REPENTANCE

As you all know, repentance means change of mind.  I have debated about making my repentance public but if it will help people I truly love, it will be worth the risk.  I have often joked that the advantage of not being healed quickly, is that you have time to take notes. 

This last week has been difficult.  There are two sources of stress:  external and internal.  My goal is to stop up the holes that allow external stress to get inside me so I can then start bailing out all the stress that has accumulated from the past.  I have two types of reactions:  those toward my environment and those toward my memories, which often occur simultaneously.   

The treatment I am attempting to apply is to consistently observe my body in my mind’s eye (this is called body awareness).  Shifting my awareness from one finger to another, for example, makes it easier to objectively observe what I am thinking, and I find that it is true that I cannot be aware of my fingers and be lost in thought at the same time.   It changes my relationship with thought.  I begin seeing my thoughts as a kind of movie instead of getting caught up in the movie as if it were reality. 

The problem is I have a zillion conduits to my environment.  It’s like trying to stop up a sieve.  I can’t just poke my finger into one hole in the dam.  There are just too many holes.  I suspect I have become hypersensitive because I doubt myself.  The problem is, the more I doubt myself, the more hypervigilent I become to the environment, and the more hypvigilient I become, the more distracted I get, which causes me to be even more untrustworthy, and hence more doubtful!  Vicious cycles are vicious prisons and I am drowning in one of my own making.   It’s no wonder I have this permanent frown on my face (which Britta says she can see in her mind’s eye).

The instruction is to cast out doubt which means to trust my conscience.  I have apologized a lot this week.  There have been a few tiny little reasons for hope, however.  I started washing over with rage and an expletive came to my lips which I actually did not utter.  I haven’t gotten to the point where I can anticipate temptation.  I just suddenly have a flashflood of emotion.  We needed to go to Church and in the past, I would have taken the Sacrament and gone home, not trusting myself to be civil or sane.  But this time, I begged God to purge my soul, to root out the rock hard parts of my heart and allow me to be a more pure conduit for His love—hoping that as it passed through me to heal others it would heal my soul as well. 

As I walked bravely into the Church, our young Relief Society President came out of Ward Council and something I said started her crying.  She was so overwhelmed.  I took her outside and told her a story our Mission President’s wife relayed at the last Zone Conference.   

Sister Barry had been asked to be in charge of a play for the Church; something she had never done before.  She didn’t want to do it and would push it aside, even though it kept weighing down on her mind.  Finally, she went to the temple.  While there, she was reminded of her commitment to offer up all of her time and talent.  She said she came out “on fire”, ready to give her all.  She said everyone was supportive and even came to early morning practices.  Everyone worked long and hard and after the final dress rehearsal, she was cleaning up the cultural hall when some people came in to start a baptismal service.  She had forgotten about the baptism but really wanted to go, so she ran home, quickly changed her clothes, and slipped into the back, a little late.  She was totally exhausted.

She said as she was listening to the speaker, she wondered if this new member of the church knew what he was getting into.   At that very moment, she looked behind the right shoulder of the speaker and saw a picture of Christ.  These words came into her mind, “Now I will do the rest.”  She had done all that she could do, but it was not enough.  She said the next evening the play was performed better than they had ever practiced and everyone was edified beyond anything they could have ever done themselves.

Our little Relief Society President stopped crying, looked me in the eye and said with a hint of surprise, “That really helped me.”  Little did she know that it helped me too.