Forgiveness

"...a man who during childhood was frequently threatened with abandonment can easily attribute such intentions to his wife. He will then misinterpret things she says and does in terms of such intent, and then take whatever action he thinks would best meet the situation he believes to exist. Misunderstanding and conflict must follow. In all this he is as unaware he is being biased by his past experience as he is that his present beliefs and expectations are mistaken." (Feeney and Monin 2008)

Science says that if something troubling has happened to us in the past—something like divorce, traumatic events, death of a loved one, abuse, addiction, and a plethora of other possible things— we are inescapably affected by it (whether or not we are aware). The research above says that if a boy is abused, he will be forever suspicious of his wife and her behaviors. If she goes out to be with friends and says, "I'm going out with friends while you watch football," that man (according to science) will tend to think She says she's going out with friends, but which friends? Will other men be there? Is she being unfaithful to me? And thus begins the downward spiral of misunderstanding and mistrust.

 So how does that man learn to trust his wife? After all, it's outside of his control, right? Something happened to him that he couldn't avoid, right? It's not that he doesn't trust her, but rather that he was hurt in the past, and he's "being biased by his past experience," right? It's not his fault, right?

Not right.

Judgement, bias, pride, distrust—those are all weakness that we have. Christ teaches that if we come to him, He can show us our weaknesses (Ether 12:27). He can show us where we are being judgmental. He can show us the prideful root of our flawed behavior. He can get to the root of the seed of distrust that we may have planted in ourselves.
He helps us to make the root-changes that we need to make by commanding us to forgive one another. Even if we've been "threatened with abandonment," abused, forgotten, He commands us to forgive. Forgiveness is the ultimate exercise of trust. It's changing the nature of the way you see that person who has offended you. Trading out mistrust for full trust.

The benefit of there even being doubt in the first place is that the Atonement, that sacrifice offered by Jesus Christ, can rip those doubts out of us if we come to Him. The benefit of that opening where doubt used to be is that it can be filled with whatever we choose. If we are truly forgiving, we can fill it with trust, we can fill it with hope, and we can fill it with love.


Christ lives. He is my Savior. He died to make us free. He suffered the pain of sin so that we can forgive and be forgiven without robbing justice.

Carmody and the Egyptians

Happy Sabbath.
Today was a day to learn to trust the Lord and give Him the benefit of the doubt. He knows what He is doing. He's in charge. He knows the way that His plan is supposed to work. 

Moses got all the way up to the Red Sea, and then the Israelites started to complain, saying that they would have rather died in Egypt because at least they would have had a grave. They doubted. They had seen so many miracles and knew the promises the Lord had made to take them to a better land. But they forgot, and they doubted.

13 ¶And Moses said unto the people, Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will ^ashew to you to day: for the Egyptians whom ye have seen to day, ye shall see them again no more for ever.

 14 The Lord shall ^afight for you, and ye shall hold your ^bpeace. (Exodus 14)

Who are we to doubt the Lord?

The benefit of doubt is that it is not meant to be permanent. Doubt has its small place. It can be replaced by faith. Faith is today and tomorrow. Faith is forever. Faith is eternal. Faith is for the future.

My dear friend Carmody Sagers passed away today. She was bright and strong, a disciple of Christ and one who found the beauty in small things like sunsets and butterflies. She taught me that every sunset is important. She taught me that every person is important. I love her as one of my closest friends; she will be remembered for her kindness and wisdom. She fought a very hard battle and liver failure proved to be too much. She passed peacefully to the other side, and instead of doubting the plan that the Lord has for her, I believe that she is okay now. One of my professors actually said that if she's only 22, and God says that it's time for her to go back to Him, then she learned everything she needed to learn in mortality. It means that she's ready to live in the presence of God. She will never have to fight those battles against pain and sickness again. She "shall see them again no more for ever." Thanks to the Atonement of Jesus Christ, Carmody will live again. 

Even as Job so boldly declared, "yet in [her] flesh shall [she] see God."

Let us not doubt the Lord, but forever be faithful and full of faith.

Little things

Sometimes we doubt whether or not the things we do or say to help others are really worthwhile. It's too easy to get sucked into the trap of feeling like nobody notices the things you do. This whole blogging experience has changed that perspective for me substantially.

Babies can't really go into the ICU as visitors. When a mom with a baby needs to go in and visit, somebody has to take care of that baby. Fortunately for everyone (especially one friend here in the hospital who gets uncomfortable holding or taking care of babies), I rather enjoy looking after children; it was no big deal to hold the little one and try to get her to sleep. It was also fortunate that I was too distracted taking care of her to have any time or energy that could be directed toward doubting that what I was doing was worth anyone's while.

I hadn't thought about how what I did affected others until that mom was heading out for the night. She gave me a big hug, and I could just tell that it meant a lot to her.

The benefit of the doubt is that we get to choose how much weight that doubt has. If we want to let it weigh enough that we'll never be able to move it, that's really our choice. However, should we decide that the doubt we feel has little weight, it can easily be displaced by love, hope, faith, and any of the positive feelings that fight to push doubts aside.

"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith.... If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit." (Galatians 5:22,25)