Ups and Downs

I've wanted to write another blog post several times since my last post. It has been a few weeks and I have been pretty up and down emotionally and spiritually. There are days where I think that for sure I will not make it through another year with this problem in our marriage and then there are days where I am confident we can make it to forever. Each time I am reminded and my testimony is strengthened of the healing power of the atonement.

I am amazed that I can be so full of anger, sadness, and loneliness one moment but I can reach out in that moment to my Savior I can be changed through His atonement. The causes of the anger, sadness, and loneliness remain but the Savior pushed the negative feelings out and filled me with peace and hope. After all man cannot serve two masters and negative emotions are from Satan, they are his way of stealing from us our happiness, our confidence, our hope, our eternal perspective, and over time our testimony.

The irony of this addiction is that as the addict opens up, makes him or herself vulnerable to their spouse, discloses their actions and thoughts, they are freed from the hold that keeping those secrets has on them. Their burden is slightly lifted. The addictions power is lessened and they often feel a greater sense of hope and peace. These very same actions often plunge the spouse into their darkness right as the addict is working on being lifted out of it. A wonderful mormon message talks a bit about this. Maybe that is why the marriage part takes so much work separate from the healing of addict and spouse. Because the addict and spouse have to work hard to be there for each other when there is hurt, anger, and sadness and because sometimes just as one is finding the seeds of hope the other is losing hope at an alarming rate.

I'm so grateful for the healing power of the Atonement and for the words of wise prophets and apostles in the scriptures and that are being spoken today that can bring me back into the fold of my Savior's arms as I choose Him, His gospel, His light, and His truth and nobody else's.