The lyrics below explain exactly how I was feeling at the time that it all happened. What a perfect way of describing it. I wish I could blame it all on him, but...I can't. I have this song on a large play list that I play as I commute to work, and the other day it began to play, it is not a song I listen to often and not one that I took much note of. Then I heard the words, and I started the song again to hear it all.

Time has passed at this point, and the things I have done have faded, time blurs past actions, but the feelings that were tearing me apart at the time are still clear in my mind and this song nailed it. Satan works so hard when we have chinks, or times of weakness like this song mentions, and when we fall he celebrates.

I am so grateful that I have changed, that I have brought my life back to Christ. The atonement has worked wonders in my life. I have been praying lately to forget, I have been praying that once I am forgiven that I will begin to forget the man I had the affair with, that I will forget the things that I did with him. Every so often those actions will flash through my mind, and every time they do it sickens me. I feel like throwing up, because those actions are so far from the person I am now. It makes me physically ill to remember them, I want to just forget them. Lately things have gotten better in that regard. I have thankfully not remembered them as often as I was. I hope it will continue to get better. In the mean time I am still reading my scriptures on a daily basis and saying my prayers. And I loved conference this weekend, what a wonderful spiritual experience. It always amazes me how the talks always seem to address things I have been worried about.


"The Walk"
by Imogen Heap

Inside out, upside-down twisting beside myself,
Stop that now, cos you and I were never meant to be
I think you better leave; it's not safe in here,
I feel a weakness coming on.

Alright then (Alright then) I could keep your number for a rainy day,
That's where this ends, no mistakes no misbehaving,
Oh, I was doing so well, can we just be friends,
I feel a weakness coming on.

It's not meant to be like this, not what I planned at all,
I don't want to feel like this, Yeah,
No it's not meant to be like this, not what I planned at all,
I don't want to feel like this, so that makes it all your fault.

Inside out, upside-down twisting beside myself,
Stop that now; you're as close as it gets without touching me,
Oh no, don't make it harder than it already is,
Mmm, I feel a weakness coming on.

It's not meant to be like this, not what I planned at all,
I don't want to feel like this, Yeah,
No it's not meant to be like this, not what I planned at all,
I don't want to feel like this, so that makes it all your fault.

Big trouble losing control,
Primary resistance at a critical low,
On the double gotta get a hold,
Point of no return one second to go,

No response on any level, red alert this vessels under siege,
Total overload, systems down, they've got control,
There's no way out, we are surrounded,
Give in, give in and relish every minute of it

Freeze, awake here forever, I feel a weakness coming on.

It's not meant to be like this, not what I planned at all,
I don't want to feel like this, Yeah,
No it's not meant to be like this, it's just what I don't need,
Why make me feel like this, it's definitely all your fault.

Feel like this la la la la la la la la
It's all your fault (Feel like this) la la la la la la la la
It's all your fault (Feel like this) la la la la la la la la
It's all your fault (Feel like this) la la la la la la la la
It's all your fault

Tags: Repentance Regret Forgiveness Attonement Adultry

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Things over the last few months have gotten better. Last time I wrote in this blog I mentioned that we had got a new Bishop. I was nervous about meeting with him because he is the husband of a good friend of mine and I was afraid that word would get to her about what I had done. My fear I am happy to say was unfounded. Our new bishop is a great man and he is an excellent bishop. He has encouraged me in the repentance process and I have been able to set goals and work toward achieving them. I am currently reading scriptures and praying daily and I have seen a great change in my life.

Both Faded and I have now read through the entirety of The Miracle of Forgiveness, and we have both started setting and achieving daily goals. We have seen a drastic and wonderful change in our lives and in our home environment. Our marriage has become better than ever even though his work schedule means that we see each other rarely. I am thankful that I am married to such a great man as I am and thank Heavenly Father for Faded on a regular basis. There are still things that we need to work through as a couple, but I know now that with the help of Jesus and Heavenly Father and the miracle of the attonement in our lives that we can work through those issues and emerge as a couple that is headed in the right direction. I am grateful for the gospel in my life.

Tags: Affair Infidelity Repentance Attonement

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So this Sunday we got a new Bishop. We had heard about it the day before because the rumor mill of the Ward was turning and the rumor came to us that we would be getting a new Bishop. Because of this I was prepared. However the change came as a huge blow to me.

Recently the Bishop asked me to start praying for forgiveness, and so I have. And just last week as I was praying I felt it, forgiveness for my sins. I was so happy, so ecstatic and so anxious to get to church on Sunday and tell the Bishop. Then Saturday we hear the rumor. I hoped so much that it was just a rumor, but no, it indeed happened. I sat there in Sacrament meeting and listened as they released our last bishop and called the new one and I was terrified. I felt the same way I did back on that first Sunday. What would happen, what would this new bishop think of me, would he feel as if he needed to have me do more before I was forgiven in the eyes of the church? And then they called him, the husband of my best friend in the ward. He is a great guy and I am sure will make a great Bishop. However, I am dying inside at the thought of talking to him about my affair.

I stopped our last bishop in the hall after Sacrament meeting and asked him what I do now. He said, “I will brief the next bishop on your situation and you will need to work with him on it.”

I know what I have to do, but I hate the thought of it. I know I will need to meet with this new bishop and talk to him about everything. We will be gone the next two Sundays on vacation so I will have to talk to him about it when we get back. I still feel sick inside about it. Everyone I tell about it I feel as if I have placed a burden upon them. I have prayed for courage and strength to do what is right, Heavenly Father blessed me with enough strength and courage to go through this the first time, I know he will help me this second time.

I had to leave church yesterday after Sacrament meeting because I was crying too hard. I couldn’t go more than a few moments without bursting into tears and even trying to hold them all back did nothing. When I got home I sent my friend an e-mail apologizing for not being there for the rest of the block (we usually sit together in RS), I told her something came up and that I needed to go home. I can’t tell her that I had to go home because I was bawling too hard about her husband being called as bishop. She hasn’t answered me back yet, and I have this terrible fear that he will be told about what I have done from our last bishop and then somehow let it slip to his wife. Ugh, it makes me sick just thinking about it. I suppose it is not so bad, considering that we will be moving soon, but still this woman is the first person who has really ever reached out to me. She is one of the big reasons I came back from inactivity, I would hate losing her friendship because of this.

What happens will happen, but I am hoping that things turn out ok in the end. At this point I am placing it all in the Lord’s hands.

Tags: Repentance Bishop Faith

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I have been thinking lately about respect. Yesterday my family got together to visit a museum, on the way out of the museum my mother offered the front passenger seat to my husband because he has very long legs. My husband’s response was very sweet, “No Mom, that is your seat, I would never take that from you.” In my family when I was growing up my mom would usually sit in the front seat and yet as time went on and we got bigger my brother began to demand to sit in the front seat. Though this was just a small thing it was one of the things he would do to that to me seemed disrespectful of women. Because of this when I got married I made sure that my husband understood that I wanted a man who respected women.

Since then whenever we are driving and there are others in the car my husband insists that I sit up there with him, he opens doors for me and is very sweet and loving toward me. It is something I really treasure in my husband.

What I have found lately is that acknowledging him for the things he does and being respectful of him in public seems to make him feel better about himself and about our marriage.

In the past he would bring up to me how he did not appreciate being torn down in front of others, so lately I have been trying to build him up in front of others. And to tell the truth it seems to be helping a lot. I can tell that he appreciates it.

Men should definitely respect women, but if there is a mutual respect there then I think the whole relationship goes better. And it allows the relationship to function on more equal footing. For some reason there is a belief out there that by putting men down women will become more equal, and conversely there seems to be a belief that by putting women down men are more in control. Instead it creates a war between the sexes with hard feelings on both sides. I think that with a mutual respect on both sides we can have better relationships no matter which gender we belong to.

Tags: Men Women Respect

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Today we had stake conference, it was broadcast from Salt Lake City, this meant that we had Dallin H. Oaks speak as well as President Monson. It was great to tell the truth. From what it sounds like the conference was broadcast to many in midwest stakes. The broadcast covered IL, WI, MN, ND, SD, NE, KS, IA. So quite a few states and quite a few stakes. For those of you who saw this broadcast as well what I speak of will be familiar. For those of you who did not see this conference then let me speak of probably my favorite part.

There were many parts of the conference that really touched me spiritually, however, one of the parts that touched me the most was President Monson’s talk. He spoke of those in the church who are “lost” or rather, the widowed, the inactive, those who are lonely and alone or who are not as close to the church as others. He then spoke of those who reached out to these people and “rescued” them. As he spoke of these people I could not help but think of my visiting teacher.

As I have mentioned before a little over a year ago I began to become inactive, eventually I stopped going to church all together. I was struggling with many things and eventually I ended up sinning greatly. However, near the end around the time that I started seriously thinking about coming back to church my visiting teachers were changed. The two sisters assigned to me were very sweet ladies and they took me out to Culvers on one of our first visits. One of them exchanged e-mail addresses with me and we began to e-mail each other. After awhile the other sister moved out of our ward and I never knew who replaced her. My remaining visiting teacher continued to e-mail me and visit me and encouraged me to come to church by promising to save me a seat in Relief Society each Sunday. Eventually, when the time came that I finally decided to change my life I came to church scared but knowing that there would be a seat in Relief Society saved for me by my visiting teacher.

That first Sunday back I actually ended up saving her a seat, but it was her encouragement that helped make coming back to church not so scary. We are now good friends and we talk every Sunday as well as e-mail during the week. I can attest to the fact that reaching out to those who are struggling does make a difference. I am so grateful that I had one such person in my life.

Tags: Visiting Teaching Conference Inactive

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Response, it is something that many of us crave. Someone to take note of us and tell us that we are special, it is why praise works so well on people. I am not a doctor or a researcher to give statistics on how praise affects us mentally or even chemically. However, I do not doubt that it does so.

Consider the forums, it is compiled of a group of people who come together to share thoughts, views and silly remarks. The simple premise to it all is: post a topic and then wait for people to respond. It is the response that people look for, a comment, a view count, a simple acknowledgement that they are being noticed by someone else. As much as some of us, like myself, tend to hermit ourselves away and pretend the rest of the world does not exist at times, humans are for the most part social beings. We like to socialize with others. However, I think that the drive and need for human contact of any sort can create problems. I think there are many who find themselves yearning, needing contact of any sort. This can lead to an addiction of sorts, reliance upon the thrill we get from a response.

I find this addiction in myself. I come to a site such as this one and find myself wanting to be noticed. I get pleasure from responses people give, even the ones that end up aggravating me. It is this that makes me wonder. How many out there have found themselves fanatically checking their favorite blogging spot, or favorite forum board? Watching the responses, checking back again and again to see if someone has commented, and it is this that I think holds much of the danger. This increased attention to a website, a virtual society that creates a virtual life which causes people to create virtual priorities. If we are not careful we can easily find ourselves putting our virtual world above our real world.

It was a virtual world like this that drew me away from my life, and opened me up to the possibility to sin in the way I did. I met people and became friends with them, I found myself checking regularly to see if anyone had commented. And from the friendships I created I developed a relationship and then let that virtual relationship take more priority than my real life relationship. I paid less attention to my marriage and allowed myself to give more attention to chatting online with my “friend”. I found myself sending comments back and forth with him while at work, and then coming home and going straight to the computer to chat the entire night with him. Though I loved the attention I did find the whole thing very stressful. If I did not show up every day then he would get worried. And so I gave away a year worth of time with my husband for the simple thrill of interacting with someone, who cared much less for me than my husband did, and who eventually encouraged me to take steps that could have ruined my life forever.

It is from these experiences that I have learned that when I begin to feel the familiar pull of the virtual worlds of the internet, that it just might be the time to step back into my real life and spend some time really living.

Tags: Forums Sin Addiction Attention

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Last year the group of poets I was working with began writing "I am" poems, I wrote one and then left it at that. And yet here I am again, finding myself writing another. What I like about these types of poems is that they do a great job of describing just who you are, and yet because they are a poem they don't tell it all, they just give a glimpse. So in light of that here is what I have written today. It could probably use more work, but here it is anyway.

I Am

I am, a moon over still waters

A shadow in the forest

A cry in the night

I am, a step in the right direction

A glimpse of what might happen

A hope for a changed tomorrow

I am a banished poet wandering

Through fields of self restraint

Praying on the path to home

(disclaimer, just because I am writing under a psudeonym does not mean that my work is free to take)

Tags: Poems

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The atonement can be an amazing thing, for me it has helped me to set my life back on the course it needed to be. I am so grateful to my Savior for what he has done for me. One thing that has become very clear to me lately is the Holy Ghost in my life. For so long I had kept him out and had been living without his presence. I didn’t realize how empty I was until now. It is wonderful to have the Spirit with me to help inspire and guide me. And I have noticed that as long as I am willing to listen to his promptings he will guide me in the right direction. This has become ever more clear to me as time has passed.

Because we had both grown lax and because we were not keeping our standards to where they should have been, my husband and I allowed certain things to come inside our house. Certain movies, (R rated movies) movies that the Spirit would not be around. Certain TV shows that used foul language and crude behavior in an effort to be funny (like South Park). These things had an effect on us, our language changed and our behavior changed. We grew desensitized to crude and offensive things. Since deciding to change myself and bringing the Spirit back into my life I have found my sensitivity to those things returning. I am once again shocked to hear foul language, and offensive behavior and offensive television has begun again to bother me.

I thought about asking my husband to remove those items and shows from the house, but that is much like trying to force my ideal on him. So instead I have asked him to watch them when I am not around or after I have gone to bed. He has to let the Spirit guide him to what he feels is right just as I have to do the same thing.

Recently he made a comment, “I am coming to realize that there is no in between with you, I can either have the bad you or the good you, there is no grey area.” And it is true, I can not truly focus on repentance and on trying my hardest to return to God if I allow things in my life that drive the Spirit away. Keeping the Spirit strong in my life is what helps me resist temptation and any urge that may come along to return to old bad habits.

Tags: Atonement Holy Ghost Spirit Repentance Righteousness

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Love, it is an interesting thing. It can drive us to do so many things in life. And the promise or premise of it can drive us to do things we never thought to do. Often when asking young teens why they have lost their virginity to someone they say, “Well we had sex because we loved each other.” In response to that I give you a statement from Spencer W. Kimball:

“Many rationalize that this attraction of two unmarried people is love, and they seek thereby to justify their intimate relations. This is one of the most false of Satan’s lies. It is lust, not love, which brings men and women to fornication and adultery. No person would injure one he truly loves, and sexual sin can only result in injury.”

The Miracle of Forgiveness by Spencer W. Kimball

1998 Chapter 6, page 65

If only I had read this sooner. I, like many others believed that if you loved someone you would be willing to give them yourself completely. And thus when I was dating I often fell into temptation. I kept myself clean because I wanted to be clean for my wedding night. I wanted to give myself totally to my husband when we were married and not to anyone else at any earlier date. And so though I came close, I did not break that until my wedding night.

However, as mentioned in my previous blog, about a year ago I found myself falling in “love” with a man other than my husband. Over the time that I knew him I felt my feelings build for him, and these feelings eventually led to me giving myself to him. The sad thing was that it wasn’t until later, after the deed had been done that I realized that what I had done was not based on love but on lust.

As I came to know the man I found myself caring for him, pitying him his infirmities and as I was caught up in the romance between us believing that I was in love with him. I did indeed feel deeply for him. And yet, was it really love? He lusted for me, of that I was sure, for he made it known. And I caught up in the relationship, which caused me to feel like a young heartsick girl with her first “real love”, I thought that what I felt for him was love that yes often brought me to feelings of lust.

Yet when it came down to it I ended up acting out of pity. The grand act of “love” between us melted down to nothing more than pity sex. I feel awful for saying it, but it is true. He had been moaning for days that it would never happen and that God hated him and that his life was never fair and as he was staying with us for a month I finally did it to shut him up. How idiotic of me, how foolish, I gave up so much with an act of pity that yielded nothing, for the next day he was complaining about how what we had done was such a huge mistake and how things would now change and how (again) life was not fair.

With this decision I had broken my covenants to my husband, I had created a possibility where I could lose my entire way of life because of one stupid decision. And all because I thought, thought that I “loved” this man.

Love, it is a very misunderstood word. It is a word that is used for many, many things. But the truth of the word is that if you really love a person, you will do anything you can not to hurt them, and if by chance you do end up hurting them, as I am sad to say we all seem to do at some point or another, then try your hardest to make it up to them. Service, understanding, asking for forgiveness.

With the way that love is misunderstood is it any wonder that we can do all manner of terrible things in the name of “Love”. I think that we must remember when we are claiming that we are acting in “Love” that we must really look at what we are doing and ask ourselves, “Is this really love?”

Tags: Infidelity Adultery Love Atonement Forgiveness

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