, this is the church I may be willing to bring new friends to,  this is really how the gospel was meant to be lived.  When it's good, it's really good.  I have always loved the doctrine, and when the people live the doctrine and abide by the teachings, it is wonderful!  I am so grateful, pretty much all the people I've met since being here have been awesome, non church people included!  Even in the stores, people are just doing their thing.   When we first got here and had a lot of things to buy, I could just feel this absence of constant judgement that I had grown accustomed to in Utah.  These people are not all that concerned with anything I do, they are friendly and polite, but I don't feel judged constantly like I did in Utah, and I didn't even realize I felt that way there until I came here and experienced this.  I feel very, very lucky.   I don't want to ever take having lots of good quality people around me for granted.  I have so much to learn from these people.  Every interaction I have fills me with more hope and gratitude.  Maybe I'll even get to the point someday of being able to serve them some instead of just taking in all their kindness and love.  

I also don't want or mean to knock Utah too much.  I have dear friends and family still there, it is still my heritage and my home all the way to my dear Mormon pioneer ancestors who gave up so much.  It is also full of really good people who have learned to cope fine and even love being there with the beautiful mountains and scenic views, and they are seemingly unaffected or just have a completely different experience than what I had.  And maybe even have in their ward there in Utah, what I have in my new ward here in the East.  It just wasn't where I was supposed to be.  And now that I'm here, it's clear I needed to be here.  And I am grateful!

I am GRATEFUL!

Love Heals

The past little bit I have gotten to continue my listening of The Science of Natural Healing taught by Mimi Guarneri, M.D. through the Teaching Company.  I have been learning so much!  She has explained the effects of stress on the body.  Did you know that they have done studies and found that people under stress actually heal more slowly?  She also explains the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system and how to reset them by breathing, meditation and other ways.  She also talks about the effect of relationships and how much better people do when they feel loved and accepted.  I really like her approach of taking people where they are and helping them there, not condemning them, but really helping them and looking at her work as a service.  She talks about breathing, feeling love and joy, letting go of anger, accepting and forgiving people, energy, yoga, meditation, mantras, prayer, spirituality, relationships, support and love.  I have learned so much so far and a lot of things are making more sense to me.  My health journey is making a lot more sense, and I'm gaining a greater understanding and balance I feel.  Love really does heal, and this quote she quoted especially stuck out to me: 

The I in illness is isolation, and the crucial letters in wellness are we.

So again, love really matters, love really makes a difference.  It is that love that will change the world.   

Now I understand better what Moroni was saying and Paul for that matter:

1 Corinthians 13:4-13

New International Version (NIV)

4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Moroni 7:45

 45 And ^acharity suffereth long, and is ^bkind, and ^cenvieth not, and is not puffed up, seeketh not her own, is not easily ^dprovoked, thinketh no evil, and rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

Taking Off My Armor and Healing

I can hardly describe the relief I have felt since moving here to New Hampshire from Utah.  We have been here 6 weeks now.  Our Utah ward got really crazy, even crazier than our previous crazy Utah ward that we moved from and had a wonderful reprieve til the ward split in our backyard.  Every week and often 2-3 times per week after church and after any interaction with church people, I would have to evaluate people's actions and mentally work through my emotions so that I could live my own life and not be completely reactive.  But just given my situation with lots of little people to care for and teens to watch out for, I was living a very reactive life full of stress.  We sent our older kids to school instead of homeschooling them, I questioned my parenting choices along the way, was I really the one with the problem, because this was the second time going through this and everybody else seemed to accept their place.  But as I worked through scenarios, talked to people, made other people mad at me and tried to find answers, I concluded that even if I was wrong or the crazy one, so be it, I did not want to be like these so-called leaders I was under nor did I want my children to grow up to be like them either.  If this is heaven, then I'll go dwell in hell with the sinners.

Being in the situation I was in was sort of like being tortured drop by drop.  At first I could let it roll off my back, then I could withstand it and keep going.  I learned coping mechanisms, made sure I had positive interactions, learned which types of people I could trust and which I could not, but over time my reservoir emptied.  That's when I started having health issues, and started to limit interaction at all because I realized it was actually physically damaging.  That helped a lot, and our last month in Utah, December, we only went to our ward once, we went to other wards for various things and it was so nice!!  It was healing and relieving.  It softened us enough to call our new ward and let them know we were coming.

The bishop was super nice, I didn't detect any of the usual self aggrandizement or judging, trying to see if I would play the game types of things talking to him.  It was just a nice normal conversation, and he seemed genuinely interested and not over bearing at all.  He was happy to have people come help us move in.  We weren't ready for that at the time and we didn't ask for help.  But the primary president and sister missionaries came over to meet us one night, and the bishop stopped by another night and a couple other people called and they all wanted to help, so we let them.  And they were all super nice and really good and really helpful.

The first Sunday was stake conference, and that was good, I heard the gospel I love there, it even brought tears to my eyes that maybe I would fit in here, it felt like coming home.  But I did not want to talk to anybody, so it was nice to have a slow intro like that.  The YW organization is super good here too.  It is actually quite large, larger than what we had in Utah and the leaders are mature, a lot of them have kids on missions and out of the house and married.  They actually wanted to talk to me and get to know me a little bit.  I started to realize that these people are not like the Utah people I had grown accostumed to, I found that I didn't know how to act around nice normal people anymore.  I had learned how to cope in Utah, just hang back, don't draw any attention to myself, avoid problematic people, and have shallow meaningless conversations when it was unavoidable.  

It was very different and yet very familiar, it felt very much how I thought it was before I found out the hard way that it wasn't the way I had hoped it was, sorry if that doesn't make sense.  Anyway, it felt like these people were genuine and real and caring.  There was no self aggrandizement or judging.  There are still little quirks, but they are not damaging and mean and judgmental.  All my kids go to their classes without complaint, I think we all even look forward to church now.  Sunday school is fine, and there is nothing weird in Relief Society, in fact the teachers seldom have any visual aids, we just discuss things, and the discussions are good, there's nothing said that makes me cringe and I can tell people just want the best for each other.  When church is over, I feel a little weird because I feel lighter and I didn't have to protect anybody or react to anybody.  I am relaxed, I am able to talk to people.  One of my visiting teachers in particular has been really nice to talk to because she understands what I am going through, she recently moved here from Utah too, and we have very similar observations about the culture there.  It has been healing to find someone who doesn't think I'm crazy or overreacting or just so angry and even understands and has lived it.  It has been so nice to have understanding and goodness.

My husband just got back from going on a winter camp with our 11 yr old scout.  The whole Young Men's is the scout troop and then the quorums are each a patrol unlike the way it is done elsewhere in the church where the quorums are each their own troop and they are separate.  It was amazing.  The older boys were really good to the younger ones and the younger boys could observe and learn from the older ones.  There were a couple boys with emotional issues or autism, but they were all accepted and treated well.  And the leaders were all good too.   Not only have we gotten out of a bad situation, we have found ourselves in an extraordinary situation that is exceptional.  I cannot express my gratitude enough.  To have people who want the same things for my children that I do, to have people who want to see my family succeed and be happy and are happy for us and are accepting of us and not threatened by us.  These feelings are so foreign to me.

It is kind of like after you go skiing or roller skating for a long time and then take the boots or skates off and start walking around without them.  Your legs feel wobbly and it takes some time to walk straight and for it to feel normal again.   That's kind of how it feels for me now.  Another analogy I though of is how it must feel when a person removes some heavy armor they had to wear to stay protected and how much lighter they feel and relieved they don't have to carry it around anymore.

  

That's how I have felt after church and after being around people, a little disoriented, these people aren't afraid of me, I don't threaten their self identity.  They are comfortable with who they are and they are even willing to give me time to orient myself.  They are not offended at my defensive mechanisms of holding back a bit, asking questions or anything else.  I'm not ready to go at it full force, but I'm sure I will be at some point.  And I'm grateful that my children are in such a healthy loving environment now.  It is one thing to not be in a bad environment, it is another to be in a good environment.

That's where we are now and I am healing and so is my family and I am super grateful.