Needing God

Day 26: Love is Responsible

Take time to pray through your areas of wrongdoing. Ask for God's forgiveness, then humble yourself enough to admit them to your spouse. do it sincerely and truthfully. Ask your spouse for forgiveness as well. No matter how they respond, make sure you cover your responsibility in love. Even if they respond with criticism, accept it by receiving it as counsel.

As you work through the 12 steps, you do this. Then in a later step you do it on a continuing basis, which is better than waiting and storing up things you need to apologize for. Better to do it as soon as you recognize what you did  wrong. Much easier to do that way. Pride is a big stumbling block in marriages. No-one ever wants to admit that they did something wrong. That we are less than perfect. But we are less than perfect. If we weren't, we wouldn't need God. Boy do I  need God. This journey has been incredibly humbling and it keeps being so. But on the good side I am finding myself and God.

I love this quote, actually the entire talk is great. It gives me hope which is what step 2 is all about.

There is no physical pain, no anguish of soul, no suffering of spirit, no infirmity or weakness that you or I ever experience during our mortal journey that the Savior did not experience first. You and I in a moment of weakness may cry out, "No one understands. No one knows." No human being, perhaps, knows. But the Son of God perfectly knows and understands, for He felt and bore our burdens before we ever did. And because He paid the ultimate price and bore that burden, He has perfect empathy and can extend to us His arm of mercy in so many phases of our life. He can reach out, touch, and succor--literally run to us--and strengthen us to be more than we could ever be and help us to do that which we could never do through relying only upon our own power.  David A Bednar BYU Devotional, "In the strength of the Lord"  Link

Prideful, Me?

I've been thinking about pride alot lately. I've decided it may be the key to any healing in either ours or our spouses recovery. Think about it, as long as we are prideful we can't be humble. If we aren't humble we can't honestly admit our thoughts and behaviors have become unmanageable. We can't honestly evaluate what we need to change about ourselves, because we aren't honestly looking at who we really are and what we have become. Maybe we are seeing ourselves better than our spouses. After all we aren't the one with that awful addiction. We must be better then them. Well that is pride.

I honestly don't know what I found so appealing about pride that I held onto it for so long. It isn't comforting. It didn't bring me peace, joy or happiness. It actually caused anger and frustration. I'm wondering if it can be a little addicting itself?

It was so painful for me to admit my faults to myself let alone anyone else. It took me a while to come to terms with who I really was as opposed to who I thought I was. It hurt. I mourned and then I started getting help and healing. The good new is that it gets easier and easier to admit my failings and that I don't know everything and that I need God. He knows me better than I do and it's time to let him take the lead.