Getting Personal: Part 1

There are a lot of thoughts I want to blog for my own journaling sake. Its more personal than I typically share, but I feel impressioned to. I'll post them in three segments. Here goes:

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ON CONTROL:
I spent a certain amount of my life believing that I had the power to eliminate problems/trials/heartache. If I look back and try to remember why I used to believe this…I think I recall feeling that this was possible in two ways: 1- I would try not to make decisions in my own life that would add or create trials for me, and 2- I could solve everyone else’s problems for them. (I especially thought the latter.)

To give my 'old self' credit, I think my motives were pure. I genuinely wanted to help everyone out of their “mess” so they could be happy. I wasn’t looking for recognition…but I was looking for the relief and peace that I thought would prevail from slaying a trial. Like I was some sort of trial-warrior for others.

The urgency that I felt when a trial arose – especially for someone in my family - was insurmountable. There was no amount of miles to travel, hours of sleep to lose, phone calls to make, baking to do, money to spend, counseling to give, (and the list goes on) that was too high, too big or too much to endure if it meant I could help (translate: fix) a loved one’s sorrow.

And then life threw me a few #10 personal trials. My world flipped-flopped around in all sorts of ways…and now…without exaggeration…I can hardly even remember those fix-it feelings. It’s like that part of me was surgically extracted and doesn’t even exist anymore. I can’t really explain it, but it’s true. And it’s brought such peace to me.

So now…when trials exist for me or those I love…I feel true compassion but not sole responsibility. I would still do nearly anything for my loved ones, but the motives are different. I would now do it without expectation of a “fixed” result. I have learned that it is NOT possible to take someone’s cross from them completely. In fact, to try and do so negates what the Savior already did for us. We have merely been commanded to love. And that love (pure, true and expectation-less love) can lift others burdens…but does not take them away.

Letting go of the control I perceived I had and realizing I am on Earth to love, not to fix… has brought so much more peace into my relationships.

ON BEING STILL:
For nearly two years now, I’ve felt like I have lived really close to (and sometimes right inside) the “refiners fire”. For reasons after reasons after reasons. And it’s just been recently that I can stop, turn around, look back and see some things with a tiny bit of clarity.

#1: A reaction and a choice are two VERY different things.
When Tucker lost his job nearly two years ago, and a myriad of other things were crumbling down…I wanted to run. I wanted to run somewhere, anywhere that would feel better. Sell the house? Move to Japan? The more extreme the better! I like to have a plan and be in control….and it wasn’t working anymore. Oh no!

But even through so much confusion and chaos I could not deny that my soul felt strongly that I was to “be still”. Over and over…when I knew nothing else, I knew that I was to “be still”. And I was able to realize that nearly every idea that came to my head at that time could be classified as a “reaction” and not a “choice”. So I focused on making ONLY choices, not reactions. It was really hard.

#2: Life is hard no matter what, and our job is to not get bitter and jaded.
I found myself struggling with resentments, anger and more specifically “this isn’t how it was supposed to go” type pity-parties. Well, if you stay in that place too long…then you’re entire outlook on life completely changes. Everything looks dim, gloom and sad. Life starts to look pointless. And I found myself feeling completely jaded.

In the dictionary - jaded: exhausted, especially through overwork. no longer interested in something, often because of having been overexposed to it. I don’t believe that pure joy will ever flow through me if I stay in that place. I absolutely have to (HAVE TO) push as hard as I can THROUGH a trial rather than waste years of my life (or the entire thing) trying to find the easier route (which doesn’t exist), or a way to avoid it.

#3 Peter 1:7 -That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.
Faith in what exactly? For me, it was holding on to faith that someday I could feel peace again. Someday, we’d feel more stable or secure. It was having a picture in my head that, no matter how impossible it may have currently seemed…and I didn’t have to know HOW it would happen (which was hard for me), but that it WAS possible to someday get to that place where I could breathe again (even if it was just to catch my breathe for the next trial). I got really caught up in the how. HOW is that peace going to ever come. And over and over I’d be reminded to surrender that control, let go and just believe that it CAN and WILL happen, even if I didn’t know how. And really…that’s the “how”! Believing is the “how”.

I’m speaking as though this is all past tense. When in actuality the intensity is merely momentarily relieved and I am feeling that peace that I believed would come. I’m still smack dab in the middle of my journey, like we all are. And chances are, when another #10 trial hits again someday…I may forget all of these lessons and have to re-learn them all over again. Human nature.

to be continued...