Mom

Next Saturday is the 14 anniversary of my mom and step-dad's deaths. I wish things could have been different and I would have gotten the chance to know my mom.  I never thought I'd get closure with her since she died before we had the chance, but thankful I was wrong. I feel like I will finally get closure next Saturday when I am baptized on her behalf.

Empathy, Anger, and Forgiveness

Around this time of the year I find myself wondering about the man that caused the accident that killed my mom and step dad. I wonder if he still thinks about it. I wonder if he thinks about the lives that he forever altered almost 14 years ago. I wonder if it is wrong of me to have empathy for this man who caused this accident.  I truly believe that this was an accident and I hope that the guy isn't beating himself up over what happened, it's just I wonder sometimes.

I struggled with having empathy and compassion for this man right after the accident happened because this man killed, although by accident, my mom and step dad.  Why would I care how he felt? Was I being disloyal toward my mom and step-dad for having empathy for this man? Was there something wrong with me? Shouldn't I have wanted justice? That seems to be the way society works. Someone must pay, but I couldn't help but feel for this man. I imagined myself in his place and I just didn't know how I'd be able to live with myself if I had been the one who had caused this accident.

I did have my moments of anger at this man years later when I saw the pain it caused my sister to lose both of her parents.  I was angry at him.  I wondered if he realized the destruction he left in his wake. The lives that his actions forever altered. I was also angry with this man because he took away my chance to ever know my mom. I will always have questions that will never have answers. 

It took a long time to come full circle with the man that caused the accident but I finally did get back to empathy for him.

Which Path Will I Take? The Choice is Mine.

I feel like I hit a wall. It happened very quickly, so quickly that I don't really understand how things could turn so bad so quickly. I was doing really well. I was feeling really positive and then I wasn't. I'm feeling very tired. Everything in me is screaming to just give up. I haven't been reading the scriptures or praying like I should, so yesterday I prayed to Heavenly Father and asked him to please help me. A few hours later I was working and I had this very strong thought come into my mind. It was a question, "When will you make a different choice?" Then I had, it wasn't necessarily a thought as much as it was a feeling, that told me Heavenly Father was going to keep bringing me back to where I am now until I make a different choice. I've been here 3 times before with my weight loss. I've been near this weight and then all the self doubt creeps in and the weight loss isn't there so I give up and go on a binge. I gain quite a bit of weight and then have to lose it again only to get stuck in almost the same place again and again and again.

I felt prompted to do a search on lds.org regarding choices and I came across a New Era Article entitled, 'The Choice is Yours' by Jonathan M Chamberlain. In it he writes, "Until you can see where you are, what is happening around you, and where you are going, you will likely stumble blindly along, feeling miserable and purposeless as you repeat the same mistakes or sinful acts over and over again, even though each time, you vow that you will never do it again. You likely struggle to overcome, only to give in again to the next temptation in the area of your greatest weakness. This is usually followed by deep feelings of guilt, suffering of soul, and despair of ever changing. It’s a cyclic pattern—that pattern of your sin.

Recognizing the pattern sin takes in your own life is one great step in learning how to overcome it. It is like studying the enemy’s movements enough to know what he will do and how to outwit him in his own battle. You can become the master of the situation by learning how to predict the next move and use effective strategies or techniques to counterattack or even to prevent attack altogether. Until you can do this with your pattern of sinning, you likely will feel vulnerable and unable to cope with a self-defeating behavior (SDB) and allow it to sweep over you without much resistance." This is the pattern I feel like I'm caught in. It is so disheartening.

The first suggestion he gave is very simple yet very visual. He says to draw a straight line on a piece of paper with a fork veering off at the upper side. Then to draw an arrow left pointing to right and label the map "My Road to Life". I hear over and over again "choose the right" and that is what this made me think of. There really is only one choice and that is the right. Elder Chamberlain goes on to say that the map needs to be completed. He says to think of a habit you have not stopped doing. He says to make the point where the line veers off with the word situation and says that this represents where a choice needs to be made. He then says to label where the fork goes off the straight line with "SDB" (Self Destructive Behavior) and to label the lower straight line as "Best Self". Best Self is where you find your joy, contentment, and creativity.  It is true that this is how my path works for me. If I am on the straight path I am happy, I am content, and life is good. It's when I start veering off that the self doubt and sadness comes in.

Elder Chamberlain goes on to write that everyday we alone make choices to get us to where we are. He says we need to make 5 choices in order to keep the sin going and they are:   (1) inner choices, (2) outer choices‍ that support the inner choice, (3) the choice to minimize or imagine that the results are less than what they really are, (4) the choice to abandon who you really are, your best self, and (5) the choice to behave irresponsibly long enough to do the act again.

An inner choice is an urge, thought, or a deliberate plan and an outer choice is the actual act of completing the choice. I personally am an expert at the third step which is the minimize the results are less than what they really are. I say to myself quite often I can have something because this is a journey not a race. While it is okay to have something on occasion it becomes an SDB when I start lying to myself about how often I'm doing this. I know that making this choice keeps me stuck and keeps me from doing what Heavenly Father wants me to do and I swear I won't do it again but I always do.

Elder Chamberlain offers hope when he says, "It is within your power to take charge over all of these choices‍ and to select alternatives that are self-enhancing rather than self-defeating. Free agency is given to all. It comes in moments of time that are meted out to us evenly as long as we live. It is in these small units of time that we exercise our agency and do our choosing. Because of these, we are in total charge over the moment in which we do the choosing, even when we choose to be out of control. Those who exercise their agency to choose to go straight ahead on the road of life reap happiness and joy. Those who continually choose to go the SDB route reap sorrow, misery, illness, and even an early death."  He goes on to say, "When you realize that the power is already within you to choose to follow the best-self route, then you can take control over your SDB, over your sin, and make certain that you end up receiving the blessing you really want for yourself and your loved ones."

Elder Chamberlain suggests imagining meeting a usual temptation as your best self and look ahead to how good it will feel to stay to the right. He says we may have moments of fear and anxiety when we give up the SDB but he called them mythical fears.  Fears that try to scare us from making detours from our path. I think that this is where I am now. I'm facing a mythical fear and it is a fear that I have given into time and time again. 

I think it's also interesting what he says about the argument that I lack will-power. He says that will-power is nothing more than time and agency. That we have been given time to make choices and the ability to choose between alternate courses of action. He says that these two things are all be need to choose the path that leads to happiness. I love how he ends this article, "Which path will you take? The choice is yours."

The choice is mine and I don't want to give in to the same fears. I want to make different choices than I have in the past. I want to own my ability to choose my path. This article is what I need to hear. It may have been written before I was born but I feel like it was written for me. It just rings of so much truth.

http://www.lds.org/new-era/1977/02/the-choice-is-yours?lang=eng&query=choice+yours