My testimony of overcoming obstacles

Yesterday I had a wonderfully long drive down to Utah to do some Mary Kay parties and I got to be alone with the most wonderful thoughts. I felt the spirit so strongly as I looked back at my life. It was interesting because I don't like to look back. I (who I am now) don't like who I have been up until the last three or four years.

I'm not writing this for myself, I'm writing it for other people. Everyone has a hardest thing, something particular to them and who they are at that point in time. Our hardest things are specific to our personalities, situations, dreams, and nightmares. I endured one of my hardest things and it nearly destroyed me. Some of the damage was due to my responses to someone else's behavior, but a lot of it happened because of that behavior, which was subtle emotional abuse I endured but did not yet recognize.

During this difficult period I had the most severe depression I've ever had. For an entire month I lay in bed, head under covers, crying over my personal living hell. I thought it was all my fault, so I didn't tell anyone what happened. The tricky thing about emotional abuse is that it's difficult to identify from the outside, let alone from the inside.

After about a year and a half of enduring by myself I finally recognized my abuser as abusive. I decided to get out. This is not my first move in my life toward personal happiness, but it is the first defining move.

I know what it's like to feel like you can never be happy again, to be ashamed of yourself and of your entire life. I also know what it's like to overcome it and find joy that surpasses anything you'd ever experienced up until that point.

When it was over I stayed a victim and I'm probably not alone in this. I wore my experience on my sleeve, keeping it a secret, and labeling myself as damaged. I did not handle my rehabilitation into normal life gracefully in most respects, with one exception: from this point on I knew I was worth something, and would never allow someone else to convince me otherwise.

A few people knew what happened (I opened a little bit, it's always easier to do that after the fact) but their knowledge and understanding didn't help much until I told someone who had the power to help me heal. I hope anyone who has endured heartache can learn from that experience. Talking it out helps best when you talk to the right person. I told a few close friends, and my family knew as well. All of these people are incredible and were very comforting, however, when you are broken, you don't need to be comforted, you need to be healed.

This is my testimony of the healing power of the atonement of Jesus Christ. For a long time after my experience I tried to be perfect. I thought that I could heal on my own by helping people, going to the temple, and reading the scriptures. These are all good things that should always be done, but I needed more. I had used the atonement to repent and to forgive, but not to heal. After a couple of years I told my (new) bishop. This man was almost a stranger to me, just barely called, but the gates of heaven were open to him. He set me on the right path and I started to move forward and let go. He had the power and the authority to lead me to peace in my heart.

Jesus Christ is the only being in the universe that has the ability to heal me or anyone else who suffers.

My eyes opened to how I had labeled myself as damaged, and in doing so limited my personal growth. This was my experience and it was over, the atonement works, and so then matters a lot less than now.

I am writing this because it is over and I want to tell everyone who is suffering or recently suffered that my experience ended. I know what happened, but I don't remember it. You don't remember the bad stuff, you only remember the good when you use the atonement. My life right now is incredible, I have fantastic memories. I have the best husband, he is a good man with a pure heart.

I feel like I've become a functional and powerful woman. I like myself and intend to continue becoming happier day by day. Life can still be hard, but every day it gets progressively better. My goal is to share my convictions with everyone I have the power to touch so they can feel the way that I do now.

I love my savior and am so grateful that he not only atoned for my sins, but all of my sufferings. I'm still learning to give him my burdens, it's really difficult for me to admit that I can't just fix it/let it go myself. Every day I feel like I unload so much on Him, just to get a good nights rest. When I mean it, when I repent, He always helps. I am writing this to promise that if you use the atonement, too, those horrible experiences will stop being a part of who you are and happiness will come.

Freedom - Is it really what it used to be?

I've had so many thoughts stewing up in my head. Anyone who's ever read my blog (and it is likely no one has read it in at least a year, as I haven't taken the time to just sit and write) must realize that my political leanings are conservative. I hope that doesn't stop anyone, Aristotle said it is a mark of intelligence to be able to entertain an idea without accepting it. I hope my ramblings are at least semi-coherent, and my opinions are at the very least worth entertaining.

So what I keep thinking about is what people used to say when I was a kid, that obnoxious phrase when you want to do something, they don't want you to, but they can't really stop you, "It's a free country." I have always disliked that phrase, because I think in even the most controlling sects of communism there are simply some things the government just doesn't care about. Some things that our national government does now just sits and nags at my brain. Joey is probably bored to death hearing about them from me, but I think he agrees.

 For example the income tax is a much higher tax than the Stamp Act or the Tea Tax our founding fathers found so abhorrent. I've always been bothered by the income tax..it's money I earned, money my employer intended for me to receive, and yet, I don't even get to see it. We even try to protect ourselves by overpaying our income taxes and then get so excited to get a tax return, even though it's still a small percentage of what we paid in the first place. I understand the military, and international diplomacy might get a little expensive...but why do I spend more on my national government than my local one? I get a lot more out of my local taxes (schools for local kids, roads (well, not in Rexburg....but generally), libraries, parks....nationally I get very little.

 Alexander Hamilton, one of the more elitist founding fathers, likely would have found the state of taxes incredibly troubling. And our modern presidents blatant power-grabs must make George Washington turn in his grave, after all, the most wonderful thing about him is that he could have become a dictator, but he didn't. But then we have our Bushes and Obamas threatening our freedoms in their various ways...No Child Left Behind and the Patriot Act are the two great legacies of Bush that I believe really hurt our freedom. I don't even agree with Lincoln suspending the writ of habeus corpus, let a lone a man who started a preemptive war in the middle east. Obama's bother me even more, and, more personally. The increased airport security is irritating, but I only have to deal with it in the airport. I HATE OBAMACARE. I don't hate that it might make it easier to get insurance, but I hate the heavy regulations on insurance that makes it so expensive, and I REALLY hate being denied the opportunity to take risks.

The thing I hate most about Obamacare is how it affects my wallet. I am one of the uninsured Americans the "Affordable Healthcare Act," was instated to protect. HOW?!? I either pay a hefty fine when I do my taxes next year, or I have to sign up for healthcare that I will not use because the deductible is so high and I am an incredibly healthy person. It is cheaper for me to finance my healthcare with a hospital than it is for me to get insurance (they have excellent payment plans and are so kind to their patients....doctors are not evil beasts out to steal all of our money!). I have always intended to get health insurance....when I have more of a disposable income and maybe it could be offered by an employer....or health issues are more of a risk. But so what if I get hurt? Isn't it my risk?I will be the one footing the bill.

Why do we have to be so safe? Why are we fined for taking a little risk? I get speed limits and stoplights, and those sorts of things, but a seat belt law?!? And I understand car insurance, not to cover myself, but whomever I could collide with, but we are so preemptive. Bush went to war in Iraq because he felt they could eventually be a threat, so is this healthcare crap. When Joey and I sat with the insurance agent, he said that Obamacare is the highest tax increase in the history of the country.  WHY am I being governed by a little city on the opposite side of the country? Why can't capital hill allow city and state governments to take care of things like that? If you want mandated healthcare, live in a state that mandates it, don't force all the other ones to do it. If you're terrified of guns, live in NYC, I hear gun control's getting pretty big there.

Why does this have to come nationally? Why do we have to have all these safeties and regulations? We're not children, and even children need to go outside and risk skinning their knees, it's not a big deal. Everything seems to be turning into plastic rail and padded knees, if we don't take risks, will we really live? Who are the wealthiest people in this nation? Did they get there by taking the easy way, insuring everything? I don't think so! They were innovative, creative, and got their hands dirty. They took a risk and didn't know what was going to happen, when I don't have health insurance I risk losing A LOT of money if I get seriously injured, but isn't that my risk to take? I know it's not going to make me millions, but maybe I'll learn a lesson, maybe I'll sign up with a health insurance company all the wiser and tell all my friends about how great it is. That is not how it is for me, though, I'm forced through the wallet to sign up for insurance, and I'm going to tell my friends, no matter how injured I get, that it sucks, that I'm paying so much money for something that's not going to help me until I have at least a $5,000 problem.

I think my point is getting away from me, so I want to return to it. How free is my life? What good do all of these regulations do me? Don't I have the right to take risks?
I love my life, and I know that's because I did not take the path that everyone else took. I'm just starting to feel like my freedom to make my own way is being threatened. I believe in local authority, I don't believe in empowering an island at least 1,000 miles away that I will call Washington D.C., even if it does have five representatives from my state in there (five is such a small number on Capital Hill). Aren't we a nation because some intelligent men didn't believe in being overly taxed by an island a couple thousand miles away from them?