The Word

There are so many words in the English language and in every other language on the earth. Behind all languages is a united semantic meaning. We just use words to describe the meaning that independently exists. These are the words I have used to describe the Semantic Meaning I was being shown.

Adversity = Abuse/Neglect X Random vs. Intentional

Random = Unconscious or Ignorant (lack of knowledge) or Natural Disasters, Accidents

Intentional = Having knowledge, purposeful, selfish

Sorrow = Fear/Depression

Abuse and Neglect cause Fear and Depression

When we Abuse ourselves or others we experience Fear.

When we Neglect ourselves or others we experience Depression.

Abuse = Processing beyond the NW Threshold

Neglect = Processing below the NE Threshold

Love = Processing within the Northern Threshold or Zone

Love = Mercy

Mercy = Justice/Time

Love = Faith/Sacrifice

Love causes Peace and Energy.

Joy = Peace/Energy

Sustainable Love = Sustainable Joy

Northern Desire = Hope

NW Desire = Demand

NE Desire = Apathy

Northern Process = Love = Faith/Sacrifice

Faith = Receiving Peace from Others' Sacrifices

Faith = Experience the Flow of Energy inward

Sacrifice = Giving Peace through Sacrifice for Others

Sacrifice = Experience the Flow of Energy outward

NW Process = Abuse = Too little Faith/Too much Sacrifice

Abuse = Force Others to Sacrifice to give you Peace

Abuse = Experience too Intensely the Flow of Energy outward and not enough inward = Stress, Anxiety, Fear

NE Process = Neglect = Too much Faith/Too little Sacrifice

Neglect = Don't Sacrifice enough to give others Peace

Neglect = Experience Energy pooled up and stagnant = Boredom, Lethargy, Depression

Southern Evaluation = Remembrance 

Remembrance X Success = Confidence/Gratitude

Remembrance X Failure = Empathy/Humility

SE/SW Evaluation X Success = Pride/Envy

SE/SW Evaluation X Failure = Toxic Shame/Toxic Blame

SE Success/Failure Evaluation = Pride/Toxic Shame -> NW Desire + Process = Demand/Abuse

SW Success/Failure Evaluation = Envy/Toxic Blame -> NE Desire + Process = Apathy/Neglect

Pride Effects = False sense of Importance and Success, You think you're better than others, you are happy that others are failing because it means that you're winning (you are ahead of them).

Envy Effects = False sense that your conditions are unfair because others have Success. Feel sorry for yourself when others succeed, have Resources you don't.

Resources = talents, gifts, abilities, natural resources, skills, knowledge, strengths

Toxic Shame Process = False perception of your Weaknesses and Failures. A Fixed Mindset that you are responsible for all Failures. Fixed Mindset that there is nothing you can do about mistakes, Failures. You see yourself as a Failure instead of the Process. You can't separate the two. You can't see that there are other Causes invovled.

Toxic Shame Effects = Insecurity, Inhibition, Low Self-esteem, feel worthless

Toxic Blame Process = False perception of other people's Weaknesses and Failures. A Fixed Mindset that they are responsible for all your Failures. The false perception that you have to rely completely on others for your success and they are failing you.  You see them as the Failure instead of the Process or Circumstances. You can't separate the two. You can't see that there is something you can do to change your Results.

Toxic Blame Effects = Anger, Irritation, Annoyance

Results X Success = Resource, abilities, talents, skills, knowledge

Cause = A person who has Success Results

Results X Failure = Weaknesses, disabilities, ignorance, DESIRE

Child = A person who presently has Failure Results

Remembrance X Success or Confidence Process = Objective understanding of the Resources you have to Sacrifice for others. Understanding of your responsibilities. To whom much is given, much is required.

Others = Children/Causes 

Children/Causes in Northern Threshold = Servants/Partners

NW/NE - SE/SW Children/Causes = Slaves/Competitors

Remembrance X Success or Gratitude Process = Objective understanding of the Resources others are Sacrificing for you. Thankfulness when they fulfill their responsibility to you. The realization that they experience Joy when they are able to Sacrifice for you.

Remembrance X Failure or Humility Process = Objective understanding of your lack of Resources to provide for your needs and to Sacrifice for others. Acknowledgment of your dependence on other Causes who have Resources. Growth Mindset - there is a time and space for you to get it right, to learn, to achieve, to develop the Resources you desire.

Remembrance X Failure or Empathy Process = Objective understanding that others lack the Resources that you have. Growth Mindset that they are in a temporary state, which can be changed. Willingness to be a part of that change. Remembering that you also have Failures and Weaknesses that you are still working on. Remembering that in the past you had similar Failures and through time and experience as well as the assistance of others, the Failures have been turned into Successes.

Failure - A term and concept used in Pride/Envy + Toxic Shame/Blame Evaluation with Fixed Mindset to suggest Eternal Worthlessness.

Failure - A term and concept used in Confidence/Humility + Empathy/Gratitude Evaluation with a Growth Mindset to suggest a Temporary Setback which can be changed into Desire and Opportunity through the Atonement of Jesus Christ.

Shields Up! Part 2

Neglect: The Opposite of Abuse
I have used the word Abuse as a synonym for reviling. And Abuse is the main word I’ve chosen to use in my writing to describe the NW Imbalance. So, technically Abuse is combining with someone else in a way that hurts them. It is adding a stimulus. It is a sin of Commission.

This post is the second part of a three-part post. If you haven't already, read this post first: Shields Up! Part 1

The opposite of Abuse is Neglect. Technically, Neglect is separating from someone else in a way that hurts them. It is subtracting a stimulus. It is a sin of Omission.

I learned that people could use Neglect to hurt me. The reason behind that is that we all need love. Love is spiritual nourishment. We need it as much as we need food and water for physical nourishment. We cannot spiritually live without it. So without love, we experience Sorrow. And that hurts.

Those who are responsible for our care have the responsibility to physically and spiritually love us. In this way, they care for our body and spirit. So if they Neglect doing this for us, they leave us in a vulnerable place. We are excessively exposed to injury and reviling. Our shields are not fully functional. We have more sensitivities. We’re easily hurt by others who Abuse and Neglect us. 

Negligence also includes neglecting to teach us relationship skills and to train us how to stand steadfast in Christ, which powers our shields. The combination of both ignorance (as a result of Negligent training) and Abuse results in a high level of vulnerability - shields down.

Degrees of Intensity

The Lord would often show me diagrams in my mind to teach me. He showed me something like the diagram to the right and taught me there are degrees of intensity for both Abuse and Neglect. Not only can others Abuse me by degrees, but they could also Neglect me by degrees. 

And of course, I could do this to others. But He had to help me understand what was done to me first so he could heal me - re-parent me. The result was that I turned around and was able to love my kids from my heart. My sacrifice became intentional and voluntary. I was able to bear their burdens without reacting to their Imbalanced Processes.

What is Love Anyway?

Have you ever studied the semantic concept of Love? That word was pretty confusing to me because of all the definitions out there. But this is what the Lord showed me: The balance between Abuse and Neglect is Love. Love includes standing steadfast in Christ in the face of other people's Abuse and Neglect. It is giving Mercy to those who hurt me instead of doing what comes naturally.

He taught me that love was also about training and giving appropriate consequences. He said that sometimes I should disapprove and correct my children's behavior. In Mercy sometimes I should separate them from the family and put them in timeout.

I asked him how I would know when I crossed the line to Abuse or Neglect. That took Him time to explain to me. We’ll get to that somewhere in the next few posts. For now, just know that it's not wrong to Combine or Separate in order to resolve conflicts. It just doesn't resolve them when we combine or separate contrary to the Holy Ghost's guidance. Combining too much is Abuse. Separating too much is Neglect.

With this information, we can see that most of us were Abused or Neglected to some degree growing up and we still may be experiencing some of that in our present family relationships. It is the degree of weakness in these critical relationships which causes weakness in our shields. With weak shields, we are more vulnerable to even less intense forms of Adversity. And because our ability to bear Adversity is not too high, we are more likely to Turn and Revile Again when our children misbehave, hurt us, or disobey. And that's just how it is.

Continued in: Shields Up! Part 3

Shields Up! Part 1

I was once overly sensitive to the way people treated me. It was like my shields were down. What they said to me, the names they called me, and other forms of NW/NE Processes hurt me intensely. 

But after I was retrained by the Savior, my shields became fully functional and my spiritual boundaries strengthened against those I did not choose to influence me. And I also became more sensitive to those whom I did choose to influence me.

Once I realized I had the capacity to gain control of this choice, I was able to maintain control of my response process.

When I was younger, I was vulnerable to the way people treated me. That continued into my younger-mother years. I unconsciously saw my kids' misbehavior as the way they were treating me. So this is where the Lord had to start retraining me. 

In the first step of his training, he had me look a little closer at semantic concepts such as Adversity, Sorrow, Abuse, Neglect, Love, Justice, Mercy, and Joy. He instructed me to create a list of synonyms for each of the words we studied and then identify their relationships with each other. 

For example, Abuse is the opposite of Neglect. In between these two concepts is Love. This is the Northern Balance. Then he showed me how semantic meanings vary by degrees. People have come up with different words to describe these variations. But they are all related.

For more on how He showed me to organize these concepts, see: The Semantic Word

All of these treasures of knowledge have been a necessary part of my training to kick the habit of what I like to refer to as Turning and Reviling Again - NW/NE Processes in response to NW/NE Processes. After studying these general concepts, we studied examples of them in history where they were played out. When I understood them, I used them to resolve my relationship conflicts. 

Whether the person who hurt me was a coworker, another driver on the road, a parent, a family member, or especially a child, I used the same core principles that the Lord taught me to resolve the conflict. When I understood them, my shields were strengthened.  In this and the next two blog posts, I am going to talk about some of the first semantic concepts that we went over.

To Revile
To Revile is to criticize, condemn, attack, rail against, slander, vilify, or Abuse. It’s also to knock, slam, badmouth, persecute, or crucify. It can be done physically or verbally. The definition we used in a previous post was: to criticize in an abusive or angrily insulting manner. So this is one of our major sources of Adversity. Abuse - other people reviling us. 

When we say that we Turn and Revile Again, we’re insinuating that we are responding to some kind of Abuse that we received first. The scriptures call this "the first offense." It is just another name or synonym for the word Revile. Note the references in the following verse to the first and second offenses.

“And they were doing that which they felt was the duty which they owed to their God; for the Lord had said unto them, and also unto their fathers, that: Inasmuch as ye are not guilty of the first offense, neither the second, ye shall not suffer yourselves to be slain by the hands of your enemies.” ~Alma 43:46

Being guilty of the first offense basically means that you started the fight.

"The second offense" is a synonym for Turning and Reviling Again. When I understood the meaning behind the first and second offenses, I understood this scripture better.  If the Nephites weren't guilty of starting the fight or reacting with hatred, then they were defending themselves and their families objectively. 

So, I learned a key semantic concept: In some cases, God directs us to defend and protect ourselves objectively. If we seek to resolve conflicts without yielding to emotional knee-jerk-reactions and a desire for vengeance, we can clearly and accurately hear his guidance.

I learned that if I did the same in my relationships with others, I would be able to resolve my relationship conflicts with love and empathy even if it meant I had to make choices my kids, my spouse, or my community did not like.

Not being subject to everyone else's responses to my choices was key for maintaining my balance. It was okay if they did not approve of my choices. The important thing was that God approved of them.

When I understood the semantic meaning of the word Revile and that there were many synonyms for it, I was able to find lots of examples of people dealing with Abuse (Extreme NW Processes) in history, and study how they responded to it. I saw how the Lord counseled them, which I also applied to my own relationships.

Degrees of Reviling
I learned that people could revile me a little or a lot. This is speaking of the degree or intensity of the Adversity. 

Before I originally wrote this post in August 2018, I wrote another post called Turning & Reviling Again. In that post, I described how much it hurt me when my brother told me I was fat. But it was a lesser degree of Adversity when it was just him than when he got all of his friends to tell me I was fat.  

When the Lord was retraining me, he taught me that if more people abused me, the intensity of my pain increased. It would hurt me more.

When my kids misbehaved, it seemed to echo the way I was treated when I was young. I had an intense reaction to it. It was like they were abusing me too. And I had to understand that even when kids treat parents badly, it is a form of abuse. But for them, they are just learning how to resolve their conflicts and obtain their desires in Northern ways. They need time and a steady parent who sets the example for them. But since I didn't have that example or understand the role I needed to play, I just experienced it as abuse.

Also, I examined how people could lightly criticize me or they could go on and on about how wrong I was and how right they were. This meant that higher levels of duration and frequency also increased the intensity of Adversity.

 

Additionally, when those I had relationships with got really specific and detailed in their criticism, the Adversity Intensity would increase. 

Finally, there is one other way that Adversity can be increased: If someone with whom we have developed a deep relationship hurts us, it is especially painful. This is what happened in Jesus' relationship with Judas Iscariot. When someone very close to you betrays you, it is especially painful. 

Learning about the cause of the pain I experienced in my relationships helped me immensely. He was teaching me that my pain was real and that it wasn't the problem. In this way, he validated my feelings and empathized with me. I learned that it was important to understand why I may get intensely upset about something when others thought all I needed to do was to take a chill-pill.

What hurts one person may not phase another. That’s because we value things differently. We're all unique. We all have different weaknesses and sensitivities. Knowing someone else's gives us the knowledge of how to love them better or hate them worse.

In the past, I was not able to take criticism and teasing lightly because my shields were not up. I was allowing everyone to define my value because I didn't have a strong enough relationship with a Cause.

If you have been reading my posts for a while, you know how I define the word Cause. I will define it here for those who haven't. A Cause is a trainer/mentor/provider/evaluator/exemplar. It is someone you trust. You can talk to him (or her) when you are upset and he doesn't make it worse. He makes it better because he knows how to resolve conflicts and obtain desires within the Northern Threshold. He has your back. He knows when to empathize and when to draw the line. The Savior has played this role for me. 

I didn't have a close enough relationship with someone like that until 2006. Once I developed that relationship with Him, my shields became fully functional.

How intensely other people revile us added to how sensitive we are, creates the level of Adversity that we experience.  The level of Adversity I experienced often exceeded my ability to stop myself from Turning and Reviling Again.

If you have been raised with NW/NE parenting and are struggling with parenting yourself and struggling with your emotional balance, I hope that what I have learned will help you strengthen your shields.

Continued in: Shields Up! Part 2

Spinning Like a Wobbly Top

The default when we are born into this world is that we all experience the Lord’s Peace continuously. It is given to us in the Northern Threshold and it is incredibly sustaining. We may not even realize we are being supported in this way until we separate ourselves from it by centrifugally spinning outward into NW and NE extremes. His Peace wanes as we increase the width of the arch of our spin. We move centrifugally instead of centripetally – our arrows point outward towards the imbalance instead of inward towards the balance.

"For the word of the Lord is truth, and whatsoever is truth is light, and whatsoever is light is Spirit, even the Spirit of Jesus Christ.

"And the Spirit giveth light to every man that cometh into the world; and the Spirit enlighteneth every man through the world, that hearkeneth to the voice of the Spirit." -D&C 86:45-46

In order to best understand what I'm talking about in this post, you should have previously read these posts:

I Have a Tale to Tell

I Learned My Lesson Well

I Know Where Beauty Lives

It Shines Inside You

The Secrets I Have Learned

Somebody Save Me

In 2006-08, the Lord taught me about these concepts. I learned about the semantic meaning behind the words Peace, Energy, Faith, and Sacrifice. 

Peace

Peace is comfort, spiritual nourishment, and rest. It is when we feel loved, cherished, cared for.

Energy

We experience an outward flow of Energy, which is somewhat painful when we voluntarily sacrifice for others.

Sacrifice

Sacrifice is when you expend effort and forego personal comfort in order to provide Peace for someone else. You parent in Mercy. Mercy is Justice over Time. You give your kids a space and time to learn, make mistakes, and grow. You do not exercise an excessive amount of Justice upon them. But you do train and educate them so they can learn higher-level functional relationship skills over time because God's Justice (the objective reality we all live in) incrementally increases over time.



Faith

We experience Peace when we put our Faith and trust in someone who has the will and capacity to help us bear our burdens – someone who voluntarily sacrifices for us. We hope to be parented in Mercy. We hope to have a space and time to learn, make mistakes, and grow. We submit ourselves to be trained and educated so we can learn higher-level function relationship skills over time.

I capitalize these words in my writing because I was trained to choose one word out of many synonyms to represent a semantic concept. That has been hard because every word adds a different brushstroke of meaning to my visualization of each of the variables.

Voluntary Sacrifice

Learning about these concepts helped me to understand that I needed to be sacrificing for my kids in Mercy. Mercy is just another word for the Northern Threshold. So, learning my role for them was very helpful. Parenting in Mercy is hard. It requires muscle, strength, sacrifice. It is supposed to hurt, but not be overwhelming. When I strive to parent centripetally in the Northern Threshold, I experience both the pain of Sacrifice and the Savior’s Peace, which when balanced is Joy.

It was important for me to understand that there was no other way for me to experience Joy. No one else could give it to me. Not even the Savior. I could experience his Peace, but without my Voluntary Sacrifice, I could not experience Joy. And I craved the Joy. I didn’t want to just sit around a feel comfortable because that actually turns into boredom and depression, which is the Northeast side of the Compass. I will talk about that in my next blog post. In this one, I will focus on the Northwest side.

Northwest Parenting

So, I already was sacrificing for my kids. In the 90s, when I was living in New Jersey and then later in Westminster, Colorado, the sacrifice parenting required of me was at the top of my NW threshold. Too often it escalated into overwhelming.

I’ll compare Sacrifice to running. In order to be a parent at the level I understood that to be, I was continually required to sprint at the top of my zone, and I was hitting my spiritual heart-rate-max too often. And this exhausted me. It made me feel like a total failure. I looked around at other moms “running beside me” that seemed to not be struggling at all. They were in the center of their zones. So, what the heck was wrong with me?

I wanted to keep up. I wanted to be a good mom. I had planned it that way. Why couldn’t I do this?

Even though I was struggling so intensely, I would not leave my post. In looking back, I see myself as Horton the elephant in the Dr. Seuss story, “Horton Hatches the Egg.” I was definitely as stubborn as he was in my commitment to stay home with my kids no matter how difficult the sacrifice.

“I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. An Elephant’s faithful one hundred percent.”

The storms and other sources of adversity that threatened to push me out of my nest were not only coming from external sources, but they were also coming from an intense internal source. I’m saying that my own inabilities over-intensified the way I felt more so than the storm itself. I wasn’t as patient and long-suffering as Horton. My parenting skills needed work. There were many times when my performance was subpar. I needed to be educated, retrained, strengthened, re-loved, re-parented in order to weather these storms more like Horton did. 

His Re-Parenting Process

It helped me immensely when the Lord showed me how to diagram my Processes (Faith and Sacrifice) and Effects (Peace and Energy) using a Compass as a metaphor. It empowered me with the knowledge of what was happening inside of me and how I could control it.

Northwest

He showed me that this is what was happening when I veered off into the Northwest:

Too Little Peace

I experienced hunger, discomfort, and unrest. I could not feel loved, cherished, or cared for. This is where the intense desire to be saved was coming from.

Too Much Sacrifice

I was Sacrificing too much for how little Peace I was receiving (or had received growing up). I didn’t anticipate motherhood being that hard. When conflicts arose, I didn’t know how to resolve them in a functional way – in Balanced Mercy. And this is all relative. I wasn’t completely dysfunctional. The issue was that I wasn’t happy with the level of my functionality. It seemed to sharply conflict with the eternal person that I really was. Thus, the intense battle within me. I needed to increase my ability to voluntarily sacrifice, but I didn’t know how. I needed to learn more Justice over Time = Mercy.

Too Much Pain

There was too much Energy flowing out of me because I was trying to parent my kids in the NW with too much Justice. I experienced too much stress. I was expecting too much of them and myself too soon. I didn’t know how else to do it. This was how I was raised. I mean, I didn’t like the disciplinary methods used upon me when I was a child and knew I should not discipline like that, but I didn’t realize that my expectations of children were one of the products of being raised like that. This was my understanding of Justice and Mercy. I definitely was not able to see that I was even contemplating these concepts at the time. But in hindsight, I could see that I was constantly trying to figure them out. While I would not let the abuse pass down upon my children if I had anything to do with it, I wasn’t yet able to figure out this Justice and Mercy thing. Therefore, I was a wall against the intense internal Justice that I had been raised with. It was continuously trying to force me to pass this onto my children, but I fought it like crazy to stop it. So much internal conflict.

Too Little Faith

This is where my relationship with Jesus Christ came in. I didn’t know that he had my back. I didn’t know how interactive he could be in my life. When it came to the day-to-day motherhood routine and all the little conflicts that arose between me and my kids, I didn’t realize I could trust him. I didn’t know about his Mercy for me. I had heard all of my life about Jesus Christ. I had loved him from a distance. I just didn’t know what his Atoning Sacrifice had to do with me, how it applied to me. And I didn’t know his governing style. So, I had too little faith in him. 

The Northwest side of the Semantic Compass is Fear or Anxiety. The Result was that I was spinning like a wobbly top ready to topple over.

The Glass Shattered in My Hands

In 1991, I bought a vintage gumball machine from a garage sale. A few weeks later, I was sitting on the edge of my bed trying to remove the glass globe from the base so I could fill it with gumballs. It wouldn’t come off, so I gripped it tighter and tried again. The glass shattered in my hands and cut me deeply in my palm. I was bleeding heavily. After rinsing and inspecting it, I knew it would need stitches. I covered it with a towel and drove myself to the hospital.

At Utah Valley Hospital in a small room partitioned with white curtains, the doctor removed a few tiny shards of glass and began sewing the cut back together. It hurt badly. I complained and pulled my hand away. He injected more local anesthetic around it but the pain was still intense. The doctor’s response was essentially, “Suck it up.” He could not understand my response and thought I was just being a wimp. So, I closed my eyes and just endured.

After the wound had healed and the stitches were removed, my palm still hurt when I put pressure on it. I thought it just would take some time to completely heal inside. But after many months, I was still feeling the pain. 

I wondered if this was just something that would always bother me. Some people get injured and live with pain and weakness for the rest of their lives. Was this one of those situations?

One day it occurred to me that there may still be some glass in there. 

A Second Opinion

I went to the doctor (a different one) and told him about the problem. He listened to my story and tested the area. He agreed that my hypothesis was most likely true. He then took some x-rays and verified that there was something in there. My skin had healed up completely, encasing it in there.

A few days later, I had out-patient surgery. The doctor opened my palm up with a laser, removed a half-inch sliver of glass, and then restitched it. This time the healing was complete. What a relief!

The emergency-room doctor had very little empathy for me because he did not know the extent of the injury. With the surface-level shards of glass removed and the local anesthetic, he believed the stitching shouldn’t have caused that much pain. He concluded that I was a wimp. Because that was his judgment, I too wondered why I wasn’t tough enough to endure the pain.

Spiritual Injuries

I have learned through years of experience that spiritual or emotional injuries are very similar to physical injuries. A spiritual injury is like the shard of glass in my palm because it is hidden and takes careful evaluation to see and understand the extent of the injury.

If we don’t work with someone who has the patience to listen to our story and the skill to heal us completely, the wounds may heal on the surface, but still cause us pain when pressure, stress, or adversity is applied.

We all have red buttons, pain points, sensitivities, vulnerabilities, weaknesses. If you have a fixed mindset like I used to have, you may think that you just have to live with them. You may think this is your life. But I’ve learned to have a growth mindset: Always take the time to look more deeply for the shards of glass first before thinking I have to live the rest of my life with a pain that may very well be easily removed now.

Physical Challenges

In many cases we do have to live with physical injuries, weaknesses, or disabilities for the rest of our lives. I have read many stories of people who have done this, but have found greater purpose, meaning, and joy in life than they ever would have without the challenge. Here are links to three videos of people who have done this:

Helen Keller

Art Berg

Nick Vujicic 

Before 2006, I had a number of weaknesses and pain points that I wasn’t completely aware of. They were hidden beneath a superficially healed surface. When the going got tough, I felt sharp spiritual pain. I reacted seemingly disproportionately to life’s challenges. Some people thought I just needed to “suck it up.” They couldn’t understand my response and thought I was just being a wimp. I believed them. So I tried to endure it. But I also went to other sources, read lots of books, and tried many things.

Jesus Christ, My Second Opinion

During His lifetime, Jesus Christ was a Spiritual and a Physical Physician. The two abilities went hand in hand.

“They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” - Matthew 9:12

In the following story, we see Jesus as a Physical Physician. The woman, like me, had tried everything she could to solve the problem with the resources that were available to her before learning about Jesus.

“And a certain woman, which had an issue of blood twelve years, And had suffered many things of many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse, When she had learned of Jesus, came in the press behind, and touched his garment. For she said, If I may touch but his clothes, I shall be whole. And straightway the fountain of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of that plague.” - Mark 5:25-29

In my story Jesus has been both a Physical and Spiritual Physician. In 2006, I began developing my communication relationship with Him to a level I had never known was possible. When I developed the faith to communicate with him, He was the doctor I went to for a second opinion. He listened to my story. He had the technology to x-ray my soul. In every single case, we identified the problem and worked through it together. We removed one shard at a time. And this time the healing was complete.

I Was Having Nightmares and They Scared Me

When I was a little girl, maybe five or six years old, I often had nightmares. They scared me. They were about bad people intending to hurt me or other people. A reoccurring dream was that there was a bad man climbing through my bedroom window. When I woke up in the middle of the night after having one of these dreams, I lay awake listening for a creeping in the house, too afraid to get out of bed and go to my parents for comfort. Because of this, I had a difficult time getting to sleep each night.

This problem continued throughout my childhood until one night, my mom taught me how to pray. She said I could ask Heavenly Father to help stop the bad dreams. Before this, I had participated in family prayers, prayers at meal time, and prayers at church, but I hadn’t learned to pray to Him personally. 

So that night, I said a very simple prayer and asked, Please don’t let me have any bad dreams. I lay back down on my pillow and felt safe. Safe.

The bad dreams decreased. They went from being very frequent to occasional. If I ever woke up in the middle of the night, I would whisper to Him, asking Him to protect me and help me to sleep. My fear would decrease and I would fall back to sleep. The problem never escalated into anything serious.

I remember this so well because from that night on, throughout my childhood, teen, and even young adult years, I said the same prayer. I added more to it as I encountered more things that were outside of my control. There were things that I wanted and conflicts that I couldn’t solve. When I prayed for them, He would help. Being young in experience and endurance, I didn’t always recognize when He answered or that He had actually answered. The way He answered was often so gradual that I wasn’t aware enough to notice. 

When I got older, I started to pay more attention to this asking/answering relationship. The more I recognized the patterns in our communication, the stronger my faith grew.

A Three Hour Tour

"Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip...[The] passengers set sail that day, 
For a three hour tour, a THREE HOUR TOUR!"

This last August I went to our family reunion in Aptos, California. That’s a little town just below Santa Cruz and Capitola and north of Monterey where, back in the day, my grandparents bought a beach cabin. Being raised in San Jose, CA, my siblings and I grew up going to the beach cabin pretty frequently. This was our second official family reunion since we’ve all grown up and had families of our own.

This time we decided that one of the activities would be a whale watching boat ride in Monterey Bay. I can’t remember whose idea it was originally but I am responsible for organizing the whole thing. Guilty as charged. So when I talked to the skipper on the phone, she told me that people often get sea sick and so we may want to come prepared with the appropriate anti-seasickness meds. I informed everyone of this possibility and also purchased the meds myself (pharmacist recommended), which turned out to be plenty for everyone who wanted to take them.

When the day for the boat ride came, we all drove down to Monterey, parked, and walked along Fisherman's Wharf to get to the dock where all the boats were. Such a cool pier lined with restaurants that serve hot clam chowder and fresh baked bread as well as a bunch of other tourist shops. So far this was looking like a great idea!

We paid for our 3 hour tour and then boarded the boat. All of us taking the meds, took them then. After much instructions, which included how and where to throw up, we were off. The first 30 minutes were fine. We were all out on the deck looking at the seals on the rocks and the shoreline getting further and further away. I was on the front deck with a lot of others from our group. We started getting splashed a little too much when the wind picked up. The waves became more choppy, which caused the boat to rock and roll a little too intensely. Everyone standing in the bow of the boat was instructed to go inside the cabin to reduce this effect. So we did. But most of us weren’t sitting there for longer than 2 minutes before we couldn’t handle it anymore. Nausea hit. We all headed out to the back deck, holding on to whatever we could because the boat was still rocking so much.

I stayed on the back deck for the rest of the ride. About 50% of our group got sick. Matthew and Laura (my son and daughter) threw up over the side of the boat. Matthew repeatedly. Chris (my other son) was fine. I was sick but I didn’t throw up, probably because of the meds. I think the meds were actually making me feel worse. I was cold too. We had stopped by Walmart on our way to Monterey and bought a few heavy sweatshirts because they said it would get pretty cold out on the water. I was standing in one spot on the deck near the side of the boat in a hooded sweatshirt, with the hood up. I was shaking pretty bad and trying to deal with the constant upchucking feeling. There was nothing I could do to make this trial go away. A few others were suffering but I couldn’t help them anymore than they could help me. There were two more hours left on the boat. I had no one to blame. I’m the one who planned the whole thing. I was in fact responsible but the cause was inexperience. I didn’t know how bad it would be. I didn’t even know if any of us would get sick. I was fine on Lake Powell boats but apparently not fine on this boat.

What was going on on the inside.

I had no desire or inclination to blame it on anyone. Yet I couldn’t just exist in that terrible state without starting on some kind of conflict resolution process. My brother Will and all his kids were fine. He was walking all around the boat, changing places often. He suggested I try this as a resolution process. But moving just made it worse for me. So I just stood there shivering. But internally, spiritually I was actively reaching up to God in prayer. I told him I could do nothing to make my situation any better. I had two hours to endure and I was unable to do that on my own.  I asked him to help me. I just focused my mind on him and stayed with him. I could feel him with me, comforting me. Tears were streaming down my face, not because of the pain, but because it was so apparent I wasn’t bearing this burden alone. I didn’t want anyone else to feel sorry for me so I tried to keep my face relatively hidden. I knew that the only sympathy that would make any real difference for me would be the Lord’s. Chris came over and put his arms around me for a bit. That was soooo sweet of him. I don’t know if it’s just me or if everyone is like this, but I needed my main line of support to come from inside me—from that place where I always feel the Lord’s presence. So even as my body was racked with so much turmoil, it was like I was somehow separated from it to a certain extent, standing outside of it, removed from it. Wave after wave of nausea was matched with wave after wave of this unbelievable love. A microcosm of peace and comfort in a macrocosm of stress and panic.

What was going on on the outside.

It makes me love my Savior incredibly intensely when he saves me like that. I don’t often get myself into situations where there is nothing I can do to save myself but pray and reach for His atoning sacrifice in faith. At least I don’t often look at my conflicts like that. It was pretty much all grace and very little works. I usually am more than willing to do whatever I can when there are conflicts to be resolved. Perhaps I’m even imbalanced to that side—trying to do too much, putting all my efforts into figuring out how to actually get off the boat and out of the tough situation when faith in Christ while I have to endure the situation for a time is the answer.

We did see whales and other sea creatures. They were neat-o. But feeling like I did, I really didn’t care about any neat-o things. “Oh another whale. Nice. Okay, how long do we have left?”  

When we finally got back to the dock, we all started feeling better immediately. We disembarked and headed for the car, but lo and behold, all the restaurants were giving taster cups of their clam chowder. So we bought a bread bowl of it and all my kids and I shared it as we explored the pier. Now that was neat-o! So warm after shivering for so long. We will never forget this adventure. I will never do it again.

So there are other conflicts that have arisen in my life that are similar to this. I find myself in situations over which I have no control. Maybe I’m the one who got myself into them in the first place. That’s usually the case. But most of the time I have had no idea it was going to turn into such a rocking and rolling upchucking experience. When I compare my experience on the 3 Hour Tour Whale Watching Boat Ride with these other experiences, I am able to more accurately identify how to resolve conflicts like these.

First, I need to identify the source of comfort that is most powerful to me. This should be someone I trust and with whom I have developed a very close relationship. This is a person who knows me well and loves me so that He’s able to evaluate when I am not myself during a conflict. He knows I’m not always in a bad mood. He knows I don’t always respond to situations like I’m responding to this one. This is the person I go to unload all of my personal struggles, irritations, frustrations, and feelings of insecurity. I don’t take this relationship for granted by just using it as a place to dump. It’s usually a relationship of love, appreciation, admiration, attraction, respect, and Joy. So when I go through times when I have to wrinkle my nose, complain, and express how upset I am, He is well aware that the trial I’m going through must be very intense.

Second, if I do talk to others about the problem, I need to keep the communication objective. I talk to them in order to objectively resolve the conflict. But unfortunately, I don’t always keep it objective. On the boat, I knew there was no one else to whom I could go “to hear my soul’s complaint.” That was very plain. But when I have other life-conflicts, sometimes I try unloading on other people. Because I need their objective help to resolve the conflict, they are usually eager to help me deal with all of the emotional baggage I’m carrying as well. But the issue is, it ends up feeling like I’m violating someone else’s privacy when I do that. Often times it’s not a rocking and rolling boat that is making me feel like I want to puke. It’s a rocking and rolling relationship with another person.

So in order for my objective helpers to comfort me, I have to basically describe the cause of my conflict to them, which is the other person’s behavior and how it’s making me feel, how it’s making me react when I don’t want to react that way. I end up feeling like I have to justify why I’m feeling the way I’m feeling. It becomes a subjective analysis rather than an objective analysis. A blame game. A game of who is right and who is wrong. That just intensifies the conflict for me. I need someone who knows exactly what is going on behind the scenes because it is behind the scenes that I predominantly live. It is tempting to seek for comfort and support from others but just like on the boat, while I sincerely appreciate their support, it is never enough for me. I have to go to that one person I trust the most. He is the person I rely on above all others. Over an extended period of time I have developed a relationship with him that I have come to depend upon implicitly. I want to hear his opinions. I want his presence. I don’t want to do anything in my relationships with other people to make my relationship with Him rock and roll so that he would rather be anywhere else than with me. I don’t want him to be counting the minutes left before this whole Boat Ride Relationship with me will be over.

Oh, it’s so hard for me to give “just the facts!”

“O wretched [wo]man that I am! Yea, my heart sorroweth because of my flesh; my soul grieveth because of mine iniquities. I am encompassed about, because of the temptations and the sins which do so easily beset me. And when I desire to rejoice, my heart groaneth because of my sins; nevertheless, I know in whom I have trusted.” ~2 Nephi 4:17-19

The cool thing about trials is if I can just shut up and take it, let others evaluate me in Pride and Envy despite my sincere intentions to do good to them without turning and reviling again in Pride and Envy, and go to my Savior alone for my comfort and support, I will be able to feel his love in that intense amazing way that I did on the boat.  And that love is more intense than what I experience when everything is hunky-dory.

"And now my beloved brethren, I would exhort you to have patience, and that ye bear with all manner of afflictions; that ye do not revile against those who do cast you out because of your exceeding poverty [or because of your reaction to whatever weaknesses and sins which do so easily beset you], lest ye become sinners like unto them; But that ye have patience, and bear with those afflictions, with a firm hope that ye shall one day rest from all your afflictions." ~Alma 34:40-41