Before & After

Before
Several years ago I was called to be a cub scout leader.  I don’t remember the exact title of the position but it required me to work with another sister to prepare weekly activities for boys that were around 8-years-old and be at the church one night a week to implement and supervise those activities.  I think one of my boys was in the cub scout group—probably Chris.  Aaron would have been in an older cub scouts group so I had two other young children that I brought with me to the church each week.  They ran around, relatively unsupervised, while I worked with the scouts.

In the previous blog post (It's My Party) I spoke of a time in my life when I found myself in the Belly of the Whale more often than not.  This event happened during that particularly vulnerable time period. 

One afternoon, the sister whom I worked with called.  She told me that she didn’t think I was a good fit for this calling because my kids ran around the halls during the cub scout meeting.  I actually didn’t know they were causing any problems until this phone call.  But she proceeded to tell me that this may not be a very good place for me to serve. 

My Spiritual Reflexes:  I cried.  I told her how badly she made me feel by saying that.  I told her how I was already feeling like a useless wretch and this just confirmed all that.  This was one of the smaller callings in our church and she basically said I couldn’t even do that much.  My crying wasn’t sweet tears that I was trying to conceal.  I actually sobbed.  And my words were defensive and miserable.  She was surprised at my reaction and also defensive herself.  She may have apologized too.  Poor woman.  But the damage had been done.  I was in the Belly of the Whale.

Of course this whole thing was “broadcast” to a number of other people who all called the bishop who then called me and told me 5 people had called him who were concerned about me, etc., etc.  I remained completely calm while on the phone with him, explained that I was going through a difficult time in my life emotionally and that this sister had just accidentally pushed the wrong button—said the wrong thing to me.  But him calling me like that just expanded the conflict.  The issue for me was that no one seemed to appreciate me.  I felt very left out of my ward and basically out of life.  I thought that the bishop didn’t even seem to know me and never really had talked to me before.  Only when I messed up and exposed my emotions did anyone become concerned about me.  And I didn’t want that kind of attention.  So this only made the whole thing worse.

After it all blew over, I continued to avoid my co-cub scout leader for years.  And she avoided me.  But wouldn’t you know it, years later her daughter was in my seminary class.  This woman came and evaluated me teaching my class and then ended up taking her daughter out and putting her in the other sophomore class. Very painful for me because it was another time of great vulnerability.  I was a new teacher and was trying to teach in the way my Cause was teaching me—a way that was not usual, which stirred up much rebellion and conflict within my class and the system.  That’s me—always trying to do big things before I could actually handle the repercussions.  This perpetuated the bad feelings between us but by that time in my life I had learned at least not to react to such an attack and to just take it to my Cause.

So my Cause is Jesus Christ now.  He was also my Cause throughout these events but I just didn’t know him well enough.  He is a Paradoxical Cause.  That means he seeks to serve first and waits to be voluntarily served last.  I often refer to him as my Cause to avoid the too frequent repetition of his sacred name.  When I developed my relationship with him, he showed me a different way to deal with the conflicts that arose in my life.

The first step was learning how to better communicate with my Cause.  I was motivated to develop this relationship in the first place because I wanted him to teach me how to write a story.  That was a goal that started back in the year 2000.  I had gone to so many other sources and had tried to implement all their suggestions but apparently it wasn’t good enough because I was rejected by publishers and criticized by others.  I was willing to learn the right way.  I just needed someone to teach me it.  By the time 2006 rolled around and I had experienced about 6 years of failure, I felt drawn to the Lord.  It was almost as if he was saying, “I will teach you.  Come unto me.”  (Reminds me of Luke 5:12-13) So I did.  As I learned how to hear him (My sheep hear my voice...), I asked him all kinds of question throughout my training, listened carefully to his answers, and wrote them down.  Sometimes they would come in scriptures that came into my mind.  Sometimes they would come in the form of songs or other stories.  Eventually, I began to detect his words in my thoughts.  I would ask a question that I didn’t know the answer to.  As I was writing it down (I wrote my prayers down to slow my mind down and help me focus more), the answer would come (see The Voice Inside My Head).  Once this relationship was developed, I could talk with him about anything.  So I did.

When I got into any kind of conflict with others, I started to hold my knee-jerk reactions in (imbalanced spiritual reflexes) because I noticed that talking to others who had no idea how to deal with me only made the conflict worse.  I took my issues to my Cause instead.  I would write to him all about it.  I would be so tangled up sometimes.  In the beginning I imagined he was judging me just like I imagined others were.  I knew many of my thoughts and feelings about others when I got into conflict with them were not right.  But he was eventually able to communicate to me that he didn’t want me thinking about what a good girl should be thinking, saying, and doing right now.  He just wanted me to be completely honest with him.  He wanted me to tell him about what was hurting and, if possible, the reasons behind that.

And what did he do with that?  HE TOOK MY SIDE!  He actually got behind me.  I could feel that he was angry with those who had hurt me.  I needed that.  I needed empathy, validation of my feelings, and a protector.  I needed someone to care about me.  And this was a place where I could just be real, let it all out, and not worry about the judgments of others.  He didn’t judge me.  He just totally loved me.

Turn! Turn! Turn!

For a Paradoxical Cause, it’s all about the timing.  He knows when to take my side and when to counsel me.  He knew a chronically injured girl when he saw one.  He knew I needed a few years of rehabilitation with him before I would be strong enough to resolve conflict with others better.  This is how he serves first and eats last.  He took my side first every time I came to him with these issues.  He knew it was important for me to empathize with others but he also knew that can’t be forced.  It had to come voluntarily from my heart.  And he knew it would, given time.




Once he cleared my Chakras (see video below), he taught me about the cause of the conflict.  It almost always stemmed from looking to conflicting Causes for validation.  I needed to choose him and only him to evaluate me.  Others did not have that ability.

 
I watched this cartoon episode from Avatar: The Last Airbender with my kids a few years ago and have never forgotten how well it depicted how I feel when I work with my Cause through this Repentance Process

The next step belonged to me.  This is what he trusted me to do voluntarily once I was resolved and healed:  I wanted to look back at the event to see what I could have done better.  Regardless of who was wrong or right, what was the best conflict resolution process?  I knew the situation would come again with that same person or with someone else.  Next time I wanted to be prepared for it.  I basically wanted to be immunized against it.  That was my desire.  How could I prevent the imbalanced words and actions of others from making me spiritually ill, which caused my thoughts, words, and actions to veer off balance?  How could I increase my strength so that my response process would remain in balance in the face of all that was imbalanced?  So he told me.  He showed me what I call the Realization Timeline.

It starts with an event in time (#1).  These events include thoughts, words, and actions between me and someone else.  Mistakes are made.  Belly of the Whale to a certain degree is the result.  I go to my Cause and he takes me through the healing process, we figure out the cause of the conflict together, I ask and he teaches me how to better respond (#2).  Responding in balance to the imbalanced behavior of others is hard.  In the moment it feels like I’m losing because I let other people say or do mean things to me without retaliation.  The next time the event comes up, I may not respond as badly as I did the time before.  After the event occurs, I realize sooner how I could have dealt with it better.  I basically repent sooner (#3).  The next time I control my tongue.  I don’t respond even though I’m struggling mightily with my thoughts and feelings (#4).  The next time I control my thoughts in advance so my heart isn’t working so hard.  I'm prepared (#5).  Finally I get the whole thing down—I get the story; I get what’s going on; I am literally above it.  I can see the situation objectively and from a bird’s-eye perspective.  When the conflicting event occurs again, I am solid rock in the balance.  The other person can say or do what he/she wants.  It doesn’t hurt me (#6).

There is one more step.  Eventually, rather than being concerned about protecting myself, I am more concerned about the other person.  Even though they are lashing out at me, I know there must be a reason for it so I am more interested in helping them resolve their conflict, getting them out of the Belly of the Whale, or preventing them from being sucked up into it if I can help it.

Listen:  Live Like That

That last step has been critical for me to learn.  That’s who I want to be.  I know there's a time and space for me to be upset.  That's with my Cause.  It is not with everyone and their dog.  It is a privilege I give to my Cause to see me at my worst and help me through it.  It's not that I don't get upset anymore--in 2015.  I do.  More extreme conflicts still have the power to take me down.  But I have this relationship with this absolutely amazing person who is able to help me work through it every time.  He makes me whole.  He re-balances me so I can maintain control or regain it in some difficult events in order to help other people.  

In short, my ultimate goal is to be the designated driver.  Everyone else around me can lose it but I want to stay in The Safe Spot for me AND FOR THEM.  This is who Jesus Christ is and I admire him like I can’t even begin to describe.  I’ve always wanted to live like that even though I didn’t always understand how to do it and am still learning how to do it.

After
A number of years after the cub scout calling, I received another calling—visiting teaching coordinator.  I was responsible for about 4-5 visiting teaching supervisors who reported to me the visiting teaching stats of their districts.  One of those supervisors was very diligent and called me often.  I loved her!  But I didn’t always have time to talk for long periods of time.  One day she told me that she didn’t think I was doing a very good job with my calling.  Hmm...Déjà vu.  But my response was so completely different than BEFORE because...

I looked to my Cause for validation and no one else.  That was the way it was.  I knew he thought I was doing a good job in the calling and the other “callings” I had from him directly.  This sister had no idea the amount of responsibility that was on my shoulders or the burdens I was carrying in regards to my marriage, my family, and my unseen life.  I was serving in ways that could not be seen by anyone else other than my Cause.  But I wasn’t angry at her for not seeing this.  How could she?  And even if she should remember that we all carry hidden burdens, that was not what I chose to focus on.  It didn't bother me that she didn't because I focused on my own issues privately with my Cause and had already been taught and gone through the Realization Timeline to be prepared for situations like this.  I was immunized.

See BYUi Presentation Transcripts for full Devotional

My Spiritual Reflexes:  I didn’t think of myself.  What I heard her saying was:  “I need you.  Will you be there for me when I call?”  I recognized I hadn’t been there for her as much as I could have been.  I didn’t recognize that my friendship and my attention was that valuable to her.  I rarely thought that I was of much value to anyone.  That made me cry but the tears were sorrow for her and for anyone else who I had neglected.  To realize that other adults actually needed me was another lesson to learn, but a sweet one.  All I could feel was compassion for her.  Empathy.  I apologized and committed to doing better.  I validated her feelings.  She instantly healed and forgave me.  She shared some of the hidden burdens she was carrying.  I listened and cried with her.  Our relationship only improved after that.

After the first event with the cub scouts I felt like garbage.  After the second event, I felt my value and I believe I was able to help her feel hers.  It had nothing to do with what other people did to me.  It had everything to do with my response to whatever they did to me.  Even though I saw there were things I could do to improve, I stayed in The Safe Spot—in that balance.  I never left it.  That probably summarizes the immunization lessons I have learned from my Cause:  Stay in The Safe Spot no matter what it takes.  Nobody, no money, no Loggerheads controversy is worth leaving it.

About 10 years after the cub scout fiasco and 4 years after the seminary fiasco, my co-cub scout leader and I happened to be thrown together again.  She and I connected through a mutual friend to put a graduation party together for our sons.  All of us moms met a few times to plan it all out.  This was years after my Paradoxical Cause had trained me so I knew what to do:  Forgive, forget, and treat her with kindness and respect as if it never happened.  I did.  The wound was healed.  Whenever we meet, on both sides there are heart-felt smiles and friendliness.



That’s what a Paradoxical Cause can do for each one of us.

It’s My Party

"It's my party and I'll cry if I want to, cry if I want to, cry if I want to. You would cry too if it happened to you." ~Lesley Gore

It was my 7th or 8th birthday and we had a party with my friends at my house.  There was some kind of disagreement during the party between my mom and me.  I’m not saying I was right.  In fact I was probably wrong.  Keep in mind that throughout my life I have been repeatedly given the description by my parents, siblings, and others as being naturally strong-willed.  But this is one of the earliest memories I have of being swallowed up into the Belly of the Whale (read the following blog post to know what that means:  The Belly of the Whale). It wasn’t as harsh back then as it came to be in my later years but I left the party and went and hid myself in the bathroom in a cubby under the sink.  I remember being mad at my mom and embarrassed in front of my friends.

The same kind of episode repeated itself at another party—my 12th birthday party.  My mom and I got in a dispute over something in front of all my friends (both boys and girls, which included a boy I had a crush on).  Again, I can’t remember what it was about and I’m sure my strong-will was a major culprit so I was probably in the wrong.  Again, I was swallowed up into the Belly of the Whale.  I left the party and went up to my room.  I was mad at my mom and totally embarrassed in front of my friends.

Loggerheads is a good word to describe the reason for these conflicts.  It is when two people’s opposing wills or goals meet to result in a stubborn dispute or disagreement.

Unfortunately these Loggerhead experiences with my mom repeated themselves at more frequent intervals and grew more intense as I grew older.  My strong will, my stubbornness, my anger intensified.  I came to see myself as a rebellious teenage girl.  My relationship with my mom was NOT good. “It’s my way or the highway,” was the lesson I was learning.  There were so many major blow-ups between us, which sent me into the Belly of the Whale.  This is how I learned to deal with conflicts:  When there are two opposing opinions the stronger of the two forces her will upon the weaker of the two.  The weaker fights as hard as she can to get her way but in the end is overcome by the stronger.  Survival of the Fittest.  Unconsciously I applied this teaching in many of my other relationships.  When I was the stronger, I would win but the strange thing was that I ended up in the Belly of the Whale anyway!  I just wasn’t even capable, wasn’t even close to understanding what was going on and how I could avoid the Belly.

Fast forward about 13 years.  I was married and had a two-year-old boy (Aaron).  We lived in New Jersey.  I was helping a neighbor out by walking her kids to the bus stop.  Aaron and I walked them over to the bus stop and watched them get on the school bus.  Aaron really wanted to get on that bus too.  So badly that he was screaming his head off about it.  I couldn’t let him get on the bus because that was against the rules.  Yet he was fighting me as if I was in the wrong.  Loggerheads.  I pit my will against his and went head to head.  I picked him up, restrained him so very tightly and harshly in my arms and walked back to our apartment.  I was so angry inside.  I was so mad at him.  I was swallowed into the Belly of the Whale.  I was the stronger in the relationship.  I won the battle.  It was my way or the highway.  And he was wrong.  Two-year-olds couldn’t get on the school bus and go to school.  That’s the truth.  I was right.  Yet I was swallowed up once again into the Belly of the Whale.

These conflicts with Aaron and then with Chris and then with Matthew repeated and became more heated over the next several years.  I got into the Belly of the Whale for using my strength to restrain and fight against them at Loggerheads.  Yet I was trying to enforce the rules of my home, the rules of my community, the rules of my church, and the rules of God. 

Because of these rules and the inevitable chaotic will of a child, every parent is going to come to Loggerheads with his/her children. Children will break the rules.  They will not want to obey them.  It is the way that it is.  Yet the rules are what they are too and most parents recognize the fact that we need to keep them and teach our children to keep them.  I did not know that this was an age-old conflict let alone how to resolve it.  My instinct and knee-jerk reaction was to allow the anger from such a conflict to burn and burn until it was wild fire inside of me.  In any Loggerhead conflict there is contention on both sides no matter who is right and who is wrong.  When two wills are pit against each other, that is the effect.

I chose force to resolve these conflicts with my children.  I guess I didn’t actually choose it because I didn’t understand the other option.  Loggerheads Force was written in my genetic code.  I didn’t know any different way even though the Belly of the Whale episodes communicated to me that the way I was trying to resolve wasn’t right (see Paradoxical vs. Survival Parenting. This blog post is actually the prequel to that one).

Choosing force caused me to lose the Spirit even more.  Those are the rules of the game.  God, our General Cause, cannot support us when we choose force as our first way of resolving conflicts with another person.  If we do not first strive to see if there is a way to talk things over, see the other person’s point of view, see his/her desire as valid, and come up with a compromise where all involved can be satisfied, we will only perpetuate the conflict, the anger, and the contention.  Because I didn’t know to do this or understand how to, I was left alone spiritually to "kick against the pricks" (Acts 9:5; D&C 121:38).  That was supposed to be a warning for me, a censure.   Because I didn’t understand why I was being censured or what to do to correct myself, all I felt was a terrible feeling inside of me plus major confusion.  I'm sure my mom didn't understand this whole thing either and most likely her mother didn't know, and so on.

As anger dissipated I would feel ashamed of my behavior because I knew I shouldn’t be angry and forceful with children.  I needed to be loving and kind.  Yet I had no idea how to teach/enforce rules AND be loving and kind.  The shame locked me into the Belly of the Whale.  Because these episodes repeated and I didn’t know what was going on, I began to experience fear—fear of the Belly.  I associated that fear and anger with my interactions with my children.  I began to hate motherhood, hate myself, and not want to be around my children.

But I had another rule meet me here:  I was supposed to love my kids from my heart.  I was a bad mother for not wanting to be around my children and would be an even worse mother if I neglected my kids in any way.  In order to force myself to be a good mother, I forced myself to not run and hide but to continue parenting while in the Belly of the Whale almost perpetually for years and years with only very small pockets of sunlight.  I did love my kids but my fear and anger were getting in the way of that.  What I did for them—the sacrifices I made--were not being made voluntarily.  And there was always some sort of societal judgment panel sitting on my shoulder all the time (#theJudge).  Total Bondage.  Locked in a prison:  My idea of what I was supposed to be and FEEL for my kids verses what I actually was and FELT for them.  The worst conflict ever for one who I have come to realize needs to love from the depths and purity of her heart or she is not okay.  The result was that I developed a hatred of myself.  Misery.  And an associative repulsion towards my kids—the very people I was giving my whole life for.  I imagine this is what hell would be like.

I was a bad child.  I was a bad mother.  Yet these shame/hatred feelings didn’t stop the Loggerheads Force behavior because I didn’t know they were connected or how to resolve the conflicts that arose between parents’ rules and children’s rules.  And you can bet I had these Loggerhead experiences with my husband and with others.  I grew up thinking I was very disagreeable and generally out of control.  And the issue was that I didn’t want to be a bad person, a bad daughter, a bad mother, a bad wife, a bad sister in Zion.  I wanted to be good like nobody’s business!  It just wasn’t happening.  I didn’t have the skills.  That’s how I came to hate myself and feel like there was no place for me in my family, my community, or anywhere.  

I don’t mean to be mean to my past self but I would have to say that because of all of this, I had many characteristics of a SHREW.  Here’s the definition the dictionary gives for that:  “a bad-tempered or aggressively assertive woman.” I say this in a loving way because I understand the reason behind it now.  An inability to resolve conflict developed in my youth resulted in this shrew-like characteristic in me.

Fast forward 15 years to another Birthday Party.  I had been working on achieving a goal for three years.  I had completed it at least 3 times but knew that it really wasn’t done.  I felt exhausted in my own strength.  I thought maybe the answer to completing it was to set a date that I would finish, pray for the Lord's help, and do my part as best I could.  So in May of 2009 I decided that I wanted to finish it by my birthday.

It’s important to note here that by this time I had spent years developing my communication relationship with the Lord—my Cause.  I was working with him on this project.  It was for him, of him, and by him that I had made any progress on it thus far.  And I knew that when I finished it I would be able to obtain what I wanted.  So I had been in close contact with him about this whole thing for years.  I felt that when I set the date of my birthday to complete it and committed to doing my part, he nodded his head and said, “Okay, I will do mine.”

It’s also important to note that by this time in my life the Lord had literally become my Savior.  He was my knight in shining armor.  He was training me how to deal with Loggerheads!  He was rewriting my spiritual DNA and I was becoming calm.  It was literally the “Taming of the Shrew.”  But I know he didn’t look at me like that in a mean way.  He knew why I was the way that I was.  He also knew how to get me out of this bondage.

When my birthday came, I still hadn’t finished it but held out hope and faith in the Lord.  The day was filled with lots of other motherhood tasks.  Laura had a dress rehearsal for her dance recital.  I was there for hours.  It was a distracting environment, totally not conducive to the quiet, pondering environment I needed to finish the project.  I couldn’t even work on it let alone finish it.  I was all tied up in knots.  I couldn’t think clearly to save my life.  A mild beginning of the Belly of the Whale.

By the end of the day, I fell on my bed and cried.  I felt betrayed.  My desire was a righteous one.  I knew that.  I knew the Lord wanted me to complete this project so why, why didn’t he come through for me when I had worked so diligently to do my part?  Where were his miracles?  Did he not have one for me?  I went to bed still tied in knots and feeling a reaction of rebellion in my heart in response to the rejection I felt from him.  The Belly of the Whale was swallowing me whole.  I was at Loggerheads with the person I had come to value more than anyone else in my life!  My relationship with him was my only solace and now we were in conflict.

The next day I wrestled with this feeling.  I wanted to turn from him.  I was mad at him.  He hurt me.  I had trusted him and it seemed like he had violated that trust.  I was tempted to walk away and say forget it then, forget everything.  At the same time I knew he was a perfect God and if anyone was out of balance it was me.  But that twisted me up even more.  I didn’t know how I could obey his rules any better than I had and yet he still wasn't giving me what I wanted, what I knew he knew I needed.

He stayed with me.  I understood that he was trying to get me to look at my feelings and the situation objectively.  But it was hard for me.  I was tempted to say some angry things to him. The other part of me didn’t want to ever sully our relationship like that.  I felt his love and compassion for me.  He was trying to tell me that he understood how I felt and that I had a right to feel this way.  This was a hard thing I was doing.  

Then why didn’t he help me complete the project?  I somehow understood that he couldn’t do that.  He wasn’t going to budge on that one.  There were certain lines he couldn’t cross, certain laws he had to keep and was asking me to keep.  This was one of them.  I didn’t understand that.  I still felt upset.  I came to a threshold, a point of decision that he was guiding me to.  Would it be my will or would it be our relationship?  Which would I sacrifice?  My life, my will, my way or his way, his will, and our life?  It wasn’t really about my will verses his.  It was about my will verses our relationship because I had two wills here—two desires.  I wanted my way in my timing and I wanted our relationship—which was also my way.

There are a million songs that sing about love conquering all.  At this moment I felt it literally impossible to give my will—my life—up (this immediate desire), but because of my love for the Lord I had no other choice.  He had saved me from that Shrew-like person and all the consequences attached to it.  He had helped me to love again.  He had made me sweet where I used to be bitter.  I was able to love my kids and myself only because of his coming into my life and being there for me.  I could not and would not give up this relationship even for my own right-here-and-right-now life.  I would not go back to being a shrew and that’s certainly what would happen to me if I did.  I had to let go.  So I let go.  I free-fell backwards.  I gave in.  I submitted.  I repented.  I was a strong-will child again, submitting to my parent’s will voluntarily and out of love.

Over the next hours a sweet peace filled my soul as well as a feeling of admiration on both sides.  I totally admired him for the way he dealt with me through this trial.  No one had ever treated my strong-will with such kindness, patience, and respect.  What a blessing he was to me!  I also felt his admiration of me.  I could feel him looking on me with pleasure for the strength it took to give up my will for our relaitonship.  I felt my worth more that day than I ever had in my life.  And that spun my love for him into the tightest knot ever!  This was a feeling that was the exact opposite of the Belly of the Whale.  He was actually praising me for submitting to his will and treating it like a gift I had given to him!  Oh the beauty!  Oh, the unparalleled Joy of interacting with him!  What can I call this opposite Belly of the Whale place?  The Heart of God?  The Bosom of God?  The Bowels of Mercy? Within a few days I understood from a higher perspective why I couldn’t have what I wanted on that day.  I understood why the Lord could not cross that line.  I understood the rules.  Yet in a way, and in hindsight, I wonder if the birthday gift I was given on that day was indeed the means by which I have completed what I have on this project and the means by which I will continue to complete it.

 

There’s one more story that has to be told to complete this overall story.  By the time my daughter came to serious Loggerheads-age, I had thankfully been retaught how to work with her.  It was about 30 years after my 12th birthday, when the following Loggerheads experience occurred with my own 12-year-old daughter.  Again, I can’t remember exactly what the dispute was about but I remember I did not provoke her to wrath.

I remember I could not cross the line she wanted me to cross for her.  She was very mad at me and told me she hated me.  She then was swallowed up into the Belly of the Whale.  Compassion filled me because I saw myself in her.  I knew what she was suffering.  I remember it and I didn’t want her to be attacked like that—for an attack of the adversary it certainly is.  I learned through these tween and teen years that once she became this upset about something, she was stuck there for hours and hours in total misery.  I couldn’t get her out.  Her three older brothers didn’t have this issue.  They would get upset, I would send them to timeout, and then I would just talk with them about what happened and how we could both do better next time, and out they would come—all perked up and ready to recommit and go on with life.  My girl on the other hand could not do this as I could not when I was younger.  We are emotional creatures and many of us are very strong-willed.  We feel things deeply.

On this occasion of her entrapment—her imprisonment in the Belly, I got the idea to bring her my journal from when I was a teen.  I had recently been re-reading it.  I had written in it a few times when I had been in the Belly as a result of conflicts with my mom.  I opened it to the place where my mother wouldn’t let me get my drivers permit when I wanted to get it.  It has the following words etched deeply into the page with a ball-point pen, “I HATE MY MOTHER!”  I gave this to Laura. I wanted her to know two things:  that I understood how she felt.  I had also felt that way towards my mother at times.  And that she was not a terrible person for feeling that way towards someone who she was at Loggerheads with.  That was normal.  I didn’t hate her back.  While I couldn’t cross certain lines—couldn’t let her have her way in this specific situation—I understood how hard it was for her to bend her will to mine. 

I think the journal helped her because she came out of her room not long after and seemed to be normal again--a veritable miracle!  She wasn’t overly angry with me.  The conflict between us didn’t perpetuate.  It subsided and she was rescued from the Belly of the Whale.  She has grown since then.  She’s 15, almost 16 now.  Loggerheads still occur sometimes but they are not getting more intense over time.  They are getting less intense.  She rarely gets swallowed up into the Belly.  And when she is upset, she doesn’t go as deep and is able to recover much more quickly.  I see her resolving Loggerhead conflicts with others in an admirable way.  I am so thankful to her and my Cause for that.

I have learned not to shove my will down my kids’ throat (...and am noticing that I still need to work on it since writing this blog).  My Cause has taught me how to look for alternative solutions if at all possible.  He has taught me how to reason with them and work with them to come up with an appropriate compromise so the situation won’t come to angry intense Loggerheads.  I have not wanted them to learn, “No you can’t!  I’m the parent!  You have to obey!  End of story!” I have wanted them to learn how to work together with me to obtain what they want within the rules. There have been times when no matter how much we have tried to talk it out, a compromise couldn’t be achieved.  That meant Loggerheads.  But that was my cue for empathy and compassion, not triumph and pride.  And when they submitted to the rules, that was my cue to admire them like the Lord had admired me.

Above all I did not want them to learn that if you could get the advantage over another person because of your age, position, strength, or intelligence then use it to get your way.  If they saw that I was doing that, they would learn to treat other people like that.  They would treat their children like that.  Then they would hate parenthood and themselves like I had done for so many years.  I would not pass that heritage down to them.  I would stop that, shield them from that.  

The Lord stopped it.  I let him, pleaded for him to stop it.  I don’t think in that specific situation with Laura that I was thinking, “Because the Lord did this for me, I will do this for my daughter.”  It’s just that he had treated me that way so many different times that I had become like him.  I treated others as I loved to be treated.  He is truly my Savior.  He enabled me to love my children, love motherhood, and love myself and in so doing he loved my children.  He rescued them from the years of hell I went through.  I love him for that! 

You Are My Hands

Each one of us has personal Saviors who act in behalf of our general Savior for us. It is most common that these Saviors are within our own family, ward, or community. It is a total blessing for us to have someone right before our eyes, face to face, talking and listening to us and imparting the Lord's word to us for our specific situations. When we can share our hopes, dreams, frustrations, and true feelings with another person who understands us, supports us, and guides us, this interaction makes life better and more manageable, not worse.  We have a place to "lay our head." We have a personal Savior who is operating through the power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ who has our best interest in mind and heart.

“God does notice us, and he watches over us. But it is usually through another person that he meets our needs.” ~President Spencer W. Kimball

There is a statue of Christ that was damaged in a war with missing hands and a sign at its base that says, "You are my hands."

“A story is told that during the bombing of a city in World War II, a large statue of Jesus Christ was severely damaged. When the townspeople found the statue among the rubble, they mourned because it had been a beloved symbol of their faith and of God’s presence in their lives. Experts were able to repair most of the statue, but its hands had been damaged so severely that they could not be restored. Some suggested that they hire a sculptor to make new hands, but others wanted to leave it as it was—a permanent reminder of the tragedy of war. Ultimately, the statue remained without hands. However, the people of the city added on the base of the statue of Jesus Christ a sign with these words: ‘You are my hands.’” ~Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf

When God allows us to be his hands, he gives us the opportunity to develop sustainable relationship of Amae with our family, friends, and community. These are like the covalent bonds we learn about in chemistry. If we all relied directly upon God for all our needs, we would not be able to establish bonds with each other. We would all bond directly with God but not with each other.

Family Bonding
Because we are all separated from God and his immediate love to a certain degree, we all have the need for Amae. Our spirits need spiritual nourishment to live just as our bodies require physical nourishment to live. God designed families as the primary way we receive both physical and spiritual nourishment. Functional families successfully provide this nourishment and thus bond with each other. Dysfunctional families struggle with the ability to provide it and that bond can't be formed. Most families fall somewhere in between totally functional and totally dysfunctional. Because we may not be able to provide the level of nourishment our children need or because our parents may not be able to do that for us, God provides back-up resources. Back-up Redeemers. 

The Fall
Sometimes the inability to provide Amae may be ascribed to purposeful negligence and abuse but other times it may be ascribed to objective random reality. The imbalanced relationship that results in dysfunction may only be a result of random circumstances. In other words, we can probably safely attribute the overall cause of dysfunctional conditions to the conditions of the Fall. Sickness, death, natural disasters, lack of maturity, generational neglect and abuse. The list of inherent weaknesses and misfortunes goes on! All of it can be categorized under the Fall. One dysfunctional condition causes another dysfunctional condition and like dominoes we all go down.   The Atonement of Jesus Christ redeems our AGENCY. It gives us the power to overcome the conditions of a dysfunctional upbringing. It provides us with Amae where we didn't have it. If choose him (and his back-up resources) as our Redeemer these Fallen imbalanced conditions can be corrected.

My Specific Adversity: What Happened?
What exactly happened to me as a child? As is the case for all of us, God primarily provided that needed spiritual nourishment through my family. That was my first-line resource growing up. Because that was dysfunctional to a given degree, I also had dysfunctional behavior before I learned to turn to my Redeemer for re-functionalization. Thankfully, part of the Atonement of Jesus Christ includes giving each of us Time to find Him and recognize how to turn to and rely upon his Redeeming love.

My parents divorced when I was really little. I barely even remember my dad. He thought it was best to completely sever ties with us so I didn't grow up knowing him. In my teenage years I had some positive interaction with him. He was very kind. But I never had that father/daughter belonging relationship with him that would fulfill the purpose of family for me.

I’m not sure why my biological father did what he did so I don’t want to go into that. I’m only sure that it was a combination of the Fall and his own choices. So he left our family early on. He left us to the care of my mom and eventually to my step-dad. My step-dad was born and raised in an abusive culture. I know he was verbally and physically knocked around a lot by his parents and siblings. So that was passed along to him and then to me and my siblings. 

From his family line, he learned that the solution to get children to obey was to force them to obey through physical pain or threat of it. The imbalanced character trait went like this: If children do not do what you say, you should increase their physical pain. In Behavioral Psychology--Operant Conditioning--this would be called Positive Punishment. Increasing or adding an undesirable stimulus like whipping a horse to get him to run faster. It is hitting a child after she has done something wrong in efforts to create a fear in her to not repeat that behavior again. If you consistently train a child like this she is going to assimilate those character traits, whether she would choose it or not.

These imbalanced methods of training children can indirectly promote other imbalanced character traits in a child when they are the primary methods by which she learns to make her choices. If she did not know she was doing wrong in the first place, punishment was used as a teaching method, and if this training was repeated throughout her childhood, what would be the consequence? What would she learn? I know what I learned—a fear that whatever I did could possibly be wrong. No space for trial and error. No time to make mistakes without the hammer of swift and painful judgment coming down on my head. It was not okay for me to be imperfect in any way. I developed an ultra-self-correction mechanism almost like an auto-immune disease and a major self-defensiveness against anyone who attempted to correct me. I will correct myself before anyone has a chance to punish me. That was my unconscious attitude. As I grew older, I grew angry. And this is probably the same process that put such intense and virulent anger into my step-dad before me. The results of the Fall--generational abuse and neglect. Lack of Amae.

Neglecting to Protect
The problem is not just in passing on dysfunctional love and character traits but it’s also in NOT passing on functional Amae and character traits. What does a child become when she is not protected by her parents? What happens if the very ones she should go to for safety, comfort, guidance, and support are the ones she has to hide from? How does she develop faith in the Atonement of Jesus Christ? Where does the vital nourishing love come from? How can a child learn how to be merciful if she never was given it? The answer is that she doesn't. Instead she learns to protect herself. She learns that no one has her back. She believes there are no Back-up Redeemers. She learns to Turn and Revile Again.

I share this story knowing that almost everyone has experienced generational abuse and neglect to some degree. And if we see it in ourselves, we may be tempted to evaluate ourselves in Toxic Shame or to evaluate our parents in Toxic Blame. My goal is to objectively see these things as the product of ignorance and the Fall. There may also be sin involved in the mix but it is not my business to be the judge between sin and ignorance. All that I need to understand in reviewing these facts is the objective fact that these specific conditions are the result of the Fall. When I recognize them as such, I can get to a place where I understand how the Atonement of Jesus Christ can be implemented to resolve the conflicts that the dysfunctional relationships have created for me. These are the resultant conflicts that I may still be struggling with today. Therefore, to resolve my present conflicts becomes my purpose for seeking to understand the past.

Back-up Redeemers
When the level of love and training our parents provide for us is not enough, the Atonement of Jesus Christ operates on our behalf. God knows what is going on. He works to put into place subsequent levels of resources that redeem us--compensate us. Our siblings may step in to help us because of their mercy and God-given abilities. They can be a resource for us especially when our parents are not. But since they are usually still learning and growing, as we are, and are receiving the same level of dysfunctional training, they often are not capable of playing this role for us. Yet mine did to a certain degree. My older sister was a beacon of light for me. She consistently read her scriptures, prayed, and went to church, which gave me a clue that these resources might be valuable to me as well.

We are all only required to do what we are willing and able to do. Love and Amae are about voluntary sacrifice, not forced sacrifice. We can't force people to love us. If we are willing, we can increase our ability to sacrifice over time in order to provide Amae for others through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. But if a parent is not aware of this chance to improve or is not willing to develop his ability to sacrifice for his children, our Savior knows about our situation and will send alternative resources. Others are called into action. Those others can be extended family members, friends, and members of our church. 

I had a few other Back-up Redeemers growing up. My grandparents, my best friend and her family, and my church, its programs, and many of its members. These resources retrained me in important ways to learn how to obtain my desires and resolve my conflicts using higher skills than I was raised with. I discovered for myself that the prophets, scriptures and personal prayers were a vital resource for me. But it wasn't until I developed the faith to really depend upon these resources, and specifically upon Jesus Christ who my church and the scriptures were pointing to, that my Amae needs have been completely redeemed.