We each need a little sunshine

As I mentioned the last few weeks I am in a program that is meant to help me gain greater focus in my life and to move forward with goals and desires. Even with a new sleep schedule that involves me getting up an hour earlier than I was I have found myself much more energized in my day and much more joyful. Finding focus and purpose is a very powerful thing.



  So this week as I was feeling rather energized and excited to meet the day I decided to write sticky note notes for my co-workers sort of as a thank you and sort of as an affirmation. I then did my best to deliver them when their cubicles were empty (now don't think that I just gave away to the world my anonymous good deed, they can totally tell my handwriting. It wasn't about being anonymous, it was about being grateful and positive). So I had delivered the notes and was doing my best to focus on some tasks I needed to finish when a co-worker came over to me and told me I was being too happy and denied a bit of what I had written in the note. Now I realized that he was mostly joking when he said that I was being too happy and that him denying what I wrote said way more about his mental space than mine.

   It was then I realized a bit more about the world we live in, I wouldn't have thought there was such a thing as being too happy, but apparently we as a world are focusing in too much about needing to be focused on goals to the exclusion of all else. We need to be grim faced and only see the negative. I can't say that I blame people for feeling that way, it seems where ever we turn we see sad news online, on the news and people only seeing the bad. It can be hard to believe that there is good in the world, but what if we made it a goal to choose everyday to say something good, to share a blessing or tender mercy we received and to say the words " I am so glad" or "I am so grateful". I feel like we count our importance these days by sharing how many things are going wrong or how many deadlines are falling through. Now I'm not saying that we can't share our burdens with others, in fact I think if more people were sharing what was actually going on in their lives we would live in a world where we had more compassion for others because we all realized that we all have things. At the same time in a world of negative expectations think of how much more vulnerable it is to say what we are grateful for or to share something new we have learned.

   This week I had a friend say to me that it sounded like I have been reading self-help books and it made me sad that it was almost said in a negative tone of voice, as if it is bad to want to improve yourself, bad to want to learn how to process heavy emotions in a more effective way or to want to be in a better head space to help others.

   We live in a world that seems to think that being negative is the order of the day, that struggling is just part of the deal and that the more we speak negatively about situations the cooler we are. So what if we started a revolution. What if we got genuinely excited about things, what if we spoke with happiness in our voices and we even smiled a time or two. I know that life can feel heavy, that it isn't all puppies and roses. We can and should share the ouches, but do we share them seeking for support, hope and solutions or do we share them in anger and disgust? I just realized that Satan lies to us, he says that if something is going wrong or isn't going quite the way we had hoped then we need to be in the depths of despair or at least we can't feel two emotions at once. We can be sad or disappointed that things aren't going quite the way we had hoped and we can feel gratitude for good things, be excited for others' successes and generally be cheerful. We are complex human beings we can feel more than one thing at once.

   This life is full of enough struggles and enough clouds, I hope that this week we can each bring a little sunshine, even in the middle of our own storms, we all need a little sunlight and just think what could happen if we all brought a little sunshine to the table, we could light up the whole room. I hope this week even in the midst of all that is happening we can each choose to see a little good, to celebrate a success no matter how small and that the nurture our hope in Christ to grow so that we can each bring sunshine to another who could feel surrounded by clouds.

Really is Progress

It has been what I feel I can only describe as an insane week, a good week, at the same time an insane week. I started a twelve week program called Go Vertical that helps in focusing the mind, goal setting and emotional release techniques to help let go of baggage from the past. After only a week I find myself with an excitement for life and a joy to see what is just around the corner. At the same time I find myself exhausted from short nights and lots of adrenaline dumps and maybe, just maybe feeling a bit jaded.

  Now I invite all of you to chuckle just a bit as I let you in on a little secret, there was a point in the week when I wondered for just a moment what life would be like without struggle. With so many things looking up, with me feeling so hopeful, I just felt sure my struggle was over, or would at least take a bit of a hiatus. Yes in that moment I forgot an eternal mortal truth, mortality was created with struggle as it's goal. I don't mean to say that Heavenly Father wants us to be miserable, He just knows we get a lot higher when we take the stairs instead of always walking on a flat surface. Anyhow in that foolish moment I wondered what life would be like now that I had "the tools I needed" to move past struggle. All I had to do was use tools and repeat and then I would be fine...yeah...no. Yes slaying dragons does wonders and saying my declarations help me face the day in a better frame of mind, but that doesn't mean my struggle is over, that just means that we are leveling up. It's sort of like the game of Super Mario. When I was little the first level was really hard for me, in fact it took a whole lot of lives for me to even get half way through the first level. But as I practiced and put in a whole lot of effort I finally made it to level two. Then it took a whole lot of practice to get to level three...and so on. Sometimes I went back to level one just to remind myself that that which had been so hard once did get easier and that when I put in the effort those harder levels would get easier too. Not because the game took pity on me, but because my skill and tenacity helped me level up to a new level of play.


  I would guess that life is much the same way. The logistics of the video game did not change, no matter what level you were on it was a matter of running, jumping, and sliding at just the right time to get where you needed to be. But just because I learned to jump in level one, didn't mean it wasn't still hard to jump when the scenery and circumstance were different in level three. I think sometimes in life we think (and I am definitely feeling this way today) that if we figure out something once that we have mastered it and we can move on. That once we figure something out we move to the next skill and the next skill after that, but I'm starting to realize that isn't exactly the case. Perhaps it is called enduring to the end because we are meant to do some of the same things over and over again, just in new circumstances so we can use that same basic skill set in a myriad of different ways. I would guess the root of the skills we are to learn in this life is charity, the pure love of Christ. In fact the first great commandment is to love the Lord your God with your whole heart, might and mind. Second only to that is to love your neighbor as yourself. We are here to learn to love those around us, even when we see them in all their human mortalness, instead of the Gods and Goddesses they will one day be. We are here to learn to love other's as our Savior loves us and I think we are also here to learn to have charity towards ourselves to forgive ourselves and to keep forgiving and keep trying.

  Last week I shared how I chose to give my anger to Christ because I valued my relationship with Him more than my own perspective and emotion. This week that was put to the test. I had made plans and those plans were sort of changed without my input and I have been struggling letting that go. It is times like these that I feel a bit like a two year, I want what I want and I want it now. I am sorry to say I haven't handled things as gracefully today as I did last week, but perhaps this is me adjusting to level two. At least right now I know where I want to end up, even if at this moment I'm not completely sure how to get there. Yes I have the tools and some skills, perhaps now it is learning how to apply them in new ways to fit new circumstances.

  Perhaps enduring to the end simply means to keep trying, that when it feels as if we have failed, because our solution just didn't work as well as it did last time that we just keep trying, that we never give up. Because of the Atonement of Jesus Christ we can always try again and we can always learn again. Mortality is a whole lot about a heart willing to try again and a lot less about immediate progression. Perhaps what feels like a step back is really two steps forward, because realizing what is going on inside us and around us and what we are hoping for really is progress.

No Anger ever Could

  I think I'm finally beginning to understand and accept that there are no magical solutions, that most things don't just go away. We cannot learn by having things go away, we learn by working through, learning and overcoming them. There came a point a few months ago when I was in a really low place and Christopher was in a really low place as well and I started praying that it could be over, that we could come to some sort of a conclusion and move on to the next thing. I just wanted it to be over, I was tired, I was done, and I was emotionally empty. At that time I felt my Father in heaven ask me a question, he asked "do you really want it to go away or do you want to learn what it being here can teach you? If I take this away you won't learn what it is you knew you needed when you agreed to come here." At that point I decided that I did want to learn what I needed and not put it off, looking back from today I also realize that I haven't done it as gracefully as I would like. I got a bit of a chip on my shoulder, feeling that too much was expected of me. I felt the burden was too heavy and having heard that I had things to learn, I felt I had to do it on my own, forgetting that I could still learn while involving the Savior.


  Now fast forward through three weekends of trainings, six weeks of therapy appointments, lots of writing and lots of hopes that things would magically get better for both of us...except they didn't.. Really all that I learned was that I am in control of my emotions and that I need to let myself feel my emotions. Those two things really didn't go together in my mind. If I was in control of my emotions, wasn't I just supposed to stop them before they went anywhere, but if I stopped them, then how in the world was I supposed to feel them.

   Then yesterday I realized something, there is a difference between feeling lonely, feeling sad, feeling confused, and allowing that loneliness, sadness and confusion lead to anger, resentment and bitterness. It depends upon the story that I tell myself or if I choose to not tell myself a story at all. I can't control my circumstances, I can't magically cure depression and anxiety, I can't force someone to talk to me or force them to be comfortable in unfamiliar circumstances. But I can respond with grace. I can accept that we all have limitations and we are all trying our best.

   The realization that I finally accepted is that I can feel loneliness, I can feel sad or even frustration and then let the emotion go, I don't have to hold onto it and fan the flames with past hurts and memories from months ago. Instead I accept that I am sad and I ask my Savior to help hold that hurt as I work through it and then it is gone. When I woke up this morning for the first time in months I wondered where the anger and discontent were, I wondered what to feel. Then I realized I didn't have to decide to feel anything, I could accept today for the possibilities it held for good and move on. And you know as I did that I found peace and the Spirit I hadn't felt in months. In choosing to feel and then let go I allowed space for the Spirit to speak to me again. I had missed that, I have missed having the Spirit as my constant companion. Friday night at Time Out for Women Tom Christofferson said something that softened my heart to learn what came yesterday. He said that there comes a time when coming to know Him (Christ) is more important than knowing why.  I saw that happen this weekend. It was more important for me to want to be near Christ than it was to hold onto the anger. We cannot hold onto anger and frustration and expect to be near our Savior, the ultimate example of love and meekness. He always desires to be near us, but the emotions we choose to hold onto can keep us from feeling the love He wants to give us.

  I realize this isn't easy, this has been a process of months of learning, pondering, and praying to finally realize that I can choose to let things go, it is my choice and a choice that brings a love into our lives that brings a comfort and hope that no anger ever could. I also realize that this will be something I learn and relearn and apply and reapply, but for today this is a beginning and one I am excited for.

Learn to Respond

There have been two main things on my mind this week. The first is choosing to respond instead of react. The second is that when we have been piling up emotions inside of us for a long time there comes a point when we can't respond rationally because we don't have clear space in our mind to see what is really going on. All we can see is the hurt from yesterday, last week, last month, last year, five years ago, a decade even. All of these emotions, if never gotten rid of in a healthy way just stays deep down inside us waiting to explode and as it waits to explode it begins coloring our vision, we no longer see reality we see hurt, that turns to anger, that turns to resentment.

  As I started writing I was going to say that first comes responding instead of reacting, but the more I thought about it the more I realized that until we learn how to work through emotions in a healthy way we will continue struggling choosing to respond instead of reacting. Now you might be wondering what the difference is, the prefix of 're' on both words would seem to indicate they are the same, but upon closer inspection we see (or at least this is how my brain quantifies it) that react means an action came our way and we are acting back in return to the initial reaction. Or something acted on us and so we act back to that action. It implies a lack of thought, we are simply acting back to what happened to us. Respond comes from the Latin word respondere which means answer to, to promise in return, to pledge. To my mind these words seem more thought out, more deliberate and seem to say that I am thoughtfully making an answer, instead of quickly acting in defense of myself.


  Our lives are full of experiences that were painful and built up emotions that can cause us to react disproportionately to future experiences. I have seen the good it has done in my life to choose to respond instead of to react. To take a moment and see what is causing my rather strong reaction and determine if the emotions I'm feeling fit with the circumstance or if I need to take a step back and dissect my emotions from reality. As I do I realize that I am defending myself from a life time of what I feel is being misunderstood, when the person saying something or doing something is coming from a life time of their experience. Only by stepping back and taking the time to respond calmly and desiring to know why they are doing what they are doing do we actually come to a helpful solution. I'm not saying this is easy, but responding instead of reacting saves a lot of heartache and wasted breath.

  Some of you might be wondering at this point well what do I do with my emotions so I can have the brain space to respond instead of react. The first thing is to be conscious of what emotions you are really dealing with. Generally what we think is anger is really just an outgrowth of fear and hurt. When we choose to consciously check in with our emotions we begin to see that what we think is a reaction to a single circumstance is actually a reaction to a life time of protecting ourselves. I struggle a lot with being called out when I have done something wrong. I want to be perfect and tend to forget that to achieve perfection correction is required. Well I received an email this week calling some things out that I had done incorrectly. It was an email so I couldn't hear the tone it was written in, but automatically my brain reached for hurt, because I had had some interactions with this person in the past, I reached for the bad. Yet I also knew that I wanted the process we were working on together to improve in the long run. So I re-read the emails and took some time thinking about what I really wanted, once I knew that I realized I needed to apologize for not doing it correctly, then set up a system to do better in the future. I am hopefully waiting to see how this new system works.

   Realize that what you experience in the moment, is not from the moment, but from a past full of experiences. Then find what works for you, maybe taking a walk and talking to yourself (make sure that no one is around) and talk things through, then as you walk back focus on what you are grateful for. Or maybe do a write and burn, choose an emotion and write it out for a page, then tear it into little pieces and burn it. You can write everything out because no one else will see it, get out all the mean, the nasty, the hurt and the painful, let it go on paper so that it doesn't burn away your insides instead. As you say good by to those emotions and work through the experiences that caused them, you don't have to be haunted by them anymore, you can be grateful for what you have learned and find peace in moving forward

   I'm not saying this from a place of having perfected it, but I know I have a lot more peace even in just the last few days, choosing to be an agent unto myself, choosing to respond instead of being reactive and taking ownership of my emotions instead of letting them own me.

We see what we ask to see

If last week was learning to allow myself to receive those things that the Lord has for me (especially when they are greater than I had planned for myself) then this week has been to learn that I can control my emotions and there is value in meeting people where they are.

  This last week seemed to come down as a crushing weight, work responsibilities feeling as if they are getting heavier and heavier, feeling as if I'm failing at being a ministering sister and feeling more and more voices in my head demanding me to be frustrated with current circumstances, that I was in over my head financially, demanding that I am emotionally overwrought and telling me that I am all alone, that no one cares and that it is my right to wallow in self pity and anger. The thing I couldn't figure out in the midst of all that is what all those emotions were based on. When I would pause and really think about what was going on in my life I could logically trace myself away from all of those emotions, when I really thought about it none of the emotions I was feeling made sense nor did I really want to be feeling them. Yet I was so caught up in what I was feeling that I could almost convince myself to stay in the moment of the emotion.

  It was in the midst of this whirl of emotions that I remembered my brain will look for what I ask it to look for. Because I was frustrated my brain was looking for things to keep me frustrated, because I was mad my brain kept looking for reasons to keep me angry. Last night after months and weeks of emotions building, I finally decided I was tired of being angry, I was tired of being frustrated and I was tired of only seeing the bad. So yesterday I asked Heavenly Father to help me see the good.

   Though this coming Wednesday is the date of our anniversary, yesterday was the weekend in which we were married, so it was still an anniversary of sorts. I assisted a bride and groom at the temple yesterday and it was very special to stand in the room where I was sealed three years ago. Yet much more important was my time in the bride's room early that morning when all was quiet and I could look in the mirror and remember the excitement of that day three years before as I prepared to go up to the third floor and be sealed for time and all eternity. Oh the hopes and dreams I had that day and oh how naive that girl was for all that was in store for the years to come. The girl looking back at me in the mirror yesterday, was not the same one from three years ago, she had seen, and felt and experienced so much more than I ever imagined with the experiences of a few weeks ago just one of many. Yet as I looked in the mirror and thought of all of life's experiences I prayed to my Father in heaven to see the good. It is so easy for our brains to just hold on to the bad bits, to let the negative things overwhelm us, it takes work to look for the good, but I can promise you that decision to see the good changes our hearts and allows the power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ to enter our hearts, to ease the pain, to ease the sadness, to wipe away the memory of past tears and to allow compassion and charity back into our hearts.

   Though this experience is heart changing it can take time. Yesterday morning may have been my declaration for change but it wasn't until last night, doing dishes in the silence in my kitchen that I finally put the voices to rest, I starved them by realizing that I am not without fault in all this. I am an imperfect being with my own struggles, frustrations and bad habits I fall back onto. It is not until I could see myself clearly for who I was and my own shortcomings that I realized I didn't have a leg to stand on for my anger and pain. And that I had spent so much time blaming and being angry I couldn't see the good that was actually happening. I was the servant who was forgiven the debt, trying to repay the forgiven debt by going after someone else.

  None of us are perfect, we all have shortcomings, we all fall short of the glory of God, yet the more we reach to beat ourselves up and those around us, the more we only see the negative. Somewhere in the last year I had forgotten how to be kind to myself. Feeling that if I couldn't control those things outside myself, I figured I could at least hold myself to the mark...forgetting that I am human and that my Savior has mercy. In learning to forgive others as we see our own shortcomings, we must not forget to give our ownselves room to fall short, to admit we have limits, to admit we have short comings and to just let ourselves keep trying with the help of our Savior.

   Our Heavenly Father sees and recognizes our needs, even when our needs might simply be a story in our heads. Sometimes He sends dear old gentlemen to pay for our lunch, just so we know we are known.

  Just as our Heavenly Father and Savior extend mercy and kindness to us, they have asked us to extend that same mercy to others. I saw a very interesting post by Hank Smith this week he said "God doesn't tell us to cheer up those who mourn, He asks us to mourn with those that mourn." As we go through this mortal journey we will meet many who are struggling, who are worried, who are fearful, who are tired, who are weary and who mourn. It is our divine nature to want to help, to lift and to carry, but please remember, Heavenly Father doesn't ask us to carry them or cheer them up, He simply asks us to mourn with them. As someone who has had cause to mourn can I just say the person who said "oh that must be really tough, how are you?" did so much more for me and my flagging spirits than the person who said "oh you're tough, you can do it, there's a light at the end of the tunnel." When we are in dark places often we aren't ready to step into the light, but it sure is wonderful to have someone in the dark with us who has a flashlight of love and a listening ear.

   I testify that we are known, that we are loved, that we see what we ask to see and that when we ask our Savior to help us see the good He will help us see it.