It is a Daily Process.....

As you may remember, I wrote about repentance earlier. It is a daily activity now. It seems that as hard as I might try, I still have to face up to the fact that I am my own worse enemy. You probably noticed that I have been harboring some negative feelings where my sister is concerned. I love her and I respect all she has done. However, that did not keep me from feeling that she did not care that I was hurting so badly.

I have since come to realize that I hadn't told her how much it hurt, or even why I was harboring those feelings. I also realize that she did the best she could under the circumstances. After all, her marriage is much more important that a business (especially a struggling one), and there was a real possibility of losing her husband if she had not returned home when she did.

I know that I need to be more tolerant. It is something that I am working on. I have made the decision to just drop the whole matter. It takes too much energy on my part to harbor bad feelings, and she is struggling right now with knee surgery, so I don't need to add my burdens to her already aching back. It is time for me to work on my own problems and stop trying to figure out how others should live.

I forgive you. I understand, and I don't want to waste any more energy on something that can't be changed. I want my family to be happy again, so, I hope you will be able to forgive me also so that we can indeed kneel at the altar in the temple when we are sealed to Mom and Dad.

Now, if I could just get all of these other little habits and slips to stop. I finally got the carpets cleaned and the furniture will be moved back tonight. The dishes are done, and the laundry is current. It would really help if the mail did not pile up on me and if the plants on the patio would not dry out so quickly. I am trying to get the upper hand on life so that I am more proactive and less reactive. It seems there is always so much work to be done, and not enough time for "fun". However, fun usually costs money or virtue, so I guess I should be glad there is so much work to do.

I am also trying to stop the habit of day dreaming. The biggest reason is that my day dreams are not very productive. They also sometimes slip into areas that I have worked hard to overcome in the past. One of the hardest things for me to overcome in the idea that I will someday not feel the pain and hurt that I have caused others in the past.

I listened to a talk by Wendy Watson Nelson in which she says that the Savior can heal with "NO SCARS". In my heart I know that it is true, but in my head I still have the memory of the pain I caused my children when I left my marriage, and every time I hear them discuss their childhood it comes back with full force and takes my breath away again. She mentioned the metaphor of a board full of nails being a person with active sin. Repentance was the act of removing the nails from the board. She said that it is tragic that some people spend the rest of their lives walking around with all of those holes in their heart. I think I am one of those people. I pray that someday those holes will close up, but in the meantime, I still bleed each time I remember how weak I was.

Each day I pray for strength; strength to overcome yesterday's weaknesses, strength to bear today's burdens, and strength or face tomorrow's challenges. I also pray that someday I will be able to look back and not crumple into a mass of tears. It has been 26 years and I am still crying.