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Letting Go...

3/20/2015

Sometimes we hold on to something we love so tight because we are afraid that something so great won't happen twice. But until you learn to let go, you will never know! Our lives have ups and downs for a reason! We may never know how strong we are until being strong is the only choice we have left! At that moment, we see our foundation of faith and face all four deep hopes! To make room for more you must release some and remember, when one door closes, a window opens somewhere!

Find someone who will:
Never get tired of kissing you everyday.
Hug's you when you're jealous.
Understandingly keeps silent when you're mad.
Squeezes your hand when you're not in the mood.
Plans and imagines the future with you in it and when you find someone...
Never let go.

Maybe your first love is the one that sticks with you because it's the only person who will ever receive all of you. After that, you learn better. But, most of all, no matter what, a piece of you forever remains left behind in the heart of the one you loved - a piece no future lover could ever get, no matter what. That piece holds innocence, the belief that love really can last forever. It holds friendship and pain, trial and error, that one kiss you'll never forget, and that night under the stars you can ever get back. It holds youth and everything you thought love would be, everything that was proven wrong.

We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

It's okay to lose your pride over someone you love, but don't lose someone you love over your pride.

Sometimes, in order to be happy in the present moment, you have to be willing to give up hope for a better past.

I believe you can still love someone, but not like them. You love them for the person they were when they were with you, and for how they made you feel at one point. you still love them, and you might always. But you can still not like them, their personality might have changed. They might have gone the wrong way, they might have lost themselves. Or, they might have just given up on you. Or everything they believed in before. It can happen.

People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway. If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway. What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today, will often be forgotten. Do good anyway. Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway. In the final analysis it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.

Never let go of someone if they are willing to fight for you no matter what you have put them through, it's rare to find someone who loves you like that.

Love isn't perfect. It isn't a fairytale or a storybook and it doesn't always come easy. Love is overcoming obstacles, facing challenges, fighting to be together, holding on and never letting go. It is a short word, easy to spell, difficult to define, and impossible to live without. Love is work, but most of all, love is realizing that every hour, every minute, every second of it was worth it because you did it together.

Letting go takes love. To let go does not mean to stop caring, it means I can't do it for someone else. To let go is not to cut myself off, it's the realization I can't control another. To let go is not to enable, but allow learning from natural consequences. To let go is to admit powerlessness, which means the outcome is not in my hands. To let go is not to try to change or blame another, it's to make the most of myself. To let go is not to care for, but to care about. To let go is not to fix, but to be supportive. To let go is not to judge, but to allow another to be a human being. To let go is not to be in the middle arranging all the outcomes, but to allow others to affect their destinies. To let go is not to be protective, it's to permit another to face reality. To let go is not to deny, but to accept. To let go is not to nag, scold or argue, but instead to search out my own shortcomings and correct them. To let go is not to adjust everything to my desires, but to take each day as it comes and cherish myself in it. To let go is not to criticize or regulate anybody, but to try to become what I dream I can be. To let go is not to regret the past, but to grow and live for the future.

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Tied to Shame:

3/13/2015

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Untransformed shame leaves you forever tied to the pain, and pain that’s not transformed will always be transmitted. The thought of hanging on to our shame and the related pain may seem absurd, but tragically it seems to be the norm rather than the exception. What happens when you don't know how to deal with shame after infidelity?

There is a difference between guilt and shame. Guilt stems from doing something bad while shame is “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging. Guilt is more likely to lead to healing behavior and shame is more likely to lead to hurtful behavior. When we feel guilt, the emotional distress of remorse causes us to examine our actions which creates pressure for us to confess, apologize, and make amends. Taking responsibility for what we’ve done makes us a better person, our marriages safer, and our community a better place.

There are two types of shame. Individual shame / honor, which is based on personal achievement or failure, and social shame / honor, which is ascribed to us by those we are associated with. If someone we’re associated with does something shameful, we are dishonored and ascribed the shame associated with those actions. We experience either a perceived or actual loss of reputation, social standing, and value in the eyes of others.

When people feel ashamed of themselves, they are not particularly motivated to apologize or attempt to repair the situation, especially if their shame is the result of another person’s actions.

“Shame is not an emotion that leads people to responsibly own up to their failures, mistakes, or transgressions and make things right. Instead, they are inclined to engage in all sorts of defensive maneuvers. They may withdraw and avoid the people around them. They may deny responsibility and blame others for the shame-eliciting situation. They may become downright hostile and angry at a world that has made them feel so small. In short, shamed individuals are inclined to assume a defensive posture rather than take a constructive, reparative stance in their relationships.”

Now back to our original question:

What happens when you don't know how to deal with shame?

There are four likely responses a person who is unwilling or unable to deal with shame may experience after infidelity. You’ll see that the repercussions extend much further than the individual person.

1. Self contempt:

Attacking yourself and putting yourself down only deflects the shame, leaving it untransformed. We loath who we are and may even become suicidal, believing if others knew the truth we would have no value. People with self-contempt take responsibility for what happened, but fail to be responsible. When the women came forward accusing Bill Cosby of sexually molesting them 40 years earlier, people asked why anyone would wait 40 years before coming forward. Self-contempt is the culprit. To deflect the shame they experienced as a result of the molestation, they took responsibility for what happened and blamed themselves for being in that situation in the first place. Their shame prevented them from being responsible, doing their civic duty and exposing the offense. Dealing with the shame would've required being vulnerable, exposing what happened, and risking what others would think. In my opinion (and if indeed Mr. Cosby molested these women), one can safely assume that if these women had known how to endure their shame and expose what happened then others may not have been harmed.

2. Others-Contempt

The second way of maintaining shame is by attacking others and putting them down as a way of building yourself up and restoring your honor. While it may feel like seeing the other person as subhuman and worthy of nothing but disdain will transform shame, in reality it’s just the opposite. Laying your shame at the feet of another is about as effective as having your mate take antibiotics to heal your kidney infection. Shame can only truly be transformed by walking through the pain, not by transmitting that pain to another.

3. Withdrawal

When we experience the intense pain that comes from the belief that we are somehow damaged and no longer worthy of belonging, withdrawal may be your natural response to avoid the pain, but it leaves shame untransformed. I believe the best definition of courage is “wanting to live so badly that you don't care if you die.” Imagine being a soldier trapped behind enemy lines. The only way to survive would be fighting your way through the enemy lines. Survival would require wanting to live so bad that you're willing to take the risk of dying. Courage is facing that fear and doing what's necessary to save your life. Responding to shame by withdrawing robs you of life and leaves you disconnected from the relationships you so desperately need. It may hide the shame but it never transforms the pain.

4. Avoidance

Avoidance is the fourth approach that keeps people tied to the shame. Drug and alcohol abuse, denial, and thrill seeking are just a few of the ways people avoid addressing their shame. While shame’s sting may fade over time, the shame itself still festers just under the surface, waiting to break out. Ultimately, when avoidance is the coping mechanism for shame, you will need more and more of what doesn't work to keep your shame shoved down below the surface.

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Give up Now - You will never be married to the same person:

3/5/2015

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I have a dear active LDS friend. She married her high school sweetheart after waiting for him on his mission and dating him for two more years. They were married for five years…before he filed for divorce and left the church.

My parents got engaged five days after their first date. They are still married.

What…what?!

How does that happen?

I thought it was so important to know someone before you marry them and then everything works out?

Well…not quite.

See, after a few basic traits of ‘must haves’ and ‘can’t haves’ for the sake of compatibility, the person you marry is of little to no consequence.

Why?

Because they aren’t the person you will stay married to.

In a study done by a Harvard psychologist, Dr. Dan Gilbert, he interviewed thousands of individuals about personal change and concluded that “all of us are walking around with an illusion, an illusion that history, our personal history, has just come to an end, that we have just recently become the people that we were always meant to be and will be for the rest of our lives.” (Read the whole TED talk here) That is because it is easier to look back and see the changes that have happened than it is to look into the future and imagine inconceivable circumstances that will surely shape us.

That “illusion” that WE have already done most of our changing in life is as scientifically and rationally ridiculous as the “illusion” that we are marrying someone for the rest of our lives.

I, for one, have spent so much time trying to find ‘this specific type of person,’ while completely ignoring the fact that they will be different in 5 years, 10 years, 50 years…and guess what…?

So will I.

And if marriage is a commitment, then, in effect, I have to choose to stay committed and married to a new person, as a new person, every day.

That choice is made by work.

What I do know is that my fear that I married the wrong person is completely unfounded based on the fact that I will never marry one person.

So what I’m saying is that my friend is to fault and my parents are to emulate?

Not at all. There are so many circumstances I can’t even pretend to understand about why one couple is together and the other isn’t.

What I’m saying is that we only have one choice…and that is to continually choose to be married to the same new person over and over.

And that, to me, is a lot less scary than I feared.

So after looking for compatibility, love and marriage is about finding someone who is committed to change with me as we constantly become new creatures in Christ. For in the seas of change, it is only on a sure foundation that we can anchor our relationships.

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Unconditional Love...

3/3/2015

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“When you make the sacrifice of marriage, you’re sacrificing not to each other but to unity in a relationship.”

It is true that love and marriage means sacrifice, when we love someone we become selfless, devoted and we learn to accept the one we love wholeheartedly. Marriage may go in waves of ups and downs. Through these trials the love and commitment between partners are being tested, but how far would you go for the one you love?

“Blind Devotion” is a masterpiece about unconditional love. The story is about when a devoted wife and her loving husband face the biggest dilemma in their lives, which will put their commitment as a couple to an ultimate test.

“Sacrifice may sound awful, but it is one of the purest ways to show love to someone. Saying “I love you” is good, and necessary; but, giving of yourself, time after time, is proof that you really mean what you say.”

True, Unconditional love is shown by loving someone even when they don’t want you to.

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We don't always get to choose:

3/1/2015

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Divorce is an optionPOSTED ON FEBRUARY 20, 2015 BY KAYLA LEMMON

I don’t think I’ll ever forget her eyes.

Or the way her face changed when she told me, matter-of-factly, that it was done. Her husband left her and he wasn’t coming back.

The last two—three?—weeks have been circled around this very decision. We’ve all been impacted—losing sleep and losing our minds. He was our close friend too. It was a complete betrayal that left us all shocked and hurt.

He came home one day, packed a bag, and said the “D” word that means all the things that our worst fears and nightmares are made out of. He walked past their wedding album, grabbed a shirt she had bought him on vacation a couple months before, and that was that.

And it was nearly midnight when I got the call and came to—not pick up the pieces—but sit with her in the mess of pieces he left behind. There was no explanation. Now, three weeks later, there still isn’t. But it doesn’t matter because he’s gone.

I watched her go from helpless to sad to angry to sad again to strong to weak all in the matter of hours and days. But there was no other choice. I helped her pack. I helped her cut up credit cards. I distracted her with Slurpees and potato chips and episodes of Grey’s Anatomy. I stayed up with her until she fell asleep and then I cried myself to sleep because I hadn’t had a chance to yet.

I watched her make the decision to get out of bed each day and the decision to quit her job and move out of state and the decision to start over. I watched her confront her mom and dad with eyes full of tears and I carried her hope chest into a waiting car, my arms carrying the weight of memories. I watched her wrestle with feelings of self doubt and grief and pain and anger with Heavenly Father. I watched her question whether she was pretty enough. Strong enough. Good enough. She never thought she’d be “that” girl.

But who does?

“Divorce isn’t an option,” she said to me a million times, once when I was half asleep one night. “Doesn’t he know that?”

And that’s when I realized: It is.

Of course divorce is an option. When we forget that, we judge incorrectly. We have a stigma within our churches and even within society that says, “Divorce isn’t an option” and instead of it being meant as, “Divorce shouldn’t ever be the first option and it shouldn’t be the convenient escape route” it casts a bad light on those who are left, who have to leave because of abuse or addiction, or for those who found themselves oppressed or abandoned in some other way.

We were sent to this earth with options. We have an option to get married—and we have the option to leave it, too. We have the option to abuse and hate and live for ourselves–and we have the option to choose God. Do we always choose the right options? No. Watching my friend curl up on the ground, watching her withdraw her paycheck and cancel her phone and leave her life behind for good to start all over—I know for a fact it wasn’t the right option he chose. Buthe made that decision. And she shouldn’t be left with the red letter A on her forehead. Because out of the terrible choices of others will always come remarkable blessings anyway.

The simple truth found in Isaiah 41:10 speaks plainly: “Do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, I will help you, yes, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.”

No matter which choices we make–no matter what choices those around us make–we are in the palm of his hand. We are his children. Divorced, abused, heartbroken, lost, angry or abandoned–we’re his children. And we’ll make it.

I’m not writing this because I take marriage lightly or because I am an advocate for slipping the ring on and off without a second thought. I’m writing this because I watched someone I love break apart into a million pieces as soon as the door shut one Friday night—and I watched her keep breathing.

If divorce wasn’t an option—if we didn’t have the choice to move on from a terrible abuser or rise above the ashes of insecurity and self-hatred; if we didn’t have the agency to not only make a horrendous choice, but a choice to move forward with strength and choose well, then what kind of life would this be? And how would it ever lead to eternal life?

She is already branded. Stigmatized. Walking around with “young and divorced” as a banner isn’t a light load to lift. And especially within the church and Christianity and our own little social circles she will continue to be…all because “divorce isn’t an option”.

“He has his agency,” I remember telling her one night, staring toward an empty wall. “And he chose.”

And now she has to choose.

I’m inspired by her. Before we said our goodbyes she smiled and she said she knew she’d be okay. And I know she cried after she got in the car. Just like I did. But she moved her feet and kept going. She decided it wasn’t the end. That was her choice.

I learned a lot from her. Divorce is an option.

But so is love. So is strength. So is understanding.

And I’m grateful for that.

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Letting Go...

Tied to Shame:

Give up Now - You will never be married to the same person:

Unconditional Love...

We don't always get to choose:

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