Creating a Space for God
My writing had become my predominant source of peace. Between 2003 and 2005, I had attended writer’s conferences at BYU every year. But in 2006, I stopped going to those and started going to private writer’s retreats. For Mother's Day or my birthday, my husband arranged for me to stay in a hotel in Vail, Colorado for a few days. I would write, get stuck or have a question, go to a different part in the room, kneel down and pray, ask for direction, go back to writing, receive the answers, and repeat. Being alone like that and making a space for the Lord to come into my life – to Hear Him – in these early years was instrumental in developing my relationship with him.
During these retreats and the months in between them I developed this habit of turning to God, rather than to anyone else. In 2007, I was still relatively new to communicating with him at this higher level. It wasn’t a matter of whether or not he was communicating with me; I realize that he always has been. It was a matter of me tuning in to hear his voice more distinctly, increasing the volume and frequency, and differentiating it from my own.
“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me” ~John 10:27
Alone at a Hotel Resort
So, at this retreat in Tuscan, I was alone at this hotel resort. Most people were with other people. I ate dinner in the dining room alone. I walked around the resort alone. I was in the elevator alone awkwardly wondering if I should strike up a conversation or not. All this made me feel uncomfortable. I didn’t feel uncomfortable being alone in my hotel room or in general. It was when I went down to eat or sit in an outdoor communal space around the resort. I felt vulnerable like people were looking at me and wondering why I was alone. It started to bother me more because I didn’t want to waste my time thinking about what they were thinking of me. Yet, I couldn’t stop myself. It was like a bad habit. So, I started praying about it.
Converting Thoughts into Written Words
My prayers during these days were written in my journal. This helped me make my conversations with God more tangible. Before, when I used to pray in my mind, it kept the communication abstract and in that vague realm of swirling thoughts and ideas. Writing them down converted my thoughts to the more concrete. And I believed it demonstrated to God that I was serious about wanting to know him better and his will for me. The bottom line was that it was the most important thing to me to Hear Him, not because it was the righteous thing to do, but because this was so intensely amazing, nothing could keep me away from it. At home, every free moment I had while I was taking care of my kids, washing the dishes, vacuuming, making meals, and pulling weeds, I was turning to him.
“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30
When I started writing my prayers out in 2006, my growth process accelerated. It became more intentional. I incrementally became aware of things I hadn’t noticed before. I was increasingly aware of my negative thought processes because I felt this new censure in my heart. For example, when I had a prideful thought, my heart would suddenly take a fall - this small kind of bitter-fear-like feeling. The more time I spent learning about Jesus Christ and who he was, the more I saw him and his characteristics. The more I saw him, the more I became conscious of where I could improve. It was a combination of my increased awareness of his presence in my mind and these effects I experienced in my heart. It was like I had a heightened awareness of when I stepped away from him and his way of thinking and loving. This was extremely fascinating to me and I absolutely loved it. Even though I was being censured and it was hard to learn how to speak his language, I was so thankful for it.
Random Reciprocity Thought Processes
Consequently, I was experiencing a new level of awareness in Tuscan, when I was alone at this busy hotel resort. I was aware of my thoughts about what other people were thinking about me. I’ll refer to this type of thinking as Random Reciprocity Thought Processes. It was annoying me that I was doing this. I recognized how insecure it made me feel. I wanted to be free of it. It was getting in the way of my relationship with the Lord because when I thought about what all these strangers were thinking about me, I couldn’t keep my mind with his. I would be distracted. I felt myself stepping away from his presence. And I wanted to stay with him all the time, not only because I loved hanging out with him and hearing what he said, but also because I didn’t like the vulnerability of listening for what everyone else was thinking about me. In essence, when I would engage in Random Reciprocity thinking, I really was alone.
He told me that the way to resolve this problem was to value his evaluation of me more than other people’s. He said I was using Random Reciprocity Thought Processes to asses my value. He reminded me of a time when I had gained the most control of these thought processes. It was when I was engaged to my soon-to-be husband. No one else’s opinion of me was more important than his. When other people voiced their opinions, they surprised me because I hadn’t been thinking about what they were thinking of me at all. I was more oblivious.
“Look unto me in every thought; doubt not, fear not.” ~D&C 6:36
The Effect of Relationships on Thought Processes
I developed Reciprocity Thought Processes when I was a child, partly out of self-preservation. People oftentimes take offense to what you do or say or are. And sometimes their response process hurts. They don’t notice or accept you unless you do certain things or act a certain way or are a certain way. And sometimes that makes you feel alone. As a child, I picked up on this unspoken communication process. I unintentionally changed certain things about myself based on the positive and negative feedback I received.
I also think this type of thinking intertwines with Empathy. Empathy is using Reciprocity Thought Processes, not to assess what other people are thinking of me, but to assess how they are thinking and feeling in a given situation. I use that information to determine how to best help them. This means the process of thinking what others are thinking or feeling isn’t the problem. It’s when I use the gift to assess how valuable I am to random citizens that the trouble occurs. Those people who have the ability to deeply empathize with people may have a more difficult time than others with controlling their Reciprocity Thought Processes.
If children don’t develop good, nurturing relationships with their parents and close family members, they will naturally and unconsciously seek approval and acceptance from others. They will adjust their behaviors accordingly. I studied this psychological concept in college. Some psychologists refer to it as Behavioral Conditioning. Over time if children live with a lack of love and acceptance in the home, instead of becoming their parents’ child, they become the child of someone else or of random people. I’m pretty sure this is how I developed this habit.
But when I met my future husband, I only wanted his approval and acceptance. It shut down any need to receive it from random sources. After we were married, we had issues from the get-go as most married couples do, but my Reciprocity Thought Processes continued to be bound to him. However, after around seven years of marriage, something changed in my relationship with him. Something started happening that began to block this bonding process. I was not aware of what it was, but I was aware of the change in the effects in my heart. Only with hindsight and training have I been able to put all the puzzle pieces together to understand what was going on.
The Value of a Growth Mindset
By the Spring of 2007, when I was in this Tuscan hotel, I was once again caught up in Random Reciprocity Thought Processes. And when I prayed to get in control of them so I could turn them off, the answer was to seek approval and acceptance only from the Lord. The more I valued him, the more valuable his opinion of me would be. This would close the door to my unconscious search for the acceptance, approval, and admiration from random people.
But that triggered certain questions and so I asked Him. Why would he admire who and what I was if he was the very one who was training me to become this? He responded to me with his own question: Are you only valuable to someone if you came into the relationship already equipped with talents, strengths, abilities, and beauty? Hmm…. I had never analyzed my thought processes so clearly. I wondered why I had been thinking about it like that.
“And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them.” ~Ether 12:27
He said there was another type of strength that was more valuable than other strengths: Coming into my relationship with Him ready and willing to learn and grow. Someone who has this kind of growth mindset is of more value than anything else because this person can become whatever He wants her to be. And I knew what he wanted me to be was the best that I could be. That’s what I wanted to be. The only limits were the ones that I created.
The pathway to get to this place and eliminate my limitations was to value him and his opinion of me more than I valued anyone else’s. This was a challenge because he was not right there in front of my physical eyes or anyone else’s physical eyes. And other people were right there. He was unseen. They were seen. He was walking with me unseen through the corridors of the hotel. He was invisibly there in the elevator and at dinner. I knew I wasn’t alone. But no one else knew it. His very presence communicated how much he valued me. He appreciated me, accepted me, and edited me. But everyone else could not see my value to him. I began to wonder why I would care what they were thinking of me. Did I value their opinions, edits, acceptance, and admiration more than his?
I decided I did not want to care about what random people thought of me. And that was a good start, but it wasn’t enough to break the habit. I had to make a conscious and continuous effort to delete the thoughts. Again, that still wasn’t enough. I had to replace them with Reciprocity Thoughts with the Lord. He taught me that you can’t just shut down the need to be valued altogether. You have to learn how to control it. For that to happen, I had to spend more time studying and writing about who Jesus Christ was. I had to essentially write him into my life as if he were physically there. It wasn’t about painting his portrait (although I have also attempted this with sad results). It was about coming to know how he makes choices, how he differentiates between two ideas, where they are balanced and where they become imbalanced. It was about understanding the way he governs, evaluates, and judges. What exactly is Mercy and how does it work with Justice? How does he love? What is love? And how could I apply all this to parenting and to my relationships with other people? Once I found the answers to these questions, I was judged by them.
What I have discovered was that it all boiled down to faith. How well could I see and hear and understand him with my spiritual senses? Could I trust the things I saw and heard that were only validated by my heart? Could I believe them above what I sensed other people were thinking, saying, and doing? Making the choice to actually look at him was a sacrifice because his feedback was different than other people’s. That meant that he was asking me to make a choice between his opinion and theirs. He was asking me to become his daughter – a daughter only interested in pleasing her father. It was like this incremental process of slowly being born again.
“…faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true.” ~Alma 32:21
“Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” ~John 3:3
Deep Comfort
By the time I flew back to Denver, I had been deeply comforted. The cloud of mourning darkness had lifted, and I was ready to get back to work empathizing and mourning with my friends while deleting the Random Reciprocity Thought Processes. Since then, it has been a work in progress similar to the process of eating right. I go through periods of time when I'm better at it than others. But amazing times have followed! To incrementally learn about Jesus Christ like this has created the most intense feelings of Sustainable Joy that I have ever experienced.
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